PAUL BRUNTON'S A SEARCH IN SECRET EGYPT

© Ian Lawton 2005

[My sincere thanks to my good friend Stephen Gawtry of Watkins Books for passing this book on to me]

Paul Brunton was a renowned student of the mystery schools, who travelled the world to further his understanding and wrote many books on his experiences. In this 1935 work he discusses the mysteries of ancient Egypt. Much of this material is not particularly to my taste, including the hoary old assertions that the pyramids and Sphinx were created by emigrant colonists from Atlantis. However, there are a couple of highly illuminating passages that I believe are worthy of reproduction and comment.

The first concerns the nature of the Great Pyramid's secrets, which impinges also on the whole idea of a secret Hall of Records. Those familiar with my books will know that I have always asserted that, if ideas of such a Hall - and of Holy Grails and so on - have any validity at all, they have nothing to do with buried treasure or incredible records of forgotten history. Rather, they are symbols of an inner spiritual search.

Brunton spent a night meditating in the King's Chamber and, after being confronted by various malignant demons, was assisted by the spirit figure of an ancient Egyptian high priest to imitate death. He left his physical body but remained attached to it by a 'mysterious psychic umbilical cord' of 'faint silvery light' - just as described by near-death experiencers - and suddenly found himself being led by his priest-guide down a secret corridor whose entrance he had not seen, supposedly to view some sort of ancient 'covenant'. However, in his desire to establish the location of the entrance to this corridor, he failed to heed his guide's warning not to look back. Immediately he did so he found himself transported back to the King's Chamber. This is what his guide then told him (chapter 4, p. 77):

My son, it matters not whether thou discoverest the door or not. Find but the secret passage within the mind that will lead thee to the hidden chamber within thine own soul, and thou shalt have found something worthy indeed. The mystery of the Great Pyramid is the mystery of thine own self. The secret chambers and ancient records are all contained in thine own nature. The lesson of the Pyramid is that man must turn inward, must venture to the unknown centre of his being to find his soul...

I could not have put this better in a million years, and I earnestly hope that seekers after the mysteries of ancient Egypt will one day recognise this fundamental truth, and call a halt to their predominantly materialistic and misguided quests.

The second passage links to this in the way that it describes the progressive degradation of ancient Egyptian spiritual beliefs, so that almost all of what we now have in the historical record, in terms of hieroglyphic texts and so on, shows only the results of this degradation. In several of my books I have stressed that the ancient Egyptian beliefs that we know about from the evidence are actually extremely unphilosophical in their outlook. The elitism underlying the idea that only those who could afford to have a copy of The Book of the Dead inscribed in their tomb would successfully negotiate the trials and tribulations of the netherworld, and the vulgarity of thinking that the physical body needed to be preserved along with all the trappings of material wealth, being just two prime examples.

Towards the end of his travels in Egypt Brunton had a synchronous encounter with a mysterious adept who, amongst many other things, revealed the following (chapter 19, p. 277):

In the final cycle of Egyptian history there was a great degeneration of the men of knowledge - the priesthood - and sorcery and the black arts were commonly practised. When the white light of truth which was formerly shining through the pure Egyptian religion became dimmed, and the noisome shadows of false, materialistic doctrines crept in to replace it, the practice of mummification arose, together with all the elaborate accompanying rituals.

No one likes a know-it-all, but don't say I didn't warn you... ;-)