As someone who has loved and studied ancient Egypt all her life, I was excited to come across this book. Even though the writing style was not exactly to my taste, and there were too many passionate repetitions of her feelings vs. other people’s more limited perspectives, I kept reading because much of what the author says struck a chord inside me, and there were some fascinating stories involving people she met and what they told her (concerning Ayurvedic medicine, for example.) There’s no doubt the author was an intelligent, sensitive, creative and all-around wonderful human being. And yet… something didn’t feel quite right; I was finding it increasingly difficult to suspend my disbelief when I got to the part where she supposedly remembers a past life in ancient Egypt in at once astonishing, and vague, detail. Then certain passages really began to bother me: “…And so it has come about that this animal-like material race of cave men is experimenting with divine laws, growing mightier and more powerful until the time comes for it to begin ruling the earth. Before leaving the earth, however, the higher race had to implant its special powers in the lower race. Through the operation of the laws of heredity, this will enable the lower race…to rise out of matter again…” Apparently, the Sons of God, those who were left after what sounds like the destruction of Atlantis, interbred with a lesser breed of human being, the so-called cave men, and created the ancient Egyptian race that built the pyramids. “‘Father,’ I ask… ‘Didn’t the daughters of the Sons of God also take husbands from among the sons of men? Why have only the Sons of God begotten children with the daughters of men?’ ‘(Because…)God still remains pure if he begets children with a daughter of the sons of men. But the blood of a pure bred daughter of God would become mixed blood if she were to marry one of the sons of men. From then on she would be mixed and so would her children.’” I won’t even go there!
Suddenly, I simply could not suspend my disbelief any longer. I didn’t feel I was truly in ancient Egypt listening to ancient Egyptians speak. I’m the first person to believe the ancient Egyptians were, in the very Old Kingdom, privy to spiritual knowledge and powers that petered out in the later dynasties, but this wisdom of theirs was both spiritual and sensual, and the author makes her views on sexuality painfully clear–the only reason for sex is to breed the next generation because one must renounce sex in order to channel its energy into spiritual organs, so to speak, which otherwise cannot develop to their fullest. No ancient Egyptian would have split sexuality and spirituality in such a fashion. Suddenly, I was reading a book written by a 20th century European imagining a life in ancient Egypt. Then I read this highly disturbing paragraph: “When absolutely constant and completely impartial love radiates from you to all creatures, your love will never again be mixed with personal inclinations or antipathies. You will consider everything from the standpoint of the whole,and when the interests of the whole community are at variance with those of individual persons, you will unhesitatingly defend the cause of the group with ruthless disregard for the interests of individuals…” What?! Did Elisabeth Haich and Ayn Rand have tea one day? The quest for “pure” spirituality, the need to rise above material desires, to transcend emotions and passions, is NOT ancient Egyptian or, in my passionate opinion, healthy. God took flesh for a reason, dare I believe to enjoy Itself? Really iffy theories of a superior race breeding with cave men (cosmic eugenics) chauvinist biology and almost fascist, definitely cold-blooded attitudes to “mere” individuals… none of these things belong in a book about spiritual initiation. A book like this is at once fascinating and dangerous because too many ethnocentric perspectives are confusingly mixed in with spiritual truths. Please, read with a grain of salt.