What we have in mind here is a non-review of books. Thanks for stopping. The aim is to present selected book titles, all of them in print, related to one another by a common thread and currently topical, if not necessarily new. We'd like to convey enough here to enable you to decide with some assurance if you want to read more.

The focus in this premier issue is books concerned with ancient Egypt. We've selected a real family as you shall see. We'll begin with Serpent in the Sky: the High Wisdom of Ancient Egypt by John Anthony West. This well-written, scholarly and intellectually exciting work will provide a central point from which we shall digress and periodically return.

The intent of Serpent... is to make clear to a broad audience the remarkably fastidious and deeply insightful, if somewhat tedious, Egyptological research work of R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz, his family and a few colleagues. That work began when R.A. went for vacation to Egypt with his wife Isha and step-daughter Lucie Lamy. For 15 years they were immersed in and by it, returning then to Europe to ponder, organize and write. Lucie's Egyptian Mysteries, Isha's own extraordinary works and R.A.'s many treatises have all been published since. Thus the knowledge possessed by and, most significantly, the mode of thought engaged in by the highly elevated individuals who assembled, integrated and embedded that knowledge into hieroglyphs, as well as Pharaonic edifices, sculptures and paintings, continued to occupy most of their waking hours until the deaths of both R.A. and Isha. Lucie's Egyptian Mysteries was first published in 1981, by which time all the books by Isha and R.A. had appeared in print, in French. English readers are indebted to various translators who have, over the last 25 years, made available every one of them.

Serpent in the Sky is a great contribution to any thinking person's experience, but it's not easy reading. How could it be? The subject matter is nothing less than a description, with examples par excellence, of a mode of thinking long totally foreign to us. So, we need to go slowly, to permit digestion. But, if we do, assimilation will take place, and months later, we'll notice subtle differences in our perceptions and understanding.

West helps us too. Throughout Serpent... in the wide margins are notes and quotations to illustrate the narrow mindedness and arrogance of the Egyptological establishment. Indeed, these scholars were so shaken by the painstaking work of Schwaller and his group that they ignored them, preferring the old, ostrich-head in the sand trick or, as Jimmy Durante used to say, my head's made up, don't confuse me with the facts. The tactic, though neither scholarly nor scientific, remains a favorite among such academics. Actually, it demonstrates a chief characteristic of what the ancient Egyptians called cerebral intelligence, the intelligence of the brain and the lower of the two intelligences potentially operative in us humans.

Schwaller's insights and conclusions that the ancient Egyptians thoroughly understood human psychology, physiology, anatomy as well as the mechanisms of genesis, the nature of numbers, the use and nature of forces and the human experience following bodily death were just too much to see, much less swallow. Easier to ignore it. The history of all areas of science is replete with similar stories, for despite contrary statements, scientific establishments function as do other bureaucracies. Individuals in the higher echelons do not happily receive ideas that contradict whatever they themselves have come to embrace and feel comfortable with. Bureaucracies resist change but not for good reason.

In her Opening of the Way, a Practical Guide to the Wisdom of Egypt, Isha shows us that the ancient Egyptians understood why this is so. She characterizes cerebral intelligence and clarifies the organization and characteristics of brain consciousness and real consciousness as understood by these ancients. The personality, they said, is associated with brain consciousness and existed according to its values. These included: concern for the mundane, an orientation toward mediocrity, temporary (i.e. relative) values, emphasis on job-oriented education (!), temporality, superficiality and satisfaction. Real consciousness, associated with the intelligence-of-the-heart (that has its place in the brain), embraced different values, permanent, non-egoistic values along with an unequivocal, enduring love of life and of reality. Westerners, and Americans particularly, might find these ancient teachings disturbing, perhaps abhorrent. But such is the power of cerebral intelligence whose transcendence has brought about the life exterior superficial and unreal to unprecedented degree.

These books suggest that the entirety of ancient Egyptian thought was ultimately directed to the possibility of and the means to accomplish a personal evolution. This was every human's purpose. The structures, edifices, paintings, sculptures and writings left in the temples and tombs were meant as examples of and teaching instruments for those who wished for the truth as then understood, to discover and put to use in their own lives. Repeatedly, Schwaller teaches that everything is consciousness, that consciousness evolves in humanity only through individual effort.

The architecture of the ancient Egyptian temples is itself sacred, incorporating profound wisdom and embodying the laws of nature that we play with today but have not understood. One might think we understood gravity, magnetism, electromagnetism, electricity, and life. In his The Temple in Man (published early in 1949), Schwaller meticulously examines many aspects of the temple at Luxor. Hidden in a strangely askew series of buildings or chambers at precisely the correct positions, as determined by overlays of the human skeleton, are brain and body outlines, the olfactory orifices, ear canals, eye openings, the twelve cranial nerves, brain structures, body organs and so forth. Yet this is only the beginning.

West took seriously Schwaller's thought that the Sphinx was far older than the pyramid near which it is situated which has resulted in an Emmy-winning television show and considerable controversy (see Getting Answers from the Sphinx on page 18).

