There is nothing new to the spiritual science of preparation, illumination and initiation into the mysteries contained within this book. For those who are actively engaged in studying the evidence, it is becoming more and more certain that the Earth was once host to an ancient, advanced civilization that had complete understanding of the physics and the timing behind the event that we are now experiencing in the Earth and Solar System.

This civilization took great pains to preserve their legacy so that we could re-discover these everlasting truths.

The most obvious footprints that have been left behind by this lost, ancient civilization are the many surviving structures around the world that are composed of multi-ton blocks of stone or “megaliths,” far too large and intricate in construction to be built by any known methods now available to humanity.

In our 2000 book The Shift of the Ages, we go into detail about such monuments, including their distinct energetic functions and their worldwide interconnected nature, provable by straightforward mathematical analysis.

Off the coast of the Japanese island of Yonaguni, a pyramid-like, obviously artificial megalithic structure has been found submerged under the sea in an area that could not have been above water for at least 12,000 years.

And in 2001, Paulina Zelinsky and Paul Weinzweig of Advanced Digital Communications announced that they had discovered vast submerged city of pyramids, buildings, roads and other structures off the western tip of Cuba, about a half-mile under the sea, as seen from side-scan sonar readings. This story actually broke into the Western mainstream media, which shows how surprisingly close they are to admitting that such a civilization did indeed exist.

Though there has been ongoing interest in the search for ancient undersea ruins, Zelinsky’s team was the first to elicit cooperation with the Communist regime of Cuba so that such advanced measurements could be taken in their national waters.

The research of Linda Moulton Howe and others has revealed that National Geographic has already signed a contract to have exclusive rights to release this new material to humanity, and that a comprehensive multimedia disclosure is being planned.

More recent updates in November 2001 revealed that interconnecting circles of rock similar to Stonehenge have now been photographed at the site by a robotic undersea probe, along with a series of stone inscriptions including crosses, sketches of Mesoamerican-style pyramids, and an unusual written language. The team hopes to photograph and survey the area much more thoroughly as time proceeds.

The original source of information for the Western world regarding this lost ancient civilization came from the works of Greek philosopher Plato, who first referred to it in the Timaeus as the island continent “Atlantis.”

It is widely held that the technological sophistication of Atlantis actually superceded our own, including anti-gravity capability that was used both for devices capable of interstellar travel as well as the levitation of tremendous blocks to build the pyramids and sacred structures seen worldwide.

Also available to the Atlanteans was a form of technology where extremely high amounts of energy to power all sorts of different devices could be drawn from the very essence of empty space itself – a non-physical energy source that the Greeks referred to as “aether,” which was their word for “shine.” The Greek word “pyramid” actually comes from the word roots “Pyre” and “Amid,” meaning “fire in the middle.”

This suggests that a harnessing of energy is occurring within such structures. In addition to technology, the Atlanteans were much more aware of the spiritual, intuitive and symbolic side of life, something that modern civilization has become much more divorced from.

Many different sources indicate that Plato had received the information regarding Atlantis secretly from the existing priesthoods of Egypt, and that he created a great controversy amongst their ranks by actually publicizing it. This one small data point, published in the philosophy texts of the day, could be seen as the first clue in unraveling a very substantial mystery.

According to such sources, the Egyptian priesthood was one of several splinter groups entrusted with preserving what they referred to as “the sacred fire of antiquity,” a coded term for the overall cosmology, physics and spiritual knowledge of Atlantis, which was also referred to as “The Tradition” or “The Mysteries.”

Rigorous oaths of secrecy were taken to uphold the secrets of such initiatory knowledge on pain of death. Offshoots of these societies are well known to still exist today through such organizations as Freemasonry, a group that was intimately connected to the foundation of the United States and still has widespread influence among the most elite power circles.

Solid information regarding such “secret societies” and their initiated teachings has been publicly available throughout the 19th and 20th century. In 1928, 33rd-degree Freemason scholar Manly Palmer Hall published a book that does a remarkable job of assembling the puzzle pieces into one single, vast composite, and its name is “The Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Quabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy, Being an Interpretation of the Secret Teachings concealed within the Rituals, Allegories and Mysteries of all Ages.”

This text is by far the most popular of its kind, and without such a book in existence, it would arguably be much more difficult to reconstruct an accurate picture of what exactly was known in the ancient world and how it was preserved throughout time.

