From Atlantis to the Sphinx (41 page)

The authors reach one more interesting conclusion. Where precisely, they asked the computer, was the vernal point situated in 10,500 BC? The answer was ‘that it lay exactly 111.111 degrees east of the station that it had occupied at 2500 BC. Then it had been at the head of the Hyades-Taurus, close to the right bank of the Milky Way; 8000 years earlier it lay
directly under the rear paws of the constellation of Leo
.’

And if this point has an ‘earthly double’, then it would seem to hint at some undiscovered secret below the rear paws of the Sphinx. The Coffin Texts speak about ‘a sealed thing, which is in darkness, with fire about it, which contains the efflux of Osiris, and is put in Rostau’. Could it be that ‘something hidden’—in a chamber under the rear paws of the Sphinx—is a ‘treasure’ that will transform our knowledge of ancient Egypt? Edgar Cayce predicted the discovery of a ‘Hall of Records’ beneath the Sphinx towards the end of the twentieth century, and Hancock and Bauval speculate whether this is not even now being investigated by the team of ‘official Egyptologists’ who are the only ones permitted near the Sphinx.

So
Keeper of Genesis
—as is perhaps inevitable—ends on a question mark. For the real question that lies behind this search into the remote past is:
what does it all mean
? We have to recognise that even the most precise knowledge of the Egyptian precessional code and their religion of resurrection still brings us no closer to answering some of the most obvious questions about their achievement—even one as straightforward as how they raised 200-ton blocks...

In Chapter 1, we saw that both Schwaller and Gurdjieff believed that the men of today have degenerated from their former level. Schwaller, obviously, was talking about ancient Egypt, and the earlier civilisation from which it derived its knowledge. But what was it that—according to Schwaller—made these men of former times ‘giants’?

What emerges clearly from his books is the idea that modern man has
forgotten
something of central importance.

Some notion of what he had in mind can be derived from the researches of American anthropologist Edward T. Hall, who spent much of his life working with or studying Native American Indians—Hopi, Navajo, Pueblo and Quiché (the descendants of the Maya). His book
The Dance of Life
(1983) is about time, and about the fact that the time system of the Indians is so totally different from that of American-Europeans (which he shortens to AE) that it is virtually a different
kind
of time. He notes that the Hopi do not even have a word for time, and that Hopi verbs have no tenses. They live in an ‘eternal present’, indifferent to western science, technology and philosophy. Hall coins the term ‘polychronic time’ to distinguish this Native American ‘eternal present’ from the ‘monochronic’ time of western civilisation, with its ever-ticking clock.

Religion is the central core of Hopi life. Religious ceremonies perform many functions which in AE cultures are treated as separate and distinct entities, quite apart from the sacred: disciplining children, for example; encouraging rain and fertility; staying in sync with nature; helping the life-giving crops to be fertile and to grow; relating to each other; and initiating the young into adulthood. In fact, religion is at the center not only of social organisation, but also of government, which is part and parcel of Hopi ceremonial life.

And the centre of this ceremonial is, of course, the dance. When a Hopi dance is successful, ‘all consciousness of external reality, all awareness of the universe outside, is obliterated. The world collapses, and is contained in this one event...’

Of course, the dance is not always successful; if some element of discord enters, it may be a failure. This underlines the fact that a Hopi dance is not simply a formality, like hymns in a Christian church; it requires total commitment, and success can be
felt
, like the success of a work of art. Elsewhere in the book Hall emphasises that ‘for the Quiché, living a life is somewhat analogous to composing music, painting, or writing a poem. Each day properly approached can be either a work of art of a disaster... The Quiché really
do
have to think deeply and seriously about the process of how each day is to be lived.’ So the ‘law of productivity’ that drives western man, and which is the measure of his achievement, seems alien to Native Americans, who feel that a day properly lived is an achievement, even if it has not involved a stroke of ‘productive work’.

This, I would suggest, begins to explain to us what Schwaller and Gurdjieff meant in stating that modern civilised man had ‘degenerated’. It is as if he has stuck ear-plugs into his ears to protect him from city noise, and then forgotten to take them out.

