The altars were prepared according to inner guidance. They included sacrificial altars and beautification altars. They did not sacrifice animals, birds, beasts, reptiles, grains, or humans on these altars. That came much later after this early connection to God-consciousness was diminished by further immersion into physicality and earthliness. According to Cayce, these earlier altars sacrificed individual’s faults and weaknesses, blotting them out with “the fires of the unseen forces” that were set in motion by attunement to the powers of the Spirit.
On one of my many trips to Egypt, I experienced “the fires of the unseen forces” while meditating in the seventh chamber of the Seti Temple in Abydos. Here’s the experience:
My group and I sat on the cold, hard stone floor in this very special chamber and began to still our minds and bodies for meditation. The guards at the temple were laughing and talking; the echo of their voices was so great inside the temple that it was very difficult to meditate. However, rather than give up or get angry I asked myself, “When was I ever going to get back to this temple?” I told myself that I had to succeed now. Then, I tried with all my might to filter out their voices and get into deep meditation. It worked. It worked so well that I not only lost consciousness of them, I completely lost consciousness of the temple and my group, entering into a vivid ancient Egyptian ceremony. It was an initiation ceremony involving water and fire. I found myself standing shoulder-deep in a pool of holy water, naked. I somehow knew it was a purification ritual. As I walked up the stone steps out of this sacred pool, attending priests wrapped a floor-length cape around me. They then anointed my head with oil and combed my hair back. My hair was black and thick with oil. Two of them approached and handed me the two scepters of Egypt, the crook and the flail (see illustration 4). Somehow, I intuitively knew that if I wanted to move, I had to hold them out in front of me; to stop, I had to cross them over my chest. I looked up and beheld a line of ancient Egyptians out in front of me. I tilted the two scepters toward them, causing me to glide across the floor, not walk, glide just an inch above the floor. It was an exhilarating feeling to glide so effortlessly. In front of me were two long rows of priests and gods: a row on my left and another on my right. I glided between them. They nodded their heads and smiled approvingly. At least at first I thought this was approval, but as I nodded back, I realized that it was also a nod of encouragement to continue through the next phase of the initiation. I looked up ahead of them to see what was at the end of the rows. To my amazement and concern, it was the sun, the real sun! At the end of this gauntlet of priests and gods, I was to enter the fire of Ra. But this Ra was the real sun that would burn me to a crisp. I looked hard into the eyes of the priests and gods, expressing to them with my eyes my deep concern about this part of the initiation. They smiled and nodded with more enthusiasm than before. I knew that all I had to do was cross the scepters and I would stop. But some knowing within me kept the scepters pointed straight toward the fiery sun. As I enter it, I felt the searing heat, but instead of burning me, it cleansed me! The Ra fire was burning away all my sins and weaknesses but not harming the rest of me. So happy was I that I began to draw its heat into me, inhaling it, wanting more of it. It felt wonderful! I wanted it to burn me completely, thoroughly, until I was fully cleansed! Suddenly, someone grabbed my arm and began shaking me saying, “John, wake up; we’re going to miss our boat. We have to go. Wake up.” I struggled to see through the sun’s brilliant light. Two faces were staring back at me; they were our Egyptian guide and my colleague. I asked, “Who are you?” After they both looked at each other, they then turned and ordered me to get up, follow them closely, and not say anything that would alarm the guards and others in our group. I obeyed, gradually realizing that I was supposed to be a part of this tour group, yet half of me was still in the initiation ceremony. Once on the bus to the boat, I fell back into the solar cleansing. Oh, it felt so good to be so clean!
Later, when reading Cayce’s discourses on Egypt, I came across this fire altar portion of the ancient Egyptian initiation in the temples of Ra-Ta. I felt both elated to have somehow experienced the initiation firsthand (if that is what I experienced) and a bit spooked to know that the ancient events were so accessible. But then Cayce also taught that all time is one time and nothing is ever lost. It is still there in the deeper levels of consciousness. All one has to do is access it with the right intention.
In another experience while in a deep state of consciousness, I woke in a stone chamber in an ancient Egyptian temple. Upon a stone altar was a person reclining on his back, waiting for a chakra adjustment! I know how weird this sounds, but this is how the scene opened. What’s even stranger is the fact that it felt so real that I lost all awareness of anything else. I was in this room, standing next to this altar. I approached the person lying on the altar and reached my hands over his heart area. I was wearing a floor-length cape and a high, cylindrical hat, similar to that worn by Amun-Ra (see illustration 5). Somehow I intuitively knew that the cape was to shield me from any interfering or contaminating influences and that the hat was an antenna-like device which channeled the energies of Venus through me! Yes, the planet! These energies were those of the typical astrological characteristics attributed to Venus: love, art (creativity), and beauty. As these influences flowed through me, they entered into the person’s heart chakra. As they did, it was as if dials in his heart chakra were being turned so as to better tune his heart to the frequency coming from the planet of love, art, and beauty.
Perhaps this is why I’m writing this book on Cayce’s Egypt. It is as if my soul knows that ancient place and time and has some lingering energies that have to find their way out of me today. My intention in sharing these experiences with you is to give possible examples of what Cayce was conveying about these ancient temples and the activities of the initiates and for us to consider the unseen influences of these experiences that are latent within us even today.
Now back to the highlights of Cayce’s story of Ra-Ta and the temples (a later chapter on the temples goes into this topic in greater detail).
When these cleansings in the temples were combined with the inner guidance to commit oneself to a specific career of service, one could then make great leaps forward in freedom from earthliness and limited consciousness to become a light to this world. This was done only after the seekers had chosen to give themselves to these services. No one was forced into the temples, and once in the temples, no one was forced to progress through the various stages. Each had to choose or be “called” from within to participate and endure.
The Temple of Sacrifice may be compared to the combination of one of our best hospitals merged with one of our best health spas and yoga centers. Restructuring and cleansing the body could employ several means: from surgeries to scented baths, from chemistry and potions to massage and body movement (likely similar to Tai Chi) or dance, from painful change through physical therapy to nirvanic transformation that would alter the very cells and hormones of the body.
The Temple Beautiful may be compared to the combination of one of our highly creative and idealistic universities, one of our most loving, monastery-type religious facilities, and one of our prayer and meditation centers.
The Temple of Sacrifice transformed the body and body-mind. The Temple Beautiful transformed participants mentally and spiritually. It combined body, mind, and soul development with service to God, to one another, and to the world. The program was not reclusive or elitist. Whether one was channeled to work in the sacred services of the altars or the daily labors of the granary, both were seen as divinely manifesting his or her ultimate potential to magnify God in life rather than escape life to be with God. Godliness in this early training was an active service, not a static state. Works were as important as faith and enlightenment.
According to Cayce’s readings, the purpose for all of this was: “That there might be a closer
