Early photo of Author inside the tomb of the Vizier Mereruka featured in 'THE SMITING TEXTS' (Amazon paperback and Kindle) |
(Excerpt)
Was
the Vizier Mereruka’s afterworld a physical place? Or just a different reality, a sort of
virtual world created by a civilization’s collective unconscious and sustained
by its religion? Mereruka did not question its existence.
‘Do
I believe in survival after death?’ Anson asked himself. ‘Perhaps not, when I
think about it. But what about when I don’t think about it, but merely feel it,
at a deeper level?’
Everyone
knew that the Egyptians were preoccupied with the afterlife, but they took it
even more seriously than many imagined. Humans, they said, were the only
creatures that must live life with the knowledge that one day they’re going to
die and our culture was the world of distraction we create around ourselves to
shield us from this knowledge. But the Egyptians’ culture did not serve as a
mere distraction to the pitiless cruelty of death. Instead their culture came
to grips with death in an attempt to overcome its tyranny. This doorway and
statue, the glowing underworlds of the tombs, the Books of Coming Forth By Day,
or the Book of the Dead as they called these religious texts - were the results
of government-funded research into the ‘first mystery’- death and the
afterlife. The early pyramids were like nationally financed space-shots
designed to launch the god-king pharaoh into the hereafter. The Egyptians even
had maps showing the routes to the underworld painted on the bases of coffins.
The unconscious psyche believes in life after
death Carl Jung asserted.
Anson
recalled that the doctor and founder of analytical psychology had written of a
near-death experience after a heart attack and had reported a spiritual
existence outside of his body.
The
images of the afterlife carved on the tomb walls around him urged Anson to
believe.
But
the veil of mystery remained.
Perhaps
we were not meant to know the truth so that we could endure this life...
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