Flight of Ibis by Daniel Meurois

“To this love, which, from life to life, leads to Love.”

I, once again was called and guided through the Akashic Records to rediscover the past life as Nagar-Teth, therapist and instructor close to Pharaoh Akhenaten. Although we are brought back to Egypt some 3500 years ago, La Demeure du Rayonnant (Home of the Radiant Sun) is not a book of the past. This intense and beautiful work plunges deep into the heart of the great human concerns, those which never leave us, the search for our identity, happiness, love, also of that infinite light that we often get nostalgia for. A revelatory book, a book of fire, a book of actuality, and an authentic testimony, which reads like a novel, will inspire those who want to enlighten their present and become their true artists… The excerpt of his book La Demeure du Rayonnant is the chapter Flight of Ibis.

Meeting with Pharaoh Amenhotep III

“So, it’s you we call Nagar-Têth!” said the man with the shaved head who must have been in his fifties, while observing me from head to foot. He had his forehead girded with a fine diadem of gold in the shape of a cobra. His left hand caressed his large breastplate, inlaid with coral, and the sides of his white robe, which were of the finest cloth possible, allowed a glimpse of extremely delicate feet, shod in leather and gold tracery. Mayan, whom I saw from the corner of my eye in front of a curtain in a corner of the room, signaled to me to kneel on the ground. I followed suit without delay and gave a light smile to the man who had called me out.

“I see that your ways are still not those of the Palace. How long have you been in Iat now?”

“More than half a year.”

“Get up, Master Nagar. So, already more than half a year! And, tell me, what have you learned from us?”

Disoriented by the question, I felt my eyes enlarge, despite the self-control I had sworn to observe since my arrival at Thebes

“I think, I have begun to unlearn,” I said, not know why but with the utmost good faith.

Eyes fixed on my impassive interlocutor, I guessed Mayan’s silhouette moving closer to me.

“So, does my Land wash your memory?” asked the man with the diadem, weighing on each of his words.

“Not exactly,| I answered, “I believe rather that she cleanses me from my memories and, on the contrary, revives my memory.”

At the same time that this response came spontaneously out of my mouth, I felt my blood freeze. Had I heard my Land? But I did not have time to think about the situation as a new question arose.

“And what kind of memory is yours?”

Without malice, as if I were guided by a force external to me, I was reminded of a frequent dream about which I had already opened up to Mayan.

“I often dream of a temple whose steps I climb,” I said. “Its heavy gold-encrusted wooden doors diverge as soon as I arrive and behind them, an immense sun shines bright with all its fires. I run out of air and I wake up with the irresistible need to go and contemplate the stars. That’s what now fills my memory.”

As I finished saying these words, I realized that I had just opened up a most intimate part of my soul to a man I did not know. I tried to pull myself together, but the words I heard did not leave me.

“So, my Land is washing your memory.”

What man other than the Pharaoh himself could say my Land? My blood boiled in my veins and I still could not do anything about it. I wanted to fully grasp the features of his face, perhaps read in them what I had tried to imagine for years; however, my eyes were invariably attracted by the beauty of his feet and I noticed, on each of his sandals, the same gold cobra that adorned his forehead.

“Do you still wish it?” asked Mayan peacefully to my interlocutor.

There was no verbal response but I perceived a nod of the head. Without knowing what attitude to adopt, I then saw Mayan move towards a metal disc suspended between two columns and strike it strongly using a long-handled ivory mallet, loudly sounding it out. Immediately two guards appeared, soon followed by a man whose head and shoulders covered with a lion’s skin said his condition of priesthood.

“What kind of being are you, Nagar-Thêth? Are you one of those I am looking for? What do you know about yourself? Do you love to love?” The questions toppled from the mouth of the man with the diadem. I did not know where to start or if even a real answer was expected from me. Mayan did not help me. It even came to my mind that he might be amused by this situation and the mystery that was being worked up around me.

