Part 1 — Commentaries On the Twelve Stanzas and Their Terms, According To Their Numeration, In Stanzas And Shlokas. (continued 4)

Idâ is primarily food, nourishment, or a libation of milk; thence a stream of praise, personified as the goddess of speech.

The “profane” are not told, however, the reason why “a libation of milk,” or “a stream of praise,” should be male and female by turn: unless, indeed, there is some “internal evidence” which the Occultists fail to perceive.

[pg 157]

In its most mystical meaning, the union of Svâyambhuva Manu with Vâch-Shata-Rûpâ, his own daughter—this being the first “euhemerization” of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ilâ are a secondary and a third form—stands in cosmic symbolism as the Root-Life, the Germ from which spring all the Solar Systems, the Worlds, Angels and the Gods. For, as says Vishnu:

From Manu all creation, gods, Asuras, man must be produced:

By him the world must be created, that which moves and moveth not.

But we may find worse opponents than even the Western Scientists and Orientalists. If, on the question of figures, Brâhmans may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of the orthodox conservatives may not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitri Devatâs. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, and we will invite them to read their own Purânas a little more carefully and with an eye to the esoteric meaning. And then, we repeat again, they will find, under the veil of more or less transparent allegories, every statement made herein corroborated by their own works. One or two instances have already been given as regards the appearance of the Second Race, which is called the “Sweat-born.” This allegory is regarded as a fairy-tale, and yet it conceals a psycho-physiological phenomenon, and one of the greatest mysteries of Nature.

But in view of the chronological statements made herein, it is natural to ask:

COULD MEN EXIST 18,000,000 YEARS AGO?

To this Occultism answers in the affirmative, notwithstanding all scientific objectors. Moreover, this duration covers only the Vaivasvata-Manu Man, i.e., the male and female entity already separated into distinct sexes. The two and a half Races that preceded that event may have lived 300,000,000 years ago for all that Science can tell. For the geological and physical difficulties in the way of the theory could not exist for the primeval, ethereal Man of the Occult Teachings. The whole issue of the quarrel between the Profane and the Esoteric Sciences depends upon the belief in, and demonstration of, the existence of an Astral Body within the Physical, the former independent of the latter. Paul d'Assier, the Positivist, seems to have proven the fact pretty plainly,350 not to speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the [pg 158] modern “Spiritualists” and Mystics. It will be found difficult to reject this fact in our age of proofs, tests, and ocular demonstrations.

The Secret Doctrine maintains that, notwithstanding the general cataclysms and disturbances of the Fourth Round of our Globe, which—owing to its being the period of its greatest physical development, for the Fourth Round is the middle-point of the Life Cycle allotted to it—were far more terrible and intense than during any of the three preceding Rounds—the Cycles of its earlier psychic and spiritual life and of its semi-ethereal conditions—Physical Humanity has existed upon it for the last 18,000,000 years.351 This period was preceded by 300,000,000 years of the mineral and vegetable development. To this, all those who refuse to accept the theory of a “boneless,” purely ethereal, man, will object. Science, which knows only of physical organisms, will feel indignant; and materialistic Theology still more so. The former will object on logical and reasonable grounds, based on the preconception that all animate organisms have always existed on the same plane of materiality in all the ages; the latter on a tissue of most absurd fictions. The ridiculous claim usually brought forward by Theologians is based on the virtual assumption that mankind (read Christians) on this Planet have the honour of being the only human beings in the whole Kosmos, who dwell on a Globe, and that they are consequently, the best of their kind.352

The Occultists, who believe firmly in the teachings of the Mother-Philosophy, repel the objections of both Theologians and Scientists. They maintain, on their side, that, even during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, with [pg 159] successive floods, upheaval of the valleys and constant shifting of the great waters and seas, none of these circumstances could form an impediment to human life and organization, such as is assigned by them to early mankind. Neither the heterogeneity of ambient regions, full of deleterious gases, nor the perils of a crust hardly consolidated, could prevent the First and Second Races from making their appearance even during the Carboniferous, or the Silurian Age itself.

Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races were ready for the new transformation. They had passed their phases of “immetalization,” of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by the biblical dead-letter, form, “Lord-God”-like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam-Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a “Living Soul” into Man? No; because the Soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a “coating.” Pygmalion, who fails to animate his statue, and Bahak Zivo of the Nazaræan Gnostics, who fails to construct “a human soul in the creature,” are, as conceptions, far more philosophical and scientific than Adam, taken in the dead-letter sense, or the biblical Elohim-Creators. Esoteric Philosophy, which teaches spontaneous generation—after the Shishta and Prajâpati have thrown the seed of life on the Earth—shows the Lower Angels able to construct physical man only, even with the help of Nature, after having evolved the Ethereal Form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic, model.

This will again be objected to; “spontaneous generation” is an exploded theory, we shall be told. Pasteur's experiments disposed of it twenty years ago, and Professor Tyndall is against it. Well, suppose he is? He ought to know that, should spontaneous generation be indeed proven impossible in our present world-period and actual conditions—which the Occultists deny—still it would be no demonstration that it could not have taken place under different cosmic conditions, not only in the seas of the Laurentian Period, but even on the then convulsed Earth. It would be interesting to know how Science could ever account for the appearance of species and life on Earth, especially of Man, once that she rejects both the biblical teachings and spontaneous generation. Pasteur's observations, however, are far from being perfect or proven. Blanchard and Dr. Lutaud reject their importance, [pg 160] and, in fact, show that they have none. The question is so far left sub judice, as well as the other as to when, at what period, life appeared on the Earth? As to the idea that Hæckel's Moneron—a pinch of salt!—has solved the problem of the origin of life; it is simply absurd. Those Materialists, who feel inclined to pooh-pooh the theory of the “Self-existent,” the “Self-born Heavenly Man,” represented as an Ethereal, Astral Man, must excuse even a tyro in Occultism laughing, in his turn, at some speculations of Modern Thought. After proving most learnedly that the primitive speck of Protoplasm (Moneron) is neither animal nor plant, but both, and that it has no ancestors among either of these, since it is that Moneron which serves as a point of departure for all organized existence, we are finally told that the Monera are their own ancestors. This may be very scientific, but it is very metaphysical also; too much so, even for the Occultist.

If spontaneous generation has changed its methods now—owing, perhaps, to accumulated material on hand—so as to almost escape detection, it was, nevertheless, in full swing in the genesis of terrestrial life. Even the simple physical form and the evolution of species show how Nature proceeds. The scale-bound, gigantic Saurian, the winged Pterodactyl, the Megalosaurus, and the hundred feet long Iguanodon of the later period, are the transformations of the earliest representatives of the animal kingdom found in the sediments of the primary epoch. There was a time when all the above enumerated “antediluvian” monsters appeared as filamentoid Infusoria without shell or crust, with neither nerves, muscles, organs nor sex, and reproduced their kind by gemmation; as do microscopical animals also, the architects and builders of our mountain ranges, agreeably to the teachings of Science. Why not man in this case? Why should he not have followed the same law in his growth, i.e., gradual condensation? Every unprejudiced person would prefer to believe that Primeval Humanity had at first an Ethereal—or, if so preferred, a huge filamentoid, jelly-like Form, evolved by Gods or natural “Forces,” which grew, condensed throughout millions of ages, and became gigantic in its physical impulse and tendency, until it settled into the huge, physical form of the Fourth Race Man—rather than believe him created of the dust of the Earth (literally), or from some unknown anthropoid ancestor.

Nor does our Esoteric theory clash with scientific data, except on first appearance, as Dr. A. Wilson, F.R.S., says, in a letter to Knowledge (Dec. 23, 1881):

[pg 161]

Evolution—rather nature, in the light of evolution—has only been studied for some twenty-five years or so. That is, of course, a mere fractional space in the history of human thought.

And just because of this we do not lose all hope that Materialistic Science will amend its ways, and will gradually accept the Esoteric Teachings—if even at first divorced from their (to Science) too metaphysical elements.

Has the last word on the subject of human evolution yet been said? As Processor Huxley says:

Each such answer to the great question [man's real place in nature], invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth—tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.353

Will this eminent Darwinian admit the possibility of his “Pithecoid Ancestry” being assignable to the list of “wholly intolerable beliefs,” in the “larger knowledge” of Occultists? But whence the savage? Mere “rising to the civilized state” does not account for the evolution of form.