The general picture of the time of Atlantis that Hall and other sources paint is of a world quite different than we know it today. Atlantis was one of two main advanced civilizations that co-existed on the Earth at that time, the other being the Rama Empire, which was centered in India. [If the Pacific Ocean-based civilization of “Lemuria” had indeed existed, it appears to have been from an even earlier period and was long-gone by the time of Atlantis and Rama.]

Documents from the Rama empire still exist today for the public to study, which the Hindus call the Vedas, and in these texts there are many references to highly advanced technology, including elaborate flying machines known as “Vimana” and nuclear weaponry. According to David Hatcher Childress in the book Vimana Aircraft of Ancient India and Atlantis,

The India of 15,000 years ago is sometimes known as the Rama Empire, a land that was contemporary with Atlantis. A huge wealth of texts still extant in India testify to the extremely advanced civilization that is said by these texts to go back over 26,000 years. Terrible wars and subsequent earth changes destroyed these civilizations, leaving only isolated pockets of civilization.

It is not surprising for those aware of such research that vast undersea city ruins have now been discovered off the coast of India near Gujarat, which could not have been above water for at least 9000 years.

Some twelve thousand years ago, most of the Earth’s population was nowhere near at the level of sophistication possessed by the Atlanteans or the Ramas, and like the “clashes of civilizations” of our own era, these two giants ended up going into war with each other.

Atlantis had just begun a program of indoctrinating lesser-developed cultures with their knowledge when their island continent was destroyed by a combination of warfare and geological cataclysms, which completely submerged their land circa 9600 BC.

Just prior to this time, some who were aware of this impending cataclysm left the island and went into hiding amongst other lesser-advanced populations of humanity. Some of these indigenous groups were in North and South America while others were in Europe, Africa and Asia. As Hall writes in Secret Teachings,

From the Atlanteans the world has received not only the heritage of arts and crafts, philosophies and sciences, ethics and religions, but also the heritage of hate, strife, and perversion. The Atlanteans instigated the first war; and it has been said that all subsequent wars were fought in a fruitless effort to justify the first one and right the wrong which it caused.

Before Atlantis sank, its spiritually illumined Initiates, who realized that their land was doomed because it had departed from the Path of Light, withdrew from the ill-fated continent. Carrying with them the sacred and secret doctrine, these Atlanteans established themselves in Egypt, where they became its first "divine" rulers.

Nearly all the great cosmologic myths forming the foundation of the various sacred books of the world are based upon the Atlantean Mystery rituals.

In the Western Hemisphere, this “Atlantean” influence is arguably behind the Mayan Calendar and many other indigenous spiritual traditions of various Native American groups. In the Eastern Hemisphere, this same Atlantean / Raman influence links the Egyptians, Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Chaldeans, Celtics, Druids, Tibetans and Greeks, as well as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Taoism, and Buddhism.

A variety of “secret societies” or “mystery schools” arose as well, including the following partial list that could easily be continued:

Atlantean, Hindu / Vedic / Raman, Hermetic, Pyramidic, Zodiacal, Egyptian, Celtic / Druidic, Mithraic, Serapean, Odinic / Gothic, Eleusinian, Orphic, Bacchic, Dionysiac, Cabiric, Pythagorean, Essenic, Platonic, Solomonic, Quabbalistic, Hebraic, Gnostic, Christian, Scandinavian, Arthurian, Alchemical, the Knights Templar, the Order of the Assassins, the Order of the Quest, Rosicrucian, Baconian / Masonic (Freemasonry,) Builders of the Adytum (BOTA), Ordo Templi Orientalis (OTO), the JASON society, the Skull and Bones society, the Islamic mysteries, the Mayan sacred teachings and the vast Native American / Shaman heritage.

It is important to remember that within each of the above names is an entire corpus of material to assimilate and digest, upon which a multiplicity of books could be written – knowledge which likely remains concealed to this day, at least in part. Secrecy was very much a part of the picture, as this next passage from Hall’s book points out:

"He who would fathom the depths of philosophic thought must familiarize himself with the teachings of those initiated priests designated as the first custodians of divine revelation. The Mysteries claimed to be the guardians of a transcendental knowledge so profound as to be incomprehensible save to the most exalted intellect and so potent as to be revealed with safety only to those in whom personal ambition was dead and who had consecrated their lives to the unselfish service of humanity.