“I love to love,” I finally resolved to answer, realizing at the same time that I did not want anyone to doubt it. “This I know.”
“And... what allows you to talk about it? What do you know about love and how do you know it’s love?”
“It's love if I feel able to give up my life for what causes it,” I replied, regaining some confidence. “You can give up your life for an idea”
“Is love an idea?”
“I think I have an idea of love...”
“But it’s not an idea, or even your idea of love that interests me, do you understand? You will follow these men, Nagar-Thêth... Go!”

FLIGHT OF IBIS

The man with the diadem made a gesture of the hand and the guards came to stand a good distance on each side of me, while the priest, whose face was strangely angular, deposited solemnly in my hands a braid made of ears of wheat. Without knowing of where Mayan had gone, I soon found myself, without further explanation, walking down a long and narrow corridor. In front of me, in the light of the torches, I only saw the majestic lion’s skin of the priest. We walked quite a long time through what looked like a maze of corridors sinking more and more abruptly into the ground. The richness of the bas-reliefs dug in the walls while taking life under the dancing light of the torches dazzled me. Some of their motifs, which were covered with oil, had obviously been the subject of a recent cult. Finally, we arrived at the entrance of a tiny square piece with an extraordinarily high ceiling. A rectangular hole in the ground that looked like the length of a man occupied the center, while a slab rested against one of the walls. Gray spirals of incense smoke escaped from there and made the air almost unbreathable.

“Here we are,” announced the priest in a hoarse voice. “Here is the house that Pharaoh has chosen for you.”

I remained motionless, wondering the meaning of the words. Had I displeased? Was I going to be imprisoned there for a motive I had no idea regarding? Unless it was a joke or an ultimate and doubtful experiment to test me. I looked at the man wearing the lion skin, he did not laugh and even began to brush his face with a little ash. His bare torso dripped with sweat. As soon as he had finished, without giving me a chance to ask a single question, he told me in a grave tone to undress. I then sensed that this must be part of some kind of ceremony to which I was not accustomed and followed his instructions. Without waiting any longer, he sprinkled my body with scented water from a small bronze vessel, then traced a strange sign with the ochre earth at the level of my heart. Finally, from a cupule identical to the one used for the lustral water, he handed me a drink which, in the light of the torch, was the color of ruby. I thought of some wine with aromatics.

With this, the priest dismissed the two guards energetically, took a torch in his hand and asked me to drink the contents of the cup in one gulp.

“It’s his will,” he added simply in a low voice. “Drink and lie down in this boat.”

“This boat?”

“Yes, my son, this boat. Your destiny is to sail, just as the Pharaoh wants it.”

These words fell on me like a sentence. I could only take refuge in the depths of my confidence while wondering how stupid I was that I had not immediately understood who I was facing.

I drank the beverage with a terribly bitter taste and lay down wordlessly in the ground hole. After a few moments, it seemed to me that my lungs were on fire as my limbs froze and stiffened.

However, still holding his torch in his hand, the priest began singing at an unusual rhythm. Strangely, no anxiety worried me. Was it the drink that anesthetized me like this? I could not say. At least, it did not take my consciousness away for I soon found myself in a state of lucidity hitherto unknown to me.

Suddenly, the priest ceased his chanting and threw some powder at me. I heard footsteps in the hallway and understood that it was the guards again and that one of them had come to put the paving stone over me. I was going to be buried alive in an underground hall of the palace!

I did not even have time to react and revolt. The dull sound of the stone being laid on my tomb came crashing down on my whole being. A nameless panic took root in me, not because of the sticky darkness in which I was brutally plunged, or because of the slab of stone but because I felt suddenly unable to make the slightest move. My limbs were paralyzed, rigid and icy like marble and that instilled in me an unbearable taste of death. Maybe I screamed? I didn’t know anymore. I only remember that my breathing, at first panting quickly became almost nonexistent to finally totally suspended. My chest was frozen and I felt horrified at plunging deeper into the inner darkness. Nothing made any sense, especially not what I had learned or what I thought I knew, all of which was about as important as the foam of the sea. Everything in me was dying and it was so much more terrible because I didn’t even have the possibility of raising my fist to sound my revolt and discomfort. Everything was dying except my consciousness. What would I not have given to have it asleep!

