Part i: Contents

COSMIC MEMORY
Prehistory of Earth and Man
Atlantis and Lemuria

CONTENTS

I. Introduction
II. Contemporary Civilization in the Mirror of the Science of the
Spirit (1904)
III. From the Akasha Chronicle (Preface)
IV. Our Atlantean Ancestors
V. Transition of the Fourth into the Fifth Root Race
VI. The Lemurian Race
VII. The Division into Sexes
VIII. The Last Periods before the Division into Sexes
IX. The Hyperborean and the Polarean Epoch
X. Beginning of the Present Earth -- Extrusion of the Sun
XI. Extrusion of the Moon
XII. Some Necessary Points of View
XIII. On the Origin of the Earth
XIV. The Earth and Its Future
XV. The Life of Saturn
XVI. The Life of the Sun
XVII. Life on the Moon
XVIII. The Life of Earth
XIX. The Fourfold Man of Earth
XX. Answers to Questions
XXI. Prejudices Arising from Alleged Science (1904)

 

Part I: Introduction

Introduction
RUDOLF STEINER: THE MAN AND HIS WORK

RUDOLF STEINER is one of those figures who appear at critical moments
in human history, and whose contribution places them in the vanguard
of the progress of mankind.

Born in Austria in 1861, educated at the Technische Hochschule in
Vienna, where he specialized in the study of mathematics and science,
Steiner received recognition as a scholar when he was invited to edit
the well-known Kurschner edition of the natural scientific writings of
Goethe. Already in 1886 at the age of twenty-five, he had shown his
comprehensive grasp of the deeper implications of Goethe's way of
thinking by writing his Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der
Goetheschen Weltanschauung (Theory of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's
Conception of the World). Four years later he was called to join the
group of eminent scholars in residence at Weimar, where he worked with
them at the Goethe-Schiller Archives for some years. A further result
of these activities was the writing of his Goethes Weltanschauung
(Goethe's Conception of the World) which, together with his
introductions and commentary on Goethe's scientific writings,
established Steiner as one of the outstanding exponents of Goethe's
methodology.

In these years Steiner came into the circle of those around the aged
Nietzsche. Out of the profound impression which this experience made
upon him, he wrote his Friedrich Nietzsche, Ein Kampfer gegen seine
Zeit (Friedrich Nietzsche, a Fighter Against his Time), published in
1895. This work evaluates the achievements of the great philosopher
against the background of his tragic life-experience on the one hand,
and the spirit of the nineteenth century on the other.

In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. His
thesis dealt with the scientific teaching of Fichte, and is further
evidence of Steiner's ability to evaluate the work of men whose
influence has gone far to shape the thinking of the modern world. In
somewhat enlarged form, this thesis appeared under the title, Wahrheit
und Wissenschaft (Truth and Science), as the preface to Steiner's
chief philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, 1894. Later he
suggested The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity as the title of the
English translation of this book.

At about this time Steiner began his work as a lecturer. This activity
was eventually to occupy the major portion of his time and was to take
him on repeated lecture tours throughout Western Europe. These
journeys extended from Norway, Sweden and Finland in the north to
Italy and Sicily in the South, and included several visits to the
British Isles. From about the turn of the century to his death in
1925, Steiner gave well over 6,000 lectures before audiences of most
diverse backgrounds and from every walk of life.

First in Vienna, later in Weimar and Berlin, Steiner wrote for various
periodicals and for the daily press. For nearly twenty years,
observations on current affairs, reviews of books and plays, along
with comment on scientific and philosophical developments flowed from
his pen. Finally, upon completion of his work at Weimar, Steiner moved
to Berlin in 1897 to assume the editorship of Das Magazin fur
Litteratur, a well-known literary periodical which had been founded by
Joseph Lehmann in 1832, the year of Goethe's death.

Steiner's written works, which eventually included over fifty titles,
together with his extensive lecturing activity brought him into
contact with increasing numbers of people in many countries. The sheer
physical and mental vigor required to carry on a life of such broad,
constant activity would alone be sufficient to mark him as one of the
most creatively productive men of our time.

The philosophical outlook of Rudolf Steiner embraces such fundamental
questions as the being of man, the nature and purpose of freedom, the
meaning of evolution, the relation of man to nature, the life after
death and before birth. On these and similar subjects, Steiner had
unexpectedly new, inspiring and thought-provoking things to say.
Through a study of his writings one can come to a clear, reasonable,
comprehensive understanding of the human being and his place in the
universe.

It is noteworthy that in all his years of work, Steiner made no appeal
to emotionalism or sectarianism in his readers or hearers. His
scrupulous regard and deep respect for the freedom of every man shines
through everything he produced. The slightest compulsion or persuasion
he considered an affront to the dignity and ability of the human
being. Therefore, he confined himself to objective statements in his
writing and speaking, leaving his readers and hearers entirely free to
reject or accept his words.

Rudolf Steiner repeatedly emphasized that it is not educational
background alone, but the healthy, sound, judgment and good will of
each individual that enables the latter to comprehend what he has to
say. While men and women eminent in cultural, social, political and
scientific life have been and are among those who have studied and
have found value in Steiner's work, experience has shown repeatedly
that his ideas can be grasped by the simplest people. His ability to
reach, without exception, all who come to meet his ideas with the
willingness to understand, is another example of the well-known
hallmark of genius.

The ideas of Rudolf Steiner address themselves to the humanity in men
and women of every race and of every religious and philosophical point
of view, and included them. However, it should be observed that for
Steiner the decisive event in world development and the meaning of the
historical process is centered in the life and activity of the Christ.
Thus, his point of view is essentially Christian, but not in a limited
or doctrinal sense. The ideas expressed in his Das Christentum als
mystische Tatsache und die Mysterien des Altertums (Christianity as
Mystical Fact and the Mysteries of Antiquity), 1902, and in other
works, especially his cycles of lectures on the Gospels (1908-1912),
have brought to many a totally new relationship to Christianity,
sufficiently broad to include men of every religious background in full
tolerance, yet more deeply grounded in basic reality than are many of
the creeds current today.

From his student days, Steiner had been occupied with the education of
children. Through his own experience as tutor in Vienna and later as
instructor in a school for working men and women in Berlin, he had
ample opportunity to gain first-hand experience in dealing with the
needs and interests of young people. In his Berlin teaching work he
saw how closely related are the problems of education and of social
life. Some of the fundamental starting-points for an educational
praxis suited to the needs of children and young people today, Steiner
set forth in a small work titled Die Erziehung des Kindes vom
Gesichtspunkte der Geisteswssenshaft (The Education of the Child in
the Light of the Science of the Spirit), published in 1907.

Just forty years ago, in response to an invitation arising from the
need of the time and from some of the ideas expressed in the essay
mentioned above, Rudolf Steiner inaugurated a system of education of
children and young people based upon factors inherent in the nature of
the growing child, the learning process, and the requirements of
modern life. He himself outlined the curriculum, selected the faculty,
and, despite constant demands for his assistance in many other
directions, he carefully supervised the initial years of activity of
the first Rudolf Steiner Schools in Germany, Switzerland and England.
The story of the successful development of the educational movement
over the past forty years cannot be told here. However, from the
opening of the first Rudolf Steiner School, the Waldorf School in
Stuttgart, Germany, to the present time, the success of Rudolf Steiner
Education sometimes referred to as Waldorf Education) has proven the
correctness of Steiner's concept of the way in which to prepare the
child for his eventual adult role in his contribution to modern
society, existence in seventeen countries of the world, including the
United States, Canada, Mexico, and South America.

In 1913, at Dornach near Basel, Switzerland, Rudolf Steiner laid the
foundation of the Goetheanum, a unique building erected in consonance
with his design and under his personal supervision. Intended as the
building in which Steiner's four dramas would be performed, the
Goetheanum also became the center of the Anthroposophical Society
which had been founded by students of Rudolf Steiner in 1912. The
original building was destroyed by fire in 1922, and subsequently was
replaced prepared by Rudolf Steiner.

Today the Goetheanum is the world headquarters of General
Anthroposophical Society, which was founded at Dornach at Christmas,
1923, with Rudolf Steiner as President. Audiences of many thousands
come there each year to attend performances of Steiner's dramas, of
Goethe's Faust (Parts I and II in their entirety), and of plays by
other authors, presented on the Goetheanum stage, one of the finest in
Europe. Eurythmy performances, musical events, conferences and
lectures on many subjects, as well as courses of study in various
fields attract people to the Goetheanum from many countries of the
world, including the United States.

Among activities springing from the work of Rudolf Steiner are
Bio-Dynamic Farming and Gardening, which aims at improved nutrition
resulting from methods of agriculture outlined by him; the art of
Eurythmy, created and described by him as "visible speech and visible
song"; the work of the Clinical and Therapeutical Institute at
Arlesheim, Switzerland, with related institutions in other countries,
where for the past thirty years the indications given by Rudolf
Steiner in the fields of Medicine and Pharmacology have been applied;
the Homes for Children in need of special care, which exist in many
countries for the treatment of mentally retarded children along lines
developed under Steiner's direction; the further development of
Steiner's indications of new directions of work in such fields as
Mathematics, Physics, Painting, Sculpture, Music Therapy, Drama,
Speech Formation, Astronomy, Economics, Psychology, and so on. Indeed,
one cannot but wonder at the breadth, the scope of the benefits which
have resulted from the work of this one man!

A full evaluation of what Rudolf Steiner accomplished for the good of
mankind in so many directions can come about only when one comprehends
the ideas which motivated him. He expressed these in his writings, of
which the present volume is one. Taken together, these written works
comprise the body of knowledge to which Steiner gave the name, the
science of the spirit, or Anthroposophy. On page 249 of this book he
writes of the benefits of this science of the spirit:

"When correctly understood, the truths of the science of the spirit
will give man a true foundation for his life, will let him recognize
his value, his dignity, and his essence, and will give him the highest
zest for living. For these truths enlighten him about his connection
with the world around him; they show him his highest goals, his true
destiny. And they do this in a way which corresponds to the demands of
the present, so that he need not remain caught in the contradiction
between belief and knowledge."

Many of the thoughts expressed in this book may at first appear
startling, even fantastic in their implications. Yet when the prospect
of space travel, as well as modern developments in technology,
psychology, medicine and philosophy challenge our entire understanding
of life and the nature of the living, strangeness as such should be no
valid reason for the serious reader to turn away from a book of this
kind. For example, while the word "occult" or "supersensible" may have
undesirable connotations for many, current developments are fast
bringing re-examination of knowledge previously shunned by
conventional research. The challenge of the atomic age has made
serious re-evaluation of all knowledge imperative, and it is
recognized that no single area of that knowledge can be left out of
consideration.

