In my book, Initiatic Tales of Hej Ptah, I wrote, that what complicates things for the human being is that he is comparable to the orphan raised by the very people who killed his parents. If you are educated by those who assassinated your parents, they will make you feel grateful for what they did. This situation, with many others, represents traps that have been set by the holders of power over the individual before the awakening of his consciousness. Before we even reach that level, let's take a look at the internal conflicts of the individual, these conflicts between the two principles we know so well. The secret education of Kemetic temples draws our attention to the fact that in the beginning, the human being succeeded only in separating himself from a simple object or a plant, only because he found a reason for his existence and understood a need to sustain his will to be different from objects that surround him. For the human being to come out of the position of the znemti--meaning the position of collapsed consciousness and physical and spiritual immobility--he has to be awakened motivated by what he perceives as the World of the Gods. To come out of the state of znemti, the human being has to see masters in the Gods he has identified. The Gods then have accepted their positions as masters and taught us the 77 commandments, the ablutions, morality, etc. so that we can maintain our promise of the 19th of Tehuti to rise towards them and to reject all the barbaric and inhumane behaviours that reduce us to the level of the most primitive animals. Since the awakening of human consciousness, the behavior of the human being toward his Gods has not in reality been much more than the relationship that exists between the disciple and his masters. *** More important than the fact that they created us, the Gods play the permanent role of masters in the life of the human being who advances towards light. It is this situation that places the spiritual priest or the guide of spiritual activities in a very important position in the life of the individual and of the entire society. If the Gods do their part to inspire the consciousness of the human being, then among humans, those who guide the steps of the individual towards the world of the Gods become the masters who lead us towards the great masters. 

According to Kemetic sacred texts, to come out of znemti (the position of the collapsed consciousness), the human being had to behave as a disciple does when facing the perfect model that is represented by the World of the Gods. We have said many times in our writings that since his genesis, the human being has never proved that he has a brain that is capable of inventing. He has proved his mastery of the art of copying and imitating. He is a good disciple of whatever inspires him or captivates his attention. It is difficult for the human being to perceive the reality of his mental situation. The knot of his real problem as an entity that is incapable of inventing can be found in the first steps of his consciousness. Our willingness to explore these aspects of our existence demands much prudence. We must start by filtering this life so that we can separate for ourselves what we believe from what is and from what we perceive. 

We must try to understand or at least imagine what could be a consciousness that is deprived of all motivation. We shall then see that we have just described a situation that is close to death, if this is not actually what we call death. According to the Kemetic sacred texts, even the great majority of the Gods became because they came out of the state of the collapsed consciousness. 

To be or to become something, one must first come out of the state of mental inertia. This coming out of a state of inertia does not depend on the quality of what inspired us. At birth, the consciousness of the being is looking for only one thing, and that is to come out and introduce any dynamism into its existence. This is the case, regardless of the direction that is taken by his existential movement. The individual will not hesitate to internalize the first influences to which he is submitted, even to the point of believing that this first influence is part of his identity. He is then the disciple of whatever he found on his arrival. He will see, in what he has perceived, the path to follow, a model to reproduce, etc. 

Because the human being has always needed a master, he found this master everywhere he looked. Everything the human being says and does, he says and does it only because he is obeying a master. The question that became enigmatic for the human being of the modern society is to know, to recognise, to identify who is the master of the person talking and acting. It is the master who instills in his disciple a given behavior, and that behaviour, in its turn, is determined by the goals decided by that master. The master, according to the goals he has set, will decide the do's and don'ts to which the disciple will consciously or unconsciously submit. What we call nowadays "discipline" is in reality defined as the art of being a disciple. There is simply no discipline without goals and without a master. If it is true that secrets of a human's intelligence reside only in what he has been exposed to, we can see how fragile our situation is as individuals arriving in a world that has already been transformed into a battlefield between good and evil. This is made more complicated by the fact that each force is claiming that it is working for the good of humanity. According to the Holy Drama, every individual is Heru. This godchild born an orphan and premature, but with a mission to reestablish the name of his father who was killed by Seth, a God that is omnipresent. Heru's situation is made more complicated by the fact that he must fight a God who preceded him and witnessed his birth. Seth had the advantage of enough time to prepare himself and to prepare the ground in his favour by placing all sorts of traps. 

