 Atlantis
The Fate of a Lost Land and its Secret Knowledge
Excerpts of selected lectures by Rudolf Steiner
In this collection of excerpted lectures
and writings on the fabled continent of Atlantis, Rudolf Steiner
explores through his own examinations of the World Akasha, the
developments of prehistoric cultures which bear little resemblance
to the impressions we derive from anthropological descriptions for
the periods concerned. It is not suggested by Steiner that the
fossilized records which anthropology reasons from are not valid;
only that they can only show traces of the more physically hardened
and spiritually degenerate offshoots of the core streams of
humanity, streams which retained a highly plastic and mobile bodily
form until around the middle period of the long Atlantean era. Such
soft tissues leave nothing for the natural processes of
sedimentation and leeching to fossilize.
Equally removed from our expectations
and assumptions about such societies, is Steiner's description of
their whole experience and way of life as not simply some primitive
version of our own. His portrayal of this earlier humanity
shows something quite different.
What Steiner describes as the nature of
humanity during this important period is one that did not reason or
calculate, that could not perceive an external physical environment
except dimly, that did not build or use fire, and that could not,
until the latter Atlantean period, even say ‘I’ to itself.
Yet these people experienced a living
reality in their environment and operated with powers that the
modern sense-bound intellect cannot conceive of.
In these lectures, Steiner guides us
through the great ages and the cultures of the Atlantean period,
describing their characteristics and their progress in the
development of the human form and human consciousness. He describes
their developing perceptual and soul faculties and some aspects of
their ways of life; the worlds that they experienced in their
'awake' and 'sleep' states; their eventual cultural decline through the
abuse of their instinctual powers; the beginnings of the ‘I’
experience which is so essential to human development; the changes
in the geological and meteorological conditions of the world
including the catastrophes of flooding and earthquakes which
eventually submerged this continent beneath the Atlantic Ocean; and
much more.
He describes the migrations from the
doomed continent and the special task of the great figure known as
the Manu who guided a small core of the fifth Atlantean sub-culture
eastward to Central Asia. These were a selection of peoples who
demonstrated the faculties which would be essential for the
post-Atlantean period of human development. These peoples the Manu
taught and cultivated as the seed for the generation of seven
consecutive cultures which were to follow the demise of this ancient
land.
Trans. rvd C
von Arnim
Rudolf Steiner Press
112pp; paperback; 17 x 12 cm
ISBN: 1 85584 079 0
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Atlantis - Rudolf Steiner
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