Steiner himself anticipated the reader's initial difficulties with
this book, as he indicates on page 112: "The reader is requested to
bear with much that is dark and difficult to comprehend, and to
struggle toward an understanding, just as the writer has struggled
toward a generally understandable manner of presentation. Many a
difficulty in reading will be rewarded when one looks upon the deep
mysteries, the important human enigmas which are indicated."

On the other hand, a further problem arises as a result of Steiner's
conviction regarding the purpose for which a book dealing with the
science of the spirit is designed. This involves the form of the book
as against its content. Steiner stressed repeatedly that a book on the
science of the spirit does not exist only for the purpose of conveying
information to the reader. With painstaking effort, he elaborated his
books in such a manner that while the reader receives certain
information from the pages, he also experiences a kind of awakening of
spiritual life within himself. Steiner describes this awakening as
"...an experiencing with inner shocks, tensions and resolutions." In
his resolutions." In his autobiography he speaks of his striving to
bring about such an awakening in the readers of his books: "I know
that with every page my inner battle has been to reach the utmost
possible in this direction. In the matter of style, I do not so
describe that my subjective feelings can be detected in the sentences.
In writing I subdue to a dry mathematical style what has come out of
warm and profound feeling. But only such a style can be an awakener,
for the reader must cause warmth and feeling to awaken in himself. He
cannot simply allow these to flow into him from the one setting forth
the truth, while he remains passively composed." (The Course of My
Life, Note)

In the present translation, therefore, careful effort has been made to
preserve as much as possible such external form details as sentence
and paragraph arrangement, italics, and even some of the more
characteristic punctuation of the original, regardless of currently
accepted English usage.

The essays contained in this book occupy a significant place in the
life-work of Rudolf Steiner. They are his first written expression of
a cosmology resulting from that spiritual perception which he
described as "a fully conscious standing-within the spiritual world."
In his autobiography he refers to the early years of the present
century as the time when, "Out of the experience of the spiritual
world in general developed specific details of knowledge.'' (Op. cit.
pp. 326, 328.) Steiner has stated that from his early childhood he
knew the reality of the spiritual world because he could experience
this spiritual world directly. However, only after nearly forty years
was it possible for him to transmit to others concrete, detailed
information regarding this spiritual world.

As they appear in the present essays, these "specific details" touch
upon processes and events of extraordinary sweep and magnitude. They
include essential elements of man's prehistory and early history, and
shed light upon the evolutionary development of our earth. Published
now for the first time in America, just a century after Darwin's
Origin of the Species began its transformation of Man's view of
himself and of his environment, these essays clarify and complement
the pioneer work of the great English scientist.

Rudolf Steiner shows that the insoluble link between man and cosmos is
the fundamental basis of evolution. As man has participated in the
development of the world we know today, so his achievements are
directly connected with the ultimate destiny of the universe. In his
hands rests the freedom to shape the future course of creation.
Knowledge of his exalted origins and of the path he followed in
forfeiting divine direction for the attainment of his present
self-dependent freedom, are indispensable if man is to evolve a future
worthy of a responsible human being. This book appears now because of
its particular significance at a moment when imperative and grave
decisions are being made in the interests of the future of mankind.

PAUL MARSHAL ALLEN
Englewood, New Jersey
June 1959

 

Part II: Contemporary Civilization in the Mirror of the Science of the
Spirit (1904)

CONTEMPORARY CIVILIZATION IN THE MIRROR OF
THE SCIENCE OF THE SPIRIT (1904)

THE OBSERVER of the course of scientific development in the last
decades cannot doubt that a great revolution is in preparation. Today
when a scientist talks about the so-called enigmas of existence, it
sounds quite different than it did a short time ago.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century some of the most daring
spirits saw in scientific materialism the only creed possible to one
familiar with the then recent results of research. The blunt saying of
that time has become famous: "Thoughts stand in about the same
relationship to the brain as gall to the liver." This was stated by
Karl Vogt, who in his Kohlerglauben und Wissenschaft (Blind Faith and
Science) ana in other writings, declared everything to be
superannuated which did not make spiritual activity and the life of
the soul proceed from the mechanism of the nervous system and of the
brain in the same manner in which the physicist explains that the
movement of the hands proceeds from the mechanism of the clock. That
was the time when Ludwig Buechner's Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter)
became a sort of gospel among wide circles of the educated. One may
well say that excellent, independently thinking minds came to such
convictions because of the powerful impression made by the successes
of science in those times. A short time before, the microscope had
shown the synthesis of living beings out of their smallest parts, the
cells. Geology, the science of the formation of the earth, had come to
the point of explaining the development of the planets in terms of the
same laws which still operate today. Darwinism promised to explain the
origin of man in a completely natural way and began its victorious
course through the educated world so auspiciously that for many it
seemed to dispose of all "old belief." A short time ago, all this
became quite different. It is true that stragglers who adhere to these
opinions can still be found in men like Ladenburg at the Congress of
Scientists in 1903, who proclaim the materialistic gospel; but against
them stand others who have arrived at a quite different way of
speaking through more mature reflection on scientific questions. A
work has just appeared which bears the title, Naturwissenschaft und
Weltanschauung (Science and World Conception). Its author is Max
Verworn, a physiologist of the school of Haeckel. In this work one can
read the following: "Indeed, even if we possessed the most complete
knowledge of the physiological events in the cells and fibers of the
cerebral cortex with which psychic events are connected, even if we
could look into the mechanism of the brain as we look into the works
of a clock, we would never find anything but moving atoms. No human
being could see or otherwise perceive through his senses how
sensations and ideas arise in this mechanism. The results which the
materialistic conception has obtained in its attempt to trace mental
processes back to the movements of atoms illustrates its efficiency
very clearly. As long as the materialistic conception has existed, it
has not explained the simplest sensation by movements of atoms. Thus
it has been and thus it will be in future. How could it be conceivable
that things which are not perceptible by the senses, such as the
psychic processes, could ever be explained by a mere splitting up of
large bodies into their smallest parts? The atom is still a body after
all, and no movement of atoms is ever capable of bridging the gulf
between the material world and the psyche. However fruitful the
materialistic point of view has been as a scientific working
hypothesis, however fruitful it will doubtless remain in this sense in
the future -- I point only to the successes of structural chemistry --
just as useless is it as the basis for a world conception. Here it
shows itself to be too narrow. Philosophical materialism has finished
playing its historical role. This attempt at a scientific world
conception has failed for ever." Thus, at the beginning of the
twentieth century, a scientist speaks about the conception which
around the middle of the nineteenth was proclaimed as a new gospel
demanded by the advances of science.

It is especially the 'fifties, the 'sixties, and the 'seventies of the
nineteenth century which may be designated as the years of the high
tide of materialism. The explanation of mental and spiritual phenomena
on the basis of purely mechanical processes exercised a really
fascinating influence at that time. The materialists could tell
themselves that they had won a victory over the adherents of a
spiritual world conception. Those also who had not started from
scientific studies joined their ranks. While Buechner, Vogt,
Moleschott and others still built on purely scientific premises, in
his Alten und neuen Glauben (Old and New Belief, 1872), David
Friedrich Strauss attempted to obtain bases for the new creed from his
theological and philosophical ideas. Decades before he had already
intervened in the intellectual life with his Leben Jesu (Life of
Jesus) in a manner which caused a sensation. He seemed to be equipped
with the full theological and philosophical culture of his time. He
now said boldly that the materialistic explanation of the phenomena of
the universe, including man, had to form the basis for a new gospel,
for a new moral comprehension and formation of existence. The descent
of man from purely animal ancestors seemed about to become a new
dogma, and in the eyes of scientific philosophers, all adherence to
spiritual-soul origin of our race amounted to an antiquated
superstition from the infancy of mankind, with which one did not have
to disturb oneself further.

The historians of culture came to the aid of those who built on the
new science. The customs and ideas of savage tribes were made the
object of study. The remains of primitive cultures, which are dug out
of the ground like the bones of prehistoric animals and the
impressions of extinct plants were to bear witness to the fact that at
his first appearance on earth man was distinguished only in degree
from the higher animals, and that mentally and spiritually he had
risen to his present eminence from the level of animalism pure and
simple. A time had come when everything in this materialistic edifice
seemed to be right. Under a kind of coercion which the ideas of the
time exercised on them, men thought as a faithful materialist has
written: "The assiduous study of science has brought me to the point
where I accept everything calmly, bear the inevitable patiently, and
for the rest help in the work of gradually reducing the misery of
mankind. The fantastic consolations which a credulous mind seeks in
marvelous formulas I can renounce all the more easily since my
imagination receives the most beautiful stimulation through literature
and art. When I follow the plot of a great drama or, under the
guidance of scientists, make a journey to other stars, an excursion
through prehistoric landscapes, when I admire the majesty of nature on
mountain peaks or venerate the art of man in tones and colors, do I
not then have enough of the elevating? Do I then still need something
which contradicts my reason? The fear of death, which torments so many
of the pious, is completely unknown to me. I know that I no more
survive after my body decays than I lived before my birth. The agonies
of purgatory and of hell do not exist for me. I return to the
boundless realm of Nature, who embraces all her children lovingly. My
life was not in vain. I have made good use of the strength which I
possessed. I depart from earth in the firm belief that everything will
become better and more beautiful." Vom Glauben zum Wissen. Ein
lehrreicher Entwickelungsgang getreu nach dem Leben geschildert von
Kuno Freidank. (On the Belief in Knowledge. An Instructive Course of
Development Described in a Manner Faithfully True to Life by Kuno
Freidank.) Many people who are still subject to the compulsive ideas
which acted upon the representatives of the materialistic world
conception in the time mentioned above, also think in this manner
today.

Those however who tried to maintain themselves on the heights of
scientific thought have come to other ideas. The first reply to
scientific materialism, made by an eminent scientist at the Congress
of Scientists in Leipzig (1876), has become famous. Du Bois-Reymond at
that time made his "Ignorabimus speech." He tried to demonstrate that
this scientific materialism could in fact do nothing but ascertain the
movements of the smallest material particles, and he demanded that it
should be satisfied with doing this. But he emphasized at the same
time that in doing this it contributes absolutely nothing to an
explanation of mental and spiritual processes. One may take whatever
attitude one pleases toward these statements of Du Bois-Reymond, but
this much is clear: they represented a rejection of the materialistic
interpretation of the world. They showed how as a scientist one could
lose confidence in this interpretation.

