An accomplished theosophist, Rudolf Steiner draws on the Âkâshic Records - described as a kind of cosmic library encoded on a mental plane - to tell us about events between the origin of the earth and the beginning of recorded history.

Steiner briefly describes man's early milestones and then centres on the history and evolution of Earth's third and fourth 'Root-Races, ' the Lemurians and the Atlanteans, portraying their homelands as more than mere Platonic allegories. These "lost" continents actually existed, and their human inhabitants "developed the first concepts of "good" and "evil," manipulated the forces of nature, laid the groundwork of all human legal and ethical systems, and ... brought humankind ... to its highest artistic, intellectual, and spiritual attainments." The current period we are in, the Âryan, is that of the fifth Root-Race, with two more to follow. Only then will mankind's odyssey on Earth be completed.

Cosmic Memory has powerful appeal, not only as an alternative history of humanity's early development, but as a spur for us to investigate the Âkâshic Records ourselves and so progress our God-given potential.