'Well, ha-ha, a very enthusiastic show of hands from some young people at the back. We'll start with you, young lady. What would you like to ask Dr Karpathian, our Shaker of the Week?'
'Thank you, Bardo! My friends and I are here together from East Atlantis University. First of all, I'd like to say that we are so grateful to Dr Karpathian for his great work and for sharing his amazing revelations from Lemuria!'
I thanked her, genuinely moved by her youthful enthusiasm and the wide smiles of her young colleagues around her.
'And your question, my dear?' asked Bardo.
'Mr question, Dr Karpathian, is about the Lemurian reference to the illusion of life. You say that all we need to do is to become aware of this illusion in order to be liberated from our suffering. But if I live in dire poverty, as many of our people do in Atlantis, and have to raise a family, and maybe I'm a single mother or I'm sick, or whatever, or one or more of my children is sick, or dysfunctional, or disabled, how can I remove myself from my suffering by just recognising the fact that reality is just an illusion and not what it seems to be?'
'Thank you again, ' I answered, 'for your support and for your kind sentiments which are most appreciated, I assure you! Thank you also for such an excellent question which I'll try to answer as best I can. First of all, to say that reality is an illusion doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, of course. It means that it's not the reality we think it is. Effectively, what we do is interpret what reality is, not just objectively but also subjectively. What do I mean by that? Well, we humans, who share a similar physiology, progeny, DNA, we all agree that a tree is a tree. This is based on our objective interpretation, or shared human consensus, of the vibrational frequencies that make up the tree. Subjectively, however, we may have very different impressions and feelings about that tree, or that person, or even that pain that we experience. We may call that pain "suffering" or even "misery", but we would be the only species on the planet to do so. By doing so, by interpreting the pain as suffering or the experience as misery, we make it worse. That is why the Lemurians say that we have turned our Paradise into hell by our stories, our interpretations.'
'Yes, but how does this knowledge remove the suffering? How does it change anything?'
'To begin with, although the pain will not be removed, the suffering will. Suffering is interpretation, based on resistance to pain. You say to yourself, why me? or, this shouldn't be happening to me, and so on. If you become friends with your pain, you are taking the first step to remove it. Secondly, when you choose joy instead of misery, you are actually stepping into the so-called future of your choice. You always have the choice between joy and misery, between fear and love. Everybody in Atlantis, everybody on Earth, could choose joy as instantly as the flick of a switch. But the problem is, we don't believe it. Believing is seeing. Try it. Even for a day. But here's the most amazing part of all. That single mother you cited as an example, or people in harsh circumstances or dire straits or in abject poverty or misery, when they choose joy, joy will choose them. What does that mean? It means they have already stepped into the so-called future of their choice. Now, one might say, how can you choose joy if you are a victim of war and have just lost your home or worse still, your family or your friends? That is, of course, true. We only have to switch on the news at any time of the day to see how people are forced by other people into suffering of the most terrible kind. But here's the amazing thing: when you choose joy, you actually diminish your chances of being a victim of suffering, of evil deeds, even of war. You say, but that makes no sense, it makes no rational sense. That may be true, if you have a left-brain approach to life, which most people do. Look at nature. Look at the birds, the way they play and hop about. Do they make mistakes? Have you ever seen a bird make a mistake?'
The audience laughed.
'When you step into joy, the amazing outcome is that objectively, externally, circumstances will change for the better. It's a law. It's one of the Six Laws: What you put in is what you get out. That's it! That's all!'
'But I still don't understand,' she insisted. 'Does it matter at all to know that reality is not what we see, but is merely vibrational frequencies? How does that help?'
'Well, you all learned at school that we are made up of what they call atoms. Right? And that each atom is mostly empty space. OK? That means that our bodies are 99.99999999% empty space. All I'm doing now is just pointing out the next logical, scientific step in our understanding of who and what we are. The tiny particles themselves that comprise the atom are not solid either. They are vibrations. You are vibrations. Reality is made up of vibrations. What it all boils down to is that you, you who are also made of vibrational frequencies, you and your reality merge! You are one! And because you are interconnected, it means your reality and the reality of the world around you is malleable, it's a lot easier to change than you think! All you have to do is have the intention to change, an intention based on the fact that whatever you do for yourself, you do for everybody else; whatever you do for everybody else, you do for yourself!'