The materialistic interpretation of the world had thereby entered the
stage where it declared itself to be unassuming as far as the life of
the soul is concerned. It admitted its "ignorance" (agnosticism). It
is true that it declared its intention of remaining "scientific" and
of not having recourse to other sources of knowledge, but on the other
hand it did not want to ascend with its means to a higher
world-conception. In recent times Raoul France, a scientist, has shown
in comprehensive fashion the inadequacy of scientific results for a
higher world-conception This is an undertaking to which we would like
to refer again on another occasion.

The facts now steadily increased which showed the impossibility of the
attempt to build up a science of the soul on the investigation of
material phenomena. Science was forced to study certain "abnormal"
phenomena of the life of the soul like hypnotism, suggestion,
somnambulism. It became apparent that in the face of these phenomena a
materialistic view is completely inadequate for a truly thinking
person. The facts with which one became acquainted were not new. They
were phenomena which had already been studied in earlier times and up
to the beginning of the nineteenth Century, but which in the time of
the materialistic flood had simply been put aside as inconvenient.

To this was added something else. It became more and more apparent on
how weak a basis the scientists had built, even as far as their
explanations of the origin of animal species and consequently of man
were concerned. For a while, the ideas of ''adaptation'' and of the
''struggle for existence-' had exercised an attraction in the
explanation of the origin of species. One learned to understand that
in following them one had followed mirages. A school was formed under
the leadership of Weismann which denied that characteristics which an
organism had acquired through adaptation to the environment could be
transmitted by inheritance, and that in this way a transformation of
organisms could occur. One therefore ascribed everything to the
"struggle for existence" and spoke of an "omnipotence of natural
selection." A stark contrast to this view was presented by those who,
relying on unquestionable facts, declared that a "struggle for
existence" had been spoken of in cases where it did not even exist.
They wanted to demonstrate that nothing could be explained by it. They
spoke of an "impotence of natural selection." Moreover, in the last
years de Vries was able to show experimentally that changes of one
life-time into another can occur by leaps, mutation. With this, what
was regarded as a firm article of faith by the Darwinists, namely that
animal and plant forms change only gradually, was shaken. More and
more the ground on which one had built for decades simply disappeared
beneath one's feet. Even earlier, thinking scientists had realized
that they had to abandon this ground; thus W. H. Rolph, who died
young, in 1884 declared in his book, Biologische Probleme, zugleich
als Versuch zur Entwicklung einer rationellen Ethik (Biological
Problems, with an Attempt at the Development of Rational Ethics):
"Only through the introduction of insatiability does the Darwinian
principle of the struggle for life become acceptable. Because it is
only then that we have an explanation for the fact that wherever it
can, a creature acquires more than it needs for maintaining the status
quo, that it grows to excess where the occasion for this is given....
While for the Darwinists there is no struggle for existence wherever
the existence of a creature is not threatened, for me the struggle is
an omnipresent one. It is primarily a struggle for life, a struggle
for the increase of life, not a struggle for existence."

It is only natural that in view of these facts the judicious confess
to themselves: "The materialistic universe of thought is not fit for
the construction of a world-conception. If we base ourselves on it, we
cannot say anything about mental and spiritual phenomena." Today there
are already numerous scientists who seek to erect a structure of the
world for themselves, based on quite different ideas. One need only
recall the work of the botanist, Reineke, Die Welt als Tat (The World
as Deed). However, it becomes apparent that such scientists have not
been trained with impunity amidst purely materialistic ideas. What
they utter from their new idealistic standpoint is inadequate, can
satisfy them for a while, but not those who look more deeply into the
enigmas of the world. Such scientists cannot bring themselves to
approach those methods which proceed from a real contemplation of the
mind and the soul. They have the greatest fear of "mysticism, of
"gnosis" or "theosophy." This appears clearly, for example, in the
work of Verworn quoted above. He says: "There is a ferment in science.
Things which seemed clear and transparent to everybody have become
cloudy today. Long-tested symbols and ideas, with which everyone dealt
and worked at every step without hesitation a short time ago, have
begun to totter and are looked upon with suspicion. Fundamental
concepts, such as those of matter, appear to have been shaken, and the
firmest ground is beginning to sway under the scientist's steps.
Certain problems alone stand with rocklike firmness, problems on which
until now all attempts, all efforts of science have been shattered. In
the face of this knowledge one who is despondent resignedly throws
himself into the arms of mysticism, which has always been the last
refuge when the tormented intellect could see no way out. The sensible
man looks for new symbols and attempts to create new bases on which he
can build further." One can see that because of his habits of
conceptualization the scientific thinker of today is not in a position
to think of "mysticism" otherwise than as implying intellectual
confusion and vagueness. What concepts of the life of the soul does
such a thinker not reach! At the end of the work referred to above, we
read: "Prehistoric man formed the idea of a separation of body and
soul in face of death. The soul separated itself from the body and led
an independent existence. It found no rest and returned as a ghost
unless it was banned by sepulchral ceremonies. Man was terrorized by
fear and superstition. The remains of these ideas have come down to
our time. The fear of death, that is, of what is to come after, is
widespread today. How differently does all this appear from the
standpoint of psychomonism! Since the psychic experiences of the
individual only take place when certain regular connections exist,
they cease when these connections are in any way disturbed, as happens
numberless times in the course of a day. With the bodily changes at
death, these connections stop entirely. Thus, no sensation and
conception, no thought and no feeling of the individual can remain.
The individual soul is dead. Nevertheless the sensations and thoughts
and feelings continue to live. They live beyond the transitory
individual in other individuals, wherever the same complexes of
conditions exist. They are transmitted from individual to individual,
from generation to generation, from people to people. They weave at
the eternal loom of the soul. They work at the history of the human
spirit. Thus we all survive after death as links in the great
interconnected chain of spiritual development." But is that something
different from the survival of the wave in others which it has caused,
itself meanwhile disappearing? Does one really survive when one
continues to exist only in one's effects? Does one not have such a
survival in common with all phenomena, even those of physical nature?
One can see that the materialistic world conception had to undermine
its own foundations. As yet it cannot lay new ones. Only a true
understanding of mysticism, theosophy, and gnosis will enable it to do
so. The chemist Osterwald spoke several years ago at the Congress of
Scientists at Luebeck of the "overcoming of materialism," and for this
purpose founded a new periodical dealing with the philosophy of
nature. Science is ready to receive the fruits of a higher
world-conception. All resistance will avail it nothing; it will have
to take into account the needs of the longing human soul.

 

Part III: From the Akasha Chronicle (Preface)

FROM THE AKASHA CHRONICLE

PREFACE

BY MEANS OF ordinary history man can learn only a small part of what
humanity experienced in prehistory. Historical documents shed light on
but a few millennia. What archaeology, paleontology, and geology can
teach us is very limited. Furthermore, everything built on external
evidence is unreliable. One need only consider how the picture of an
event or people, not so very remote from us, has changed when new
historical evidence has been discovered. One need but compare the
descriptions of one and the same thing as given by different
historians, and he will soon realize on what uncertain ground he
stands in these matters. Everything belonging to the external world of
the senses is subject to time. In addition, time destroys what has
originated in time. On the other hand, external history is dependent
on what has been preserved in time. Nobody can say that the essential
has been preserved, if he remains content with external evidence.

Everything which comes into being in time has its origin in the
eternal. But the eternal is not accessible to sensory perception.
Nevertheless, the ways to the perception of the eternal are open for
man. He can develop forces dormant in him so that he can recognize the
eternal. In the essays, Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der hoheren
Welten? (How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?), which
appear in this periodical, this development is referred to. These
present essays will also show that at a certain high level of his
cognitive power, man can penetrate to the eternal origins of the
things which vanish with time. A man broadens his power of cognition
in this way if he is no longer limited to external evidence where
knowledge of the past is concerned. Then he can see in events what is
not perceptible to the senses, that part which time cannot destroy. He
penetrates from transitory to non-transitory history. It is a fact
that this history is written in other characters than is ordinary
history. In gnosis and in theosophy it is called the "Akasha
Chronicle." Only a faint conception of this chronicle can be given in
our language. For our language corresponds to the world of the senses.
That which is described by our language at once receives the character
of this sense world. To the uninitiated, who cannot yet convince
himself of the reality of a separate spiritual world through his own
experience, the initiate easily appears to be a visionary, if not
something worse.

The one who has acquired the ability to perceive in the spiritual
world comes to know past events in their eternal character. They do
not stand before him like the dead testimony of history, but appear in
full life. In a certain sense, what has happened takes place before
him.

Those initiated into the reading of such a living script can look back
into a much more remote past than is represented by external history;
and -- on the basis of direct spiritual perception -- they can also
describe much more dependably the things of which history tells. In
order to avoid possible misunderstanding, it should be said that
spiritual perception is not infallible. This perception also can err,
can see in an inexact, oblique, wrong manner. No man is free from
error in this field, no matter how high he stands. Therefore one
should not object when communications emanating from such spiritual
sources do not always entirely correspond. But the dependability of
observation is much greater here than in the external world of the
senses. What various initiates can relate about history and prehistory
will be in essential agreement. Such a history and prehistory does in
fact exist in all mystery schools. Here for millennia the agreement
has been so complete that the conformity existing among external
historians of even a single century cannot be compared with it. The
initiates describe essentially the same things at all times and in all
places.

Following this introduction, several chapters from the Akasha
Chronicle will be given. First, those events will be described which
took place when the so-called Atlantean Continent still existed
between America and Europe. This part of our earths surface was once
land. Today this forms the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Plato tells of
the last remnant of this land, the island Poseidon, which lay westward
of Europe and Africa. In The Story of Atlantis and lost Lemuria, by W.
Scott-Elliot, the reader can find that the floor of the Atlantic Ocean
was once a continent, that for about a million years it was the scene
of a civilization which, to be sure, was quite different from our
modern ones, and the fact that the last remnants of this continent
sank in the tenth millennium B.C. In this present book the intention
is to give information which will supplement what is said by
Scott-Elliott. While he describes more the outer, the external events
among our Atlantean ancestors, the aim here is to record some details
concerning their spiritual character and the inner nature of the
conditions under which they lived. Therefore the reader must go back
in imagination to a period which lies almost ten thousand years behind
us, and which lasted for many millennia. What is described here
however, did not take place only on the continent now covered by the
waters of the Atlantic Ocean, but also in the neighboring regions of
what today is Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. What took place in
these regions later, developed from this earlier civilizations.

Today I am still obliged to remain silent about the sources of the
information given here. One who knows anything at all about such
sources will understand why this has to be so. But events can occur
which will make a breaking of this silence possible very soon. How
much of the knowledge hidden within the theosophical movement may
gradually be communicated, depends entirely on the attitude of our
contemporaries.

Now follows the first of the writings which can be given here.

