Lemuria and Atlantis

[Ninshub]

I don't know if anybody has any opinion about this.

These past "continents"/eras/"races" of humankind are often brought up by channelers, and they seem to have their sources in theosophy and Mme Blavatsky from what I can understand.

To those who have an actual serious interest in channeling and the like, what do you make of this?

Do you tend to believe a) they were actual places/eras? Or again b) other eras/places but in another dimensional reality? c) Or symbols that we shouldn't take literally but whose content is vibrationally significant or some such? Or d) just fantasy and BS?

I'm interested in answers because i am able to just go with the heart intelligence and let the ego aside when listening to channeling, but when stuff like this is brought up it tends to create a skeptical block I then have to take certain pains to navigate around. So any helpful opinions would be welcome.

[Ninshub]

Here's a theosophy website page related to the topic:
https://blavatskytheosophy.com/atlantis-and-lemuria/

I don't know if anybody has any opinion about this.

These past "continents"/eras/"races" of humankind are often brought up by channelers, and they seem to have their sources in theosophy and Mme Blavatsky from what I can understand.

To those who have an actual serious interest in channeling and the like, what do you make of this?

Do you tend to believe a) they were actual places/eras? Or again b) other eras/places but in another dimensional reality? c) Or symbols that we shouldn't take literally but whose content is vibrationally significant or some such? Or d) just fantasy and BS?

I'm interested in answers because i am able to just go with the heart intelligence and let the ego aside when listening to channeling, but when stuff like this is brought up it tends to create a skeptical block I then have to take certain pains to navigate around. So any helpful opinions would be welcome.

Almost certainly (d) - fantasy and human imagination in my opinion. There isn't any credible archaeological evidence for such prehistoric civilizations, and if they existed and were technological and scientific they would have already depleted the world's oil and metals deposits, which we would certainly have noticed. About as likely as the crackpot theories about the Great Pyramid, that it was for instance built with the help of aliens. And I don't think there is any need to explain these channelings by postulating other dimensional realities or whatnot.

[Ninshub]

So you wouldn't even go to c) ?

I don't know if anybody has any opinion about this.

These past "continents"/eras/"races" of humankind are often brought up by channelers, and they seem to have their sources in theosophy and Mme Blavatsky from what I can understand.

To those who have an actual serious interest in channeling and the like, what do you make of this?

Do you tend to believe a) they were actual places/eras? Or again b) other eras/places but in another dimensional reality? c) Or symbols that we shouldn't take literally but whose content is vibrationally significant or some such? Or d) just fantasy and BS?

I'm interested in answers because i am able to just go with the heart intelligence and let the ego aside when listening to channeling, but when stuff like this is brought up it tends to create a skeptical block I then have to take certain pains to navigate around. So any helpful opinions would be welcome.

I've told this story before but I once knew a guy had to his personal satisfaction verified Psi and reincarnation. He also did therapy for veterans and worked to help them get benefits. So someone who had his feet in the spiritual but was not divorced from the hard concerns of this life.

He also believed that Atlantis had been destroyed by its communication with the "Black Lodge". I pressed him for details and he finally told me I wouldn't understand because to me Osiris and Apollo were allegories for the harvest and path of the sun respectively...whereas for him the harvest was an allegory for the god Osiris, and the path of the sun was an allegory for the god Apollo...

As for myself, I sometimes think it's possibly a) and b) but with the b) being a place that influenced a) as a sort of lesser earthly version...but mostly I'd go for a combination of c) & d)...

One of my favourite authors, Dr Arthur Guirdham wrote about Atlantis in terms of beings who were like us, yet somehow had more ethereal bodies, not so material and physical as our heavy biological bodies. Much as I appreciated his ideas, that didn't seem like a practical description of anything on our planet Earth, it came across as more of a parallel reality, a sort of existence somewhere 'in another dimension'.

More generally it seems the only dependable source is the writings of Plato, but conveniently he describes somewhere far away and long ago which means even in his terms it was like an empty page upon which he could tell any story he liked as no-one would have any way to produce facts to contradict him.

To return to Guirdham, one of his books, 'The Island' in the form of a novel describes what he says is from his own memory of some past life and covers the theme of the Mysteries of Eleusis, the mythology of Persephone and Pluto set against at background of volcanic and earthquake destruction of a small island. It's an interesting book which melds different themes of spiritual and physical worlds, plausible actual history with mythology. Somehow the corruption and destruction in this story has echoes of the tale of Atlantis though it does not purport to be so, it is a simpler and less prominent settlement. I found myself almost able to believe he was telling of real events.

Mostly I don't find the multiple accounts of Atlantis to be plausible except in one aspect. Many lands and human settlements both simple and more advanced have at one time been lost beneath the sea. Because there is a genuine geological/archaeological basis in fact, we find ourselves being led halfway along the trail. The other half being impossible to substantiate and a fertile ground for fantasy and embroidery according to taste.

So you wouldn't even go to c) ?

I suppose I could go that far, though reluctantly. Just about any idle or deluded speculation can be claimed to have some sort of spiritual or occult symbolism or significance, with no way of really testing the claim.

[Ninshub]

So what would you make of the legion of channelers* who speak of such places/eras? Edgar Cayce among them (Atlantis). I disregard intentional lying/imagining as an explanation. What are the other potential explanations? Just asking out of curiosity.

*I trust many of them sincerely believe they are channeling another entity that does not involve their own imagination at play. So I'm wondering how that works that something like Atlantis comes up.

It is something that has troubled me in the past. 

Firstly, regarding channels. I tend to regard their information as being delivered through the lens of the channel her/himself. By that I mean that if they are receiving information about past civilisations they might unconsciously make the association with Atlantis, whether or not a place of that name or general description actually existed in our history. What I do find pretty convincing, however, is the idea that civilisations before our own recorded history came and went.  

There is a lot of speculation and some of it is extreme (I don't see the need for aliens, for example) but I am not discounting the possibility that some previous civilisations were perhaps even more advanced than we are although maybe in different ways. I can imagine a civilisation developing around radically different technology, probably among a much smaller human population and without the need for a petro-chemical fuelled industrialisation. I remember a Seth dialogue about one such earlier advanced civilisation which thrived in below-ground networks. Some of the more recent archaeological finds in Turkey, etc., seem to suggest such a possibility.

It is so easy to dismiss all alternative archaeology, mythology, sacred texts, legends and symbolism as nonsense but how often do we witness that same kind of generalisation when it comes to Psi research? There are fake mediums, crazy New Age fads and a bunch of YouTube and Facebook nut cases nobody here would want to be associated with yet a large percentage of the population out there would put this forum in that very same category.

[Ninshub]

Thanks for that post Kam.

Regarding this bit, though:

Firstly, regarding channels. I tend to regard their information as being delivered through the lens of the channel her/himself. By that I mean that if they are receiving information about past civilisations they might unconsciously make the association with Atlantis, whether or not a place of that name or general description actually existed in our history.

On the one hand that makes sense to me. On the other hand, it seems clear to me listening to some channelers that the guide or ascended master who is allegedly communicating with them is referencing these specific places, with even more distinct locations within them. A lot of detailed information is generated. I'm not saying that means it's true; my point is more that in these cases it seems something is happening other than "the channeler is filtering the information and adding names". I don't doubt, however, that your theory may help explain what happens in some or many cases; I'm still left wondering what's going on in those cases where I think something else is at play. (Whether that's the channeler working out of his own imagination unconsciously for the whole thing, which I find puzzling and hard to explain to myself how that could happen; or there is an entity relating these things, whether they are true or not, on this plane or another, or in parallel realities, etc. etc.)