Slowly, as I began to better enjoy my terror, my consciousness grew expansive and endless. The perception of my body had definitively run away and I was reduced to a soul afraid of himself, a soul I did not know at all. Yes, that was it, I realized with panic that I did not know anything about me. I knew absolutely nothing about this “I” who thought, spoke, suffered and loved. Love. What did it mean exactly, by the way? The Pharaoh was right!

Nevertheless, deep in my chaos, I gradually realized that my thoughts were organized and that my thoughts were always thoughts. My body was no longer their prison. They existed without it, they dilated and seemed to want to say to me: “But look, we are you, you are nothing but us, tinted by all the beauties of the world to make you a beauty of the world.” A wave of peace washed over me, warm and enveloping. She populated my nothingness. I was good. I felt myself growing wings.

Then, it seemed to me that the darkness meant nothing and that I could penetrate her, make her reveal her concealed clarity. How long did it take? It does not matter when you navigate within yourself. I only knew that a lightning glow finally leapt into my soul and took me from my tomb.

I was above the Nile, floating in the azure as the falcon flies. I looked around at the sails of the boats moved by the wind, the nets that were thrown into the water, the flight of ducks, the caravans of camels and the small markets that were organized on the banks of the river. There was no sound. I was alone with my thoughts forever. But I was not a hawk no, I was an ibis! I did not know how I knew it, but I knew it. It was inscribed in me: I perceived from within the beating of my wings and it was good. In an endless flight, I saw myself flying up the God Nile River and his silver glitter. I saw long strips of sand stretching and swelling to form dunes, I saw small shrines rising from the ground and cows grazing around. Finally, I entered a temple in the desert, unless it was in Heaven? It was an immense building in the middle of nowhere, and its columns were the color of porphyry and turquoise.

I felt the flapping of my wings taking me up to its center, in the heart of Naos[1] which was wide open. I stood there facing an immense being, dazzling like a white sun. How to say… would you ever believe me? It was the God Thoth himself, the man with the head of ibis, the divine messenger, master of all medicines!

HEALING FROM THE GOD THOTH

I did not exist anymore. His eyes, deep like the lapis lazuli stone, absorbed me completely and paralyzed me. I felt myself on the edge of a sword, in an unspeakable balance between terror and wonder.

Thoth's voice came looking for me inside and his words were written on my soul like etchings on granite slabs.

“Nagar,” she cried, “Wake up! Who are you to come to meet me? Look at you. Do you think you are a priest? Do you imagine yourself a therapist? Why do you dare wear the master-teachers’ robe? When will you finally discard your beliefs, Nagar? Stop thinking and do not recite!”

I was broken, the God reduced me to dust and was probably going to scatter me through all the deserts. But scatter what? I was nothing!

“Nagar,” she said, “Stop playing! Like all humans, you are entertained. No longer playing to love but agreeing to become the one who loves. You think you have to love and serve because you have been told that it is good to love and serve. You think you know how to love and give because you do not measure your efforts, nor do you count your time. You think you can decline the word love because one day you started what you thought was emptiness.
But the emptiness you did not know until now, my son. As for Love, do you only know what it looks like? First there is fusion—you in the other and the other in you. You in the universe and the universe in the hollow of you. It is more than sharing, much more than the offering, because it is called Unity. The ocean and its beaches are one. Do you understand? They are not alike, but speak the same language.
Unity, true unity, is not the overtaking of the two, of the three nor even of the multiplicity, but the marriage with the palettes of the Infinite. It is a uni-diversity, my son, an enthusiasm that makes you fly beyond Good and Evil. You have been told that Love is Good, so you seek Love because you want the Good to be inscribed in you. You desire Good because you say that Love is engraved in It, as it is in you. Yet, you turn around Love without ever knowing it. As for what you call Good, do not you see how it changes face, according to the seasons of the soul, the places and the times?
Fly! Fly above the ideas and embody your heart. Love, Nagar, it was all running in you without you even knowing it or knowing about who has sent you here blindly. So, stop playing and finally find what you sense. Abandon the bud to the sap! You have nothing else to do. Everything comes if you say yes to the Whole, yes to Death that hides in Life and yes to Life that takes the mask of Death. Fly!”