 

Part IV: Our Atlantean Ancestors

OUR ATLANTEAN ANCESTORS

OUR ATLANTEAN ancestors differed more from present-day man than he
would imagine whose knowledge is confined wholly to the world of the
senses. This difference extended not only to the external appearance
but also to spiritual faculties. Their knowledge, their technical
arts, indeed their entire civilization differed from what can be
observed today. If we go back to the first periods of Atlantean
humanity we find a mental capacity quite different from ours. Logical
reason, the power of arithmetical combining, on which everything rests
that is produced today, were totally absent among the first
Atlanteans. On the other hand, they had a highly developed memory.
This memory was one of their most prominent mental faculties. For
example, the Atlantean did not calculate as we do, by learning certain
rules which he then applied. A "multiplication table" was something
totally unknown in Atlantean times. Nobody impressed upon his
intellect that three times four is twelve. In the event that he had to
perform such a calculation he could manage because he remembered
identical or similar situations. He remembered how it had been on
previous occasions. One need only realize that each time a new faculty
develops in an organism, an old faculty loses power and acuteness. The
man of today is superior to the Atlantean in logical reasoning, in the
ability to combine. On the other hand, memory has deteriorated.
Nowadays man thinks in concepts; the Atlantean thought in images. When
an image appeared in his soul he remembered a great many similar
images which he had already experienced, He directed his judgment
accordingly. For this reason all teaching at that time was different
from what it became later. It was not calculated to furnish the child
with rules, to sharpen his reason. Instead, life was presented to him
in vivid images, so that later he could remember as much as possible
when he had to act under particular conditions. When the child had
grown and had gone out into life, for everything he had to do he could
remember something similar which had been presented to him in the
course of his education. He could manage best when the new situation
was similar to one he had already seen. Under totally new conditions
the Atlantean had to rely on experiment, while in this respect much
has been spared modern man due to the fact that he is equipped with
rules. He can easily apply these in those situations which are new to
him. The Atlantean system of education gave a uniformity to all of
life. For long periods things were done again and again in the same
way. The faithful memory did not allow anything to develop which was
even remotely similar to the rapidity of our present-day progress. One
did what one had always "seen" before. One did not invent; one
remembered. He was not an authority who had learned much, but rather
he who had experienced much and therefore could remember much. In the
Atlantean period it would have been impossible for someone to decide
an important matter before reaching a certain age. One had confidence
only in a person who could look back upon long experience.

What has been said here was not true of the initiates and their
schools. For they are in advance of the stage of development of their
period. For admission into such schools, the decisive factor is not
age, but whether in his previous incarnations the applicant has
acquired the faculties for receiving higher wisdom. The confidence
placed in the initiates and their representatives during the Atlantean
period was not based on the richness of their personal experience, but
rather on the antiquity of their wisdom. In the case of the initiate,
personality ceases to have any importance. He is totally in the
service of eternal wisdom. Therefore the characteristic features of a
particular period do not apply to him.

While the power to think logically was absent among the Atlanteans
(especially the earlier ones), in their highly developed memory they
possessed something which gave a special character to everything they
did. But with the nature of one human power others are always
connected. Memory is closer to the deeper natural basis of man than
reason, and in connection with it other powers were developed which
were still closer to those of subordinate natural beings than are
contemporary human powers. Thus the Atlanteans could control what one
calls the life force. As today one extracts the energy of heat from
coal and transforms it into motive power for our means of locomotion,
the Atlanteans knew how to put the germinal energy of organisms into
the service of their technology. One can form an idea of this from the
following. Think of a kernel of seed-grain. In this an energy lies
dormant. This energy causes the stalk to sprout from the kernel.
Nature can awaken this energy which reposes in the seed. Modern man
cannot do it at will. He must bury the seed in the ground and leave
the awakening to the forces of nature. The Atlantean could do
something else. He knew how one can change the energy of a pile of
grain into technical power, just as modern man can change the heat
energy of a pile of coal into such power. Plants were cultivated in
the Atlantean period not merely for use as foodstuffs but also in
order to make the energies dormant in them available to commerce and
industry. Just as we have mechanisms for transforming the energy
dormant in coal into energy of motion in our locomotives, so the
Atlanteans had mechanisms in which they -- so to speak -- burned plant
seeds, and in which the life force was transformed into technically
utilizable power. The vehicles of the Atlanteans, which floated a
short distance above the ground travelled at a height lower than that
of the mountain ranges of the Atlantean period, and they had steering
mechanisms by the aid of which they could rise above these mountain
ranges.

One must imagine that with the passage of time all conditions on our
earth have changed very much. Today, the above-mentioned vehicles of
the Atlanteans would be totally useless. Their usefulness depended on
the fact that then the cover of air which envelops the earth was much
denser than at present. Whether in face of current scientific beliefs
one can easily imagine such greater density of air, must not occupy us
here. Because of their very nature, science and logical thinking can
never decide what is possible or impossible. Their only function is to
explain what has been ascertained by experience and observation. The
above-mentioned density of air is as certain for occult experience as
any fact of today given by the senses can be.

Equally certain however is the fact, perhaps even more at that time
the water on the whole earth was much thinner than today. Because of
this thinness the water could be directed by the germinal energy used
by the Atlanteans into technical services which today are impossible.
As a result of the increased density of the water, it has become
impossible to move and to direct it in such be sufficiently clear that
the civilization of the Atlantean period was radically different from
ours. It will also be understood that the physical nature of an
Atlantean was quite different from that of a contemporary man. The
Atlantean took into himself water which could be used by the life
force inherent in his own body in a manner quite different from that
possible in today's physical body. It was due to this that the
Atlantean could consciously employ his physical powers in an entirely
different way from a man of today. He had, so to speak, the means to
increase the physical powers in himself when he needed them for what
he was doing. In order to have an accurate conception of the
Atlanteans one must know that their ideas of fatigue and the depletion
of forces were quite different from those of present-day man.

An Atlantean settlement -- as must be evident from everything we have
described -- had a character which in no way resembled that of a modern
city. In such a settlement everything was, on the contrary, still in
alliance with nature. Only a vaguely similar picture is given if one
should say that in the first Atlantean periods -- about to the middle of
the third subrace -- a settlement resembled a garden in which the houses
were built of trees with artfully intertwined branches. What the work
of human hands created at that time grew out of nature. And man
himself felt wholly related to nature. Hence his social sense also was
quite different from that of today. After all, nature is common to all
men. What the Atlantean built up on the basis of nature he considered
to be common property just as a man of today thinks it only natural to
consider as his private property what his ingenuity, his intelligence
have created for him.

One familiar with the idea that the Atlanteans were equipped with such
spiritual and physical powers as have been described, will also
understand that in still earlier times mankind presented a picture
which reminds him in only a few particulars of what he is accustomed
to see today. Not only men, but also the surrounding nature has
changed enormously in the course of time. Plant and animal forms have
become different. All of earthly nature has been subjected to
transformations. Once inhabited regions of earth have been destroyed;
others have come into existence.

The ancestors of the Atlanteans lived in a region which has
disappeared, the main part of which lay south of contemporary Asia. In
theosophical writings they are called the Lemurians. After they had
passed through various stages of development the greatest part of them
declined. These became stunted men, whose descendants still inhabit
certain parts of the earth today as so-called savage tribes. Only a
small part of Lemurian humanity was capable of further development.
From this part the Atlanteans were formed.

Later, something similar again took place. The greatest part of the
Atlantean population declined, and from a small portion are descended
the so-called Aryans who comprise present-day civilized humanity.
According to the nomenclature of the science of the spirit, the
Lemurians, Atlanteans and Aryans are root races of mankind. If one
imagines that two such root races preceded the Lemurians and that two
will succeed the Aryans in the future, one obtains a total of seven.
One always arises from another in the manner just indicated with
respect to the Lemurians, Atlanteans, and Aryans. Each root race has
physical and mental characteristics which are quite different from
those of the preceding one. While, for example, the Atlanteans
especially developed memory and everything connected with it, at the
present time it is the task of the Aryans to develop the faculty of
thought and all that belongs to it.

In each root race various stages must also be gone through. There are
always seven of these. In the beginning of a period identified with a
root race, its principal characteristics are in a youthful condition;
slowly they attain maturity and finally enter a decline. The
population of a root race is thereby divided into seven sub-races. But
one must not imagine that one subrace immediately disappears when a
new one develops. Each one may maintain itself for a long time while
others are developing beside it. Thus there are always populations
which show different stages of development living beside each other on
earth.

The first subrace of the Atlanteans developed from a very advanced
part of the Lemurians who had a high evolutionary potential. The
faculty of memory appeared only in its rudiments among the Lemurians,
and then only in the last period of their development. One must
imagine that while a Lemurian could form ideas of what he was
experiencing, he could not preserve these ideas. He immediately forgot
what he had represented to himself Nevertheless, that he lived in a
certain civilization, that, for example, he had tools, erected
buildings and so-forth -- this he owed not to his own powers of
conception, but to a mental force in him, which was instinctive.
However, one must not imagine this to have been the present-day
instinct of animals, but one of a different kind.

Theosophical writings call the first subrace of the Atlanteans that of
the Rmoahals. The memory of this race was primarily directed toward
vivid sense impressions. Colors which the eye had seen, sounds which
the ear had heard, had a long after-effect in the soul. This was
expressed in the fact that the Rmoahals developed feelings which their
Lemurian ancestors did not yet know. For example, the attachment to
what has been experienced in the past is a part of these feelings.

With the development of memory was connected that of language. As long
as man did not preserve what was past, a communication of what had
been experienced could not take place through the medium of language.
Because in the last Lemurian period the first beginnings of memory
appeared, at that time it was also possible for the faculty of naming
what had been seen and heard to have its inception. Only men who have
the faculty of recollection can make use of a name which has been
given to something. The Atlantean period, therefore, is the one in
which the development of language took place. With language a bond was
established between the human soul and the things outside man. He
produced a speech-word inside himself, and this speech-word belonged
to the objects of the external world. A new bond is also formed among
men by communications through the medium of language. It is true that
all this existed in a still youthful form among the Rmoahals, but
nevertheless it distinguished them profoundly from their Lemurian
forefathers.

