SOMETHING REALLY INTERESTING … METAPHYSICAL TOURISM

In case you missed it, log on and read ETHAN TODRAS-WHITEHILL’s fascinating (and sometimes downright funny) story from Sunday’s New York Times about touring the spirit world, as it were.

Here’s a taste:

No sound was heard in the burial chamber of the Great Pyramid as a tall, slender woman lay down in the pharaoh’s pitted granite sarcophagus, her flowing silver hair spreading beneath her. Her dozen or so companions in the dank room lifted their arms, palms upward, eyes closed in meditation.

As was prescribed in the training of priests in pharaonic Egypt, the woman had said, each member of the group had taken a turn in the sarcophagus; now she, their spiritual leader, occupied the space. Suddenly, her lips quivered, and a guttural moan escaped them, bouncing off the smooth stone walls and ceiling like an angry pinball. She climbed out of the sarcophagus, her face creased with determination, and formed the group into a circle, sitting cross-legged. In a deep voice, she read from the Emerald Tablets of Thoth, which she believes were translated from the ancient tongue of Atlantis.

The leader’s name is Shari Billger, and her home is near Colorado Springs. But on this January day, she was leading a group of Americans and Japanese who had come to the pyramids to connect with the unique spiritual energy that many Western visitors to Egypt believe they will find there.

Earlier, Ms. Billger had explained the group’s mission this way: When the advanced civilization of Atlantis fell more than 30,000 years ago, the accumulated knowledge of the ancients — sort of a spiritual Library of Congress — was placed on the site of the Great Pyramid. These modern travelers were there to make that wisdom accessible to all mankind. But to harness the energies required for this task, their spirits would temporarily have to leave their bodies.

Ms. Billger had everyone lie down. “When ye have released the self from the body, rise to the outermost bounds of your earth-plane,” she intoned, “and speak ye the word Dor-E-Lil-La.”

“Dor-E-Lil-La,” the bodies replied.

This was not a cult; the participants had met only two days before. They were in Egypt on a package tour.

FOR THE FULL STORY CLICK HERE