'Last question, Dr Karpathian, if I may,' she continued apologetically. 'Your criticism, or should I say, the Lemurian critique of our society suggests that we seem to have got everything wrong. I mean, like, EVERYTHING! Do we need a revolution?'
'Of course. But there's no point in throwing stones at the screen of reality, at the illusion on the screen. You have to go back to the projector, from where the film is projected. And the projector is you. The revolution begins with you. When we change our perspective and look at life as an infinite variety of vibrational frequencies, then we realise that we are all intimately interconnected. We are all one. And each one of us is all. These are the Laws. The revolution we need is contained in the Six Laws. When we start living with an awareness of the Six Laws, we have taken the first step back to Paradise. Or rather forward to Paradise, I should say. So rather than use the word revolution, which might not resonate very well with many people, I would use the word retUrn, with a capital U to distinguish it from the regular meaning. Everything pivots on the retUrn. We can retUrn to our natural state of joy while on Earth, but we will always retUrn, in any case, to our natural state of pure joy when we leave this life.'
'Thank you, young lady!' said Bardo. 'Yes, you, madam, the lady in blue.'
'My question is in relation to vegetarianism or veganism. My daughter has been listening to Dr Karpathian's views in the media in the past week and now she wants to become a vegan. Although the arguments presented against eating meat which relate to the massive waste of water and arable land, the incessant cruelty to our poor animals, the prevention of world hunger, and so on, are all very convincing, my question is, what about nature? In our back garden, the blackbirds are worn out trying to keep the magpies away from their nest... '
Laughter from the audience.
'...and around the world and in the oceans, animals and fish prey upon one another. And then there's the parasites ...'
'In Government Buildings!' shouted one wit from the audience to a raucous outburst of laughter.'
'Thank you, Madam. We've got your point now. Well, Dr Karpathian? What about Mother Nature's carnivores?'
'I recall asking that very same question while I was there. Omnivores came about as a result of scarcity. It is their view that even our own species became predatory and carnivorous as a result of scarcity. Obviously, it was a matter of survive or die. Then the hunter-gatherers came up with the idea of breeding their own livestock, as we call it, and farming began. Prior to all of that, it would have been totally inconceivable for a human to harm an animal and, indeed, for an animal to harm another animal. And why? Because they lived in co-operation with one another, in tune with spirit, with their subtle or energy bodies, as one indivisible whole.'
'In your articles and interviews with the media,' Bardo asked, to change the subject, 'you have eulogised the Lemurians for their disapproval of competition. But isn't competition a good thing? I mean, it's the driving force of invention, improvement, expansion. Isn't there a danger of inertia setting in if we abandon competition in our society?'
'The change didn't happen overnight. The competition taboo in their society was introduced incrementally over many generations. Although the Lemurians have transcended competition now, there was a time when they had to live with it too, just like us. But they were able to learn that for competition to be a positive force in society, one's competitor must be respected as the very means by which you can progress through competition. They had to learn how to look on competition as a form of co-operation, not conflict. They saw it as a game with no winners and no losers. It was fun. The process was more important than the outcome.'
Bardo pointed his microphone at a member of the audience. A man in the front row got to his feet.
'Two questions, Dr Karpathian. As an engineer, I'm particularly interested in your reports regarding transport in Lemuria. You claim that you reached the mainland from the airport in one of their vehicles in less than five minutes, suggesting that it would normally have taken a plane about two hours. On what do you base this presumption?'
'On the maps. If you don't believe me, why not ask the other twenty-six QSA division managers who travelled with me?'
'It's not that I doubt your word, Dr Karpathian. In fact, I wager that the response from your colleagues would be exactly the same. And why? Because the mainland was less than five minutes away! How can anybody verify the authenticity of cartography if our satellite signals have been blocked for generations and the Lemurian airspace is a no-fly zone? We don't even know how many of those islands, some of which may be artificial, have even been charted in the past seventy years!'
'I have nothing to add to my report, I'm afraid. All I can say is that access to Lemuria has been blocked, not because the Lemurians are unfriendly, but because we do not respect them and their environment enough to be invited.'
There was a groan of disapproval from the audience.
