IF EVER ANYONE could establish beyond reasonable doubt that the legend of Abang (or Ibu) Aku originated in the mists of Malayan antiquity, specifically amongst the Orang Asli - it would indicate the high level of initiatory knowledge to which their ancestors had access.
An unexpected corroboration of my working theory about the basis of the Temuan myth system came about one day in 1995 when my mother-in-law Indah chanced upon an alternative metaphysics book I was reading (Nothing in This Book Is True, But It's Exactly How Things Are by Bob Frissell, Frog Ltd, 1994). On its cover was a montage showing a flying saucer fleet, the Face on Mars, the Barbury Castle crop circle of July 1991, and a couple of humanoid aliens that might have been Martian-Grey hybrids. Indah pointed excitedly at the alien figures and squealed, 'There! That's how the ancient sky gods looked!” I chuckled and asked her how she could possibly know. She said, “I know from the description I once heard as a child. My grandmother told us they were very tall and had large heads with enormous eyes.” Her husband Rasid looked at the book and nodded a wordless agreement.
Well, such information is extremely difficult to verify. Perhaps Indah and Rasid had once seen a sci-fi film on TV and were keen to impress me with their breadth of understanding. I've found that even the most knowledgeable among the Temuan elders are rarely able to be specific about any of the old legends. (The fact is, Orang Asli generally don't place too high a value on specificity.) For instance, they seem reluctant or unable to explain the difference between Orang Halus and Orang Bunian (elves and fairies).
Rasid told me there was yet another species of mythical folk known as Orang Alas: these were originally humans who had reverted completely to the wild. They were rarely seen because they had acquired extremely swift responses and would vanish when any outsider ventured too close. One might as well embark on a unicorn hunt than try and track down an Orang Alas. Some thought of the Orang Alas as spectral hunters, which they call hantu seburu.
As for the Halus and the Bunian and the Lang Suir (harpies or sirens of the hills), and the huge compendium of hantu and other fourth-dimensional fauna mentioned in Temuan stories, one need look no further than the nearest coral reef to be reminded of nature's unfettered imagination when it comes to conjuring dream and nightmare forms. What was it the Master said about the infinite mysteries contained in a mustard seed?
At a certain Balinese temple in Ubud I spoke with the guardian who disclosed that his predecessor had reported a Tintya visitation as recently as 1967 or 1969. There had been an unearthly light in the temple garden when the Tintya appeared.
So what do we make of these stories? Very little, going by the rules of empirical, mainstream analysis. However, if we take on board recent information relating to the unknown (read suppressed) history of the Earth, culled from various sources ranging from Zecharia Sitchin's maverick interpretations of Mesopotamian records and J.J. Hurtak's enigmatic Keys of Enoch, to “channeled” messages from “ascended masters” and a motley crew of “space brothers and sisters” - and then complement the data with our own restimulated “genetic memory” (most of us are quite capable of experiencing DNA flashbacks, though we tend to deny or recoil from such right-brained quantum jumps beyond the pre-programmed defines of our left-brained, linear thought-rails) - we may begin to perceive a much bigger pattern behind these fragments of myth.
The crop circle phenomenon of the 1990s, for example, raises a few important questions: What is the special connection between prehistoric sacred sites and UFO sightings? How does our distant past relate to our immediate future?* Is our modern “scientific-materialistic” perspective wide enough to encompass the larger cosmic context in which we live? Why have historians and theologians been vacillating, for nearly two thousand years, between trying to regain and trying to suppress cosmological knowledge that was already well established in pre-Christian times? Perhaps the Ouroboros Effect (time swallowing itself in the form of a looped serpent), wherein the past meets and merges with the future in the present, will prove to be the single most valuable key to unlocking the Mystery of the Ages.
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| From The Cosmic Connection by Michael Hesseltine |
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* Although the majority of crop circles have been geometric or pictographic, there have been instances of agriglyphic formations such as the one which appeared in mid-July, 1991, at the foot of Milk Hill at Stanton St Bernard in Wiltshire, England. It was a 120-foot long, 15-foot high hieratic inscription combining Iberian, Hebrew, and Phoenician letters - which experts have deciphered as a message from “The Creator, wise and kind.” The agriglyphs read: PH.EH.TH.I. (Phehthi) EA.E.CH.CH.E. (Ea-echche) - literally,”Ptah/Ea, Friend of Man.” (Ea/Enki, the Sumerian progenitor god of humanity, was called in Egypt, Ptah.)