
Cosmic Memory Prehistory of Earth and Man
RUDOLF STEINER is one of those figures who appear
at critical moments in human history, and whose contribution
places them in the vanguard of the progress of
mankind.
Born in Austria in 1861, educated at the Technische
Hochschule in Vienna, where he specialized in the study
of mathematics and science, Steiner received recognition
as a scholar when he was invited to edit the well-known
Kurschner edition of the natural scientific writings of
Goethe. Already in 1886 at the age of twenty-five, he had
shown his comprehensive grasp of the deeper implications
of Goethe's way of thinking by writing his
Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen
Weltanschauung (Theory of Knowledge Implicit in
Goethe's Conception of the World).
Four years later he
was called to join the group of eminent scholars in residence
at Weimar, where he worked with them at the
Goethe-Schiller Archives for some years. A further result
of these activities was the writing of his Goethes
Weltanschauung (Goethe's Conception of the World)
which, together with his introductions and commentary
on Goethe's scientific writings, established Steiner as one
of the outstanding exponents of Goethe's methodology.
Excerpt:
BY MEANS OF ordinary history man can learn only a
small part of what humanity experienced in prehistory.
Historical documents shed light on but a few millennia.
What archaeology, paleontology, and geology can teach
us is very limited. Furthermore, everything built on external
evidence is unreliable.
One need only consider how
the picture of an event or people, not so very remote from
us, has changed when new historical evidence has been
discovered. One need but compare the descriptions of
one and the same thing as given by different historians,
and he will soon realize on what uncertain ground he
stands in these matters.
Everything belonging to the external
world of the senses is subject to time. In addition,
time destroys what has originated in time. On the other
hand, external history is dependent on what has been preserved
in time. Nobody can say that the essential has been
preserved, if he remains content with external evidence.
Everything which comes into being in time has its origin
in the eternal. But the eternal is not accessible to sensory
perception. Nevertheless, the ways to the perception
of the eternal are open for man.
He can develop forces
dormant in him so that he can recognize the eternal. In
the essays, Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der hoheren
Welten? (How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher
Worlds?), which appear in this periodical*, this development
is referred to. These present essays will also show
that at a certain high level of his cognitive power, man
can penetrate to the eternal origins of the things which
vanish with time.
A man broadens his power of cognition
in this way if he is no longer limited to external evidence
where knowledge of the past is concerned. Then he can
see in events what is not perceptible to the senses, that
part which time cannot destroy. He penetrates from transitory
to non-transitory history. It is a fact that this history
is written in other characters than is ordinary history. In
gnosis and in theosophy it is called the 'Akasha
Chronicle.' Only a faint conception of this chronicle can
be given in our language. For our language corresponds
to the world of the senses.
That which is described by our
language at once receives the character of this sense
world. To the uninitiated, who cannot yet convince himself
of the reality of a separate spiritual world through his
own experience, the initiate easily appears to be a visionary,
if not something worse.
The one who has acquired the ability to perceive in
the spiritual world comes to know past events in their eternal
character. They do not stand before him like the dead
testimony of history, but appear in full life. In a certain
sense, what has happened takes place before him.
I. Contemporary Civilization in the Mirror of the Science
of the Spirit
II. From the Akasha Chronicle
III. Our Atlantean Ancestors
IV. Transition of the Fourth into the Fifth Root Race
V. The Lemurian Race
VI. The Division into Sexes
VII. The Last Periods before the Division into Sexes
VIII. The Hyperborean and the Polarean Epoch
IX. Beginning of the Present Earth - Extrusion of the Sun
X. Extrusion of the Moon
XI. Some Necessary Points of View
XII. On the Origin of the Earth
XIII. The Earth and Its Future
XIV. The Life of Saturn
XV. The Life of the Sun
XVI. Life on the Moon
XVII. The Life of Earth
XVIII. The Fourfold Man of Earth
XIX. Answers to Questions
XX. Prejudices Arising from Alleged Science
Softcover, 5¼" x 8¼", 185+ pages
Perfect-Bound