Do you guys actually believe this stuff?

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OK I haven't really read this whole thread but I'm gonna toss in my two cents nonetheless: The Ra material may be mostly entertainment but I personally get a lot out of entertainment, especially when it has a good message.

I spent years as a kid watching Star Trek and I can honestly say that the Federation philosophy has had an impact on my own personal philosophy. Do I believe Star Trek is real? No not really, I mean I suppose if the Universe is truly infinite then somewhere in the stretch of time and space there could be a similar group operating from a similar philosophy as the Federation, but to me that's besides the point. Star Trek is just a vehicle for certain ideas.

Similarly the Ra material is a vehicle for certain ideas. Are Ra really a group of extraterrestrials from Venus who are beaming information thru Carla? That I don't know about. I certainly enjoy the message though, not that it's anything I hadn't considered before, but the way it condenses all these concepts I've had floating around in my head most of my life into a coherent (or at least semi-coherent) concept of reality has been interesting to me. As others have mentioned I've found the archetypal mind stuff from book IV to be useful as a tool for self-study, but I've always been interested in the idea of the archetypes having grown up with a keen interest in mythology and have enjoyed the works of people like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, so once again it's nothing new just a rearrangement of old ideas.

So I guess whether it comes from Carla's subconscious or from an entity named Ra doesn't make much difference to me. A lot of it just seems like window dressing there to pique people's interest and certainly many people get caught up in all that stuff, sometimes to the point where it has a detrimental effect on their relationships and loosens their grip on reality. Going back to my Star Trek analogy though, the same could be said of Trekkies