Self-Knowledge and God-Knowledge I

GA 90a — 26 June 1904, Berlin

XXXVI. On Atlantean Culture

Nothing in the world is accidental. Every age, every people, every person has certain tasks. The present root race has the task of developing the human mind and everything connected with it: calculating, building machines.

The mind is essentially tied to the personality. In earlier root races, something else was important, even with the Egyptian pyramids, for the construction of which people sacrificed their entire lives. They were firmly convinced of reincarnation. And in this firm belief, the workers willingly did everything that was required of them. That was what remained from earlier times for the beginnings of the root race.

As long as individuality was not yet in the foreground, other forms of religion were needed, and other cultures were to be found. The present root race with the culture of the mind of the personality goes back ten thousand years.

The first sub-race was the one that had settled in the Indian peninsula. The second race in Persia spread over the earth. The third was the Egyptian. The fourth, the Roman, adopted Christianity. The fifth is the Germanic-Anglo-Saxon, the sixth will be the Slavic and the seventh will be the American. This will found an empire that will encompass the entire earth, but will be short-lived and, like the Chinese, will be followed by another, more powerful one.

The preceding Atlantean culture was quite different. The main center was on the floor of the present Atlantic Ocean, but extended over other areas.

We have to imagine the Atlanteans as being totally different from us.

The first Atlanteans, about a million years ago, had no minds at all, but they had very developed memories. When one ability comes to the fore, others recede. Because, as development progressed, the combining mental activity had to come to the fore, memory receded.

He had no rule, but the image that emerged in his mind was the decisive one. They told people important things that could be encountered in characteristic images, not rules. That is why they were very conservative. A young person could not have reached a high position because one had to have a lot of experience behind one. Everything we have similar to an Areopagus still comes from Atlantis.

All the forces that were closer to nature, as with undeveloped people. They could use, for example, life force or plant seed power. Coals contain stored heat, which is used to heat locomotives. Just as steam heat is converted into motive power, so the energy can be extracted from piles of cereal grains. The Atlanteans had a small type of airship that used the converted vril power as motive power.

This institution benefited from the fact that the waters were thinner and the air thicker. Plants were planted as coal mines are laid out today to serve traffic. Humans and animals that feed on thinner water have very different organ natures. He could increase his power through his arbitrariness. Water was more related to his willpower. He had the organism more in his hands.

They did not make plans for the cities, they had no combining intellect. They sowed trees in an ellipse; they grew faster. Fruits outside - apartments inside. That was the first Atlantic period until six hundred thousand years ago.

The first race of the Rmoahals were like that; then they approached the present race. But the second race of the Tlavatli and the third of the Toltecs were similar. In the third race, the seeds of intellectual activity began to take hold. The peoples were very obedient, which decreased among the Turanians. They were the infamous black magicians of Atlantis. They were also great technicians, did not make big plans, but had a firm grip on things; they knew how much rock could be carried when they cut it out. Everything was based on personal skill. They then recorded this in symbolic drawings. Many secrets were revealed, morality fell, and doom was invoked. Only saved by the Ursemites, who were the fifth sub-race. They were a calculating and trading people, from whom the whole present root race has grown. They were the basic combiners.

Then sixth, the Akkadians, the actual colonizing people. They went, for example, to Ireland, where this highly developed Akkadian culture had flourished before the Celtic one. Seventh, the Mongols, who of course survived.

Then we come back to catastrophes. The Atlanteans were flooded by water. The destruction by fire preceded the Rmoahals, that is, the Lemurians – Australia and neighboring areas. We must distinguish precisely between the first Lemurians and the second; in total, also a million years. It is only from the middle of the Lemurian race that there are two sexes. The Urlehre calls the sexless Adam Kadmon. They had no memory, but imagination. The Lemurian could not yet retain the image, it soon vanished. That is why decadent Lemurians in Australia have no memory. But the imagination was much more vivid. For example, the difference between warmth and cold.

In those days the elements were not so differentiated as they are now. The sea was filled as if with drifting mists. There were denser and thinner mists, but water and air were not yet separated.