The on-going mind (Part 2)

When I was confronted with the presence of my favourite uncle in spirit form about 25 years ago, I had to accept that:

• long after his Earthly death, my uncle had materialised (through the medium of a clairvoyant) to offer me guidance on my spiritual progress
• while I could not see or hear him, the clairvoyant could describe his appearance, and to communicate with him mentally
• my uncle, most surprisingly, responded to a comment I had made to the clairvoyant. That is, he could hear what I said
• his advice to me (through the clairvoyant) indicated that he had retained his Earthly memory, and that he knew about matters pertaining to me which had occurred after his demise
• his advice concluded thus: seek to contribute to building a bridge from where you came to where you are.

It took me two years to digest this experience – for I had no knowledge that the spirit realm existed; and to realise that I was then (possibly) the only person to know (through work experience) all about the government’s policies on migrant settlement (now integration). So, I wrote 4 books based on my experience (that was my contribution to the ‘bridge’ mentioned by my uncle). Much to my surprise, I learnt that a number of senior academics now considered me an expert in this field of policy. This is just to indicate when I began to ponder about matters immaterial – like mind and memory.

What is of great import is that my uncle had displayed, without a material brain and ears, that he had retained his Earthly memories and his mind. They seem to go together. As well, what I refer to as the Afterlife (the home of spirits – former humans) clearly exists.

Then, my experience:
• when I read a clue in a crossword puzzle, my brain often pops up with an answer even before I search my memory
• when I had my heart attack, I lost my memory for quite a few faces, even those of significance. After a few years, I progressively recovered most of that memory. That suggests that I had lost the connection to the recorded memory.

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The on-going mind (Part 1)

The thought that my mind and my memories are not totally located or contained within my brain is challenging. How could that be? Why do I suspect that, while (obviously) my mind and memories are based, linked, or associated with the brain, they may also have an independent existence? From my experience!

However, the mechanistic material paradigm reflected in the scientific method that we know does not enable us to explain the immaterial (or insubstantial) phenomena in the realm of the ethereal. The scientific method requires repeatability, to facilitate acceptance.

With ephemeral events or phenomena, the winks of the firefly come to mind. As well, recall what the physicists have found about particles which flit in and out of existence. Then think about dark matter and dark energy which together reportedly add up to 96% of allegedly known matter.

How much of accepted science is no more than a collection of speculative theories; and which do not enable testing through the scientific method? Space-time, expanding space, ‘black holes’, the ‘Big Bang’ theory of cosmogony, Darwin’s theory of evolution relating to new species, the ‘multiverse’ (or many universes), and more, are not ‘proven’ by observation alone. They are maths-backed speculations – so they seem to me.

Yet, so-called psychic phenomena, and alternative scenarios underlying existence, such as the aether or Consciousness, which do not fit into prevailing explanatory paradigms, are challenged or denied. Whenever I read about some expert asking “Where is the evidence?”, I wonder at the seemingly defensive posture.

Mountain building

There is no doubt that the stupendous natural forces connected with mountain-building (orogeny) are closely related to large -scale deformation of the Earth’s crust, and that many of the highest ranges originated in, and even attained their present elevation, during crustal disturbances that signalled the end of the Pleistocene times. This is not to imply that the Alps or Himalayas, for instance, attained their present form at a single catastrophic stroke.”

“We do urge, however, that a high percentage of today’s major ranges rose to their present heights only at the end of, or after, Pleistocene times. By general consensus of opinion, that event occurred about 11,000 years before the present. Before then, as demonstrated by numerous geological facts and observations, mountains were mostly of very modest elevation. Evidence supporting that contention is both widespread and convincing.”

“The geological modernity of folded mountains in many parts of Asia was recognised by Dr Bailey Willis when he wrote how they ‘challenge credibility by their extreme youth’. His conclusions were confirmed by studies of mountain ranges in China, where huge uplifts of the Earth’s crust were found to have occurred since the glacial period. Similar youthfulness characterises the ranges bordering western Gobi desert, including all those from the Russian Altai mountains to the Tien Shan range.

Indeed, it has been said of this region that: The present Gobi basin is relatively young, and was formed coincidently with the uplift of the Transbaikal ranges.”

“Flint linked this Himalayan uprise with the formation of other major Earth features thus: Late Pleistocene uplift occurred in the Himalayan region and in the Alps, and large scale rifting took place in eastern Africa.