Both Serpent... and Lucie's Egyptian Mysteries (which is a fine introduction to West's work) contain over 100 photographs and drawings which illustrate how a symbol or a thought was represented in carvings or hieroglyphs.

Studying the photos is, in itself, interesting and enriching. Human-headed birds, jackal-headed humans, men with erect phalluses protruding from the navel area, humans with either two left or two right hands. In every case an important message is being conveyed. These strange-to-us means were utilized by the ancients to enable direct, immediate communication with the real consciousness of the intelligence-of-the-heart. Such intelligence, though common to us all, has been stunted by humanity's adherence to lesser and material values and by the unwholesome educational practices arising therefrom. It knows things directly, absolutely and without comparison. Hieroglyphs, allegory, symbol and myth (in the true sense of these terms) sidestep cerebral intelligence, which thinks by comparison. But the method of our higher intelligence is intuition and a higher teaching must appeal to and activate it. This is foreign to us, yet vital and alive in a way cerebral intelligence cannot appreciate.

The capacity to explore nature and oneself according to its subtle principles of action leads to super science and super people. These individuals can, and did, establish a social order that benefits all who function within it, from the point of view of each individual's psychological evolution. Clearly, the magnificent, enigmatic structures, the masterful sculptures, paintings, friezes, carvings, everything, could not have been accomplished with such elegance, grace, delicacy, intelligence and attention to detail if the artisans and laborers had not known and deeply felt that they themselves were individually benefited by their work in a way that exceeded mere care or satisfaction of the body. Here we may observe a true civilization, a real culture with an actual understanding in which wisdom established a constructive milieu for all citizens. Many may grimace at this, but, does anyone seriously believe that societies such as those of today's western world could possibly last 5000 years on the good earth we have poisoned?

Isha Schwaller de Lubicz gained extraordinary wisdom during her long life. An expert in hieroglyphics and Egyptian symbology, she wrote both non-fiction and novels about it. In Her-Bak: Egyptian Initiate, she weaves an illuminating, exhilarating, edifying story from the life of Her-Bak and the profound knowledge the masters of the temple of Karnak teach him. Even though a novel, it's not easy reading. Every day Her-Bak is challenged to learn something new that further breaks the bonds of cerebral intelligence on his mentations and places him among those who truly can understand. Understand what? Suffice it to say, the subtle interaction of the forces of creation, the hierarchical organization of everything existing, the structure of our psyche, the complete nature of our psychology and the essence of the relationship between the natural realm and the organizing principles according to which it continually comes into being.

We can learn with Her-Bak. At one point, we overhear a master informing Her-Bak that: The commonest error among men is to think they are free.... As Her-Bak, we twinge, then dispute, rebut or reject. But with Her-Bak, wisdom prevails: in one way he lived at a better time. We do appear to be slaves of our cerebral intelligence with its remarkable capacity to form associations (habits) and to run our lives for us, we being typically unaware of all that's cooking. Indeed, a goodly portion of chapter three is devoted to a consideration of the automaton and the existence of two independent wills in humans. Of course, the brain, having gained ascendance through no fault of its own, does not happily yield to the higher will. In those who sustain the higher will, a duel results. This is inevitable and as it must be. But why? R.A. explains in The Egyptian Miracle, the Pharaonic mentality understood, ...that every phenomenon is a reactive effect. Further, A cause never produces a direct effect... i.e. resistance is required for a force to have an effect, he says. Incomprehension of this idea is the basis of error in Western mentality. Reaction, he says is life. Absorption or non-reaction annul a force, as can be seen clearly in martial arts.

All of these works concern humanity, our position in the universe and the fulfillment of our promise, our actual potential, through psychological evolution. Perhaps for many people today these topics do not command attention. Evenso, many of the books can be read simply for intellectual enrichment. This is particularly true for Serpent... wherein West considers a broad array of subjects, quite often as their treatment today compares with their treatment by the Pharaonic sages. The process is intrinsically educational, interesting, and often inspiring. If one has any humility at all (it's not a value these days, is it?) one finds oneself in awe and conjecturing on the understanding the sages must have attained to do what they did. Science, then, integrated everything art, literature, philosophy, theology into a unified, mutually related, internally consistent whole. This was not, as some think, because the Pharaonic sages knew less; it was because they knew and understood far more than we.

The truth of this ancient science can be verified and already some has. In a remarkable little book, Esotericism and Symbol, R.A. states, Pictorial writing is the only means of conveying a thought directly to intelligence-of-the-heart. Hieroglyphs depend upon visual gnosis, they evoke innate consciousness and can be translated thereafter by the cerebral intelligence.

By the way, R.A. tells us that our understanding of many key terms (such as symbol, esoteric) is now incomplete or worse. In turn, this increases the difficulty we have in coming simply to experience their form of thought: it is synthetic, not analytic; holistic, not fragmentary. It appears to be but is not authoritarian and absolutist. It is simply beyond rational thinking, sequential logic and the dualization essential to cerebrally based thought.