Egyptontology

Limiting discussion to humans and their world(s), there are five human realities, each of them potentially knowable by man, who is able to participate in them by means of the five bodies he/she possesses. These are the "gross" and "subtle" bodies encountered in all major spiritual traditions and systems of magic and occultism. The understanding of them is distorted, however, and some systems, for example, subcategorize, while others lump together, thus arriving at three, seven, nine, or some other number of bodies and their respective realities. The five human dimensions or worlds are a "midpoint" between the realities of chaotic "matter" and evolutionary "spirit."

The "gross material or physical body, " or just "physical body" (AUFU), is the body of anatomy and physiology, and it is what most people think they mean by "my body." This body, however, has a brain but no mind and is therefore not the body of most experience, as will be explained more fully later.

The second, more subtle body is the Double (KA), and it is the body usually experienced by the mind of that body; it is a body image, coincides more or less with the AUFU, and its sensations also are images or, more precisely, symbolic representations of an imaginal reality, which it in many ways distorts. This distortion is recognized by psychology, so that some authors speak, for example, of a "symbolic coding" of the "actual" reality done by the brain or the brain-mind. Quite apart from metaphysics, one can accept that the experience of one's own and other bodies is not immediate, but mediated by the mind, and "occurs in" the mind (or brain, if one chooses to regard mind as "epiphenomenon of brain").

As the KA's world is more subtle than the AUFU's, similarly the third body and world of the Shadow (HAIDIT) is more subtle than that of the KA. This is a reality ordinarily experienced as altogether "mental" and mostly "unconscious", the world, for example, of most dreams and most images experienced in trance and drug states. It can be a world of either the personal or the collective or transpersonal unconscious, a world that is the source of many works of art and which figures also in other sorts of "creativity." Many fail to consider that in, say, the dream world they have a body which is not the body of everyday experience and that the dream world also is a different reality, the dream body and dream worlds being unfettered by many of the "laws" which bind the world of the ordinary waking consciousness. As is true of the KA and the other subtle bodies, the HAIDIT is part of and interactive with that constellation of five bodies which is the human being. Therefore its experiences can affect the others, particularly those inferior to it in subtlety, but the more subtle bodies also. Such interactions are most strikingly apparent in cases where the unconscious is clearly in a causal relationship to the sickness or healing of the physical body or the mind. Once again, this world of experience is well-known to psychology. What is not grasped sufficiently, however, is that the world of the HAIDIT, or Shadow, is equally as real as the "objective" world, that the body of the HAIDIT is also equally real, and that the failure to recognize these facts is damaging and severely limiting.

The Magical Body and its world, or KHU, are only rarely consciously experienced but shape importantly that "work of art" or "myth" which the HAIDIT in its own consciousness lives, and which it imposes on the KA, which in turn lives out the same myth, but almost always unconsciously. These subtler realities then very largely determine the fate of the AUFU, including, accidents apart, when and how it will deteriorate and die. In ancient times when such matters were better understood the KHU was not thought of as "magical", but as magico-spiritual, the line between magic and religion being artificial and imposed on human thinking by religions which already had lost much of their awareness and potency. The KHU was the "second order" reality and work of the magician-priest -- only later, just of the magician. To live and act consciously in the KHU it is necessary to undergo a prolonged and very rigorous training. There are brief, spontaneous experiences of it, most often triggered by unusual stress and a resultant alteration of consciousness. Also, in some more primitive societies, shamans, witch doctors and similar figures still attain to fragmentary knowledge of the KHU and thus can generate some "paranormal" effects, but these fall far short of what is possible. Nevertheless the importance of the KHU, which can serve either Cosmos or Chaos, is very great. Functioning unconsciously insofar as the less subtle bodies are concerned, it affects them and their worlds quite apart from determining the myth that is lived out. Each person is to some extent an "unconscious magician", affecting his world, including other persons, by telepathic, psychokinetic and other means. In some cases this "unconscious magic" can be extremely potent.

The "highest" and most subtle body and world is the SAHU, or Spiritual Body which again, more appropriately, should be magicospiritual, but of the "first order." This is the world of authentic "religious experience" as it is attained to by rigorous practitioners of "spiritual disciplines" -- "holy men", "saints", "spiritual masters," whatever they may be called in a particular system. In the ancient traditions, the high magician-priest was expected to be able to experience and work with the realities of both KHU and SAHU. Presently, however, spiritual disciplines largely eschew the magical reality, aiming only at passive consciousness of the "spiritual" one -- more rarely, spiritual Work and interactions with Neters. This limitation is crippling for spiritual development. And the true goal must be "complete" consciousness -- that is, the knowledge and use of all five of the bodies and their respective dimensions. Similarly, the magician is crippled if his consciousness and Work do not extend beyond the KHU.

The SAHU is the only human reality which is "congenial" to the Cosmic "Gods", although such Beings may "descend" all the way into the realm of the AUFU which, however, is excremental to them. The "Gods" of Chaos ordinarily "ascend" only to the realm of the KHU, when a "black magic" is practiced. However, some of the most potent sometimes invade the SAHU, so that even the holiest of men or women is not secure from them. Also, the most powerful of black magicians can work with Metaeidolons representing the UrGods of Chaos at this level, thus effecting the most potent

                                                       robert masters