From the Akashic Record

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From the Akashic Chronicle is a collection of essays that Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925) wrote between July 1904 and May 1908 as independent articles for the journal Lucifer Gnosis which he edited . At that time Steiner was Secretary General of the German section of the Theosophical Society . The essays were later published together with the essay series How do you get knowledge of the higher worlds? published in several offprints. They were first published in the present book form in 1939. They are seen today by those familiar with his work as “preliminary studies” for his more extensive book The Secret Science in Outline (1910).

In contrast to his book Theosophy, which was intended for a wider audience . Introduction to supersensible knowledge of the world and human determination (1904), in which Steiner developed an esoteric basic work based on the ideas of thinkers such as Lessing , Fichte or Carus , in these essays Steiner took up to a large extent the ideas and concepts of the then established modern theosophy , which were particularly thorough Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) was shaped. For example, the concept of a universal world memory called the Akashic Record is a theosophical concept. In his preface, Steiner expressly stated that he largely agreed with the descriptions of the American theosophist William Scott-Elliot about Atlantis from the Akashic Chronicle. "While there more the outer side, the outer processes of these our Atlantean ancestors are described, here something is to be recorded about their spiritual character and about the inner nature of the conditions under which they lived." The declared intention of the book is therefore that Already published representations of other authors from the Akashic Chronicle to add a kind of history of the soul and to make the merely external representation of human development more understandable.

Location of the Atlantic continent according to Scott-Elliot around 10,000 BC. Chr.

The events that Steiner - who also claimed to be able to read in the Akashic Records - drew up in agreement with Blavatsky and Scott-Elliot, convey a picture that deviates from the scientific representation of human evolution . He described that humanity evolved into seven " root races " that follow one another. She is currently in the section of the fifth, the Aryan root race. Steiner used the term "Aryans" in the sense of the theosophical usage of Blavatsky or Annie Besant , who did not associate the term with any racist ideas, but, like Steiner, represented the ideal of human fraternization without distinction of race. In addition, he was convinced that a “race development” could only be spoken of until the end of the Atlantic period: “(...) it is too easy to arouse misconceptions with the word race, because one overlooks the fact that the motive for classifying Humanity that we have today is much more internal than that which is connected with the expression of race. "

The "Aryans" were preceded by the "Atlantians" and these by the " Lemurians ", who lived on a continent in southern Asia that stretched from Ceylon to Madagascar . Like the Atlantic, the Lemurian continent was well established in scientific discussion around 1900. Ernst Haeckel writes, for example: “The origin of the 'prehistoric men' probably took place during the Diluvial period in the hot zone of the old world, either on the mainland of tropical Africa or Asia, or on an earlier one (now under the mirror of the Indian Ocean submerged) continents that stretched from East Africa (Madagascar and Abyssinia) to East Asia (Sunda Islands and Behind India). What weighty reasons speak for the existence of this great continent, called Lemuria, and how the distribution of the most diverse human species and races is to be thought approximately from this 'paradise' over the surface of the earth, I already have in detail in my 'natural history of creation' discussed. "

However, Steiner took the view that in the Lemurian times, for example, humans looked significantly different than they do today: the earth was not yet completely solidified, the air was even denser, the water was thinner, and accordingly , his body was much "finer". Although Steiner took up the same topic anew and expanded it, especially in his Secret Science (1910), these essays were republished in book form posthumously in 1939 and have been reprinted several times since then. In Steiner's work they represent only an episode of a few years; However, in the following and also by critics, they are often placed indiscriminately next to the books that Steiner had written to publicly represent his anthroposophy.

Book editions

The first edition:

  • From the Akashic Record . Published by Marie Steiner . Philosophical-Anthroposophical Publishing House, Dornach 1939

Current issues:

Individual evidence

  1. ^ So Christoph Lindenberg in: Rudolf Steiner. Eine Chronik 1861–1925 , Stuttgart 1988, p. 213
  2. ^ William Scott-Elliot: The Story of Atlantis , London 1896; Online version ; German edition: Atlantis according to occult sources , Leipzig 1903
  3. ↑ Rudolf Steiner: From the Akasha Chronicle (= GA 11), Dornach 1969, p. 24
  4. ↑ Rudolf Steiner: The Gospel of John (= GA 103). 10. Lecture of May 30, 1908, Dornach 1981, pp. 168f
  5. ^ Ernst Haeckel: Anthropogenie or human development history , 2nd A. Leipzig 1874, p. 496