The soul powers of these first Atlanteans still possessed something of
the forces of nature. These men were more closely related to the
beings of nature which surrounded them than were their successors.
Their soul powers were more connected with forces of nature than are
those of modern man. Thus the speech-word which they produced had
something of the power of nature. They not only named things, but in
their words was a power over things and also over their fellow-men.
The word of the Rmoahals not only had meaning, but also power. The
magic power of words is something which was far truer for those men
than it is for men of today. When a Rmoahals man pronounced a word,
this word developed a power similar to that of the object it
designated. Because of this, words at that time were curative; they
could advance the growth of plants, tame the rage of animals, and
perform other similar functions. All this progressively decreased in
force among the later sub-races of the Atlanteans. One could say that
the original fullness of power was gradually lost. The Rmoahals men
felt this plenitude of power to be a gift of mighty nature, and their
relationship to the latter had a religious character. For them
language was something especially sacred. The misuse of certain
sounds, which possessed an important power, was an impossibility. Each
man felt that such misuse must cause him enormous harm. The good magic
of such words would have changed into its opposite; that which would
have brought blessings if used properly would bring ruin to the author
if used criminally. In a kind of innocence of feeling the Rmoahals
ascribed their power not so much to themselves as to the divine nature
acting within them.

This changed among the second subrace, the so-called Tlavatli peoples.
The men of this race began to feel their own personal value. Ambition,
a quality unknown to the Rmoahals, made itself felt among them. Memory
was in a sense transferred to the conception of communal life. He who
could look back upon certain deeds demanded recognition of them from
his fellow-men. He demanded that his works be preserved in memory.
Based upon this memory of deeds, a group of men who belonged together
elected one as leader A kind of regal rank developed. This recognition
was even preserved beyond death. The memory, the remembrance of the
ancestors or of those who had acquired merit in life, developed. From
this there emerged among some tribes a kind of religious veneration of
the deceased, an ancestor cult. This cult continued into much later
times and took the most varied forms. Among the Rmoahals a man was
still esteemed only to the degree to which he could command respect at
a particular moment through his powers. If someone among them wanted
recognition for what he had done in earlier days, he had to
demonstrate by new deeds that he still possessed his old power. He had
to recall the old works to memory by means of new ones. What had been
done was not esteemed for its own sake. Only the second subrace
considered the personal character of a man to the point where it took
his past life into account in the evaluation of this character.

A further consequence of memory for the communal life of man was the
fact that groups of men were formed which were held together by the
remembrance of common deeds. Previously the formation of groups
depended wholly upon natural forces, upon common descent. Man did not
add anything through his own mind to what nature had made of him. Now
a powerful personality recruited a number of people for a joint
undertaking, and the memory of this joint action formed a social
group.

This kind of social communal life became fully developed only among
the third subrace, the Toltec. It was therefore the men of this race
who first founded what a a state. The leadership, the government of
these communities, was transmitted from one generation to the next.
The father now gave over to the son what previously survived only in
the memory of contemporaries. The deeds of the ancestors were not to
be forgotten by their whole line of descent. What an ancestor had done
was esteemed by his descendants. However, one must realize that in
those times men actually had the power to transmit their gifts to
their descendants. Education, after all, was calculated to mold life
through vivid images. The effectiveness of this education had its
foundation in the personal power which emanated from the educator -- He
did not sharpen the power of thought, but in fact, developed those
gifts which were of a more instinctive kind. Through such a system of
education the capacities of the father were generally transmitted to
the son.

Under such conditions personal experience acquired more and more
importance among the third subrace. When one group of men separated
from another for the foundation of a new community, it carried along
the remembrance of what it had experienced at the old scene. But at
the same time there was something in this remembrance which the group
did not find suitable for itself, in which it did not feel at ease.
Therefore it then tried something new. Thus conditions improved with
every one of these new foundations. It was only natural that what was
better was imitated. These are the facts which explain the development
of those flourishing communities in the period of the third subrace,
described in theosophic literature. The personal experiences which
were acquired found support from those who were initiated into the
eternal laws of spiritual development. Powerful rulers themselves were
initiated, so that personal ability might have full support. Through
his personal ability man slowly prepares himself for initiation. He
must first develop his powers from below in order that the
enlightenment from above can be given to him. In this way the
initiated kings and leaders of the Atlanteans came into being.
Enormous power was in their hands, and they were greatly venerated.

But in this fact also lay the reason for decline and decay. The
development of memory led to the pre-eminent power of a personality.
Man wanted to count for something through his power. The greater the
power became, the more he wanted to exploit it for himself. The
ambition which had developed turned into marked selfishness. Thus the
misuse of these powers arose. When one considers the capabilities of
the Atlanteans resulting from their mastery of the life force, one
will understand that this misuse inevitably had enormous consequences.
A broad power over nature could be put at the service of personal
egotism.

This was accomplished in full measure by the fourth subrace, the
Primal Turanians. The members of this race, who were instructed in the
mastery of the above-mentioned powers, often used them in order to
satisfy their selfish wishes and desires. But used in such a manner,
these powers destroy each other in their reciprocal effects. It is as
if the feet were stubbornly to carry a man forward, while his torso
wanted to go backward.

Such a destructive effect could only be halted through the development
of a higher faculty in man. This was the faculty of thought. Logical
thinking has a restraining effect on selfish personal wishes. The
origin of logical thinking must be sought among the fifth subrace, the
Primal Semites. Men began to go beyond a mere remembrance of the past
and to compare different experiences. The faculty of judgment
developed. Wishes and appetites were regulated in accordance with this
faculty of judgment. One began to calculate, to combine. One learned
to work with thoughts. If previously one had abandoned oneself to
every desire, now one first asked whether thought could approve this
desire. While the men of the fourth subrace rushed wildly toward the
satisfaction of their appetites, those of the fifth began to listen to
an inner voice. This inner voice checks the appetites, although it
cannot destroy the claims of the selfish personality.

Thus the fifth subrace transferred the impulses for action to within
the human being. Man wishes to come to terms within himself as to what
he must or must not do. But what thus was won within, with respect to
the faculty of thought, was lost with respect to the control of
external natural forces. With this combining thought mentioned above,
one can master only the forces of the mineral world, not the life
force. The fifth subrace therefore developed thought at the expense of
control of the life force. But it was just through this that it
produced the germ of the further development of mankind. New
personality, self-love, even complete selfishness could grow freely;
for thought alone which works wholly within, and can no longer give
direct orders to nature, is not capable of producing such devastating
effects as the previously misused powers. From this fifth subrace the
most gifted part was selected which survived the decline of the fourth
root race and formed the germ of the fifth, the Aryan race, whose
mission is the complete development of the thinking faculty.

The men of the sixth subrace, the Akkadians, developed the faculty of
thought even further than the fifth. They differed from the so-called
Primal Semites in that they employed this faculty in a more
comprehensive sense than the former.

It has been said that while the development of the faculty of thought
prevented the claims of the selfish personality from having the same
devastating effects as among the earlier races, these claims were not
destroyed by it. The Primal Semites at first arranged their personal
circumstances as their faculty of thought directed. Intelligence took
the place of mere appetites and desires. The conditions of life
changed. If preceding races were inclined to acknowledge as leader one
whose deeds had impressed themselves deeply upon their memory, or who
could look back upon a life of rich memories, this role was now
conferred upon the intelligent. If previously that which lived in a
clear remembrance was decisive, one now regarded as best what was most
convincing to thought. Under the influence of memory one formerly held
fast to a thing until one found it to be inadequate, and in that case
it was quite natural that he who was in a position to remedy a want
could introduce an innovation. But as a result of the faculty of
thought, a fondness for innovations and changes developed. Each wanted
to put into effect what his intelligence suggested to him. Turbulent
conditions therefore began to prevail under the fifth subrace, and in
the sixth they led to a feeling of the need to bring the obdurate
thinking of the individual under general laws. The splendor Of the
communities of the third subrace was based on the fact that common
memories brought about order and harmony. In the sixth, this order had
to be brought about by thought-out laws. Thus it is in this sixth
subrace that one must look for the origin of regulations of justice
and law.

During the third subrace, the separation of a group of men took place
only when they were forced out of their community so to speak, because
they no felt at ease in the conditions prevailing as a result of
memory In the sixth this was considerably different. The calculating
faculty of thought sought the new as such; it spurred men to
enterprises and new foundations. The Akkadians were therefore an
enterprising people with an inclination to colonization. It was
commerce, especially, which nourished the waxing faculty of thought
and judgment.

Among the seventh subrace, the Mongols, the faculty of thought was
also developed. But characteristics of the earlier sub-races,
especially of the fourth, remained present in them to a much higher
degree than in the fifth and sixth. They remained faithful to the
feeling for memory. And thus they reached the conviction that what is
oldest is also what is most sensible and can best defend itself
against the faculty of thought. It is true that they also lost the
mastery over the life forces, but what developed in them as the
thinking faculty also possessed something of the natural might of this
life force. Indeed they had lost the power over life, but they never
lost their direct, naive faith in it. This force had become their god,
in whose behalf they did everything they considered right. Thus they
appeared to the neighboring peoples as if possessed by this secret
force, and they surrendered themselves to it in blind trust. Their
descendants in Asia and in some parts of Europe manifested and still
manifest much of this quality.

The faculty of thought planted in men could only attain its full value
in relation to human development when it received a new impetus in the
fifth root race. The fourth root race, after all, could only put this
faculty at the service of that to which it was educated through the
gift of memory. The fifth alone reached life conditions for which the
proper tool is the ability to think.

 

Part V: Transition of the Fourth into the Fifth Root Race

TRANSITION OF THE FOURTH INTO THE FIFTH ROOT RACE

IN THIS CHAPTER we shall learn about the transition of the fourth, the
Atlantean root race, into the fifth, the Aryan, to which contemporary
civilized mankind belongs. Only he will understand it aright who can
steep himself in the idea of development to its full extent and
meaning. Everything which man perceives around him is in process of
development. In this sense, the use of thought, which is
characteristic of the men of our fifth root race, had first to
develop. It is this root race in particular which slowly and gradually
brings the faculty of thought to maturity. In his thought, man decides
upon something, and then executes it as the consequence of his own
thought. This ability was only in preparation among the Atlanteans It
was not their own thoughts, but those which flowed into them from
entities of a higher kind, that influenced their will. Thus, in a
manner of speaking, their will was directed from outside.

The one who familiarizes himself with the thought of this development
of the human being and learns to admit that man -- as earthly man --
was a being of a quite different kind in prehistory, will also be able
to rise to a conception of the totally different entities which are
spoken of here. The development to be described required enormously
long periods of time.

What has previously been said about the fourth root race, the
Atlanteans, refers to the great bulk of mankind. But they followed
leaders whose abilities towered far above theirs. The wisdom these
leaders possessed and the powers at their command were not to be
attained by any earthly education. They had been imparted to them by
higher beings which did not belong directly to earth. Therefore it was
only natural that the great mass of men felt their leaders to be
beings of a higher kind, to be "messengers" of the gods. For what
these leaders knew and could do would not have been attainable by
human sense organs and by human reason. They were venerated as "divine
messengers," and men received their orders, their commandments, and
also their instruction. It was by beings of this kind that mankind was
instructed in the sciences, in the arts, and in the making of tools.
Such "divine messengers" either directed the communities themselves or
instructed men who were sufficiently advanced in the art of government.
It was said of these leaders that they "communicate with the gods" and
were initiated by the gods themselves into the laws according to which
mankind had to develop. This was true. In places about which the
average people knew nothing, this initiation, this communication with
the gods, actually took place. These places of initiation were called
temples of the mysteries. From them the human race was directed.

What took place in the temples of the mysteries was therefore
incomprehensible to the people. Equally little did the latter
understand the intentions of their great leaders. After all, the
people could grasp with their senses only what happened directly upon
earth, not what was revealed from higher worlds for the welfare of
earth. Therefore the teachings of the leaders had to be expressed in a
form unlike communications about earthly events. The language the gods
spoke with their messengers in the mysteries was not earthly, and
neither were the shapes in which these gods revealed themselves. The
higher spirits appeared to their messengers "in fiery clouds" in order
to tell them how they were to lead men. Only man can appear in human
form; entities whose capacities tower above the human must reveal
themselves in shapes which are not to be found on earth.

Because they themselves were the most perfect among their human
brothers, the "divine messengers" could receive these revelations. In
earlier stages they had already gone through what the majority of men
still had to experience. They belonged among their fellow humans only
in a certain respect. They could assume human form. But their
spiritual-mental qualities were of a superhuman kind. Thus they were
divine-human hybrid beings. One can also describe them as higher
spirits who assumed human bodies in order to help mankind forward on
their earthly path. The real home of these beings was not on earth.

These divine-human beings led men, without being able to inform them
of the principles by which they directed them. For until the fifth
subrace of the Atlanteans, the Primal Semites, men had absolutely no
capacities for understanding these principles. The faculty of thought,
which developed in this subrace, was such a capacity. But this evolved
slowly and gradually. Even the last sub-races of the Atlanteans could
understand very little of the principles of their divine leaders. They
began, at first quite imperfectly, to have a presentiment of such
principles. Therefore their thoughts and also the laws which we have
mentioned among their governmental institutions, were guessed at
rather than clearly thought out.

The principal leader of the fifth Atlantean subrace gradually prepared
it so that in later times, after the decline of the Atlantean way of
life, it could begin a new one which was to be wholly directed by the
faculty of thought.

One must realize that at the end of the Atlantean period there existed
three groups of man-like beings: 1. The above-mentioned "divine
messengers," who in their development were far ahead of the great mass
of the people, and who taught divine wisdom and accomplished divine
deeds. 2. The great mass of humanity, among which the faculty of
thought was in a dull condition, although they possessed natural
abilities which modern men have lost. 3. A small group of those who
were developing the faculty of thought. While they gradually lost the
natural abilities of the Atlanteans through this process, they were
advancing to the stage where they could grasp the principles of the
"divine messengers" with their thoughts.

The second group of human beings was doomed to gradual extinction. The
third however could be trained by a being of the first kind to take
its direction into its own hands.

From this third group the above-mentioned principal leader, whom
occult literature designates as Manu, selected the ablest in order to
cause a new humanity to emerge from them. These most capable ones
existed in the fifth subrace. The faculty of the sixth and seventh
sub-races had already gone astray in a certain sense and was not fit
for further development.

The best qualities of the best had to be developed. This was
accomplished by the leader through the isolation of the selected ones
in a certain place on earth -- in inner Asia -- where they were freed
from any influence of those who remained behind or of those who had
gone astray.

The task which the leader imposed upon himself was to bring his
followers to the point where, in their own soul, with their own
faculty of thought, they could grasp the principles according to which
they had hitherto been directed in a way vaguely sensed, but not
clearly recognized by them. Men were to recognize the divine forces
which they had unconsciously followed. Hitherto the gods had led men
through their messengers; now men were to know about these divine
entities. They were to learn to consider themselves as the
implementing organs of divine providence.

The isolated group thus faced an important decision. The divine leader
was in their midst, in human form. From such divine messengers men had
previously received instructions and orders as to what they were or
were not to do. Human beings had been instructed in the sciences which
dealt with what they could perceive through the senses. Men had
vaguely sensed a divine control of the world, had felt it in their own
actions, but they had not known anything of it clearly.

Now their leader spoke to them in a completely new way. He taught them
that invisible powers directed what confronted them visibly, and that
they themselves were servants of these invisible powers, that they had
to fulfill the laws of these invisible powers with their thoughts. Men
heard of the supernatural-divine. They heard that the invisible
spiritual was the creator and preserver of the visible physical.
Hitherto they had looked up to their visible divine messengers, to the
superhuman initiates, and through the latter was communicated what was
and was not to be done. But now they were considered worthy of having
the divine messenger speak to them of the gods themselves. Mighty were
the words which again and again he impressed upon his followers:
"Until now you have seen those who led you: but there are higher
leaders whom you do not see. It is these leaders to whom you are
subject. You shall carry out the orders of the god whom you do not
see; and you shall obey one of whom you can make no image to
yourselves." Thus did the new and highest commandment come from the
mouth of the great leader, prescribing the veneration of a god whom no
sensory-visible image could resemble, and therefore of whom none was
to be made. Of this great fundamental commandment of the fifth human
root race, the well-known commandment which follows is an echo: "Thou
shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any
thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or
that is in the water under the earth...." (Exodus 20:1).

The principal leader, Manu, was assisted by other divine messengers
who executed his intentions for particular branches of life and worked
on the development of the new race. For it was a matter of arranging
all of life according to the new conception of a divine administration
of the world. Everywhere the thoughts of men were to be directed from
the visible to the invisible. Life is determined by the forces of
nature. The course of human life depends on day and night, on winter
and summer, on sunshine and rain. How these influential visible events
are connected with the invisible, divine powers and how man was to
behave in order to arrange his life in accordance with these invisible
powers, was shown to him. All knowledge and all labor was to be
pursued in this sense. In the course of the stars and of the weather,
man was to see divine decrees, the emanation of divine wisdom.
Astronomy and meteorology were taught with this idea. Man was to
arrange his labor, his moral life in such a way that they would
correspond to the wise laws of the divine. Life was ordered according
to divine commandments, just as the divine thoughts were explored in
the course of the stars and in the changes of the weather. Man was to
bring his works into harmony with the dispensations of the gods
through sacrificial acts.

It was the intention of Manu to direct everything in human life toward
the higher worlds. All human activities, all institutions were to bear
a religious character. Through this, Manu wanted to initiate the real
task imposed upon the fifth root race. This race was to learn to
direct itself by its own thoughts. But such a self-determination can
only lead to good if man also places himself at the service of the
higher powers. Man should use his faculty of thought, but this faculty
of thought should be sanctified by being devoted to the divine.

One can only understand completely what happened at that time if one
knows that the development of the faculty of thought, beginning with
the fifth subrace of the Atlanteans, also entailed something else.
From a certain quarter men had come into possession of knowledge and
of arts, which were not immediately connected with what the
above-mentioned Manu had to consider as his true task. This knowledge
and these arts were at first devoid of religious character. They came
to man in such a way that he could think of nothing other than to
place them at the service of self-interest, of his personal needs* . .
. To such knowledge belongs for example that of the use of fire in
human activities. In the first Atlantean time man did not use fire
since the life force was available for his service. But with the
passage of time he was less and less in a position to make use of this
force, hence he had to learn to make tools, utensils from so-called
lifeless objects. He employed fire for this purpose. Similar
conditions prevailed with respect to other natural forces. Thus man
learned to make use of such natural forces without being conscious of
their divine origin. So it was meant to be. Man was not to be forced
by anything to relate these things which served his faculty of thought
to the divine order of the world. Rather was he to do this voluntarily
in his thoughts. It was the intention of Manu to bring men to the
point where, independently, out of an inner need, they brought such
things into a relation with the higher order of the world. Men could
choose whether they wanted to use the insight they had attained purely
in a spirit of personal self-interest or in the religious service of a
higher world.

If man was previously forced to consider himself as a link in the
divine government of the world, by which for example, the domination
over the life force was given to him without his having to use the
faculty of thought, he could now employ the natural forces without
directing his thoughts to the divine.

Not all men whom Manu had gathered around him were equal to this
decision, but only a few of them. It was from this few that Manu could
really form the germ of the new race. He retired with them in order to
develop them further, while the others mingled with the rest of
mankind. From this small number of men who finally gathered around
Manu, everything is descended which up to the present, forms the true
germs of progress of the fifth root race. For this reason also, two
characteristics run through the entire development of this fifth root
race. One of these characteristics is peculiar to those men who are
animated by higher ideas, who regard themselves as children of a
divine universal power; the other belongs to those who put everything
at the service of personal interests, of egotism.

The small following remained gathered around Manu until it was
sufficiently fortified to act in the new spirit, and until its members
could go out to bring this new spirit to the rest of mankind, which
remained from the earlier races. It is natural that this new spirit
assumed a different character among the various peoples, according to
how they themselves had developed in different fields. The old
remaining characteristics blended with what the messengers of Manu
carried to the various parts of the world. Thus a variety of new
cultures and civilizations came into being.

The ablest personalities from the circle around Manu were selected for
a gradual direct initiation into his divine wisdom, so that they could
become the teachers of the others. A new kind of initiate thus was
added to the old divine messengers. It consisted of those who had
developed their faculty of thought in an earthly manner just as their
fellow-men had done. The earlier divine messengers -- and also Manu --
had not done this. Their development belonged to higher worlds. They
introduced their higher wisdom into earthly conditions. What they gave
to mankind was a "gift from above." Before the middle of the Atlantean
period men had not reached the point where by their own powers they
could grasp what the divine decrees were. Now -- at the time indicated
-- they were to attain this point. Earthly thinking was to elevate
itself to the concept of the divine. The human initiates united
themselves with the divine. This represents an important revolution in
the development of the human race. The first Atlanteans did not as yet
have a choice as to whether or not they would consider their leaders
to be divine messengers. For what the latter accomplished imposed
itself as the deed of higher worlds. It bore the stamp of a divine
origin. Thus the messengers of the Atlantean period were entities
sanctified by their power, surrounded by the splendor which this power
conferred upon them. From an external point of view, the human
initiates of later times are men among men. But they remain in
relation with the higher worlds, and the revelations and
manifestations of the divine messengers come to them. Only
exceptionally, when a higher necessity arises, do they make use of
certain powers which are conferred upon them from above. Then they
accomplish deeds which men cannot explain by the laws they know and
which therefore they rightly regard as miracles.

But in all this the higher intention is to put mankind on its own
feet, fully to develop its faculty of thought. Today the human
initiates are the mediators between the people and the higher powers,
and only initiation can make one capable of communication with the
divine messengers.

The human initiates, the sacred teachers, became leaders of the rest
of mankind in the beginning of the fifth root race. The great priest
kings of prehistory, who are not spoken of in history, but rather in
the world of legend, belong among these initiates. The higher divine
messenger's retired from the earth more and more, and left the
leadership to these human initiates, whom however they assisted in
word and deed. Were this not so, man would never attain free use of
his faculty of thought. The world is under divine direction, but man
is not to be forced to admit this; he is to realize and to understand
it by free reflection. When he reaches this point, the initiates will
gradually divulge their secrets to him. But this cannot happen all at
once. The whole development of the fifth root race is a slow road to
this goal. At first Manu himself led his following like children. Then
the leadership was gradually transferred to the human initiates. Today
progress still consists in a mixture of the conscious and unconscious
acting and thinking of men. Only at the end of the fifth root race,
when throughout the sixth and seventh sub-races a sufficiently great
number of men are capable of knowledge, will the greatest among the
initiates be able to reveal himself to them openly. Then this human
initiate will be able to assume the principal leadership just as Manu
did at the end of the fourth root race. Thus the education of the
fifth root race consists in this, that a greater part of humanity will
become able freely to follow a human Manu as the germinal race of this
fifth root race followed the divine one.

 

Part VI: The Lemurian Race

THE LEMURIAN RACE

A PASSAGE from the Akasha Chronicle referring to a very distant
prehistoric period in the development of mankind, will be set forth in
this chapter. This period precedes the one depicted in the
descriptions given above. We are here concerned with the third human
root race, of which it is said in theosophical books that it inhabited
the Lemurian Continent. According to these books this continent was
situated south of Asia, and extended approximately from Ceylon to
Madagascar. What is today southern Asia and parts of Africa also
belonged to it.

While all possible care has been taken in the deciphering of the
Akasha Chronicle it must be emphasized that nowhere is a dogmatic
character to be claimed for these communications If, to begin with,
the reading of things and events so remote from the present is not
easy, the translation of what has been seen and deciphered into the
language of today presents almost insuperable obstacles.

Dates will be given later. They will be better understood when the
whole Lemurian period and also the period of our fifth root race up to
the present, have been discussed.

The things which are communicated here are surprising even for the
occultist who reads them for the first time -- although the word
"surprising" is not quite exact. Therefore he should only communicate
them after the most careful examination.

The fourth, the Atlantean root race, was preceded by the so-called
Lemurian. During its development, events of the very greatest
importance occurred with respect to the earth and to men. Here,
however, something will first be said of the character of this root
race after these events, and only then will the latter be discussed.
By and large, memory was not yet developed among this race. While men
could have ideas of things and events, these ideas did not remain in
the memory. Therefore they did not yet have a language in the true
sense. Rather what they could utter were natural sounds which
expressed their sensations, pleasure, joy, pain and so forth, but
which did not designate external objects.

But their ideas had a quite different strength from those of later
men. Through this strength they acted upon their environment. Other
men, animals, plants, and even lifeless objects could feel this action
and could be influenced purely by ideas. Thus the Lemurian could
communicate with his fellow-men without needing a language. This
communication consisted in a kind of "thought reading." The Lemurian
derived the strength of his ideas directly from the objects which
surrounded him. It flowed to him from the energy of growth of plants,
from the life force of animals. In this manner he understood plants
and animals in their inner action and life. He even understood the
physical and chemical forces of lifeless objects in the same way. When
he built something he did not first have to calculate the load-limit
of a tree trunk, the weight of a stone; he could see how much the tree
trunk could bear, where the stone in view of its weight and height
would fit, where it would not. Thus the Lemurian built without
engineering knowledge on the basis of his faculty of imagination which
acted with the sureness of a kind of instinct. Moreover, to a great
extent, he had power over his own body. When it was necessary, he
could increase the strength of his arm by a simple effort of the will.
For example, he could lift enormous loads merely by using his will. If
later the Atlantean was helped by his control of the life force, the
Lemurian was helped by his mastery of the will. He was -- the
expression should not be misinterpreted -- a born magician in all
fields of lower human activities.

The goal of the Lemurians was the development of the will, of the
faculty of imagination. The education of children was wholly directed
toward this. The boys were hardened in the strongest manner. They had
to learn to undergo dangers, to overcome pain, to accomplish daring
deeds. Those who could not bear tortures, who could not undergo
dangers, were not regarded as useful members of mankind. They were
left to perish under these exertions. What the Akasha Chronicle shows
with respect to this raising of children surpasses everything
contemporary man can picture to himself in his boldest imaginings -- The
bearing of heat, even of a searing fire, the piercing of the body with
pointed objects, were quite common procedures.

The raising of girls was different. While the female child was also
hardened, everything else was directed toward her developing a strong
imagination. For example, she was exposed to the storm in order calmly
to feel its dreadful beauty; she had to witness the combats of the men
fearlessly, filled only with a feeling of appreciation of the strength
and power she saw before her. Thereby propensities for dreaming and
for fantasy developed in the girl, and these were highly valued.
Because no memory existed, these propensities could not degenerate.
The dream or fantasy conceptions in question lasted only as long as
there was a corresponding external cause. Thus they had a real basis
in external things. They did not lose themselves in bottomless depths.
It was, so to speak, nature's own fantasy and dreaming which were put
into the female soul.

The Lemurians did not have dwellings in our sense, except in their
latest times. They lived where nature gave them the opportunity to do
so. The caves which they used were only altered and extended insofar
as necessary. Later they built such caves themselves and at that time
they developed great skill for such constructions. One must not
imagine, however, that they did not also execute more artful
constructions. But these did not serve as dwellings. In the earliest
times they originated in the desire to give to the things of nature a
man-made form. Hills were remodeled in such a way that the form
afforded man joy and pleasure. Stones were put together for the same
purpose, or in order to be used for certain activities. The places
where the children were hardened were surrounded with walls of this
kind.

Toward the end of this period, the buildings which served for the
cultivation of "divine wisdom and divine art" became more and more
imposing and ornate. These institutions differed in every respect from
what temples were later, for they were educational and scientific
institutions at the same time. He who was found fit was here initiated
into the science of the universal laws and into the handling of them.
If the Lemurian was a born magician, this talent was here developed
into art and insight. Only those could be admitted who, through all
kinds of discipline, had acquired the ability to overcome themselves
to the greatest extent. For all others what went on in these
institutions was the deepest secret. Here one learned to know and to
control the forces of nature through direct contemplation of them. But
the learning was such that in man the forces of nature changed into
forces of the will. He himself could thereby execute what nature
accomplishes. What later mankind accomplished by reflection, by
calculation, at that time had the character of an instinctive
activity. But here one must not use the word "instinct" in the same
sense in which one is accustomed to apply it to the animal world. For
the activities of Lemurian humanity towered high above everything the
animal world can produce through instinct. They even stood far above
what mankind has since acquired in the way of arts and sciences
through memory, reason and imagination. If one were to use an
expression for these institutions which would facilitate an
understanding of them, one could call them "colleges of will power and
of the clairvoyant power of the imagination."

From them emerged the men who, in every respect, became rulers of the
others. Today it is difficult to give in words a true conception of
all these conditions. For everything on earth has changed since that
time. Nature itself and all human life were different, therefore human
labor and the relationship of man to man differed greatly from what is
customary today.

The air was much thicker even than in later Atlantean times, the water
much thinner. And what forms the firm crust of our earth today was not
yet as hard as it later became. The world of plants and animals had
developed only as far as the amphibians, the birds, and the lower
mammals, and as far as vegetable growths which resemble our palms and
similar trees. However, all forms were different from what they are
today. What now exists only all in forms was then developed to
gigantic sizes. At that time our small ferns were trees and formed
mighty forests. The modern higher mammals did not exist. On the other
hand a great part of humanity was on such a low stage of development
that one cannot but designate it as animal. What has been described
here was true only of a small part of mankind, The rest lived their
life in animalism. In their external appearance and in their way of
life these animal men were quite different from the small group. They
were not especially different from the lower mammals, which resembled
them in form in certain respects.

A few more words must be said about the significance of the
above-mentioned temple localities. What was cultivated there was not
really religion. It was "divine wisdom and art." Man felt that what
was given to him there was a direct gift from the spiritual universal
forces. When he received this gift he considered himself a "servant"
of these universal forces. He felt himself "sanctified" from
everything unspiritual. If one wishes to speak of religion at this
stage of the development of mankind, one could call it "religion of
the will." The religious temper and dedication lay in the fact that
man guarded the powers granted to him as a strict, divine "secret,"
and that he led a life through which he sanctified his power. Persons
who had such powers were regarded by others with great awe and
veneration. And this awe and veneration were not called forth by laws
or something similar, but by the immediate power which these persons
exercised. The uninitiated of course stood under the magical influence
of the initiated. It was also natural that the latter considered
themselves to be sanctified personages. For in their temples they
participated in direct contemplation of the active forces of nature.
They looked into the creative workshop of nature. They experienced a
communion with the beings which build the world itself. One can call
this communication an association with the gods. What later developed
as "initiation," as "mystery," emerged from this original manner of
communication of men with the gods. In subsequent times this
communication had to become different, since the human imagination,
the human spirit, took other forms.

Of special importance is something which occurred in the course of
Lemurian development by virtue of the fact that the women lived in the
manner described above. They thereby developed special human powers.
Their faculty of imagination which was in alliance with nature, became
the basis for a higher development of the life of ideas. They took the
forces of nature into themselves, where they had an after-effect in
the soul. Thus the germs of memory were formed. With memory was also
born the capacity to form the first and simplest moral concepts.

The development of the will among the male element at first knew
nothing of this. The man followed instinctively either the impulses of
nature or the influences emanating from the initiated.

It was from the manner of life of the women that the first ideas of
"good and evil" arose. There one began to love some of the things
which had made a special impression on the imagination, and to abhor
others. While the control which the male element exercised was
directed more toward the external action of the powers of the will,
toward the manipulation of the forces of nature, beside it in the
female element there developed an action through the soul, through the
inner, personal forces of man. The development of mankind can only be
correctly understood by the one who takes into consideration that the
first progress in the life of the imagination was made by women. The
development connected with the life of the imagination, with the
formation of memory, of customs which formed the seeds for a life of
law, for a kind of morals, came from this side. If man had seen and
exercised the forces of nature, woman became the first interpreter of
them. It was a special new manner of living through reflection which
developed here. This manner had something much more personal than that
of the men. One must imagine this manner of the women to have been
also a kind of clairvoyance, although it differed from the magic of
the will of the men. In her soul woman was accessible to another kind
of spiritual powers. The latter spoke more to the feeling element of
the soul, less to the spiritual, to which man was subject. Thus there
emanated from men an effect which was more natural-divine, from women
one which was more soul-divine.