Among other ranges affected then were ‘the Cordilleran systems in both North and South America, the Caucasus, and many others.’ “

“Not only were the Himalayas and their satellite ranges affected by this gigantic crustal uplift, but so also were the Pamirs, the Hindu Kush, Karakorum and Kailas ranges, the Kun-lun mountains and the Altai and Tien Shan ranges, all of which rose to their present altitudes very recently. “

“In other words, when portions of the Earth’s crust sink in one place, other portions tend to rise elsewhere in compensation.”

“Dr Walter Bucher of Columbia University has observed: Taken in their entirety, the orogenic belts are the result of world-wide stresses that have acted on the crust as a whole. Certainly the pattern of these belts is not what one would expect from wholly independent – purely local – changes in the crust.”

“Suffice it to observe that something acting on a planetary scale and with staggering power was basically responsible for those titanic crustal disturbances in times geologically very recent, described as ‘A remarkable and stupendous period – a period so startling that it might be accepted with hesitation, were not the conception unavoidable before a series of facts as extraordinary as itself.’ “

These are also extracts from Allan& Delair’s Cataclysm: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500 BC.

(Comment: It seems logical to link the Universal Flood to these convulsions. What was the cause of these catastrophes? The Pleistocene has been revised by the authors as between 11,500 to 11,400 years ago.)

The subsidence of land (2)

“… certain biological evidence … shows that continuous land united Greenland and north-west Europe as late as post-glacial times … this landmass ‘… sank beneath the sea at the end of the Ice Age.’ “

“Presumably these crustal disturbances – collapses, they were nothing less – occurred more or less simultaneously with the subsidence of the entire North Atlantic floor between Greenland and Norway by some 9,000 ft ((2750m), a convulsion which Forrest believed took place ‘since the Ice Age.’ … these tremendous changes occurred synchronously with the breakup and drowning of the greater part of Fennoscandia, a now-submerged northern landmass formerly connecting Spitzbergen with northern Eurasia.”

“Leaving the Atlantic for the Indian Ocean we find in the latter interesting evidence for the geologically recent submergence of extensive landmasses or series of large islands which Wallace called the great Southern Continent. This submergence was apparently yet another facet of the global catastrophe under discussion and, as in so many other areas, here also it was accompanied by stupendous volcanic activity.

Records of this were recovered by the Swedish survey ship Albatross in 1947 when, for several hundred miles south-east of Sri Lanka, it sailed over a vast and continuous plateau of hardened lava. This filled almost all the earlier valleys of the sea-bed and gave the ocean floor a singularly level surface.”

“According to HF Blanford, the eruption of this material may have been synchronous with the sinking of Wallace’s Southern Continent, of which he believed the Seychelles, Mauritius, the Adas Bank, the Laccadives, Maldives and Chagos island groups, and the Saya de Malha (Mulha) are the last surviving remnants. To Blanford’s list can also be added Sri Lanka, for it is believed to have been severed from the Indian state of Madras ‘in sub-recent times.’ “

These are also extracts from Allan & Delair’s ‘Cataclysm: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catatrophe in 9500 BC’

The subsidence of land (Part 1)

What happened to Fennoscandia, Beringia, and Appalachia? Or, Wallace’s great Southern Continent? Or, Sundaland? Or, to Hawaiki of Maori legend? These were land masses which are no more.

Allen & Delair in ‘Cataclysm: Compelling Evidence of a Cosmic Catastrophe in 9500BC’ (1997) stated as follows:

“… crustal subsidences, sometimes amounting to vertical collapses, occurred in some regions simultaneously with the late Pleistocene elevation of mountains elsewhere. They were evidently part and parcel of the same terrible world calamity.”

“The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is also directly associated with a great world-encircling fracture complex …”

“Tachylite, a lava which naturally disintegrates in sea water within 15,000 years of eruption, lies on the sea-bed around the Azores and apparently dates from outpourings less than 13,000 years ago.”

“… may we not wonder if all these islands were once part of an Atlantic plateau extending westwards of the Anti-Atlas mountains …”

“That such possibilities should be seriously considered finds support in the discovery of geologically very young beach sand in two deep-sea cores procured in this area from depths of 10,500 feet (3,250m) and 18,440 ft (5,700m), indicating that the region was above sea level at no very remote period. Maurice Ewing concluded from this evidence that:

Either the land must have shrunk two or three miles, or the sea must have once been three miles lower than now. Either conclusion is startling. … If the sea was once two miles lower, where would all the extra water have gone?

