Early Atlanteans...

The early Atlanteans sense of feeling according to Rudolph Steiner and his access to the Akashic Records, was dramatically different than how we understand the sense of feeling. If the Atlanteans were tired and needed rest, they would enter their physical body. For activity, they would enter the spirit world. In the spirit world, they felt transposed into a group soul. During this early first period of Atlantis, a process took place in which human beings gradually passed from one set of conditions into their opposite. Gradually, the etheric body was being driven into the physical and this occurred during the last third of the Atlantean epoch. They originally felt at rest in the physical and alive in the brilliance of the spiritual world. As the shift from the one viewpoint changed, they withdrew from the spiritual into the physical. The Atlanteans at that stage of physical evolution finally understood themselves in the confinement of a body shell as an independent being.

Gradually, it dawned upon them that they were egos with their own consciousness and not the group soul they had previously known as their identity. As they spent more time in the snail-body, they knew what they were and learned to perceive the physical environment that used to be seen only as vagueness. Now, when they descended fully into their physical bodies and looked at the sky, they did not see the rainbow but they finally did see something like a circle formed of color. They were seeing for the first time the sun although at that time the sun did not penetrate with its power through the heavy mist. The awakening of external consciousness was connected with the emergence of the Sun from the mist. Now, we can understand why so many early religions worshipped the Sun. The early Atlanteans did not require the Sun to physically live because, remember, they spent more of their time out of the physical body then in it.

Once the Sun appeared and physical and environmental changes occurred, the door of inner spirit vision closed to these beings. This is a cosmic process in world history. Consciousness of self evolves through spiritual darkening. In this way, human beings grew away from the brilliance of the group souls but gained individuality. It was a long time before they really grew to possess individuality, as we know it. Souls today are still searching for the spirit contact they once had when they were not as grounded in matter.