An Outline of Religious Ideas in post-Atlantean Times

If we go back to the dim and distant past and sift through the legends and myths, and let the Germanic teachings about the gods take effect on us, we find messages from the supersensible worlds in pictorial form. These messages are not images, personifications, invented by the folk imagination, as some would have us believe, but they are real memories from those ancient times when people themselves still knew what they had experienced. The legends of Wotan, Thor and so on are such memories. And what has remained with man, especially into the post-Atlantic period, is, in the highest sense of the word, a kind of religion of memory. It is most advanced among the peoples living in southern Asia, among the Indian peoples; in a different form it asserted itself in Europe. In India, the memory of the time when every human being still had direct perception in the spiritual world made itself felt as a longing for that world. What is real was felt to be illusion, maya, and there was a yearning back to those ancient times. This was called yoga, and in some individuals it brought forth the ability to penetrate into the supersensible worlds. Not all peoples proceeded in such a way that they had sages who could rise to the level of yoga. Other peoples had to be content with memories, especially the peoples of the north. Their initiates also penetrated into the spiritual worlds, and had direct experiences in the divine world, but the Nordic nature made it difficult for them to penetrate in larger numbers. This is how Nordic mythology developed.