The development which woman went through during the Lemurian period
had the result that at the appearance of the next -- the Atlantean --
root race on earth, an important role devolved upon her. This
appearance took place under the influence of highly developed
entities, who were familiar with the laws of the formation of races
and capable of guiding the existing forces of human nature into such
paths that a new race could come into being. These beings will be
specially mentioned further on. May it suffice for the moment to say
that they possessed superhuman wisdom and power. They now isolated a
small group out of Lemurian mankind and designated these to be the
ancestors of the coming Atlantean race. The place where they did this
was situated in the tropical zone. Under their direction the men of
this group had been trained in the control of the natural forces. They
were very strong, and knew how to win the most diverse treasures from
the earth. They could cultivate the fields and use their fruits for
their subsistence. They had become characters of strong will through
the discipline to which they had been subjected. Their souls and
hearts were developed only in small measure. On the other hand these
had been developed among the women. Memory and fantasy and everything
connected with them were to be found among the latter.

The above-mentioned leaders caused the group to divide itself into
smaller groups. They put the women in charge of ordering and
establishing these groups. Through her memory, woman had acquired the
capacity to make the experiences and adventures of the past useful for
the future. What had proved helpful yesterday she used today and
realized that it would also be useful tomorrow. The institutions for
communal life therefore emanated from her. Under her influence the
concepts of "good and evil" developed. Through her thoughtful life she
had acquired an understanding for nature. Out of the observation of
nature, those ideas developed in her according to which she directed
the actions of men. The leaders had arranged things in such a way that
through the soul of woman, the willful nature, the vigorous strength
of man were ennobled and refined. Of course one must represent all
this to oneself as childish beginnings. The words of our language all
too easily call up ideas which are taken from the life of the present.

By way of the awakened soul life of the women the leaders first
developed the soul life of the men. In the colony we have described,
the influence of the women was therefore very great. One had to go to
them for advice when one wanted to interpret the signs of nature. The
whole manner of their soul life however was still dominated by the
"hidden" human soul forces. One does not describe the matter quite
exactly, but fairly closely, if one speaks of a somnambulistic
contemplating among these women. In certain higher dreams the secrets
of nature were divulged to them and they received the impulses for
their actions. Everything was animated for them and showed itself to
them in soul powers and apparitions. They abandoned themselves to the
mysterious weaving of their soul forces. That which impelled them to
their actions were "inner voices," or what plants, animals, stones,
wind and clouds, the whispering of the trees, and so on, told them.

From this state of soul originated that which one can call human
religion. The spiritual in nature and in human life gradually came to
be venerated and worshiped. Some women attained a special preeminence
because out of special mysterious depths they could interpret what the
world contained.

Thus it could come to pass among such women that that which lived
within them could transpose itself into a kind of natural language.
For the beginning of language lies in something which is similar to
song. The energy of thought was transformed into audible sound. The
inner rhythm of nature sounded from the lips of ''wise" women. One
gathered around such women and in their songlike sentences felt the
utterances of higher powers. Human worship of the gods began with such
things.

For that period there can be no question of "sense" in that which was
spoken. Sound, tone, and rhythm were perceived. One did not imagine
anything along with these, but absorbed in the soul the power of what
was heard. The whole process was under the direction of the higher
leaders. They had inspired the "wise" priestesses with tones and
rhythms in a manner which cannot now be further discussed. Thus they
could have an ennobling effect on the souls of men. One can say that
in this way the true life of the soul first awakened.

In this realm, beautiful scenes are shown by the Akasha Chronicle. One
of these will be described. We are in a forest, near a mighty tree.
The sun has just risen in the east. The palmlike tree, from around
which the other trees have been removed, casts mighty shadows. The
priestess, her face turned to the east, ecstatic, sits on a seat made
of rare natural objects and plants. Slowly in rhythmical sequence, a
few strange, constantly repeated sounds stream from her lips. A number
of men and women are sitting in circles around her, their faces lost
in dreams, absorbing inner life from what they hear.

Other scenes too can be seen. At a similarly arranged place a
priestess "sings" in a similar manner, but her tones have in them
something mightier, more powerful. Those around her move in rhythmic
dances. For this was the other way in which "soul" entered into
mankind. The mysterious rhythms which one had heard from Nature were
imitated by the movements of the limbs. One thereby felt at one with
nature and with the powers acting in her.

The place on earth in which this stock of a coming race of men was
developed was especially suited for this purpose. It was one where the
then still turbulent earth had become fairly calm. For Lemuria was
turbulent. After all, the earth at that time did not yet have its
later density. The thin ground was everywhere undermined by volcanic
forces which broke forth in smaller or larger streams. Mighty
volcanos existed almost everywhere and developed a continuous
destructive activity. Men were accustomed to reckoning with this fiery
activity in everything they did. They also used this fire in their
labors and contrivances. Their occupations were often such that the
fire of nature served as a basis for them in the same way as
artificial fire does in human labor today.

It was through the activity of this volcanic fire that the destruction
of the Lemurian land came about. While the part of Lemuria from which
the parent race of the Atlanteans was to develop had a hot climate, it
was by and large free of volcanic activity.

Human nature could unfold more calmly and peacefully here than in the
other regions of the earth. The more nomadic life of former times was
abandoned, and fixed settlements became more and more numerous.

One must represent to oneself that at that time the human body still
had very malleable and pliant qualities. This body still changed form
whenever the inner life changed. Not long before, men had still been
quite diverse as regards their external form. At that time the
external influence of region and climate were still decisive in
respect to their form. Only in the colony described did the body of
man Increasingly become an expression of his inner soul life.
Moreover, this colony had an advanced externally more nobly formed
race of men. One must say that through the things which they had done,
the leaders had really first created what is the true human form. This
occurred quite slowly and gradually. It happened in such a way that
the soul life of man was first developed and that the still soft and
malleable body adapted itself to this. It is a law in the development
of mankind that, as progress continues, man has less and less of a
molding influence on his physical body. This physical human body in
fact received a fairly unchanging form only with the development of
the faculty of reason and with the hardening of the rock, mineral, and
metal formations of earth connected with this development. For in the
Lemurian and even in the Atlantean period, stones and metals were much
softer than later.

This is not contradicted by the fact that there exist descendants of
the last Lemurians and Atlanteans who today exhibit forms as fixed as
the human races which were formed later. These remnants had to adapt
themselves to the changed environmental conditions of earth and thus
became more rigid. Just this is the reason for their decline. They did
not transform themselves from within; instead, their less developed
interior was forced into rigidity from the outside and thus compelled
to stagnation. This stagnation is really a regression, for the inner
life, too, has degenerated because it could not fulfill itself within
the rigid external bodily structure.

Animal life was subject to even greater changeability. We shall speak
further about the animal species existing at the time of the
development of man and about their origin, as well as about the
development of new animal forms after man already existed. Here we
shall say only that the existing animal species continually
transformed themselves and that new ones were developing. This
transformation was of course a gradual one. The reasons for the
transformation lay in part in a change of habitat and of the manner of
life. The animals had a capacity of extraordinarily rapid adaptation
to new conditions. The malleable body changed its organs comparatively
rapidly, so that after a more or less brief period the descendants of
a particular animal species resembled their ancestors only slightly.
The same was the case in even greater measure for the plants. The
greatest influence on the transformation of men and animals was
exercised by man himself. This was true whether he instinctively
brought organisms into such an environment that they assumed certain
forms, or whether he achieved this by experiments in breeding. The
transforming influence of man on nature was immeasurably great at that
time, compared with the conditions of today. This was especially the
case in the colony we have described. For there the leaders directed
this transformation in a way of which men were not conscious. This was
the case to such a degree that when men left the colony in order to
found the different Atlantean races, they could take with them a
highly developed knowledge of the breeding of animals and plants. The
labor of cultivation in Atlantis was then essentially a consequence of
the knowledge thus brought along. But here again it must be emphasized
that this knowledge had an instinctive character. In this state
essentially it remained among the first Atlantean races.

The preeminence of the feminine soul, which has been described, was
especially strong in the last Lemurian period and continued into the
Atlantean times, during which the fourth subrace was preparing itself.
But one must not imagine that this was the case among all of mankind.
It was true, however, for that part of the population of earth from
which the truly advanced races later emerged. This influence exercised
the strongest effect upon all that which in man is "unconscious." The
development of certain constant gestures, the refinements of sensory
perception, the feeling for beauty, a good part of the general life of
sensations and feelings which is common to all men -- all this
originally emanated from the spiritual influence of woman. It is not
an over-statement if one interprets the reports in such a way as to
affirm, "The civilized nations have a bodily form and expression, as
well as certain bases of physical-soul life, which were imprinted upon
them by woman."

In the next chapter we shall go back to earlier periods of the
development of mankind, during which the population of earth still
belonged to only one sex. The development of the two sexes will then
be described.

 

Part VII: The Division into Sexes

THE DIVISION INTO SEXES

MUCH AS THE HUMAN FORM in those ancient times described in the
preceding chapters differed from the form of present-day man, one
comes to conditions still more dissimilar if one goes even further
back in the history of mankind. For only in the course of time did the
forms of man and woman develop from an older, basic form in which
human beings were neither the one nor the other, but rather were both
at once. He who wants to form an idea of these enormously distant
periods of the past must however liberate himself completely from the
habitual conceptions taken from what man sees around him.

The times into which we now look back lie somewhat before the middle
of the epoch which in the preceding passages was designated as the
Lemurian. At that time the human body still consisted of soft and
malleable materials. The other forms of earth also were still soft and
malleable. As opposed to its later hardened condition, earth was still
in a welling, more fluid one. As the human soul at that time embodied
itself in matter, it could adapt this matter to itself in a much
greater degree than later. That the soul takes on a male or a female
body is due to the fact that the development of external terrestrial
nature forces the one or the other upon it. While the material
substances had not yet become rigid, the soul could force these
substances to obey its own laws. It made of the body an impression of
its own nature. But when became denser the soul had to submit to the
laws impressed upon this matter by external terrestrial nature. As
long as the soul could still control matter, it formed its body as
neither male nor female, but, instead gave it qualities which embraced
both at the same time. For the soul is simultaneously male and female.
It carries these two natures in itself its male element -- is related
to what is called will, its female element to what is called
imagination.

The external formation of earth resulted in t