Both the dignity of these sacred institutions and the validity of their claim to possession of Universal Wisdom are attested by the most illustrious philosophers of antiquity, who were themselves initiated into the profundities of the secret doctrine and who bore witness to its efficacy.

The question may legitimately be propounded: If these ancient mystical institutions were of such "great pith and moment," why is so little information now available concerning them and the arcana they claimed to possess? The answer is simple enough: The Mysteries were secret societies, binding their initiates to inviolable secrecy, and avenging with death the betrayal of their sacred trusts.

Although these schools were the true inspiration of the various doctrines promulgated by the ancient philosophers, the fountainhead of those doctrines was never revealed to the profane. Furthermore, in the lapse of time the teachings came so inextricably linked with the names of disseminators that the actual but recondite source — the Mysteries — came to be wholly ignored."

In the next paragraph, Hall explains how much of this secret ancient knowledge was preserved through the use of symbolism. This enabled valuable information to be stored in plain sight, such as in physical structures, mythological accounts and sacred texts, and yet concealed in an encoded form, which would only be decipherable to those who had already grasped the knowledge of the ancient Mysteries to some degree:

"Symbolism is the language of the Mysteries; in it is the language not only of mysticism and philosophy but of all Nature, for every law and power active in universal procedure is manifested to the limited sense perceptions of man through the medium of symbol.

Every form existing in the diversified sphere of being is symbolic of the divine activity by which it is produced. By symbols men have ever sought to communicate to each other those thoughts which transcend the limitations of language.

Rejecting man-conceived dialects as inadequate and unworthy to perpetuate divine ideas, the Mysteries thus chose symbolism as a far more ingenious and ideal method of preserving their transcendental knowledge. In a single figure a symbol may both reveal and conceal, for to the wise the subject of the symbol is obvious, while to the ignorant the figure remains inscrutable.

He who seeks to unveil the secret doctrine of antiquity must search for that doctrine not upon the open pages of books which might fall into the hands of the unworthy but in the place where it was originally concealed.

Far-sighted were the initiates of antiquity. They realized that nations come and go, that empires fall, and that the golden ages of art, science, and idealism are succeeded by the dark ages of superstition. With the needs of posterity foremost in mind, the sages of old went to inconceivable extremes to make certain that their knowledge should be preserved.

They engraved it upon the face of mountains and concealed it with the measurements of colossal images, each of which was a geometric marvel. Their knowledge of chemistry and mathematics they hid within mythologies which the ignorant would perpetuate, or in the spans and arches of their temples which time has not entirely obliterated.

They wrote in characters that neither the vandalism of men nor the ruthlessness of the elements could completely efface. Today men gaze with awe and reverence upon the mighty Memnons (Pyramids) standing alone on the sands of Egypt, or upon the strange terraced pyramids of Palanque. Mute testimonies these are of the lost arts and sciences of antiquity; and concealed this wisdom must remain until this race has learned to read the universal language — SYMBOLISM.

The book to which this is the introduction is dedicated to the proposition that concealed within the emblematic figures, allegories and rituals of the ancients is a secret doctrine concerning the inner mysteries of life; which doctrine has been preserved in toto among a small band of initiated minds since the beginning of the world.

Departing, these illumined philosophers left their formulae that others, too, might attain to understanding. But, lest these secret processes fall into uncultured hands and be perverted, the Great Arcanum was always concealed in symbol or allegory; and those who can today discover its lost keys may open with them a treasure house of philosophic, scientific, and religious truths."

So as we can see from the above passage, the sacred knowledge from Atlantis concerned a cosmology of the “inner mysteries of life,” a viewpoint of reality that was markedly different than that espoused by the “profane” masses who were not initiates into the ancient traditions.

Hall does make the explicit point at the end of this passage that those who can discover the lost keys of ancient wisdom “may open with them a treasure house of philosophic, scientific and religious truths.”

Within this book that you are now reading is an exhaustive reconstruction of the scientific knowledge of the Ancients, upgrading this information with the most modern cutting-edge discoveries in physics, and thus returning the “lost keys” to the hands of modern-day seekers. With these ancient keys we can indeed reveal an incredible storehouse of spiritual wisdom that has thus far almost completely eluded the Western scientific establishment, at least overtly.