The position of the human being at birth is comparable to a consciousness that is trying not to fall into a big hole in inertia. The human being who has fallen in a hole will grab even the blade of a sword that is pointed at him. The recruitment of the individual starts at that level. He will then become the disciple and will be proud of his sense of discipline, without trying to know who his masters are, or what their ambitions are. These situations have allowed many slavery driven societies to perpetuate their culture and to expand through the principle of education and discipline by an invisible master. For the world to survive the evil that is expanding, every individual must look for the faces and the ambitions of those who until now have directly or indirectly taught him what he now thinks he knows. We must also try to see if the world we live in is the kind of world we came here to build. If all the evil that surrounds us is part of the world we came here to build, we are simply part of the problems of humanity; we are disciples of the destructive forces and this is how our sense of discipline destroys the world. 

Discipline is the art of being a disciple. It is the art of following a master or a guide. But one does not follow a guide if it is not to go in a given direction. To be a disciple is then a vital necessity for every consciousness that comes into this world. We are all forced to leave the crib of birth of our consciousness if we want to avoid becoming a collapsed consciousness and to avoid submitting to the principles of decomposition and self- destruction. The need to leave the crib has been imposed on us by nature without taking into consideration the fact that we don't necessarily know which direction we must take to help preservation of the principle that gave us a chance at our experience on this earth. This situation is further complicated by the social context in which we arrive, where the politician knows that, to ensure his grasp on the consciousness of the individual, he must do so in a manner that will be perceived as legitimate by the individual. He must come to the individual early, at the awakening of his consciousness, and present himself as the legitimate master to whom the individual owes obedience. He will do this in very subtle ways, like through diverse institutions, all of them specialized in the art of presenting themselves as moral or spiritual authorities, while presenting temporary masters to the individual or while appearing to impose a direction for the individual to follow, but disappearing when it is time to answer for the impact they have had on our lives. This approach gives the individual the false impression that he decided by himself and advanced without being a disciple; the approach also reinforces the feelings of individual responsibility and individual choices, independence, etc., which in reality exist only because those who taught us what we know refuse to proclaim their responsibility for our future and for the future of humanity. 

The human being has always needed a model to follow. He will find that model in anything that he can perceive. The secret in control of humanity lies in placing one's values in such a way that they can be internalized by those who perceive them. The individual will never accept easily the fact that he is, in reality, a puppet submitted to those who have succeeded into affecting his centres of decisions and emotions.  If we understand discipline as the art of being a disciple, we can see why, for a long time, those who taught us discipline, as a needed value, made sure not to complete the equation by teaching us at the same time to refuse to see in other humans the masters whom we must value, accept, and honour as though they are truly helping us to come out of a collapsed consciousness. 

The politician knows that his social ambition will succeed only when the individual sees in him the absolute master of his destiny and the destiny of the society. For that, the individual must believe instead of look for knowledge. The believer must also go a bit further, he must become convinced. This situation places the individual in a dilemma between two or more irreconcilable tendencies, an imposed confusion that he must manage until the end of this life. It is very easy to create a confused and ignorant individual. One only needs to confuse his awareness to the point of making sure that his cerebral efforts lead to failures and frustrations, leaving belief as the only open way to perceive and take to go through the world. When belief comes before the search for knowledge, belief will decide not only what we must research but also what we must accept as light and truth. 

We must understand that on the level of the individual, and even on the level of a whole society, there is no discipline without goals. Discipline, is that mental, moral, and physical effort that we submit to for a precise goal. To ask the individual to be disciplined without revealing to him the goal of this discipline is to colonise him; it is to recruit him without his knowledge as a force in the evil that infects the world. We must be capable of judging the quality of the goals that are presented by politicians. If the politician's goal is honest and humane, he should not see the individual's desire to know why he is made to do what he is doing a problem or a rebelling. The human being may not know how to tell the difference between good and evil in the context of the dimensions of the universe of his action. But he can, on the basis of what has been presented to his consciousness, project a vision that is more or less acceptable of what can be perceived as the good of the world. Every individual has by instinct decided to fight against forces that keep him on the path of self-destruction. It is this instinctive attachment to life that became the real reason behind our actions; from that level, it all became a matter of our level of perception. We avoid what we perceive to be evil and we pursue what we perceive to be good. Our problem at that level lies in the fact that a perception is not necessarily a reality. It is dependent on factors of education and internalization. What we perceive is what has succeeded into reaching our consciousness. 

The human being who is advancing towards light must confront all the resistance. Everything pushing him towards the politicians' logics of destruction and self-destruction will try to seduce him by exploiting his weaknesses and vices. This is why we must be aware of our condition as disciples if we want to be able to question the direction our life is taking as well as the direction being taken by the world we came to build. We shall then, at least, understand why discipline is, for us, a necessity.