We have previously seen how infant humanity in Atlantis lived in unity under direct guidance of divine leaders, and how they were eventually brought out of the water into a clear atmosphere where the separateness of each individual from all others became obvious at once.

“God is Light”—the Light which became life in man. It was dim and achromatically diffused in the misty atmosphere of early Atlantis, as colorless as the air on a densely foggy day in the present age, hence the unity of all beings who lived in that light. But when man rose above the waters, when he emerged into the air where the godly manifestation, Light, was refracted in multitudinous hues, this variously colored light was differently absorbed by each. Thus diversity was inaugurated, when mankind went through the mighty arch of the rainbow with its variegated and beautiful colors. That bow may therefore be considered an entrance gate to “the promised land,” the world as now constituted. Here the light of God is70 no longer an insipid single tint as in early Atlantis. The present dazzling play of color tells us that the watchword of the present age is segregation, and therefore so long as we remain in the present condition under the law of alternating cycles, where summer and winter, ebb and flow, succeed each other in unbroken sequence, so long as God’s bow stands in the sky, an emblem of diversity, it is yet the day of the kingdoms of men, and the kingdom of God is held in abeyance.

Nevertheless, as surely as the Edenic conditions upon the fire girt islands of ancient Lemuria ended in separation into sexes, each expressing one element of the creative fire, and making the union of man and woman as necessary to the generation of a body as is the union of hydrogen and oxygen to the production of water; and as surely as emergence from the watery atmosphere of Atlantis into the airy environment of Aryana, the world of today, promoted further segregation into separate nations and individuals, who war and prey upon one another (because the sharply differentiated forms which they behold blind them to the inalienable unity of each soul with all others); just as certainly will this world condition give place to a “new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”

In early Atlantis we lived in the deepest basins of the earth where the mist was densest; we breathed by means of gills and would have been unable to live in71 an atmosphere such as we have now. In the course of time desire to explore beyond caused the invention of airships, which were propelled by the expansive force of sprouting grain. The “ark” story is a perverted remembrance of that fact. Those ships actually did founder upon mountain tops where the atmosphere was too rare to sustain them. Today our ships float upon the element in which the Atlantean ships were at one time immersed. We have now contrived various means of propulsion able to carry us over the highlands of the earth which we occupy at present, and are commencing to reach out into the atmosphere to conquer that element as we have subjected the waters; and as surely as our Atlantean ancestors made a highway of the watery element which they breathed and then rose above it to live in a new element, just as certainly shall we conquer the air and then rise above it into the newly discovered element which we call ether.

Thus each age has its own peculiar conditions and laws; the beings who evolve have a physiological constitution suited to the environment of that age, but are dominated by the nature forces then prevailing until they learn to conform to them. Then these forces become most valuable servants, as for instance, steam and electricity, which we have partially harnessed. The law of gravity still holds us in its powerful grip, although by mechanical means we are trying to escape into the new element. We shall at a not72 distant time attain to mastery of the air, but as the ships of the Atlanteans foundered upon the mountains of the earth because their buoyancy was insufficient to enable them to rise higher in the light mist of those altitudes, and because respiration was difficult, so also will the increasing rarity of our present atmosphere prevent us from entering the “new heaven and the new earth,” which are to be the scene of the New Dispensation.

Before we can reach that state, physiological as well as moral and spiritual changes must take place. The Greek text of the New Testament does not leave us in doubt as to this, though lack of knowledge of the mystery teachings prevented the translators from bringing it out in the English version. Did we but believe the Bible even as we have it, we should be spared many delusions and much uneasiness concerning the time of this. Whole sects have disposed of their belongings in anticipation of the advent of Christ on a certain day, and have suffered untold privations afterwards. Schemers have passed themselves off as Christ or even as God, have married, raised families, and died, leaving their sons, who were supposed to be Christs, to fight f............