Only the greatest conceivable disturbance could have produced crustal faults and collapses as great as these.”

“It may not be unreasonable, especially in view of confirmatory biological evidence … to regard the volcanic upheavals traced on the bed of the Atlantic around the Azores as having occurred synchronously with the breakup and subsidence of Appalachia, the name given by geologists to the continental landmass in the North Atlantic … reposing some two miles (3.2km) below the level of the adjacent continental shelves. Appalachia connected Europe and North America via Greenland and Iceland.”

Were Lemurians also in Asia?

Here are some of the connections drawn by researchers about Lemurian influences in Asia. Sand paintings by a number of Native American tribes, some of which narrate important folk memories, have been described as “transparently Lemurian.” They “portray the deluge which was responsible for bringing tribal ancestors to America.” As an aside, I wonder whether these ancestors were Caucasoid or Asian.

Ritual sand painting is also a feature of Tibetan Buddhism. A sacred art shared between cultures as widely spread as Southern America and near-Central Asia does suggest a common origin as most likely.

The swastika is another signifier of a culture shared by Tibetan Buddhism and Native Americans, and which Churchward identified as a Lemurian emblem. It is also held by Hawaiians as the Cross of Teave, signifying the ‘Almighty Flame of Creation.’ As said by Frank Joseph, “The creative flame … in so many mythic traditions around the globe implied a shared source … “

Yet, in my view, cultural diffusion is not adequately indicative of a shared source or origin. For instance, some religious symbolism in our major religions would seem to have been adopted or adapted from earlier cultures. A proximity of cultures will also lead to behavioural cultural diffusion, as in, say, modern Malaysia.

Further, “The natural catastrophes which battered the Motherland and eventually overwhelmed it were dramatically documented in ancient China” in a colossal encyclopaedia in its imperial library. Frank Joseph’s Motherland is Mu. He also states that “The sudden appearance of the sophisticated bronze-working Shang dynasty on the plain of the Yellow River suggests it was the mixed offspring of native Asians and refugees from Mu.”

As well: “A flood myth known in Laos tells how a semi-divine people long ago dwelled on a distant island of great splendour and renown until celestial powers threatened with a global deluge.” Frank Joseph also refers to a “unique relic from their vanished homeland … a central pillar from the chief temple … “ which was set up in the kingdom Ayodhya in Thailand. A duplicate of this pillar, Lak Mu-ang or holy stone of Mu, is now in a temple in Bangkok.

What is significant is that each November there is a celebration which, in part, pays homage to the spirits of an ancestral people whose splendid kingdom was drowned. Japan’s “nocturnal Bon Odori” and the Roman ‘Lemuria’ seem linked to this historical cultural memory.

Is it also relevant to note that earthernware shards in Thailand have been dated as 6,000 years old; that is, 500 years before the Mesopotamian culture centres? Or that there is evidence of agriculture in Thailand 2,000 years before farming began in Mesopotamia?

So, there you have it. Are the above selected examples of apparent contributions by Lemurians to some Asian cultures sufficiently persuasive? Or, was there also another source of civilisation for some Asian societies?

Were there Lemurians in America?

The legends of the peoples of the Andes indicate that, following “ … a terrifying period when the earth had been inundated by a great flood and plunged into darkness by the disappearance of the sun … and the people suffered great hardship … “ there arrived a bearded tall man clothed in a white robe, bringing with him a number of viracochas. He was on a civilising mission, teaching love and kindness, as well as such skills as medicine, metallurgy, farming, etc., including  …  terraces and fields to be formed on the steep sides of ravines, and sustaining walls to rise up and support them.” (Graham Hancock in ‘Fingerprints of the Gods’).

Were the terraces similar to those constructed on Luzon by those who were believed to have operated Nan Madol’s cyclone-control system? If so, were Kon Tiki and his Viracochas Lemurians? Did those legends of the Andes also refer to those who had created the huge buildings constructed of megaliths, and how this had been done? Had these been built by an earlier culture with access to ‘magic’?

In a comparable manner, Mexican and Maya legends refer to Kukulkan and his companions bringing civilisation to Central America from the east in boats. The previous practice of human sacrifice was forbidden, while he “ … caused various important edifices to be built … “ (Hancock). Did that include the step-pyramids, which would have required ‘magic’?

