Paul Brunton’s writings cover a broad range of topics ranging from human life experience to abstract philosophy. A Search in Secret Egypt transports the reader into the ancient past. PB says on p. 185, “the Mysteries became the most exclusive institution of antique times, and the secrets revealed behind their well-guarded doors were always imparted under solemn oath that they would never be divulged.”
The ancient civilizations inherited these Mysteries from a remote antiquity and they constituted part of a primitive revelation from the gods to the human race. Almost every people of pre-Christian times possessed its institution and tradition of the Mysteries. The Roman, the Celts, the Druids of Britain, the Greeks, the Cretans, the Syrians, the Hindus, the Persians, the Mayas and the American Indians, among others, had corresponding temples and rites with a system of graduated illuminations for the initiates. Aristotle did not hesitate to declare that he considered the welfare of Greece secured by the Eleusinian Mysteries, Socrates remarked that “those who are acquainted with the Mysteries insure to themselves very pleasing hopes against the hour of death.” Among the ancients who have confessed or hinted that they had been initiated into the Mysteries, we may list the names of Aristides the orator, Menippus of Babylon, Sophocles the playwright, Aeschylus the poet, Solon the law-giver, Cicero, Heraclitus of Ephesus, Pindar and Pythagoras. (p. 185-6.) Today Ju-jitsu in Japan and Freemasonry carry remnants of the institutions which have their roots in Egypt.
The Mysteries demonstrated that a man’s normal worldly nature could be temporarily paralyzed by a profound lethargic sleep, and his usually unnoticed psychic or spiritual nature awakened by processes known only to the hierophant…the finite mind of man was drawn into contact with the infinite mind of his superior divinity. He was able for a while to enter into silent, spell-bound communion with the Father of All, and this fleeting contact of incomparable ecstasy was enough to change his entire attitude towards life. …. The highest doctrine of the Egyptians, that which was the theoretical basis of the loftiest degrees of initiation, was that the soul of man must eventually return to the divine Being from which it was first rayed out, and they termed this return “becoming Osiris.” (p. 190.) PB points out that this was the noblest and most impressive revelation then possible to Egyptian man, and still possible, albeit through other ways, to modern man. (p. 186-8.)
Scientific, psychical and psychological research is changing the Western world’s attitude towards matters which were once dismissed as fanciful nonsense. Such research is lifting the ideas of the ancients out of the undeserved contempt in which they have lain while younger notions sprang to lusty manhood. We are beginning to detect sanity in the apparent insanity of the ancients. We are beginning to discover that their knowledge of the powers and properties of the human mind was in some directions superior to ours…Our best scientists and foremost thinkers are joining the ranks of those who believe there is a psychic basis to life. What they think today, the masses will think to-morrow. The first great message of the ancient Mysteries -‘There is no death ‘- although always susceptible of personal experiential proof by a mere few, is destined to be broadcast to the whole world. The idea of survival does not necessarily imply that we shall all scramble out of our coffins at some uncertain future date. To confuse ourselves with the fleshly houses wherein we reside is hardly creditable to our intelligence. (p. 191.)
History moves in cycles, that which has been shall be again; gloom and chaos are once more upon us, while the innate urge of man to re-establish communication with the higher worlds troubles him anew. Wherefore it is the writer’s hope that conditions may be found, circumstances may be propitious, and the right persons forthcoming to plant a modern version, entirely altered to suit our changed epoch, of those Mysteries once more in each of the five continents of our world. (p. 193-4.)