We could express this, of course, by saying that the civilised city dweller is a left brainer, and that the Hopi and Quiché are right brainers. It is true, of course. But it gets us no closer to our objective—defining the mental world of the ancient Egyptians.

As a first step, consider Hall’s description of a long ride he took with a companion to bring his horses from New Mexico to Arizona.

Our daily average was twelve to fifteen miles, otherwise the mustangs we were riding would tire and ultimately give out. Dropping down from the fir-covered slopes of the Jemez Mountains onto the parched plains of the west, I watched the same mountain from different angles during three days, as it seemed to slowly rotate while we passed by. Experiences of this sort give one a very different feeling than speeding by on a paved highway in one or two hours. The horse, the country, and the weather set the pace; we were in the grip of nature, with little control over the rate of progress.
Later, riding horseback on a trek of three or four hundred miles, I discovered it took a minimum of three days to adjust to the tempo and the more leisurely rhythm of the horse’s walking gait...

He is not speaking merely about relaxation, but about a different kind of
perception
.

Oddly enough, the ‘magician’ Aleister Crowley, who was in some ways a most unadmirable character, knew about this. In 1920, an actress called Jane Wolff came to visit Crowley in his rented villa at Cefalu. She proved to be highly combative, and Crowley determined to teach her that he knew best. He told her that she should begin her training in magic with a month’s meditation in a tent at the top of the cliff. When she flatly refused, he told her she was free to leave on the next boat. Finally, with anger and reluctance, she agreed to go and meditate.

During the next month she lived in the tent, wearing only a woollen robe, and living on bread, grapes and water. During the first few days she was tense, resentful and uncomfortable. Then she became bored. But after the nineteenth day she suddenly plunged into a mood of ‘perfect calm, deep joy, and renewal of strength and courage’. Suddenly she understood what Crowley meant when he told her that she had the sun, moon, stars, sky, sea and the universe to read and play with. When the month was up, she left her tent reluctantly.

Like Hall, she had switched from one mode of time to another. This is not simply a matter of relaxation—after all, when we are relaxed, the world may look more or less the same as when we are tense. But what Hall—and Jane Wolff—experienced was a
perception
, a certainty, that the world is a richer and stranger place than we realise.

This also emerges in a story Hall tells about the Pueblo Indians (of whom D. H. Lawrence wrote in
Mornings in Mexico
). A new agricultural agent had spent a summer and winter working with the Indians, and seemed to be well-liked. Then, one day, he called on the superintendent of the agency, and admitted that the Indians seemed to have taken a dislike to him—he had no idea why. The superintendent called on a religious leader of the Pueblos and asked him what had gone wrong. All the Indian would say was: ‘He just doesn’t know certain things.’

After thinking about it, the superintendent suddenly realised what was wrong.

In the spring, Mother Earth is pregnant, and must be treated gently. The Indians remove the steel shoes from their horses; they don’t use their wagons or even wear white man’s shoes because they don’t want to break the surface of the earth. The agricultural extension agent, not knowing about this and probably not thinking it important if he did, was trying his best to get the Indians to start ‘early spring plowing’.

Like most ‘civilised’ westerners, the agent no doubt regarded the notion of the earth as a pregnant mother as some kind of quaint superstition, failing to realise that for the Indians, it is not an idea or belief, but something they
feel
in their bones, so that an Indian’s relationship with the earth is as intimate as his relationship with his horse—or, for that matter, his wife. To regard this as a ‘belief’ is to miss a whole dimension of reality.

We can also see that the ancient Egyptian must have felt precisely this about his relationship with the earth, and with the Nile that enabled him to stay alive by flooding it every time Sothis returned to the dawn sky. It was not a matter of superstition, but of a deeply
experienced
relationship with the earth and the heavens, a relationship that could be felt as distinctly as the midday sun or a cold wind. Egypt was, as Schwaller is never tired of pointing out, a
sacred
society.

