Excerpt
As preparation for our arrival, I thought it would be useful if Elizabeth told her story in her own words.
“My dreams have always been interesting and varied,” she said, “but I have had the same dream ever since I was a child. I found myself visiting another period in time on a regular basis. I knew instinctively it was Earth, but it was a culture with which I was not familiar."
"I have always had a avid interest in ancient civilizations as so many of them have come and gone over the last 6,000 years, each one leaving a legacy which the modern age has inherited and a wealth of treasures of every possible shape and form.”
As she related her experiences, Elisabeth was opening a window onto a civilisation which had some parallels to the Yumi culture. She described the people she encountered as tall and graceful in appearance.
“They came from a society which used the power of crystals for many and varied tasks, a culture which was so very different to the one that I come from.”
“It has been nearly ten years since I first ventured into the Temple of Creation,” she said.
“It is a place I used to see it my mind’s eye, long before I ever went there. As I discovered in my dreams, it was the inner sanctum of a temple in a magnificent city which I visited on numerous occasions.”
"I often saw myself wearing a flowing white gown and participating in complex ceremonies where the priests recalibrated a massive crystal which was, I believe, the power source of the city.”
“Like other people in this world, I also discovered that I had the capacity to use the power of thought to deal with some of the basic issues of life. However, there were those who were much more advanced than I and some even had the power to relocate from one place to another.”
“I never knew whether my dreams were real or not, but many years later I stumbled upon a very old book in a very interesting bookshop."
"It was called, A Tale of a Lost Land."
"I presumed that it was a bible at first, but it was not. It had been printed at least 200 years before. It was over 800 pages long and illustrated throughout with detailed black and white engravings.”
“As I flipped through its pages, I realised to my amazement that it was a story about the very place I had visited in my dreams.”
This was no ordinary story as Elizabeth was clear to point out; it was a record of a journey taken by a man called Jolariel. He was a physician and scholar who had heard of a civilisation called Lemuria and set off on a journey across many continents in search of this fabled land.
"The curious thing about this book was that he was not stated as the author on the cover or anywhere else, but whoever did write it, knew of Lemuria in intricate detail."
“It would have been most unusual for someone to undertake a journey of such magnitude,” she said, “especially during that epoch, because the Earth was somewhat different then.”
"By the time Jolariel arrived in Lemuria, it was very different to the stories he had heard about. He encountered many wonderful things and had many interesting adventures, but the people were not all that different to his own."
They did live in an abundant paradise where they longed for nothing, but miracles of nature were no longer a commonplace event. Even so, no one ever went hungry, but the days had long passed where you could pluck fruit from a tree and it grew back overnight.
"The Elders, as he referred to the original inhabitants did leave a legacy and some of the more fortunate were schooled in the ways of using the energy of crystals. Children not only learned to read and write, they also had the opportunity to pursue a profession."
Jolariel described Lemuria as a sort of heavenly paradise, as it was far too beautiful to have been anything else. He encountered many towns and cities scattered throughout the countryside and along the coastline, but it was the capital city, a place he called the Temple City of Lemuria that he fell in love with.
“It was like no other city he had ever encountered before and could not believe it had been created by mere mortals.”
It was a never-ending metropolis of magnificent buildings, manicured parklands, grand boulevards and tree-lined promenades on which people travelled along in self-propelled wheeled carriages.
The central structure in this city was a monolithic pyramid, just one of many scattered throughout the land. It was approached by a boulevard lined with enormous palm trees and a series of massive archways, which, like many other structures in this city, also radiated a very noticeable power.
But, it was the craftsmanship that he could not believe. Whether it was a palace or temple or simply a private residence, every building was constructed from beautifully crafted blocks of stone which no man could ever have made by hand or even created without the assistance of a machine.
Jolariel stayed in that land for nearly two hundred years and never aged in all that time, and it was while he was there that he wrote this tale. Even though he loved Lemuria, he was aware of an on-going situation, a problem which continued to develop as the years went on.
In this world, the priests had the power, they had been schooled in the secrets of the universe and had used these to master the world in which they lived.
But over time, each generation became more human in appearance and the old knowledge became less important.
The common people had developed different ideas to their masters and it was this element which divided the community and caused much grief and anger, especially amongst the priests of the temples.
A belief developed that some great ill was about to befall their world and those who could predict the future, eventually put it into words.
A prophecy passed down over time said that great waters would flood the land, that the Earth would swallow them up and Lemuria would disappear into the ocean.
As a consequence, many people had been preparing for this eventuality, some by building ships and others, curiously enough by tunneling deep into the Earth and establishing underground communities.
Jolariel lived a blessed life and one of luxury in a villa overlooking the ocean. He said that he chose to leave Lemuria as he knew that war was about to break out. The prophecies of oncoming destruction were not just the fabrications of tortured minds; he believed them to be real.
He packed a few possessions and oddly enough his manuscript. He had been preparing for the catastrophe and had even built a sea-going vessel of his own design.
It was on this vessel that he set sail across the ocean in an effort to get as far away from Lemuria as he possibly could, eventually ending up on the highest mountain plateau on the planet.
“Apparently, he survived the great flood,” Elizabeth said, “and lived a long life for a very long time after that. He eventually completed his story and carried it with him for many years after, one of the first to venture into what he described as a new world.”
“The interesting thing is that he obviously lived long enough to see his book in print.”
“The copy I own was printed sometime in the late 17th century and it never appeared in any library that I ever visited."
"I would never have known about it if I had not stumbled upon it in a New Age bookshop in London."
"I have often wondered about the owner of that shop,” she said. ‘He was not young and he was not old and if he was, he was very well preserved.’
‘I remember his eyes especially and the timbre of his voice. I had a feeling about him as I stood there discussing the price of the book. Oddly enough, he was very keen for me to have it for a generous discount.”
“As I said, that book for me was a Godsend, but the final chapter was so very different to the rest of the story. It was written in carefully worded metaphors as if the author now saw his story in a totally different light. He described it in a very similar fashion to one of the first stories of one of our sacred books called the Bible."
“That chapter was titled, The End of Paradise, where the author told a curious parable of a beautiful garden which had been destroyed by the Gods because humankind had fallen from grace."
"Whether they had fallen into depravity or not, I do not know," said Elisabeth, "but what he did say is that the priests had misused their power and had tried to destroy their own people in battle."
"But, this was no ordinary battle. At the very last moment, the gods did intervene and appeared apparently, in golden chariots and their world, after that, was never the same again.”