Customer Reviews

Egyptian Yoga II: The Supreme Wisdom of Enlightenment (Volume 2)

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I read the "1997-2005" edition of "Egyptian Yoga Volume II: The Supreme Wisdom of Enlightenment and the Mysteries of Amun Religion" aka "Egyptian Yoga Volume II: Mysteries of Amun and the Supreme Wisdom of Enlightenment". The 1997 original, "Hymns of Amun", had been revised with an additional two new sections in 1998. This book may double as Volume 2 of the "African Religion" series on Egyptian based city theologies. At least I am not able to confirm the existence of another African Religion Vol. 2, in which place Egyptian Yoga Volume II gets usually listed. This would make sense, as this book focuses on the theology of the city of Thebes (aka Waset/Diospolis/No/No-Amon/Anu/Hektaptah): The major focus is on largely extensive commentaries on the Amun hymn verses of this city. The number of pages approximates Egyptian Yoga Vol. 1:: The Philosophy of Enlightenment, yet with a bigger font size, leaving the content at about half of that of Volume I. The second Volume (if it was originally planned as such) shows the spiritual development of the author. Which is not the reason, why I give Vol. 2 one more star than Vol. 1, but because the subtractions are not intense enough/are not occupying that much space for this great mystical book.

Volume II elaborates on some issues of Volume I, smoothes away the occasional more extreme view of the first Volume and takes more care of the do-it-yourself layout. (The favorite slips this time being headlines and captions not on the respective pages and name rendering variations in brackets accidentally largely being the very same ones than in front of the brackets.)

The derivation of Indian religion from the common Egyptian source gets more elaborated on. The reasoning on the mysticism of the Adam & Eve mythology gets explained in a most revealing matter (even though not complete), the trinity concept gets explained well via its much more coherent Egyptian source and the origin of the word "Amen" gets explained via the same way. All of this and other revelations make the book worthy to read alone. No less revealing the SYMBOLIC skin color of Aset/Isis being black, not necessarily her real one (which is rather an incidental doubling, then), the same way as the NON-Black skin colors of ancient Egyptian paintings are symbolic. Which sure is bound to be "controversial" among African-centered egyptologists.

Not everything has to get agreed upon 100%. For example that ALL animals are not aware of the self/individual has been disproven by now and that there is a clear-cut hierarchy in the complexity of the nervous system from plant to animal to human may be considered as specicist, too. That I-n-I (our) vision of self is responsible for many ailments we develop is true, but ALL of them, even infectious endemics such as Aids, is probably a little off... Also, to put the blame of e.g. child abuse on the survivors, caused by their actions in a previous life, is sure not for the sensibilities of everyone. In Buddhist countries to this day, many people suffer, because their religiously enlightened claim, every malady such as blindness is supposedly the result of karma, i.e. one's own fault.

I was also disappointed that the author shied away from elaborating on an important ritual for supposedly not being fit to be exposed in a book. Instead, I suspect, this has more to do with that the issue was too controversial in our Imes (and the author), as it is about a ritual symbolizing "the sexual union with the ["androgynous"] Divinity him/herself."

I recommend this book, though I have to admit that I dread forward reading a handful of other books by Muata Ashby on my table, simply for their repetitive character...

I GIVE THIS BOOK 5 STARS. IT IS EASY TO UNDERSTAND WHEN THE TECHNIQUES( IN HIS OTHER BOOKS:MEDITATION;SERPENT POWER;MAAT ETC.) ARE PRACTICED AND APPLIED TO ONES EVERYDAY EXPERIENCES