Twelfth Lecture

But it is precisely this ancient knowledge that should be covered up, veiled by today's materialistic method, which is fully justified and can remain in the purely physical field. For in the time when that high knowledge of nature existed, which I have characterized, man was not a free being, but was only on the way to gradually developing freedom. He was guided and directed. He was not a being with free will, and most of what happened to guide human beings was brought about by the higher hierarchies. And only individuals who strayed from the path, who were driven too far on the path of freedom, caused the descent into the abyss, caused Atlantis to be washed away. But as the will became freer and freer, human beings would not have been able to bear having such knowledge.