VI. The Mystery of the Future

At this point we are drawing near the time of our own Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch which denotes something of peculiar significance in the evolution of humanity. In the Greco-Latin epoch it was still true to speak of an equal possibility, on the one side of remembering the visions arising in the ancient, shadowy clairvoyance, and on the other, of living wholly within the physical body, and of being thereby completely cut off from the spiritual worlds. Individuals here and there had this experience. The whole trend of modern life goes to show that the man of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch has descended still more deeply into the physical body—the outer sign being the birth of materialistic concepts. These made their appearance for the first time in the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, with the Atomists of ancient Greece. Then, having passed from the scene for a time, we find them cropping up again, and during the last four centuries their influence has so greatly increased that man has lost, not only the content of the old memories of the spiritual worlds, but, gradually, all belief in the very existence of those worlds. There you have the true state of affairs. In this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, man has sunk so deeply into the physical body that he has lost even belief! In a very large number of people, belief in the existence of a spiritual world has simply vanished.