An unnamed pain then struck the center of my chest like a spear, forever freezing Thoth's last words in my consciousness. I was certain of falling off of a horrible precipice, and I found myself at the bottom of my frozen tomb with my breath suspended.

I wanted to scream but this time not with terror but happiness. No sound, alas, left my throat; the amazement of my soul was imprisoned in me like an ultimate stratagem of Life to complete all dilation. A time that must have been long passed thus, without my having the slightest desire to change my state. My extreme loneliness had gained a soul, a space of absolute plenitude.

Finally, the muffled sounds of a wave of chanting reached me. There were metallic noises, then a crunch of the stone. The slab of my tomb rose and the emaciated face of the priest appeared over me in the dancing light of a torch. The man looked for a moment to read my eyes, then gave a quick smile. At his side, I soon saw the face of two other shaved-head priests leaning towards me. I was still incapable of the slightest movement and did not perceive anything of my body. I only saw that I was being sprinkled with water and a small cupule, from which ribbons of smoke escaped, was being wafted above me.

The three men finally decided to remove me from the tomb. This was not easy because my body was still not responding. While two of them held me as well as they could in a vertical position, the third began to coat my body with a balm whose effects on my circulation were quickly felt. I could not articulate a word, but it did not bother me. Indeed, it seemed to me that at the first word that I would finally pronounce, a part of my treasure was going to flee forever. When at last, dressed in a red dress, I could take a few steps, the atmosphere of the little room had become unbreathable once again. The smell of terebinth[2] that took seed in my throat gave birth to my first thought.

“Why, I said, why terebinth? I don’t see any God statues here.”
“Have not you gone to the Divinity? asked the priest with lion’s skin. Did She not come to visit you? So you bring some of Her back to us. It is Her presence in your soul that we will bring today. Be blessed.”

When I found the light of day, the sun had long since begun its decline. I was then entitled to honors which I could not have ever imagined rousing in my whole life. I was offered a new deep blue robe before being taken back to my home on a seat carried by four men. I admit that it left me indifferent as I was inhabited by the experience of the tomb.

I remember spending the night on the terrace of my house. The starry sky seemed to me the only possible dwelling place after the unspeakable power of what I had just experienced. That night, I slept little. I was sure I had landed on a shore that would give me the key to what I had been looking for confusedly forever. Maybe I only lived for that moment, I said to myself incessantly. Then, the words that had came to me one day before my students, resurfaced tirelessly:

“We live continually for the moment to come. When standing in front of the daily rising sun, there are none of them that is truly more beautiful than the other. So, the one sun that amazes us, and we want to immortalize is nothing but the song of life, of all those past and future suns asking us to remain silent in order to know how to listen.”

It was not only Nagar-Têth, the priest-teacher of the city of Thebes whom the God Ibis had just touched with his azure and golden gaze, but also the little boy of the desert, the son of Sekhmet and the therapist of Alpu. Beyond all these momentary masks, it was first of all the journey of a soul starting to open to the radiant sun.

[1]The holiest of the Egyptian temples, “the sacred boat.”

[2]Mediterranean tree whose bark and sap were used in rituals and ceremonies in temples.

(This book is currently being translated into English).