Devi Savitri - A Son Of God The Life And Philosophy Of Akhnaton, Ksiazki,Ksiegi,Ksiazeczki
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//-->A SON OF GODTHE LIFE AND PHILOSOPHY OF AKHNATON, KING OF EGYPTbySavitri Devi1946CONTENTSINTRODUCTION— p. 1PART ITHE WORLD’S FIRST INDIVIDUALCHAPTER I:Fleur Séculaire — p. 13CHAPTER II:Prince Amenhotep — p. 19CHAPTER III:Alone Against Millions — p. 39PART IITHE RELIGION OF THE DISKCHAPTER IV:The City of God — p. 69CHAPTER V:The Way of Reason — p. 106CHAPTER VI:The Way of Love — p. 140CHAPTER VII:The Way of Beauty — p. 170CHAPTER VIII:The Implications of the Religion of the Disk — p. 187PART IIITRUTH VERSUS SUCCESSCHAPTER IX:Unrest in Conquered Land — p. 215CHAPTER X:The Reward of War — p. 251CHAPTER XI:The Price of Perfection — p. 262CHAPTER XII:Akhnaton and the World of Today — p. 275HYMNS OF AKHNATON TO THE SUN— p. 304DEDICATIONTO MY HUSBAND“Thou art in my heart;There is no other that knoweth Thee,Save Thy Son, Akhnaton.Thou hast made him wise in Thy designsAnd in Thy might.”Akhnaton — Longer Hymn to the Sun(Translation by Breasted)“The modern world has yet adequately to value oreven to acquaint itself with this man who, in an ageso remote and under conditions so adverse, becamethe world’s first idealist and the world’s firstindividual.”Breasted —History of Egypt,page 3921INTRODUCTIONRoughly fourteen hundred years before Christ, at the time Egypt was at theheight of her power, King Akhnaton ruled over that great country for a few years.He was a thinker; he was an artist; he was a saint — the world’s firstrationalist, and the oldest Prince of Peace. Through the visible disk of the Sun —Aton — he worshipped “the Energy within the Disk” — the ultimate Reality whichmen of all creeds still seek, knowingly or unknowingly, under a thousand namesand through a thousand paths. And he styled himself as the Son of that unseen,everlasting Source of all life. “Thou art in my heart,” he said in one of his hymns,“and no one knoweth Thee save I, Thy Son.” And his words, long forgotten, havecome down to us, recorded upon the walls of a nobleman’s tomb — these amazingwords in what is perhaps the earliest poem which can be ascribed with certainty toany particular author: “I, Thy Son. . . .”Akhnaton is one of the very few men who ever put forth such a bold claim.The aim of this book is to show that, in doing so, he was no less justified than anyother teacher of the truth, however impressive may appear the success of the lattercontrasted with his defeat; however widespread may be his fame, contrasted withthe total oblivion in which has lain the Egyptian king for the last thirty-threehundred years.***Who is a “son of God”?There are men who vehemently deny the honour of that title to any personwhosoever, in consistency with the fundamental idea of a transcendent God, aboveand outside the Universe and distinct from all that is within it. Others recognise no“Son” but the founder of their own creed, to2whom they attribute a miraculous birth as the proof of a divine origin.In harmony with an entirely different conception of God, we believe that anyman who realises to the full that true relation of his finite individuality to theimmanent, impersonal Essence of all things can call himself the Son of God — atonce human and divine — for the relation of which he is then aware is one ofsubstantial identity with that supreme Essence. We also believe that, properlyspeaking, the word “God” has no meaning except to those who have realised this.Such men are rare, always and everywhere. But they alone stand to justify theexistence of the human species.The aim of this book is to show that Akhnaton was one of those few men,and the earliest known, perhaps, among those whose life can be dated.***The failure of his teaching to survive him as an established religion can beregarded as one of the tragedies of history. We can explain it; we can even try toredeem it. But the bitter fact remains, for nothing can undo the past.Other great souls have had disciples to preach their message, martyrs to beartestimony to their greatness in torture and death, missionaries to carry their nameand domination to the limits of the earth; they have had commentators, admirers,detractors — philosophers, poets, artists — to keep their memory alive centuryafter century. But Akhnaton’s fate was different. He had no sooner died than thefervour of his followers seems to have been spent out. Within a few years, hisname was anathematised, his new city pulled down stone by stone, his remainsprofaned and his memory systematically destroyed, without, apparently, a singlecry of protest on the part of any of those eighty thousand1or more who had, in theirzeal, left Thebes with him, thirteen years before. Ever since then, until a part of hisforeign correspondence and fragments of his hymns were1Arthur Weigall:Short History of Ancient Egypt(Edit. 1934), pp. 149-150. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |