A distant civilization, millions of years ago, evokes an inexplicable sense of remembrance for many people. Much of what we experience today is a re-telling of the story of Atlantis.
Today I want to share the interesting connection between the abilities of the Atlanteans, and what is supposed to emerge as a new human faculty in the present and near-future.
All the souls that are present today had already been incarnated in Atlantis
Our Atlantean ancestors
In "Cosmic Memory - Our Atlantean Ancestors", Steiner describes how before modern man used logical thinking, concepts, and rules, he primarily used memory. Before the Atlantean period, in Lemurian period, humans acted instinctively rather than from past remembrance.
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...A Lemurian could form ideas of what he was experiencing, he could not preserve these ideas.
The Atlanteans had a different physical make-up and state of consciousness than modern humanity. They were dimly clairvoyant; they saw the aura of of objects instead of sharp outlines.
The human physical bodies of the Atlantean period consisted of a substance far softer, more flexible, more plastic...at that time men were not yet able, for example, to perceive solid objects such as our eyes see today in sharp outline. The Atlantean could distinguish the objects of the outer world—the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms—but only indistinctly, blurred.
Just as nowadays in a foggy autumn evening the street lights show a fringe of color, so people of that time saw objects surrounded by a colored border—an aura, as the term is. The auras were the indication of the spiritual beings belonging to the objects.
If we wish vividly to imagine the consciousness of an ancient Atlantean, we must think of it as follows: He did not see a rose, for example, so sharply outlined as we do today. It was blurred, hazy and surrounded by colored borders.
The co-existent plant and animal kingdoms were also unlike those we 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.
Memory was especially pronounced in the early Atlantean period. They did not use logic or concepts, but relied on the likeness of their present condition to images preserved in memory of a past condition. Innovation was uncommon, especially early in the Atlantean period; it was ideal to encounter a situation where past experience was applicable.
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.
When an image appeared in his soul he remembered a great many similar images which he had already experienced. 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.
Thus, children were instilled with as many vivid images of life as possible to guide them later on. Great confidence was put in the antiquity of wisdom acquired by an initiate in his previous lifetimes.
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.
What Atlanteans saw as the glowing outlines of objects — the aura of plants and animals — was connected to the spirits working within nature. The powerful memories of the Atlanteans bestowed them a control of the life-force, a similar ability to these spirits.
He discerned quite clearly what we must term the rose spirit, the rose soul. And the same was true of all other objects in his environment.
With the nature of one human power, others are always connected. Memory is closer to the deeper natural basis of man than reason. 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.
They applied the inherent life-force of organisms, such that exists in a seed to make it grow, to their technologies. Their vehicles were powered through these means, and their industries were based on the cultivation of plant power.
The Atlanteans knew how to put the germinal energy of organisms into the service of their technology. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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Language was also first developed in the Atlantean period, which is a type of preservation of memory, "the faculty of naming what had been seen and heard". The early Atlanteans used a sacred language that held an inherent power.
The magic power of words is something which was far truer for those men than it is for men of today. Words at that time were curative; they could advance the growth of plants, tame the rage of animals, and perform other similar functions.
Interestingly, the 19th century book "The Kingdom of Agartha" written by French occultist Alexandre Saint-Yves, mentions a sacred language holding the power of creation, called Vattanian. It is said to belong to inhabitants of the subterranean Inner Earth civilization, Agartha, who escaped the flooding of Atlantis.
For Initiation consists in this very act of learning to know the things of the universe by those Names which they bear in the spirit of their Divine Author. And the mystery of things lies in these Names. Therefore is it that the Initiate speaks another language than that of the uninitiated, for the former knows the Names by which things were called into existence.
The symbols or signs of the secret script are not arbitrarily invented or imagined, but correspond to powers which are active and efficacious in the world. It is through these symbols or signs, that one learns the language of such matters. The candidate immediately sees for himself that these symbols correspond to the figures, tones, and colours which he has learned to perceive during the periods of Probation and Enlightenment...
All that appeared to him before as separate figures, tones, and colours, is now revealed to him as a Perfect unity, a coherent harmony, and now, or the first time, he attains a real certainty in observing and following the higher worlds...he Initiate can only communicate to the candidate, on these planes, in the direct form or figures of the secret alphabet.
The birth of personality
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.
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The first Atlanteans, the Rmoahals, did not yet possess any personal nature. They beheld the life-force with great reverence and wielded this power with no personal ambition of their own.
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...[they] ascribed their power not so much to themselves as to the divine nature acting within them.
Personal experience first evolved from discomfort towards the established memory of the group, and a desire to divert away from it. Separate communities formed and centered around powerful personalities.
When one group of men separated from another for the foundation of a new community, there was something in this remembrance which the group did not find suitable for itself, in which it did not feel at ease.
Personal memory and the desire for one's deeds to be preserved in communal life, as well as the formation of ancestral cults, started to take precedence over the eternal Wisdom. The Great Initiates were an exception to this, who always remained in service to the eternal Wisdom.
Because humanity was in the beginning phases of developing personal experience, as opposed to group-consciousness, the egoic impulse was under-developed and very prone to self-serving behavior.
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 deeds of the ancestors were not to be forgotten by their whole line of descent...[but] in the case of the initiate, personality ceases to have any importance. He is totally in the service of eternal wisdom.
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.
The consequence was that from about the middle of the Atlantean age it was possible for individuals who desired to harm their fellow human beings to use all kinds of creative powers on them—keeping them dwarf-sized in growth or making them into giants, or letting the physical organism develop in such a way that the individual concerned would be an intelligent person or a cretin.
A terrible power was in human hands in the middle of the Atlantean age. You know, for I have drawn attention to this, that this was not kept secret, though not from any kind of evil intent. According to one of the laws of world history, something which initially was the work of the gods had to become the work of human beings.
This led to serious mischief in the Atlantean age, so that over the last four or three periods of civilization the whole of Atlantean civilization had to be guided towards its own destruction. Our own civilization was saved and brought across from Atlantis, as I have described elsewhere, and you will recall my descriptions of what happened in the Atlantean age.
Reason as a virtue
Whenever a new faculty is developed in a being, an old one loses its force and precision. The man of the present day has the advantage over the Atlantean of possessing a logical understanding and an aptitude for combination; but on the other hand his memory power has waned.
Such a destructive effect could only be halted through the development of a higher faculty in man. If previously one had abandoned oneself to every desire, now one first asked whether thought could approve this desire.
This was the faculty of thought. Logical thinking has a restraining effect on selfish personal wishes. This inner voice checks the appetites, although it cannot destroy...the selfish personality. Intelligence took the place of mere appetites and desires.
In theosophical descriptions of the soul, Manas (mind, or Spirit-Self in anthroposophy) is put above Kama (desire) . The mind, when used properly, is a more noble faculty than personal desire. Or rather, the mind tends to purify the personal nature. But as thought developed in human evolution, human faculties retreated inwards and the ability to control the life-force in nature faded away.
The fifth subrace therefore developed thought at the expense of control of the life force. 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.
A plan for a new world
The calculating faculty of thought sought the new as such; it spurred men to enterprises and new foundations. 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.
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.
In the present time, it is the task of the Aryans [the Post-Atlantean epoch] to develop the faculty of thought and all that belongs to it.
The decadence and ultimate disappearance of Atlantean civilization is in turn as instructive as its rise and glory — William Scott-Elliot, "The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria"
Then came the great Flood...the most advanced of all went towards Asia and founded in Central Asia the great colony of the Manu. The Manu was the lofty Being who was the leader of this handful of the most advanced Atlanteans who went with him to Central Asia and from there called the different cultures to life.
The first pupils of the Manu became the teachers and leaders of the first Post-Atlantean culture—that of the ancient Indian peoples. The first form of Post-Atlantean culture therefore arose under the influence of these Teachers—the holy Rishis. We already know the basic character of this culture. The pupils of the Rishis had a kind of memory of ancient times, of how in Atlantis they themselves had been companions of the Gods.
1. Rmoahals (feelings, sense memory, language)
2. Tlavatli (memory, ancestor cult)
3. Primal Toltecs (personal experience)
4. Primal Turanians (personal power)
5. Primal Semites (power of judgement, arithmetic)
6. Primal Akkadians (application of judgement, "laws")
7. Primal Mongols (lose power over life forces, but retain belief in them)