Hall’s understanding of this relationship becomes increasingly clear as he talks about the Quiché Indians and their sense of time. Inheritors of the Maya calendar system, they live simultaneously by two calendars, one secular and one religious. Their ordinary calendar—as we know—is the same Julian calendar that the ancient Egyptians used, of 360 days with five days ‘spare’. Their sacred calendar has 260 days made up of various periods. The two calendars interlock, so they return to ‘square one’ every 52 years, when the sacred calendar has repeated itself 73 times. When a normal year is over, the sacred calendar is well into its second year; so it could be said to go on turning endlessly, like a wheel.

Each day, Hall explains, has special characteristics—just as, in ancient Egypt (according to Schwaller) each hour had its special
neters—

and it takes a special shaman-diviner to provide a proper interpretation of the day. This is particularly important when critical decisions are contemplated. Not only does each of the twenty days have a proper name and character that is divine, but also a number. The ‘nature’ of the days change depending on the numerical accompaniment, as well as the actions or moves contemplated during that particular day. A ‘good’ day in one context may be bad in another. There are favourable and unfavourable combinations, and it is the combination that determines how the day should be interpreted.

Again, it is important to realise that all this is quite distinct from a ‘belief’. The ‘right-brain’ state of mind permits deeper perception. For example, ‘an important feature of Quiché divination is the use of the body as sender, receiver and analyser of messages’. So a Quiché shaman feels the pulse in different parts of the patient’s body in order to reach a diagnosis and effect a cure. It sounds—as Hall admits—‘hogwash’, yet it works. And Hall goes on to tell a story of a psychoanalyst who also learned to use his body as a receiver and analyser of messages. He was dealing with a seductive but very violent female patient who might try to smash his skull with some heavy object without warning. The assaults occurred when the psychoanalyst was most relaxed and trusting. Then he noticed that his own pulse rate was giving him warning of the attacks; it began to increase a few seconds in advance. All he had to do was to make sure he paid attention to it, and he was ready to ward off the blow. He was picking up some kind of signal—telepathic or otherwise—and his pulse acted as an alarm clock.

It is because there is a ‘telepathic’ (or ‘collective unconscious’) element in the lives of Native Americans that they recognise the importance of thought. Hall explains that when the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico plan to build a house, they wait until the ‘right thoughts’ are present. ‘The Pueblos believe that thoughts have a life of their own, and that these live thoughts are an integral part of any man-made structure, and will remain with that structure forever. Thoughts are as essential an ingredient as mortar and bricks. Something done without the right thoughts is worse than nothing.’

This is obviously part and parcel of the attitude that makes the Hopi put such immense effort into the sacred dance, in an effort to ensure that it is ‘successful’. They recognise that there is a subtle sense in which human thoughts, human attitudes,
imprint
themselves on what we do. In traditional magic—for example, Tibetan—there is a belief that ‘thought forms’ can be brought into existence by a long effort of concentration. (In Tibet they are called tulpas.) Such thought-forms may be benevolent or otherwise.

But Hall also points out that the ‘right thoughts’ that are needed to build a house are not simply those of its future owner, but of everyone concerned in the building. It is essentially a joint venture. ‘When a Pueblo Indian builds a house, it reaffirms the group.’ Again, we sense that the Pueblo Indians share a ‘collective unconscious’ like that of Cordova’s Amahuaca Indians of Brazil, and that it is quite unlike the compartmentalised mind of the ‘AE’ westerner. Our ‘left-brain’ consciousness strands us in a far more bleak and boring universe than the Indian.

If we can grasp this, we can see that it is not a question of Indian credulity, but that we suffer from what William James called ‘a certain blindness in human beings’. The AE westerner lacks a
sense
that the Indian possesses, just as a blind man lacks a sense possessed by a man who can see.

This sense, Hall argues, is due to the Indian slowing-down of time. We all have some conception of this—for example, the way that, under the right circumstances, a glass of wine or whisky can relax us and make everything look more real and interesting. This enables us to understand how our ‘left-brain’ time has the effect of making things slightly unreal. What is so hard for us to understand is that a long period of ‘right-brain’ time can make us aware of
another reality
. Hall likes to remind us ‘that this reality... exists as something distinct from what I or anyone else says or thinks’.