Like Viracocha, Kukulkan eventually left the peoples he had led to civilisation, promising to return. Why did they leave? Reference to the East (as the direction from which he had come) is confusing, for Lemuria would have been in the West of the Americas. Was Kukulkan then an Atlantean? According to other legends, Atlantis had been established in the Atlantic Ocean by earlier expatriate Lemurians!

However, the folklore, as well as some totem poles, of sundry Native Indian tribes in northern America seemingly suggest a more direct connection to Lemuria. Indeed, on the basis claimed by Churchward of the image of the deer and the Tree of Life being key elements of the faiths of a number of cultures, it has been claimed that the Lemurian influence, through immigration, had extended not only to the Maya, but also to the Navajo Indians in the American Southwest, to the Japanese (Jomon and Ainu), and to China!

Claims such as this appear to be based on the apparently unchallengeable fact that, when Caucasoid people (that is, obviously light-skinned, but also long-headed with high-bridge noses?) are found in the Americas, and in Asian terrain as far inland as Tibet, Xinjiang, and Central Asia, they must be of Lamurian origin. Indeed, there are some who claim that the Garden of Eden was Mu (Lemuria); and that the escapees from a drowning Motherland had travelled, progressively, all the way to India, and then to the Persian Gulf!

Was this track traced purely on skin and hair colour? If so, compare the skin colour of modern North and Central Asians in the temperate zone, beginning from the Mediterranean Sea. Would it not be strange were the Caucasians to have originated, not around the Caucasian Mountains, but in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

Or, had there been a mother civilisation of advanced humans which established Lemuria, as well as the suddenly-arrived, fully-developed civilisations of Egypt, Sumer, Harappa, pre-Inca Andes, and pre-Olmec Mesoamerica? How could they have known enough maths and astrology (without guidance), to build pyramidal structures reflecting the layout of the Earth’s surface, and Earth’s alignments with certain star configurations?

Lemuria as mother civilisation

Examining what has been written about Lemuria (Mu) is like discussing Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny with non-Christian Asians. However, when an author describes his experiences (not speculations) when investigating cross-cultural links, in the context of the reported movements of peoples across the globe; or the probable existence in the distant past of an advanced civilisation spread over the Pacific, I cannot but keep an open mind. I am assured that no harm will come to my knowledge-bank.

The following represent the observations of Frank Joseph in his book on Lemuria. In Lima, Peru, at the Herrera Museum, he saw the blond and red-haired mummies of a pre-Inca (non-Indian) people. In Chicago’s Chinatown, he watched a Chinese lass executing her people’s ‘most ancient dance,’ dressed in attire almost identical to those of Aymara Indian girls in the Andes of Peru. In Minnesota, USA, at a celebration of the Cambodian New Year, he saw ‘the most Polynesian-performance’ outside Honolulu performed by Cambodians dressed in simple loin-cloths and sarongs, the men bare-chested.

Further, a Malaysian government representative told him about a legend of her people (obviously Malay) which referred to a great kingdom far to the east; and as that territory slid under the waves, another territory (Malaysia) rose from the sea to receive the survivors.

In Italy, the author learned that Lemuria is the name given by the proto-Romans (Etruscans?) to ‘their oldest ceremony,’ conducted every year on the 9th, 11th, and 13th of May. The ‘Lemuria’ was intended to propitiate the restless spirits of people who had died violently or prematurely. He wrote: ‘These troubled souls, the Romans believed, were accompanied by those of an ancestral people who perished tragically when their distant homeland, by the same name, was overwhelmed by a natural catastrophe in some far-off sea.’

Then there are the submerged massive stone ruins of a ceremonial building rising in tiers from the bottom of the ocean near Yonoguni Island of Japan. The author investigated these ruins often in the company of Prof. Yoshida, President of the Japan Petrograph Society, and has dived about 50 times to inspect the ruins. What he has to say should surely carry more weight than those of any armchair experts of the conservative kind.

How can an honest sceptic counter such undeniable observations by an author well-accredited as a researcher?

Sundaland – the mother civilisation?

The publisher of ‘East of Eden: the drowned continent of Southeast Asia’ by Stephen Oppenheimer says this about the book: “The biblical flood did really occur at the end of the last Ice Age. The Flood drowned for ever the huge continental shelf of Southeast Asia, and caused a population dispersal which fertilised the Neolithic cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and the eastern Mediterranean, thus creating the first civilisations.

