THE STAIRWAY TO THE SKY

A similar use can be found in the Pyramid Texts, the oldest religious records ever found in Egypt. These texts, which date back to at least 2400 BCE, are filled with references to a mysterious divine ladder or stairway to the sky on which the soul could ascend to attain immortality among the gods:

A stairway to the sky is set up for me...

A stairway to the sky is set up for you among the imperishable stars.⁸

A ladder is set up for him that he may ascend on it.⁹

I ascend on this ladder, which my father Ra (the sun god) made for me.¹⁰

Although modern Egyptologists presume commonly that the stairway to the sky was ascended after the death of the physical body, the Hermetic texts, which claim to explicate the older, philosophic spirit of ancient Egypt, suggest that the enlightened soul has the potential to ascend to heaven without ever quitting the earth: “Man ascends even to heaven, and measures it; and what is more than all beside, he mounts to heaven without quitting the earth; to so vast a distance can he put forth his power. We must not shrink then from saying that a man on earth is a mortal god, and that a god in heaven is an immortal man.”¹¹

By traversing the path of immortality while possessing a physical body, the enlightened seers discerned the lineaments of heaven and earth within their ever-expanding awareness and thereby formulated the ancient science of immortality.