In the same letter, “The Evolution of Man,” Dr. Wilson makes other strange confessions. Thus, he observes, in answer to the queries put to Knowledge, by “G. M.”:

“Has evolution effected any change in man? If so, what change? If not, why not?”... If we refuse to admit [as science does] that man was created a perfect being, and then became degraded, there exists only another supposition—that of evolution. If man has arisen from a savage to a civilized state, that surely is evolution. We do not yet know because such knowledge is difficult to acquire, if the human frame is subject to the same influences as those of lower animals. But there is little doubt that elevation from savagery to civilized life means and implies “evolution,”and that of considerable extent. Mentally, man's evolution cannot be doubted; the ever-widening sphere of thought has sprung from small and rude beginnings, like language itself. But man's ways of life, his power of adaptation to his surroundings, and countless other circumstances, have made the facts and course of his “evolution” very difficult to trace.

This very difficulty ought to make the Evolutionists more cautious in their affirmations. But why is evolution impossible, if “man was created a perfect being, and then became degraded”? At best it can only apply to the outward, physical man. As remarked in Isis Unveiled, [pg 162] Darwin's evolution begins at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as for everything else, from universals. The Aristotle-Baconian method may have its advantages, but it has, undeniably, already demonstrated its defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from universals downwards, are now shown more learned, in the light of Modern Science, than was Aristotle. For the latter opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution of the Earth and even of its rotundity, when writing:

Almost all those who affirm that they have studied heaven in its uniformity, claim that the earth is in the centre, but the philosophers of the Italian School, otherwise called the Pythagoreans, teach entirely the contrary.

This, because the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and followed the deductive method. Whereas Aristotle, the father of the inductive system, complained of those who taught that:

The centre of our system was occupied by the sun, and the earth was only a star, which by a rotatory motion around the same centre, produces night and day.354

The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and now expounded, is the only one, which—without falling into the absurdity of a “miraculous” man created out of the dust of the earth, or the still greater fallacy of man evolving from a pinch of lime-salt, the ex-protoplasmic Moneron—can account for his appearance on Earth.

Analogy is the guiding law in Nature, the only true Ariadne's thread that can lead us, through the inextricable paths of her domain, toward her primal and final mysteries. Nature, as a creative potency, is infinite, and no generation of Physical Scientists can ever boast of having exhausted the list of her ways and methods, however uniform the laws upon which she proceeds. If we can conceive of a ball of “fire-mist”—as it rolls through æons of time in the interstellar spaces—becoming gradually a Planet, a self-luminous Globe, to settle into a man-bearing World or Earth, thus having passed from a soft plastic body into a rock-bound Globe; and if we see on it everything evolving from the non-nucleated jelly-speck that becomes the Sarcode355 of the Moneron, then passes from its protistic state356 into the form of an [pg 163] animal, to grow into a gigantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic times; then dwindling again into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now confined solely to tropical regions, and the universally common lizard357—if we can conceive all this, then how can man alone escape the general law? “There were giants on earth in those days” says Genesis, repeating the statement of all the other Eastern Scriptures; and the Titans are founded on an anthropological and physiological fact.

And, as the hard-shelled crustacean was once upon a time a jelly-speck, a “thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition,” so was the outward covering of primitive man, his early “coat of skin,” plus an immortal spiritual Monad, and a psychic temporary form and body within that shell. The modern, hard, muscular man, almost impervious to any climate, was, perhaps, some 25,000,000 years ago, just what the Hæckelian Moneron is, strictly an “organism without organs,” an entirely homogeneous substance with a structureless albumen body within, and a human form only outwardly.

No man of Science has the right, in this century, to find the figures of the Brâhmans in the question of chronology preposterous; for their own calculations often exceed by far the claims made by Esoteric Science. This may easily be shown.

Helmholtz calculated that the cooling of our Earth from a temperature of 2,000° to 200° Cent. must have occupied a period of no less than 350,000,000 years. Western Science (including Geology) seems generally to allow our Globe an age of about 500,000,000 years altogether. Sir William Thomson, however, limits the appearance of the earliest vegetable life to 100,000,000 years ago—a statement respectfully contradicted by the Archaic Records. Speculations, furthermore, vary daily in the domains of Science. Meanwhile, some Geologists are very much opposed to such limitation. Volger calculates:

That the time requisite for the deposit of the strata known to us must at least have amounted to 648 millions of years.

Both time and space are infinite and eternal.

The earth, as a material existence, is indeed infinite; the changes only which it has undergone can be determined by finite periods of time....

We must therefore assume that the starry heaven is not merely in space, which no [pg 164]astronomer doubts, but also in time, without beginning or end; that it never was created, and is imperishable.358

Czolbe repeats exactly what the Occultists say. But the Âryan Occultists, we may be told, knew nothing of these later speculations. As Coleman says:

They were even ignorant of the globular form of our earth.

To this the Vishnu Purâna contains a reply, which has forced certain Orientalists to open their eyes very wide.

The sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and over against mid-night, in all the Dvîpas [Continents], Maitreya. But the rising and the setting of the sun being perpetually opposite to each other,—and, in the same way, all the cardinal points, and so the cross-points, Maitreya, people speak of the rising of the sun where they see it; and where the sun disappears, there, to them, is his setting. Of the sun, which is always in one and the same place, there is neither setting nor rising; for what is called rising and setting are only the seeing and the not seeing the sun.359

To this Fitzedward Hall remarks:

The heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is contradicted, however, a little further on.360

Contradicted purposely, because it was a secret temple-teaching. Martin Haug remarked the same teaching in another passage. It is useless to calumniate the Âryans any longer.

To return to the chronology of the Geologists and Anthropologists. We are afraid Science has no reasonable grounds on which she could oppose the views of the Occultists in this direction. Except that “of man, the highest organic being of creation, not a trace was found in the primary strata; only in the uppermost, the so-called alluvial layer,” is all that can be urged, so far. That man was not the last member in the mammalian family, but the first in this Round, is something that Science will be forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been mooted in France on very high authority.

That man can be shown to have lived in the Mid-Tertiary Period, and in a geological age when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the now known species of mammals, is a statement that Science cannot deny and which has now been proven by de Quatrefages.361 But even supposing his existence in the Eocene Period is not yet demonstrated, what period of time has elapsed since the Cretaceous Period? We [pg 165] are aware of the fact that only the boldest Geologists dare place man further back than the Miocene Age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and periods since the Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation and wrangling, Science is silent, the greatest authorities upon the subject being compelled to answer to the question: “We do not know.” This ought to show that the men of Science are no greater authorities in this matter than are the profane. If, according to Professor Huxley, “the time represented by the Coal formation alone would be six millions of years,”362 how many more millions would be required to cover the time from the Jurassic Period, or the middle of the so-called Reptilian Age—when the Third Race appeared—up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the Fourth Race was submerged?363

The writer is aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages of the Globe and Man are the most liberal, have always had the shyer majority against them. But this proves very little, since the majority rarely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long run. Harvey stood alone for many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic with steamers were in danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer is classed to this day—in the Encyclopædias—along with Cagliostro and St. Germain, as a charlatan and impostor. And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet have vindicated Mesmer's claims, and that Mesmerism under its new name of “Hypnotism”—a false nose on a very old face—is accepted by Science, it does not strengthen our respect for that majority, when we see the ease and unconcern with which its members treat of “Hypnotism,” of “telepathic impacts,” and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they had believed therein since the days of Solomon, and had not, only a few years ago, called its votaries lunatics and impostors!364

The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years which Esoteric Philosophy claims as the age of sexual and physiological mankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says: [pg 166] “The Mind-born, the boneless, gave being to the Will-born with bones;”—adding that this took place in the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago—has yet a chance of being accepted by future Scientists.

As far as nineteenth century thought is concerned, we shall be told, even by some personal friends who are imbued with an abnormal respect for the shifting conclusions of Science, that such a statement is absurd. How much more improbable will appear our further assertion, viz., that the antiquity of the First Race dates back millions of years beyond this again. For, although the exact figures are withheld—and it is out of the question to refer the incipient evolution of the primeval Divine Races with certainty to either the early Secondary, or the Primary Ages of Geology—one thing is clear, that the figures 18,000,000 of years, which embrace the duration of sexual, physical, man, have to be enormously increased if the whole process of spiritual, astral and physical development is taken into account. Many Geologists, indeed, consider that the duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the concession of such an estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial conditions whatever negative the hypothesis of an Eocene man, if evidence for his reality is forthcoming. Occultists, who maintain that the above date carries us far back into the Secondary or “Reptilian” Age, may refer to M. de Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote antiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root-Races the case is very different. If the thick agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic acid, that escaped from the soil, or was held in suspension in the atmosphere since the commencement of sedimentation, offered a fatal obstacle to the life of human organisms as now known, how, it will be asked, could the primeval men have existed? This consideration is, in reality, out of court. Such terrestrial conditions as were then operative had no touch with the plane on which the evolution of the ethereal astral Races proceeded. Only in relatively recent geological periods, has the spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the lowest grade of physical evolution—the plane of gross material causation. In those early ages, astral evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes, the astral and the physical,365 though developing on parallel lines, had [pg 167] no direct point of contact with one another. It is obvious that a shadow-like ethereal man is related by virtue of his organization—if such it can be called—only to that plane from which the substance of his Upâdhi is derived.