“ … “The Polynesians did not come from China but from the islands of Southeast Asia.” … “The domestication of rice was not in China, but in the Malay Peninsula, 9,000 years ago.” So, there we go! Yet another fantastic scenario.

The evidence? From oceanography, linguistics, genetics, and folklore, says the author – as archaeology is relatively silent on this issue, unless one digs under the sea.

Oppenheimer says “It is beyond doubt that during the Ice Age, Southeast Asia was a single huge continent – a land mass which included Indo-China, Malaysia and Indonesia.” This would effectively be a substantial appendage, a peninsula, to continent Asia. Without writing, or archaeological finds, pre-history could seek to trace the family trees of languages to identify population movements (but not necessarily the ethnic or tribal links), aided by genetics. Folklore may be a starting indicative point in this search. This is what Oppenheimer has done to reach what he admits is a theory.

Thus, 3 sudden floods approximately 14,000 years, 11,500 years, and 8,000 years ago resulted in a rise in sea levels of 500 feet (120 metres). “Rapid land loss was accompanied by great earthquakes.” Contrary to the prevailing paradigm that everything important that has affected us commenced relatively recently – I am not sure how that view arose – Oppenheimer claims much longer histories; for example, for rice growing.

He concludes thus: “The final and most compelling evidence – that the present inhabitants of Southeast Asia have been there since the Ice Age, and started moving in all directions at the time of the floods – comes from the genes they carry ... Gene markers reveal Aboriginals of Southeast Asia at the root of the Asian family trees, and spreading to all parts of the compass as far as America and the Middle East. One particular marker – called the ‘Polynesian motif’ because such a high proportion of Polynesians carry it – originated in the people of Maluku (the Moluccas) in eastern Indonesia during the Ice Age. The fact that this marker has not been found in China, Taiwan or the Philippines contradicts the conventional theory, and allows a much older view of Southeast Asian prehistory.”

So, contrary to the post-colonial view that civilisation went from West to East, did it go from the East (via Sundaland) to the West, as Oppenheimer asserts?

A unified culture vs. multiculturalism (Part 6)

Dual citizenship is an anomaly to the reality that citizenship connotes a national identity, with an implicit commitment to one’s nation. Dual nationality undermines that commitment. Do the following benefits to some – tax advantages in the other nation (the country of origin); unfettered entry to both country of birth and country of adoption; and the freedom to take up arms on behalf of one’s ancestral folk – offset the deleterious international consequences flowing from the grant of dual citizenship?

Were one to get into a serious spot of bother with, or in, one’s secondary attachment, one’s national government is not likely to be able to offer adequate (or any) consular support. Some of Australia’s newest citizens have learnt that.

Then, there could also arise a comparable disadvantage were the nation of one’s ancestors to be bound by the Napoleonic Code in relation to citizenship. Under this Code, a government is entitled to treat the descendants of a former citizen, no matter where they lived, as citizens of the ancestral nation; even when these descendants had been born elsewhere, had lived there all their lives, and had never visited the tribal land.

For example, not that long ago, when an Australian official in his early twenties was to represent the Australian Government in the former nation of his father (both Australian citizens), it was discovered that the young man could be called up for national service were he to arrive at his ancestral land.

Normally, citizenship by birth is available to one born of permanent residents in the nation. Citizenship by descent is available to one born overseas to citizens who are temporarily away from home. Citizenship by grant is available to immigrants who satisfy specified legal conditions. Not that long ago, anyone taking up the citizenship of a foreign nation automatically lost the original citizenship.

When Australia offered dual citizenship, for political reasons, did that diminish the value of one’s passport to only a document of identity? What of one’s commitment to one’s nation? Is the replacement of colonialism’s globalisation by military power, by the USA’s globalisation by economic power, leading to the devaluation of sovereignty and national pride? At least until the next world war?

What of the complications for cultural identity of dual nationality? Are the principal signifiers of cultural identity becoming less significant to a peripatetic younger generation? Without the divisive influence of institutional religion, especially based on authority and priestly control, could cultural identities begin to coalesce?

Indubitably, as we immigrants in Australia have shown, there is an innate tendency for humans to be interested in one another, and thence to reach out to one another. Remarkably, Anglo-Australians did demonstrate, within two generations, a capacity to become multi-ethnic, and colour blind. We are now one national people.