Metaphysical meaning of Egypt (mbd)
Egypt, e'-gypt (Gk.)--Coptic land; from the Hebrew name Mizraim, which means shut in, restraint, misery, tribulation, distress.
A country in the northeast of Africa, where the Israelites were held in bondage for many years (Gen. 12:10; 37:2; 42:1 to end of Exod. 14). Jesus was taken into Egypt when a babe, to save him from Herod (Matt. 2:13).
Meta. The realm of substance and life in the depths of the body consciousness. To the unregenerate soul it is the land of darkness and mystery, yet it is essential to the perpetuation of the body. Egypt signifies the darkness of ignorance, obscurity; it has a special significance in the body consciousness, and we often think of it as referring to the subjective or subconscious mind. We also refer to Egypt as the flesh consciousness, sense consciousness, or material consciousness.
This hidden realm within our organism is in an Egyptian or obscured state to most of us. Yet it is a great kingdom, and its king is Pharaoh, ruler of the sun, or that brain and nerve center which our physiologists have correctly named the solar plexus. They tell us that this is the brain of the body, and that it directs the circulation, digestion, assimilation, and so forth. Students of mind have discovered that the solar plexus is but the organ through which a ruling thought acts, and this ruling thought is typified by Pharaoh, he of the hard heart, who would not "let my people go." But we should not forget that it is down in Egypt that we find the "grain" or substance required to sustain the man.
Many workers in Truth think that it is useless to go into this obscure kingdom within each man. They are not willing that Joseph shall spend a part of his time down in Egypt making ready the storehouses and filling them with the vitality that will be needed when the outer man has exhausted his resources. These will find that they cannot have that joyous reunion of mind and body with all its brothers, or faculties, as set forth in Genesis 42 to 46, unless they are willing to let the higher thought go consciously down into Egypt and rule there second to King Pharaoh himself.
Physically Egypt typifies that part of the body below the diaphragm. The various plagues brought upon the Egyptians by the Lord through Moses are symbolical representations of what occurs in this part of the organism when the presiding intelligence (Pharaoh) opposes the influx of the higher life.
Parallels to the bloody waters, frogs, lice, flies, murrain, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and death of first-born may all be found in the various diseases of bowels, kidneys, and other organs of the body as named by doctors. A very large number of these ills result from mental resistance to spiritual consciousness, which is working widely in humanity.
The spiritual man, the true ego, is the only rightful heir to the divine inheritance: spiritual consciousness. We as individuals must awake from the dream of mortality, leave Egypt (the flesh consciousness) forever, cross the Red Sea (the boundary line where we sacrifice every tie that binds us to the past), thence go through the wilderness (a transitory state), through the waters of Jordan (the boundary line between the transitional and the permanent), and plant our feet on Canaan's land--our inheritance. Once there, we have thirty-one kings (usurping thought forces) to conquer before we can peaceably settle down in our inheritance. But Christ, the Captain of the army of the Lord of hosts, meets us (is revealed to conscious thought) on Canaan's shore and directs our battles: Truth becomes an active, irresistible power.
When the spiritual man awakens and finds that he is the possessor of the divine germ (the word of Truth), he begins at once to make use of it. The result is an influx of light. Mortality, which is synonymous with darkness, begins to fade from his conscious thought. As this light increases, mortality decreases, until, as Paul says, mortality is swallowed up in immortality, "death is swallowed up in victory" (I Cor. 15:53, 54).
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Preceding Entry: Eglon
Following Entry: Egyptian