There are things, perhaps, that may have escaped the far-seeing—but not all-seeing—eyes of our modern Naturalists; yet it is Nature herself who undertakes to furnish the missing links. Agnostic speculative thinkers have to choose between the version given by the Secret Doctrine of the East, and the hopelessly materialistic Darwinian and Biblical accounts of the origin of man; between no soul and no spiritual evolution, and the Occult doctrine which repudiates “special creation” and the “Evolutionist” anthropogenesis equally.

Again, to take up the question of “spontaneous generation”; life—as Science shows—has not always reigned on this terrestrial plane. There was a time when even the Hæckelian Moneron—that simple globule of Protoplasm—had not yet appeared at the bottom of the seas. Whence came the Impulse which caused the molecules of Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, etc., to group themselves into the Urschleim of Oken, that organic “Slime,” now christened Protoplasm? What were the prototypes of the Monera? They, at least, could not have fallen in meteorites from other Globes already formed, Sir William Thomson's wild theory to this effect notwithstanding. And even if they had so fallen; if our Earth got its supply of life-germs from other Planets; who, or what, had carried them on to these Planets? Here, again, unless the Occult Teaching is accepted, we are compelled once more to face a miracle—to accept the theory of a personal, anthropomorphic Creator, the attributes and definitions of whom, as formulated by the Monotheists, clash as much with philosophy and logic, as they degrade the ideal of an infinite Universal Deity, before whose incomprehensible awful grandeur the highest human intellect feels dwarfed. Let not the modern Philosopher, while arbitrarily placing himself on the highest pinnacle of human intellectuality hitherto evolved, show himself spiritually and intuitionally so far below the conceptions of even the ancient Greeks, themselves on a far lower level, in these respects, than the Philosophers of Eastern Âryan antiquity. Hylozoism, when philosophically understood, is the highest aspect of Pantheism. It is the only possible escape from idiotic Atheism based on lethal materiality, and the still more idiotic anthropomorphic conceptions of the Monotheists; between which it stands on its own entirely neutral ground. [pg 168] Hylozoism demands absolute Divine Thought, which would pervade the numberless active, creating Forces, or “Creators,” which Entities are moved by, and have their being in, from, and through, that Divine Thought; the latter, nevertheless, having no more personal concern in them or their creations, than the Sun has in the sun-flower and its seeds, or in vegetation in general. Such active “Creators” are known to exist and are believed in, because perceived and sensed by the Inner Man in the Occultist. Thus the latter says that an Absolute Deity, having to be unconditioned and unrelated, cannot be thought of at the same time as an active, creating, one living God, without immediate degradation of the ideal.366 A Deity that manifests in Space and Time—these two being simply the forms of That which is the Absolute All—can be but a fractional part of the whole. And since that “All” cannot be divided in its absoluteness, therefore that sensed Creator (we say Creators) can be at best but the mere aspect thereof. To use the same metaphor—inadequate to express the full idea, yet well adapted to the case in hand—these Creators are like the numerous rays of the solar orb, which remains unconscious of, and unconcerned in, the work; while its mediating agents, the rays, become the instrumental media every spring—the Manvantaric dawn of the Earth—in fructifying and awakening the dormant vitality inherent in Nature and its differentiated matter. This was so well understood in antiquity, that even the moderately religious Aristotle remarked that such work of direct creation would be quite unbecoming to God—ἀπρεπὲς τῷ Θεῷ. Plato and other philosophers taught the same: deity cannot set its own hand to creation—αὐτουργεῖν ἅπαντα. This Cudworth calls “Hylozoism.” As old Zeno is credited by Laërtius with having said:

Nature is a habit moved from itself, according to seminal principles; perfecting and containing those several things which in determinate times are produced from it, and acting agreeably to that from which it was secreted.367

Let us return to our subject, pausing to think over it. Indeed, if there was vegetable life during those periods that could feed on the then deleterious elements; and if there was even animal life whose aquatic organization could be developed, notwithstanding the supposed scarcity of Oxygen, why could there not be human life also, in its [pg 169] incipient physical form, i.e., in a race of beings adapted for that geological period and its surroundings? Besides, Science confesses that it knows nothing of the real length of geological periods.

But the chief question before us is, whether it is quite certain that, from the time of that which is called the Azoic Age, there ever was such an atmosphere as that hypothesized by the Naturalists. Not all the Physicists agree with this idea. Were the writer anxious to corroborate the teachings of the Secret Doctrine by exact Science, it would be easy to show, on the admission of more than one Physicist, that the atmosphere has changed little, if at all, since the first condensation of the oceans—i.e., since the Laurentian Period, the Pyrolithic Age. Such, at any rate, is the opinion of Blanchard, S. Meunier, and even of Bischof—as the experiments of the last Scientist with basalts have shown. For were we to take the word of the majority of Scientists as to the quantity of deadly gases, and of elements entirely saturated with Carbon and Nitrogen, in which the vegetable and animal kingdoms are shown to have lived, thriven, and developed, then one would have to come to the curious conclusion that there were, in those days, oceans of liquid carbonic acid, instead of water. With such an element, it becomes doubtful whether the Ganoids, or even the Primitive Trilobites themselves could live in the oceans of the Primary Age—let alone in those of the Silurian, as shown by Blanchard.

The conditions that were necessary for the earliest Race of mankind, however, require no elements, whether simple or compound. That which was stated at the beginning is maintained. The spiritual ethereal Entity which lived in Spaces unknown to Earth, before the first sidereal “jelly-speck” evolved in the Ocean of crude Cosmic Matter—billions and trillions of years before our globular speck in infinity, called Earth, came into being and generated the Monera in its drops, called oceans—needed no “elements.” The “Manu with soft bones,” could well dispense with Calcium Phosphate, as he had no bones, save in a figurative sense. And while even the Monera, however homogeneous their organism, still required physical conditions of life that would help them toward further evolution, the Being which became Primitive Man and the “Father of Man,” after evolving on planes of existence undreamed of by Science, could well remain impervious to any state of atmospheric conditions around him. The primitive ancestor, in Brasseur de Bourbourg's Popol Vuh, who—in the Mexican legends—could act and live with equal ease under ground and [pg 170] water as upon the earth, answers only to the Second and early Third Races in our texts. And if the three kingdoms of Nature were so different in pre-diluvian ages, why should not man have been composed of materials and combinations of atoms now entirely unknown to Physical Science? The plants and animals now known, in almost numberless varieties and species, have all developed, according to scientific hypotheses, from primitive and far fewer organic forms. Why should not the same have occurred in the case of man, the elements, and the rest? As the Commentary says:

Universal Genesis starts from the One, breaks into Three, then Five, and finally culminates in Seven, to return into Four, Three, and One.

Stanza VII. From The Semi-Divine Down To The First Human Races.

24. The higher Creators reject in their pride the Forms evolved by the “Sons of Yoga.” 25. They will not incarnate in the early Egg-born. 26. They select the later Androgynes. 27. The first man endowed with mind.

24. The Sons of Wisdom, the Sons of Night,368 ready for rebirth, came down. They saw the vile369 forms of the First Third370 (a). “We can choose,” said the Lords, “we have wisdom.” Some entered the Chhâyâs. Some projected a Spark. Some deferred till the Fourth.371 From their own Rûpa they filled372 the Kâma.373Those who entered became Arhats. Those who received but a Spark, remained destitute of knowledge;374 the Spark burned low (b). The Third remained mind-less. Their Jîvas375 were not ready. These were set apart among the Seven.376 They became narrow-headed. The Third were ready. “In these shall we dwell,” said the Lords of the Flame and of the Dark Wisdom (c).

[pg 171]

This Stanza contains, in itself, the whole key to the mysteries of evil, the so-called Fall of the Angels, and the many problems that have puzzled the brains of the Philosophers from the time that the memory of man began. It solves the secret of the subsequent inequalities or intellectual capacity, of birth or social position, and gives a logical explanation to the incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the æons which followed. The best explanation which can be given, in view of the difficulties of the subject, will now be attempted.

(a) Up to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race in this Round, Man—if the ever-changing forms that clothed the Monads during the first three Rounds and the first two and a half Races of the present Round can be given that misleading name—is, so far, only an animal intellectually. It is only in the present midway Round that he entirely develops in himself the Fourth Principle as a fit vehicle for the Fifth. But Manas will be relatively fully developed only in the following Round, when it will have an opportunity of becoming entirely divine until the end of the Rounds. As Christian Schœttgen says in Horæ Hebraicæ, etc., the first terrestrial Adam “had only the breath of life,”—Nephesh, but not the living Soul.

(b) Here the inferior Races, of which there are still some analogues left—as the Australians, now fast dying out, and some African and Oceanic tribes—are meant. “They were not ready” signifies that the Karmic development of these Monads had not yet fitted them to occupy the forms of men destined for incarnation in higher intellectual Races. But this is explained later on.

(c) The Zohar speaks of “Black Fire,” which is Absolute Light—Wisdom. To those who, prompted by old theological prejudice, may say: But the Asuras are the rebel Devas, the opponents of the Gods—hence Devils, and the Spirits of Evil—it is answered: Esoteric Philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing independently in Nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and passions. There are no Devils or the utterly depraved, as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be Spirits of Light and of Darkness; thus Lucifer—the Spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and Freedom of Thought—is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man to find his way through the rocks and sand-banks of Life, for Lucifer is the Logos in his highest, and the “Adversary” in his lowest aspect—both of which [pg 172] are reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of Christ, makes the Logos, the Word, “the first-born brother of Satan, and the first of all creatures.”377

The Vishnu Purâna describes these primeval creatures (Tiryaksrotas) with crooked digestive canals:

[They were] endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in ignorance about their kind and nature.378

The twenty-eight kinds of Badhas, or “imperfections,” do not apply, as Wilson thought, to the animals now known, which are specified by him, for they did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain from the said work, in which the first created are the “five-fold (immovable) world,” minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous animals, Tiryaksrotas—the monsters of the Abyss, slain by the “Lords,” of Stanzas II and III; then the Ûrdhvasrotas, the happy celestial beings, which feed on ambrosia; and lastly, the Arvâksrotas, human beings—Brahmâ's seventh “creation” so-called. But these “creations,” including the latter, did not occur on this Globe, wherever else they may have taken place. It is not Brahmâ who creates things and men on this Earth, but the Chief and Lord of the Prajâpatis, the Lords of Being and terrestrial Creation. “Obeying the command of Brahmâ,” Daksha—the synthesis, or the aggregate, of the Terrestrial Creators and Progenitors, the Pitris included—made superior and inferior (vara and avara) things, “referring to putra” progeny, and “bipeds and quadrupeds, and subsequently, by his will [referring to the Sons of Will and Yoga], gave birth to females”379—i.e., separated the androgynes. Here, again, we have “bipeds” or men, created before the “quadrupeds” as in the Esoteric Teachings.

Since, in the exoteric accounts, the Asuras are the first Beings created from the “Body of Night,” while the Pitris issue from that of “Twilight”; the “Gods” being placed by Parâshara, in the Vishnu Purâna, between the two, and shown to evolve from the “Body of the Day,” it is easy to discover a determined purpose to veil the order of creation. Man is the Arvâksrota coming from the “Body of the Dawn”; and elsewhere, man is again referred to, when the Creator of the World, Brahmâ, is shown “creating fierce beings, who were denominated Bhûtas, and eaters of flesh,” or as the text has it, “fiends, [pg 173] frightful from being monkey-coloured and carnivorous.”380 Whereas the Râkshasas are generally translated by “evil Spirits” and “enemies of the Gods,” which identifies them with the Asuras. In the Râmâyana, when Hanumân is reconnoitering the enemy in Lankâ, he finds there Râkshasas, some hideous, “while some were beautiful to look upon,” and, in the Vishnu Purâna, there is a direct reference to their becoming the Saviours of “Humanity,” or of Brahmâ.

The allegory is very ingenious. Great intellect and too much knowledge are a two-edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good. When combined with selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a footstool for the elevation of him who possesses them, and a means for the attainment of his objects; while, applied to altruistic humanitarian purposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. At all events, the absence of self-consciousness and intellect will make of man an idiot, a brute in human form. Brahmâ is Mahat, the Universal Mind; hence the too selfish among the Râkshasas showing the desire to become possessed of it all—to “devour” Mahat. The allegory is transparent.

At any rate, Esoteric Philosophy identifies the pre-Brâhmanical Asuras, Rudras,381 Râkshasas and all the “Adversaries” of the Gods in the allegories, with the Egos, which, by incarnating in the still witless man of the Third Race, made him consciously immortal. They are, then, during the cycle of Incarnations, the true dual Logos—the conflicting and two-faced Divine Principle in Man. The Commentary that follows, and the next Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light on this very difficult tenet, but the writer does not feel competent to give it out fully. Of the succession of Races, however, the Commentary says:

First come the Self-existent on this Earth. They are the “Spiritual Lives” projected by the absolute Will and Law, at the Dawn of every Rebirth of the Worlds. These Lives are the divine “Shishta” [the Seed-Manus, or the Prajâpatis and the Pitris].

From these proceed:

1. The First Race, the “Self-born,” which are the [Astral] Shadows of their Progenitors. The Body was devoid of all understanding [mind, intelligence, and will]. The Inner Being [the Higher Self, or Monad], though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The link, the Manas, was not there as yet.

[pg 174]

2. From the First [Race] emanated the Second, called the “Sweat-born”382and the “Boneless.” This is the Second Root-Race, endowed by the Preservers [Râkshasas]383 and the Incarnating Gods [the Asuras and Kumâras] with the first primitive and weak Spark [the germ of intelligence]....

And from these in turn proceeds:

3. The Third Root-Race, the “Two-fold” [Androgynes]. The first Races thereof are Shells, till the last is “inhabited” [i.e., informed] by the Dhyânîs.

[pg 175]

The Second Race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of itself, at its beginning, the Third, Androgyne Race by an analogous, but already more complicated process. As described in the Commentary, the very earliest of that Race were:

The “Sons of Passive Yoga.”384 They issued from the Second Manushyas [Human Race], and became oviparous. The emanations that came out of their bodies during the seasons of procreation were ovulary; the small spheroidal nuclei developing into a large soft, egg-like vehicle, gradually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it broke and the young human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our Race.

This must seem to the reader ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is strictly on the lines of evolutionary analogy, which Science perceives in the development of the living animal species. First the moneron-like procreation by “self-division”; then, after a few stages, the oviparous, as in the case of the reptiles, which are followed by the birds; then, finally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous modes of producing their young ones.

If the term “ovoviviparous” is applied to some fish and reptiles, which hatch their eggs within their bodies, why should it not be applied to female mammalians, including woman? The ovule, in which, after impregnation, the development of the fœtus takes place, is an egg.

At all events, this conception is more philosophical than that of Eve with a suddenly created placenta giving birth to Cain, because of the “apple,” when even the marsupial, the earliest of mammals, is not placental yet.

Moreover, the progressive order of the methods of reproduction, as unveiled by Science, is a brilliant confirmation of Esoteric Ethnology, It is only necessary to tabulate the data in order to prove our assertion.385

I. Fission.

(a) As seen in the division of the homogeneous speck of Protoplasm, known as Moneron or Amœba, into two.

(b) As seen in the division of the nucleated cell, in which the cell-nucleus splits into two sub-nuclei, which either develop within the [pg 176] original cell-wall or burst it, and multiply outside as independent entities. (Cf. the First Root-Race.)

II. Budding.

A small portion of the parent structure swells out at the surface and finally parts company, growing to the size of the original organism; e.g., many vegetables, the sea-anemone, etc. (Cf. the Second Root-Race.)386

III. Spores.

A single cell thrown off by the parent organism, which develops into a multicellular organism reproducing the features of the latter, e.g., Bacteria and mosses.

IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism.

Male and female organs inhering in the same individual; e.g., the majority of plants, worms, and snails, etc.; allied to budding. (Cf. Second and early Third Root-Races.)

V. True Sexual Union.

(Cf. later Third Root-Race.)

We now come to an important point with regard to the double evolution of the human race. The Sons of Wisdom, or the Spiritual, Dhyânîs had become “intellectual” through their contact with Matter, because they had already reached, during previous cycles of incarnation, that degree of intellect which enabled them to become independent and self-conscious entities, on this plane of Matter. They were reborn only by reason of Karmic effects. They entered those who were “ready,” and became the Arhats, or Sages, alluded to above. This needs explanation.

It does not mean that Monads entered Forms in which other Monads already were. They were “Essences,” “Intelligences,” and Conscious Spirits; Entities seeking to become still more conscious by uniting with more developed Matter. Their essence was too pure to be distinct from the Universal Essence; but their “Egos,” or Manas (since they are called Mânasaputra, born of Mahat, or Brahmâ) had to pass through earthly human experiences to become all-wise, and be able to start on the returning ascending cycle. The Monads are not discrete principles, limited or conditioned, but rays from that one universal absolute Principle. The entrance of one ray of sunlight following [pg 177] another through the same aperture into a dark room will not constitute two rays, but one ray intensified. It is not in the course of natural law that man should become a perfect Septenary Being before the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round. Yet he has all these principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it part of the evolutionary law that the Fifth Principle (Manas), should receive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such prematurely developed intellects (on the spiritual plane) in our Race are abnormal; they are those whom we have called the “Fifth-Rounders.” Even in the coming Seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was reached during the Fourth Root-Race. Thus, those who were “half ready,” who received “but a spark,” constitute the average humanity which have to acquire their intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution, after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the “Sons of Wisdom.” While those which “were not ready” at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower animal forms at the close of the Third Round, remained the “narrow-brained” of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees of intellectuality among the various races of men—the savage Bushman and the European—even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly disinherited, or the “unfavoured,” as some may think—nothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the human Monads, which “were not ready”; which have to evolve during the present Round, as also on the three remaining Globes—hence on four different planes of being—so as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in this connection. The Monads of the lowest specimens of humanity—the “narrow-brained”387 savage South-Sea Islander, the [pg 178] African, the Australian—had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only now; the latter are burdened with past, present and future Karma. In this respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of civilized countries.

Let us pause before giving any more such strange teachings. Let us try and find out how far any ancient Scriptures, and even Science, permit the possibility of, or even distinctly corroborate, such wild notions as are found in our Anthropogenesis.

Recapitulating that which has been said, we find that the Secret Doctrine claims for man: (1) a polygenetic origin; (2) a variety of modes of procreation before humanity fell into the ordinary method of generation; (3) that the evolution of animals—of the mammalians at any rate—follows that of man instead of preceding it. And this is diametrically opposed to the now generally accepted theories of evolution and the descent of man from an animal ancestor.

Let us, giving to Cæsar what is Cæsar's, examine, first of all, the chances for the polygenetic theory among the men of Science.

Now the majority of the Darwinian Evolutionists incline to a polygenetic explanation of the origin of races. On this particular question, however, as in many other cases, Scientists are at sixes and sevens; they agree to disagree.

Does man descend from one single couple or from several groups—monogenism or polygenism? As far as one can venture to pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses [?] will never be known [?], the second hypothesis is far the most probable.388

Abel Hovelacque, in his Science of Language, comes to a similar conclusion, arguing from the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer.

In an address delivered before the British Association, Professor W. H. Flower remarked on this question:

The view which appears best to accord with what is now known of the characters and distribution of the races of man ... is a modification of the monogenistic hypothesis[!]. Without entering into the difficult question of the method of man's first appearance upon the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity, at all events as measured by any historical standard. If we had any approach to a complete palæontological record, the history of man could be re-constructed, but nothing of the kind is forthcoming.

Such an admission must be regarded as fatal to the dogmatism of the Physical Evolutionists, and as opening a wide margin to Occult speculations. [pg 179] The opponents of the Darwinian theory were, and still remain, polygenists. Such “intellectual giants” as John Crawford and James Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in their day there was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this theory. It was only in 1864 that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of unity, of which Messrs. Huxley and Lubbock became the first coryphæi.

As regards the other question, of the priority of man to the animals in the order of evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very impossible in it, and is but logical. For, man becomes that Macrocosm for the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a physical standpoint, all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral—which is light itself, crystallized and immetallized—from plants to the creatures which preceded the first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical structures by means of the “cast-off dust” of those minerals, and the refuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead bodies, on which they fed and which gave them their outer bodies. In his turn also, man grew more physical, by reäbsorbing into his system that which he had given out, and which became transformed in the living animal crucibles through which it had passed, owing to Nature's alchemical transmutations. There were animals in those days of which our Modern Naturalists have never dreamed; and the stronger became physical material man—the giants of those times—the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne Humanity separated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child-bearing engines, it ceased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of the body. But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on the human plane—before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say—all this vital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the production of the first mammal-animal forms. Evolution is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught; and Nature never leaves an atom unused. Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are directed towards one point—Man. The progress in the succession of beings, says Agassiz:

Consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and among the vertebrates, especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first palæozoic fishes.389

[pg 180]

Just so; but the “palæozoic fishes” are at the lower curve of the arc of the evolution of forms, and this Round began with Astral Man, the reflection of the Dhyân Chohans, called the “Builders.” Man is the alpha and the omega of objective creation. As said in Isis Unveiled:

All things had their origin in Spirit—evolution having originally begun from above and proceeding downwards, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory.390

Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent Naturalist above quoted is one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of evolution, the observations made would greatly interfere with the modern theory, which has now almost become (Darwinian) law.

But in citing the passage from Agassiz' work with approval, it must not be understood that the Occultists are making any concession to the theory which derives man from the animal kingdom. The fact that in this Round he preceded the mammalia is obviously not impugned by the consideration that the latter follow in the wake of man.

25. How did the Mânasa, the Sons of Wisdom, act? They rejected the Self-born.391 They are not ready. They spurned the Sweat-born.392 They are not quite ready. They would not enter the first Egg-born.393

To a Theist or a Christian this verse would suggest a rather theological idea: that of the Fall of the Angels through Pride. In the Secret Doctrine, however, the reasons for the refusal to incarnate in half-ready physical bodies seem to be more connected with physiological than metaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were sufficiently ready. The Incarnating Powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned the rest.

By a curious coincidence, when selecting a familiar name for the [pg 181] continent on which the first Androgynes, the Third Root-Race, separated, the writer chose, on geographical considerations, that of “Lemuria,” invented by Mr. P. L. Sclater. It was only later that, on reading Hæckel's Pedigree of Man, it was found that the German “Animalist” had chosen the name for his late continent. He traces, properly enough, the centre of human evolution to Lemuria, but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that “cradle of mankind,” he pictures the gradual transformation of the anthropoid mammal into the primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in America man sprang from a branch of the platyrrhine apes, independently of the origination of the African and Asian root-stocks from the old world catarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as usual, at loggerheads on this question, as on many others. We shall examine this claim in the light of Esoteric Philosophy in Stanza VIII. Meanwhile, let us give a few moments of attention to the various consecutive modes of procreation according to the laws of Evolution.

Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub-races of the Third Human Race, by those who found themselves endowed with the “Sacred Fire” from the Spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual Parents of Man, as the lower Pitri Devatâs (the Pitris) were the Progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as “towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositories of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.” Have they likewise fallen, if, then, incarnation was the “Fall”?

Of this presently. The only thing now to be noted of these is, that the chief Gods and Heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these Men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in these Gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity. They were the Pre-Adamite and the Divine Races, with which even Theology, in whose sight they are all the “accursed Cainite races,” now begins to busy itself.

But the action of the “Spiritual Progenitors” of that Race has first to be disposed of. A very difficult and abstruse point has to be explained with regard to Shlokas 26 and 27.

[pg 182]

26. When the Sweat-born produced the Egg-born, the two-fold,394the mighty, the powerful with bones, the Lords of Wisdom said: “Now shall we create.”

Why “now”—and not earlier? This the following Shloka explains.

27. The Third Race became the Vâhan395 of the Lords of Wisdom. It created Sons of Will and Yoga, by Kriyâshakti it created them, the Holy Fathers, Ancestors of the Arhats....

How did they “create,” since the “Lords of Wisdom” are identical with the Hindû Devas, who refuse to “create”? Clearly they are the Kumâras of the Hindû Pantheon and Purânas, those Elder Sons of Brahmâ:

Sanandana and the other sous of Vedhas [who], previously created by him ... without desire or passion, [remained chaste] inspired with holy wisdom ... and undesirous of progeny.396

The power, by which they first created, is that which has since caused them to be degraded from their high status to the position of Evil Spirits, of Satan and his Host—created in their turn by the unclean fancy of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyâshakti, that mysterious and divine power, latent in the will of every man, which, if not called to life, quickened and developed by Yoga-training, remains dormant in 999,999 men out of a million, and so gets atrophied. This power is explained in the “Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,”397 as follows:

Kriyâshakti:—The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally, if one's attention [and will] is deeply concentrated upon it. Similarly, an intense volition will be followed by the desired result.

A Yogî generally performs his wonders by means of Ichchhâshakti (Will-power) and Kriyâshakti.

[pg 183]

The Third Race had thus created the so-called “Sons of Will and Yoga,” or the “Ancestors”—the Spiritual Forefathers—of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or Mahâtmâs, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the “Fall of Man.” For Creation is but the result of Will acting on phenomenal Matter, the calling forth out of it the Primordial Divine Light and Eternal Life. They were the “Holy Seed Grain” of the future Saviours of Humanity.

Here we have to again make a break, in order to explain certain difficult points, of which there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such interruptions.398

The order of the evolution of the Human Races stands as follows in the Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and has already been given:

The first men were Chhâyâs (1); the Second, the “Sweat-born” (2); the Third, “Egg-born,” and the holy Fathers born by the power of Kriyâshakti (3); the Fourth were the children of the Padmapâni [Chenresi] (4).

Of course such primeval modes of procreation—by the evolution of one's image; through drops of perspiration; after that by Yoga; and then by what people will regard as magic (Kriyâshakti)—are doomed beforehand to be regarded as fairy-tales. Nevertheless, beginning with the first and ending with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in them, nor anything which may not be shown to be natural. This must be proven.

1. Chhâyâ-birth, or that primeval mode of sexless procreation—the First Race having oozed out, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris—is hinted at in a cosmic allegory in the Purânas.399 It is the beautiful allegory and story of Sanjñâ, the daughter of Vishvakarman—married to the Sun, who, “unable to endure the fervours of her Lord,” gave him her Chhâyâ (shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the Chhâyâ to be his wife, begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith—an ethereal shadow also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster millions of years ago.

[pg 184]

But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of the Paurânic authors. We have another proof ready. If the materialized forms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the bodies of certain mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid—the “creation” of the First Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind of procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the mystery nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any greater—while it is far more comprehensible to the mind of the true metaphysical thinker—than the mystery of the conception of the fœtus, its gestation and birth as a child, as we now know it.

Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the Purânas about the “Sweat-born.”

2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogî, eminent in holy wisdom and pious austerities, which, finally, awaken the jealousy of the Gods, who are represented in the Hindû Scriptures as being in never-ending strife with the Ascetics. Indra, the “King of the Gods,”400 finally sends one of his female Apsarases to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah sending Sarah, Abraham's wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but in truth it is these Gods (and God), who are ever trying to disturb Ascetics and thus make them lose the fruit of their austerities, who ought to be regarded as “tempting demons,” instead of applying the term to the Rudras, Kumâras, and Asuras, whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing reproach to the Don Juanic Gods of the Pantheon. But it is the reverse that we find in all the Paurânic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.

The King of the Gods, or Indra, sends a beautiful Apsaras (nymph) named Pramlochâ to seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her unholy purpose and “nine hundred and seven years six months and three days”401 spent in her company seem to the Sage as one day. When this psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni bitterly curses the creature who has seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. “Depart, begone!” he cries, “vile bundle of delusions!” And Pramlochâ, terrified, flies away, wiping the perspiration [pg 185]from her body with the leaves of the trees as she passes through the air.

The nymph went from tree to tree, and, as, with the dusky shoots that crowned their summits, she dried her limbs, the child she had conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews; and the winds collected them into one mass. “This,” said Soma [the Moon], “I matured by my rays; and gradually it increased in size, till the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely girl named Mârishâ.”402

Now Kandu stands for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one “devoid of mind,” a fact hinted at by his being unable to discern a period of nearly one thousand years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so easily deluded and blinded. Here is a variant of the allegory in Genesis, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the “Lord God” breathes the “breath of life” but not of intellect and discrimination, which are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first development of Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect is of the earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and the Divine Soul. Pramlochâ is the Hindû Lilith of the Âryan Adam; and Mârishâ, the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the “Sweat-born,” and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of mankind.

It is not Indra, who in this case figures in the Purânas, but Kâmadeva, the God of love and desire, who sends Pramlochâ on Earth. Logic, as well as the Esoteric Doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kâma is the king and lord of the Apsarases, of whom Pramlochâ is one; and, therefore, when Kandu, cursing her, exclaims: “Thou hast performed the office assigned by the monarch of the gods, go!”—he must mean by that monarch Kâma, and not Indra, to whom the Apsarases are not subservient. For Kâma, again, is in the Rig Veda403 the personification of that feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the First Movement that stirred the One, after its manifestation from the purely Abstract Principle, to create.

Desire first arose in It, which was the Primal Germ of Mind; and which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity.

[pg 186]

A Hymn in the Atharva Veda exalts Kâma into a supreme God and Creator, and says:

Kâma was born the first. Him, neither Gods nor Fathers [Pitris] nor Men have equalled.

The Atharva Veda identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to that God. The Taittirîya Brâhmana makes him allegorically the son of Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Shraddhâ (faith). Elsewhere Kâma is born from the heart of Brahmâ; therefore he is Âtmabhû “Self-Existent,” and Aja, the “Unborn.” His sending Pramlochâ has a deep philosophical meaning; sent by Indra—the narrative has none. As Erôs was connected in early Greek mythology with the world's creation, and only afterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kâma in his original Vedic character; the Harivamsha making him a son of Lakshmî, who is Venus. The allegory, as said, shows the psychic element developing the physiological, before the birth of Daksha—the progenitor of real physical men—who is made to be born from Mârishâ and before whose time living beings and men were procreated “by the will, by sight, by touch, and by yoga,” as will be shown.

This, then, is the allegory on the mode of procreation of the Second or the “Sweat-born.” The same for the Third Race in its final development.

Mârishâ, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the Prachetases, the production of the “Mind-born” sons of Brahmâ also,404 from whom they beget the Patriarch Daksha—a son of Brahmâ also in a former Kalpa or life, explain and add the Purânas, in order to mislead, yet speaking the truth.

3. The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of “Sweat,” which, after many a transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more difficult to imagine or realize than the growth of the fœtus [pg 187] from an imperceptible germ, and its subsequent development into a child, and then into a strong, heavy man. But the Third Race changes yet again its mode of procreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a vis formativa, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater drops, which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies—huge eggs. In these the human fœtus gestated for several years. In the Purânas, Mârishâ, the daughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetases, and the mother of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first human-like Progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The evolution of man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the universe, the macrocosm. His evolution stands between that of the latter and that of the animal, for which man, in his turn, is a macrocosm.

Then the Third Race becomes:

4. The Androgyne, or Hermaphrodite. This process of men-bearing explains, perhaps, why Aristophanes, in Plato's Banquet, describes the nature of the old race as “androgynous,” the form of every individual being rounded, “having the back and sides as in a circle,” whose “manner of running was circular ... terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition.” Therefore, to make them weaker, “Zeus divided them [in the Third Root-Race] into two, and Apollo [the Sun], under his direction, closed up the skin.”

The Madagascans—the island belonged to Lemuria—have a tradition about the first man. He lived at first without eating, and, having indulged in food, a swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, there emerged from it a female, who became the mother of their race. Truly, “we have our sciences of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet open.... The polyps ... produce their offspring from themselves, like the buds and ramifications of a tree....” Why not the primitive human polyp? The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation into the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately develop into a sea-nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to its parent-organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia once more put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to understand that a form may be evolved—as in the sexual Lemurians from hermaphrodite parentage—quite unlike its immediate [pg 188] progenitors. It is, moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of Heredity, its servant.

The meaning of the last sentence in the above-quoted Commentary on Shloka 27, namely, that the Fourth Race were the children of Padmapâni, may find its explanation in a certain letter from the Inspirer of Esoteric Buddhism:

The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub-race of the Fourth Root-Race—the above-mentioned Chinamen and their off-shoots and branchlets (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux are all remnants of this last offshoot).

Padmapâni or Avalokiteshvara, in Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now, Avalokiteshvara is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine regions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the Progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men. Padmapâni-Avalokiteshvara is called esoterically Bodhisattva (or Dhyân Chohan) Chenresi Vanchug, “the powerful and all-seeing.” He is considered now as the greatest protector of Asia in general, and of Tibet in particular. In order to guide the Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, and preserve the great Arhats in the world, this heavenly Being is credited with manifesting himself from age to age in human form. A popular legend has it that whenever faith begins to die out in the world, Padmapâni Chenresi, the “Lotus-bearer,” emits a brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two great Lamas—the Dalai and Teschu Lamas; finally, it is believed that he will incarnate as the “most perfect Buddha” in Tibet, instead of in India, where his predecessors, the great Rishis and Manus had appeared in the beginning of our Race, but now appear no longer. Even the exoteric appearance of Dhyâni Chenresi is suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching. He is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and the progenitor of all the human Races after the Third—the first complete one—and thus is represented as the culmination of the four Primeval Races in his eleven-faced form. This is a column built in four rows, each series having three faces or heads of different complexions; the three faces for each Race being typical of its three fundamental physiological transformations. The first is white (moon-coloured); the second is yellow; the third, red-brown; the fourth, in which are only two faces—the third face being left a blank; a reference to the untimely end of the Atlanteans—is brown-black. Padmapâni (Daksha) [pg 189] is seated on the column, and forms the apex. In this reference compare Shloka 39. The Dhyân Chohan is represented with four arms, another allusion to the four Races. For while two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus—Padmapâni, the “Lotus-bearer”; the flower symbolizing generation—and the fourth holds a serpent, emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and on his head the sign of water [Symbol: two horizontal rows of wave-like symbols]—matter, deluge—while on his brow rests the third eye, Shiva's eye, that of spiritual insight. His name is “Protector” (of Tibet), “Saviour of Humanity.” On other occasions when he has only two arms, he is Chenresi the Dhyânî, and Bodhisattva, Chakna Padma Karpo, “he who holds a white lotus.” His other name is Chantong, “he of the thousand eyes,” when he is endowed with a thousand arms and hands, on the palm of each of which is represented an eye of Wisdom, these arms radiating from his body like a forest of rays. Another of his names in Sanskrit is Lokapati or Lokanâtha, “Lord of the World”; and in Tibetan Jigten Gonpo, “Protector and Saviour” against evil of any kind.405

Padmapâni, however, is the “Lotus-bearer” symbolically only for the profane; esoterically, it means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of which is called Pâdma, and represents one half of the life of Brahmâ. Though really a minor Kalpa, it is called Mahâ, “great,” because it comprises the age in which Brahmâ sprang from a lotus. Theoretically, the Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and subdivided in Space and Time, each division—down to the smallest—having its own Dhyânî as patron or regent. Padmapâni (Avalokiteshvara) becomes, in China, in his female aspect, Kwan-yin, “who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to save mankind.” The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the constellations on the respective “birthdays” of these Dhyânîs—Amitabha (the A-mi-to Fo, of China), included: e.g., on the 19th day of the second month, on the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day of the third month,406 etc.—gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for performing what are called “magic” feats. The future of an individual is seen, with all its coming events marshalled in order, in a magic mirror placed under the ray of certain constellations. But—beware of the reverse of the medal, Sorcery.

[pg 190]

Stanza VIII. Evolution Of The Animal Mammalians: The First Fall.

28. How the first mammals were produced. 29. A quasi-Darwinian evolution. 30. The animals get solid bodies. 31. Their separation into sexes. 32. The first sin of the mindless men.

28. From the drops of sweat, from the residue of the substance, matter from dead bodies of men and animals of the Wheel before,407 and from cast-off dust, the first animals408were produced.

The Occult Doctrine maintains that, in this Round, the mammalians were a later work of evolution than man. Evolution proceeds in Cycles. The great Manvantaric Cycle of Seven Rounds, beginning in the First Round with the mineral, vegetable, and animal, brings its evolutionary work on the descending arc to a dead stop in the middle of the Fourth Race, at the close of the first half of the Fourth Round. It is on our Earth, then—the Fourth Sphere and the lowest—and in the present Round, that this middle point has been reached. And since the Monad has passed, after its first “immetallization” on Globe A, through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds in every degree of the three states of matter, except the last degree of the third or solid state, which it reached only at the “mid-point of evolution,” it is but logical and natural that at the beginning of the Fourth Round on Globe D, Man should be the first to appear; and also that his frame should be of the most tenuous matter that is compatible with objectivity. To make it still clearer: if the Monad begins its cycle of incarnations through the three objective kingdoms on the descending curved line, it has necessarily to enter on the reäscending curved line of the Sphere as a man also. On the descending arc it is the spiritual which gradually transforms into the material. On the middle line of the base, Spirit and Matter are equilibrized in Man. On the ascending arc, Spirit is slowly reässerting itself at the expense of the physical, or Matter, so that, at the close of the Seventh Race of the Seventh Round, the Monad will find itself as free from Matter and all its [pg 191] qualities as it was in the beginning; having gained in addition the experience and wisdom, the fruitage of all its personal lives, without their evil and temptations.

This order of evolution is found also in the first and second chapters of Genesis, if one reads it in its true esoteric sense; for Chapter i contains the history of the first Three Rounds, as well as that of the first Three Races of the Fourth, up to the moment when Man is called to conscious life by the Elohim of Wisdom. In Chapter i, animals, whales and fowls of the air, are created before the androgyne Adam.409 In Chapter ii, Adam (the sexless) comes first, and the animals only appear after him. Even the state of mental torpor and unconsciousness of the first two Races, and of the first half of the Third Race, is symbolized, in the second chapter of Genesis, by the deep sleep of Adam. It is the dreamless sleep of mental inaction, the slumber of the Soul and Mind, which is meant by that “sleep,” and not at all the physiological process of differentiation of sexes, as a learned French theorist, M. Naudin, imagined.

The Purânas, the Chaldæan and Egyptian fragments, and also the Chinese traditions, all show an agreement with the Secret Doctrine as to the process and order of evolution. We find in them the corroboration of almost all our teaching: for instance, the statement concerning the oviparous mode of procreation of the Third Race, and even a hint at a less innocent mode of procreation of the first mammal forms. “Gigantic, transparent, dumb and monstrous they were,” says the Commentary. Study in this connection the stories of the several Rishis and their multifarious progeny. Pulastya is the father of all the Serpents and Nâgas—an oviparous brood; Kashyapa is grandsire, through his wife Tâmrâ, of the birds and of Garuda, king of the feathered tribe; while by his wife Surabhi, he was the parent of cows and buffaloes, etc.

In the Secret Doctrine, the first Nâgas—Beings wiser than Serpents—are the “Sons of Will and Yoga,” born before the complete separation of the sexes, “matured in the man-bearing eggs410 produced by [pg 192] the power (Kriyâshakti) of the holy Sages” of the early Third Race.411

“In these were incarnated the Lords of the three [upper] worlds—the various classes of Rudras, who had been Tushitas, who had been Jayas, who are Âdityas;” for, as explained by Parâshara: “There are a hundred appellations of the immeasurably mighty Rudras.”

Some of the descendants of the primitive Nâgas, the Serpents of Wisdom, peopled America, when its continent arose during the palmy days of the great Atlantis; America being the Pâtâla or Antipodes of Jambu-dvîpa, not of Bhârata-varsha. Otherwise, whence the traditions and legends—the latter always more true than history, as says Augustin Thierry—and even the identity in the names of certain “medicine men” and priests, who exist to this day in Mexico? We shall have to say something of the Nargals and the Nagals, and also of Nagalism, called “devil-worship” by the missionaries.

In almost all the Purânas, the story of the “Sacrifice of Daksha” is given, the oldest account of which is to be found in the Vâyu Purâna. Allegorical as it is, there is more meaning and biological revelation in it to a Naturalist, than in all the pseudo-scientific vagaries, which are regarded as learned theories and hypotheses.

Daksha, who is regarded as the Chief Progenitor, is, moreover, pointed out as the creator of physical man, in the “fable” which makes him lose his head from his body in the general strife between the Gods and the Raumas. This head, being burnt in the fire, is replaced by the head of a ram, according to the Kâshi Khanda of the Skanda Purâna. Now the ram's head and horns are ever the symbol of generating power and of reproductive force, and are phallic. As we have shown, it is Daksha who establishes the era of men engendered by sexual intercourse. This mode of procreation did not occur suddenly, however, as one might think, but required long ages before it became the one “natural” way. Therefore, Daksha's sacrifice to the Gods is shown to have been interfered with by Shiva—the Destroying Deity, Evolution and Progress personified, who is the Regenerator at the same time; who destroys things under one form but to recall them to life [pg 193] under another more perfect type. Shiva-Rudra creates the terrible Vîrabhadra, born of his breath, the “thousand-headed, thousand-armed” monster, and commissions him to destroy the sacrifice prepared by Daksha. Then Vîrabhadra, “abiding in the region of ghosts (ethereal men) ... created from the pores of his skin (Roma-kûpas) powerful Raumas.”412 Now, however mythical the allegory, the Mahâbhârata413—which is as much history as is the Iliad—shows the Raumas and other races springing in the same manner from the Roma-kûpas, hair or skin pores. This allegorical description of Daksha's “sacrifice” is full of significance to the students of the Secret Doctrine who know of the “Sweat-born.”

