The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria

THE ORIGINS The stem of New Thought appeared in the United States in the first part of the nineteenth century. About 1800-25, there was in New England a revival of transcendental thought, traced directly to the interest in Arminianism and Arianism -evinced a full century before by New England thinkers. This interest spread out in two directions: the Unitarianism; and the Transcendental Movement of Emerson and his associates (based on a revived interest in Neo-Platonism). New England thought began to escape from the influence of Locke and Bentham, which had dominated the philosophical thought; and to manifest new interest in the ideas of the newer schools of English and German thought. A similar revolution manifested in literature, and a keen interest began in the writings of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Herder, Goethe, and others who held certain ideas fitting well into the new conceptions. These awakened New Englanders were attracted by Coleridge's idea of a higher reason (or transcendental intuition), a manifestation of the indwelling spirit. By its means one “might experience an immediate perception of things above the plane of the ordinary senses and reason”. Coleridge also taught that there was a great Universal Spirit, reflected in the spirits of all men. Wordsworth presented an attractive form of higher pantheism—a nature in which was immanent the One Spirit of the Universe; a universe animated by a Universal Mind, proceeding under Universal Law and Order.