who don ’ t know the way the book is structured , there are three lines for every statement . At the top are the hieroglyphics that were found in the papyrus , written by the high priest Ani , several thousand years ago . Below that are the phonetic sounds the hieroglyphics make and on the third line are the English translations . |
I first looked for the phonetic sound ‘ maxeru ’. It appeared to mean priest , or priestly nature . ‘ Khereb ’ was harder to find . In fact , I couldn ’ t find it at all that day . It wasn ’ t until a year later , when visiting a friend who was doing readings at The Crystal Ball in Dymocks Arcade in downtown Sydney , that I came across it . In the waiting room , on a coffee table full of magazines and books for the edification of those waiting for their allotted reading appointment , a book stood out .
The book was called Egyptian Magic *. I picked it up and flipped through the pages . Every now and then a woodcut appeared displaying illustrations as shown on the walls of various pyramids in Egypt . Below each one was a description . As I turned the pages , I suddenly caught sight of the word ‘ khereb ’. I couldn ’ t believe my eyes . ‘ A khereb priest performing the ceremony of the opening of the mouth .’ Apparently , the khereb priest was the court magician whose rank was only just one level below the pharaoh in importance , and the opening of the mouth ceremony was conducted to enable the dead to speak to the living . It could only be performed by a khereb priest .
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So the priest whom I had seen superimposed on the painting in my living room was saying that he was a khereb priest and that I possibly was or had been one in a past life . That to me was mind-blasting . I could , of course , have read about priestly affairs in Ancient Egypt at some point in the past and simply forgot about it , as some sceptics might say to quash my conclusion , but I don ’ t think so . I had not read much about Egypt up to that point , and certainly nothing about high priests and their machinations . It was a totally unique experience .
Reincarnation makes sense to me as it appears unlikely we could amass the kind of wisdom some of us possess in one lifetime . It is far more likely we were born with certain memories gleaned from experiences in past lives , even though those memories may be buried in our subconscious minds . Perhaps our minds have a way these past-life memories can be released into our conscious minds , allowing us to make use of that we may have learnt before we were reborn .
Parapsychologist Ian Stevenson , who wrote extensively about reincarnation cases he was guided to discover in India , Sri Lanka , Lebanon and Turkey , found that children in the main found it easier to remember their past lives . Their memories of past lives seemed to fade after some years .
The idea of reincarnation crept from the Zoroastrian religion to the Jewish and on to the
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Christian belief systems . The evidence for this can be found in reincarnation researcher Herbert Bruce Puryear ’ s book , Why Jesus Taught Reincarnation : a Better News Gospel . Edgar Cayce also wrote a lot about his research into reincarnation .
Ian Stevenson looks at reincarnation from all possible angles in his book , Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation , from fraud to cryptomnesia , where a child whose claims he was investigating would somehow have known someone who had the information he later recalled about their life . He mentions genetic memory , where some of the experiences emerge from experiences of the individual ’ s ancestors . Other possibilities Stevenson offers are extrasensory
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perception , which he feels would not require the child to make contact with anyone in particular on a physical level for it to occur .
My own experiences have taught me to take ideas such as these with a grain of salt . I ultimately feel I have lived past lives , but I cannot say for certain this is true . To quote Woody Allen , ‘ I sure as hell hope that there is such a thing as reincarnation , otherwise I spent way too much on that carpet over there .’
A previously unpublished excerpt from Simon Turnbull ’ s memoirs , God in a Chip .
* We believe these titles were authored by E . A . Wallis Budge – Ed .
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