What "craves" then, if it isn't the Astral body? Our desires must be collected somewhere, and this "somewhere" isn't a body or a physical brain, it's obvious.
True but many of them are causal, genetic and generally of the world. We ‘need’ to desire things, it is only when those desires become all consuming or extreme that they are a problem.
I don’t see what is wrong with want? It is a natural aspect of interacting with the world.
--> I agree. And once the astral body and its associated desires, cravings, and addictions are cast away forever (once they are no longer needed), it will be much more 'divine.'
well the way I see it is that the soul remains the same, it is eternal.
Something like this…
The soul of the pyramid
Egyptian soul - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Someone posted me this concise understanding of Egyptian spirituality so I felt I had to pass it on as it is usually so confusing, many people ascribe different meanings to the various aspects, but I feel this is the best explanation I have come across to date. I have added some elements [some from wiki] to further explain it and to fill in what I thought was missing.
Personally I feel that if you read between the lines and form some manner of unified vision then it is not so fragmented, though it may intentionally be as such to act as a life-training tool. It wont be easy to understand but it is well worth taking the time to read this single page of information, the Egyptian civilisation was entirely built around its spirituality which lasted many thousands of years, and this is the result of not only many thousands [possibly hundreds of thousands] of Egyptian scholars, but many modern ones too.
Ancient Egyptian metaphysics does not employ the simple Judaeo-Christian concepts of »ego«, »personality«, »soul« or »personhood«. The pharaoh is a matrix composed of various intra-psychic and extra-psychic entities.
As far as his inner realm is concerned, the pharaoh is a cluster of interacting components the harmony and integrity of which must be preserved and reinforced in a life-long process of fine-tuning.
These components include;
1. The »akh« ~ a latent soul that becomes manifest as soon as it enters the circumpolar realm. Presumably this is what the soul becomes as it leaves its earthly body.
2. The »ka« ~ a 'gestalt soul' or invisible doppelganger that produces and preserves the visible form of the human body [and its mummy].
3. The »ba« ~ an agile soul that mediates between akh and ka, astral and terrestrial existence, the world and the beyond.
The 'Ba' (b3) is in some regards the closest to the contemporary Western religious notion of a soul, but it also was everything that makes an individual unique, similar to the notion of 'personality'. (In this sense, inanimate objects could also have a 'Ba', a unique character, and indeed
Old Kingdom pyramids often were called the 'Ba' of their owner). Like a soul, the 'Ba' is an aspect of a person that the Egyptians believed would live after the body died, and it is sometimes depicted as a human-headed bird flying out of the tomb to join with the 'Ka' in the afterlife.
Some have argued as I do, that the Ba is not part of the person but the person himself unlike the soul in Greek, or late Judaic or Christian thought. It is the actual ‘you’.
The word 'bau', plural of the word ‘ba‘, meant something similar to 'impressiveness', 'power', and 'reputation', and is perhaps the reflection of oneself in the world and how we are perceived by others. one takes an immediate sense of who a person is upon meeting [fool or wiseman etc] and this is the essence of that sense.
4. The »sechem« ~ a 'power soul' enabling the deceased pharaoh to influence worldly affairs from the beyond.
5. The protective 'shadow soul' called »schut«.
6. The 'god soul' »netscher«
7. Then the 'image soul' »achem« residing in the pharaoh’s statues.
8. The name ren. As a part of the soul, a person's ren was given to them at birth and the Egyptians believed that it would live for as long as that name was spoken, which explains why efforts were made to protect it and the practice of placing it in numerous writings. For example, part of the Book of Breathings, a derivative of the
Book of the Dead, was a means to ensure the survival of the name. A
cartouche (magical rope) often was used to surround the name and protect it.
The pharaoh is not a mere entity or being, but rather a PROCESS. In spatial terms, his living body is a composite of limbs and individual organs. This non-unified ensemble moves through a complex temporal landscape composed of a rhythmic totality called »neheh«, an unalterable, self-identical infinity called »dshet«, and a personal time called »acha'u«.
The acha'u itself is connected to the vital power »ankh«, the magical capacity »heka«, the truth/justice »ma'at« [universal balance] and the epistemic faculty called »hu«. These forces and fields are independent of the individual ruler. The pharaoh is a shifting zone of interaction, a wandering realm where worldly and otherworldly vectors meet: a 'strange attractor', so to speak. The unity of this sphere must not be allowed to disintegrate: during his lifetime, the pharaoh has to PROVE his integrity at regular intervals; once he has entered the netherworld, this unity is preserved and continually reinforced by a specialized priesthood.
So whenever we analyze the meaning, purpose and function of pyramid complexes, we should not reduce them to mere tombs, socio-economic projects or places of ancestor worship. While a typical pyramid complex does resemble a medieval cathedral, a bustling centre of spiritual and economic activities managed by a priesthood, rather than a dead mausoleum or classical necropolis, it is not even a truly religious artefact. The visible hardware reflects the complexities of a highly sophisticated metaphysical software -- the ancient Egyptian »Science of the Otherworld«, as Prof. Hornung once termed it. »The pyramid« is an interface between the latent and the manifest (see Hornung), potential proto-being and actual being, the 'hidden' and the 'named' (see Prof. Assmann's masterful treatise »Schleier und Schwelle«), the primeval hill of creation and its subsidiary »py«-lands (see Finnestad), the stellar akh and the mummified ka, the abstract sechem of the beyond and the concrete achem of the statues, the straight visible Euclidean space of the world and the strangely non-Euclidean space of the otherworld, the two ancient Egyptian conceptions of time, the personal psychic entities of the pharaoh and the impersonal forces invading him, his astral destiny and his terrestrial obligations, his predecessors and his successors, and the multidimensional netherworld and its ma'at-driven counterpart.
That's why the Egyptian pyramids are absolutely unique. While it is certainly true that these gigantic monuments provided a mighty impulse for the development of administration, astronomy, mathematics and architecture, I maintain that their raison d'etre is not reducible to the socio-economic substructure or ideological superstructure of a highly centralized state, rather the pyramid is the embodiment of the eternal soul .
