Yet what proof is there that such a horrific religion did come from Bravenna? None. Indeed, it seems this religion evolved to its final blood flower over a long period of time during which human beings sought to make sense of the fact of suffering and pain and a world in which there was no apparently overarching justice! And what cruelty came of such ideas. Think of the Christian saints who starved and flogged themselves; think of the cruel flogging inflicted on children due to the barbarous idea that they were inherently evil from birth. Think of the cruel executions throughout human history. Think of the morbid idea of the God of love inflicting suffering on those He favors and would bring to perfection!

But human beings are moving away from these blood-drenched fables, are they not? They are moving away in an affluent world in which people have come to suspect the value of suffering. They are gradually rejecting these old notions. The abundant New Age writings in some places contain the same themes as troubled Amel—that some force beyond this planet might be harvesting emotions, thriving off human emotions and using them for purposes known and unknown.

Well, think on it. Think on it that we saw a long-ago world in which many simple people rejected such an idea without the long history of the development of ideas that you have all inherited on this earth. We saw it there in the beginning. And it was not the teachings of Amel that inculcated these people with a suspicion of suffering. I believe that what moved the millions of Atalantayans to think in a different way was that they had never been indoctrinated with such a notion in the first place. They knew of it, they associated it with some tribes in the Wilderness lands, but that was all. And in the free and creative atmosphere of Atalantaya they believed in a world without the sanctification of suffering.

But let me go back now to us! Let me go back to that day on Atalantaya when we all but staggered out of Amel’s chambers and went down and out and back into the city. We were virgin minds, newborn minds, minds unprepared for the shock of all this. Yet we were mammalian beings and we had within us the mammalian concept of fairness. We felt the human mammalian revolt against that which seems utterly monstrous!

In the days that followed we wandered the city anew paying attention now to things we’d ignored before. Nightly without fail, we sat for at least an hour in a Meditation Center. And we visited the great water compounds in Atalantaya which extracted salt from the sea and somehow harnessed the power of the flow of water to run many complex systems of Atalantaya. We also visited the great factories in which all manner of items were made, and everywhere we went we found that pilgrims like us were welcome. Seldom did we need to show our passes.