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The Tenth Lesson: Spiritual Evolution.867
The civilization of Atlantis was remarkable, and its people attained heights
which seem almost incredible to even those who are familiar with the highest
achievements of man in our own times. The Chosen Ones preserved from
the cataclysm which destroyed Lemuria, and who lived to a remarkably old
age, had stored up within their minds the wisdom and learning of the races
that had been destroyed, and they thus gave the Atlanteans an enormous
starting-advantage. They soon attained great advancement along all the lines
of human endeavor. They perfected mechanical inventions and appliances,
reaching far ahead of even our present attainments. In the field of electricity
especially they reached the stages that our present races will reach in about
two or three hundred years from now. Along the lines of Occult Attainment
their progress was far beyond the dreams of the average man of our own
race, and in fact from this arose one of the causes of their downfall, for they
prostituted the power to base and selfish uses, and Black Magic.
And, so the decline of Atlantis began. But the end did not come at once, or
suddenly, but gradually. The continent, and its surrounding islands gradually
sank beneath the waves of the Atlantic Ocean, the process occupying over
10,000 years. The Greeks and Romans of our own Cycle had traditions
regarding the sinking of the continent, but their knowledge referred
only to the disappearance of the small remainder—certain islands—the
continent itself having disappeared thousands of years before their time. It
is recorded that the Egyptian priests had traditions that the continent itself
had disappeared nine thousand years before their time. As was the case
with the Chosen Ones of Lemuria, so was it with the Elect of Atlantis, who
were taken away from the doomed land some time prior to its destruction.
The few advanced people left their homes and migrated to portions of what
are now South America and Central America, but which were then islands
of the sea. These people have left their traces of their civilization and works,
which our antiquaries are discovering to-day.
When the Fifth Cycle dawned (our own cycle, remember) these brave
and advanced souls acted as the race-teachers and became as “gods” to