In the Vâyu Purâna's account of the sacrifice, moreover, it is said to have taken place in the presence of creatures born from the egg, from the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally only, from the womb.414

Daksha typifies the early Third Race, holy and pure, as yet devoid of an Individual Ego, and possessing passive capacities only. Brahmâ, therefore, commands him to create (in the exoteric texts); when, obeying the command, he made “inferior and superior” (Avara and Vara) progeny (Putra), bipeds and quadrupeds; and by his will, gave birth to females, to the Gods, the Daityas (Giants of the Fourth Race), the snake-gods, animals, cattle and the Dânavas (Titans and Demon Magicians) and other beings.

From that period forward, living creatures were engendered by sexual intercourse. Before the time of Daksha, they were variously propagated—by the will, by sight, by touch, and by the influence of religious austerities practised by devout sages and holy saints.415

And now comes the simply zoölogical teaching.

29. Animals with bones, dragons of the deep, and flying Sarpas416 were added to the creeping things. They that creep on the ground got wings. They of the long necks in the water became the progenitors of the fowls of the air.

This is a point on which the teachings and modern biological speculation [pg 194] are in perfect accord. The missing links representing this transition process between reptile and bird are apparent to the veriest bigot, especially in the Ornithoscelidæ, Hesperornis, and the Archæopteryx of Vogt.

30. During the Third,417 the boneless animals grew and changed; they became animals with bones, their Chhâyâs became solid.418

Vertebrates, and after that mammalians. Before that the animals were also ethereal proto-organisms, just as man was.

31. The animals separated the first.419 They began to breed. The two-fold man420 separated also. He421 said: “Let us as they; let us unite and make creatures.” They did....

32. And those which had no Spark422 took huge she-animals unto them. They begat upon them dumb races. Dumb they423were themselves. But their tongues untied.424 The tongues of their progeny remained still. Monsters they bred. A race of crooked red-hair-covered monsters going on all fours.425 A dumb race, to keep the shame untold.426

The fact of former hermaphrodite mammals and the subsequent separation of sexes is now indisputable, even from the standpoint of Biology. As Prof. Oscar Schmidt, an avowed Darwinist, shows:

Use and disuse, combined with selection, elucidate [?] the separation of the sexes, and the existence, otherwise totally incomprehensible, of rudimentary sexual organs. In the Vertebrata especially, each sex possesses such distinct traces of the reproductive apparatus characteristic of the other, that even antiquity assumed hermaphroditism as a natural primæval condition of mankind.... The tenacity with which these rudiments of sexual organs are inherited is remarkable. In the class of mammals, actual hermaphroditism is unheard of, although through the whole [pg 195]period of their development they drag along with them these residues, borne by their unknown ancestry, no one can say how long.427

“The animals separated the first,” says Shloka 31. Bear in mind that at that period men were different, even physiologically, to what they are now; the middle point of the Fifth Race being already passed. We are not told what the “huge she-animals” were; but they certainly were as different from any we now know, as were the “men” from the men of to-day.

This was the first physical “fall into matter” of some of the then existing and lower races. Bear in mind Shloka 24. The “Sons of Wisdom” had spurned the early Third Race, i.e., the non-developed, and are shown incarnating in, and thereby endowing with intellect, the later Third Race. Thus the sin of the brainless or “mindless” Races, who had no “spark” and were irresponsible, fell upon those who failed to do by them their Karmic duty.

What May Be The Objections To The Foregoing.

Thus Occultism rejects the idea that Nature developed man from the ape, or even from an ancestor common to both; but, on the contrary, traces some of the most anthropoid species to the Third Race man of the early Atlantean Period. As this proposition will be maintained and defended elsewhere, a few words more are all that are needed at present. For greater clearness, however, we shall repeat in brief what was said previously in Volume I, Stanza VI.

Our teachings show that, while it is quite correct to say that Nature had, at one time, built round the human astral form an ape-like external shape, it is also as correct that this shape was no more that of the “missing link,” than were the multitudinous other coverings of that astral form, during the course of its natural evolution through all the kingdoms of Nature. Nor was it, as has been shown, on this Fourth Round Planet that such evolution took place, but only during the First, Second, and Third Rounds, when Man was, in turn, “a stone, a plant, and an animal” until he became what he was in the First Root-Race of present Humanity. The real line of evolution differs from the Darwinian, and the two systems are irreconcilable, unless the latter is divorced from the dogmas of “natural selection” and the like. [pg 196] Indeed, between the Moneron of Hæckel and the Sarîsripa of Manu, there lies an impassable chasm in the shape of the Jîva; for the “human” Monad, whether “immetallized” in the stone-atom, or “in-vegetalized” in the plant, or “inanimalized” in the animal, is still ever a divine, hence also a human Monad. It ceases to be human only when it becomes absolutely divine. The terms “mineral,” “vegetable” and “animal” Monad are intended to create a superficial distinction: there is no such thing as a Monad (Jîva) other than divine, and consequently having once been, or having in the future to become, human. The latter term has to remain meaningless unless this difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop out of the Shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within, the plane of primæval differentiation. It is divine in its higher and human in its lower condition—the adjectives “higher” and “lower” being used for lack of better words—but a Monad it remains at all times, save in the Nirvânic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever external forms. As the Logos reflects the Universe in the Divine Mind, and the Manifested Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it repeating an Eastern teaching, so the Monad has, during the cycle of its incarnations, to reflect in itself every root-form of each kingdom. Therefore, the Kabalists say correctly that “Man becomes a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, a spirit, and finally God,” thus accomplishing his cycle or circuit and returning to the point from which he had started as the Heavenly Man. But by “Man” the Divine Monad is meant, and not the Thinking Entity, much less his Physical Body. The men of Science now try to trace the immortal Soul, while rejecting its existence, through a series of animal forms from the lowest to the highest; whereas, in truth, all the present fauna are the descendants of those primordial monsters of which the Stanzas speak. The animals—the creeping beasts and those in the waters that preceded Man in this Fourth Round, as well as those contemporary with the Third Race, and again the mammalia that are posterior to the Third and Fourth Races—all are either directly or indirectly the mutual and correlative product, physically, of Man. It is correct to say that the man of this Manvantara, i.e., of the three preceding Rounds, has passed through all the kingdoms of Nature. That he was “a stone, a plant, an animal.” But (a) these stones, plants, and animals were the prototypes, the filmy presentments of those of the Fourth Round; and (b) even those at the beginning of the Fourth Round were the astral shadows, as the [pg 197] Occultists express it, of the present stones, plants and animals. And finally, neither the forms nor genera of either man, animal, or plant were what they became later. Thus the astral prototypes of the lower beings of the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, which preceded the Chhâyâs of Men, were the consolidated, though still very ethereal sheaths of the still more ethereal forms, or models, produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe D, as set forth in Esoteric Buddhism; produced “from the residue of the substance; matter from dead bodies of men and [other extinct] animals of the Wheel before,” or the previous Third Round—as Shloka 28 tells us. Hence, while the nondescript “animals” that preceded the Astral Man at the beginning of this Life-cycle on our Earth were still, so to speak, the progeny of the Man of the Third Round, the mammalians of this Round owe their existence, in a great measure, to Man again. Moreover, the “ancestor” of the present anthropoid animal, the ape, is the direct production of the yet mindless Man, who desecrated his human dignity by putting himself physically on the level of an animal.

The above accounts for some of the alleged physiological proofs, brought forward by the Anthropologists as a demonstration of the descent of man from the animals.

The point most insisted upon by the Evolutionists is that, “The history of the embryo is an epitome of that of the race.” That:

Every organism, in its development from the egg, runs through a series of forms, through which, in like succession, its ancestors have passed in the long course of earth's history.428 The history of the embryo ... is a picture in little, and outline of that of the race. This conception forms the gist of our fundamental biogenetic law, which we are obliged to place at the head of the study of the fundamental law of organic development.429

This modern theory was known as a fact to, and far more philosophically expressed by, the Sages and Occultists from the remotest [pg 198] ages. A passage from Isis Unveiled may here be cited to furnish a few points of comparison. It was asked why, with all their great learning, Physiologists were unable to explain teratological phenomena?

Any Anatomist who has made the development and growth of the embryo ... “a subject of special study,” can tell, without much brain-work, what daily experience and the evidence of his own eyes show him, viz., that up to a certain period, the human embryo is a facsimile of a young batrachian in its first remove from the spawn—a tadpole. But no Physiologist or Anatomist seems to have had the idea of applying to the development of the human being—from the first instant of its physical appearance as a germ to its ultimate formation and birth—the Pythagorean esoteric doctrine of metempsychosis, so erroneously interpreted by critics. The meaning of the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a plant, a beast; a beast, a man,” etc., was mentioned in another place in relation to the spiritual and physical evolution of men on this Earth. We will now add a few more words to make the matter clearer.

What is the primitive shape of the future man? A grain, a corpuscle, say some Physiologists; a molecule, an ovum of the ovum, say others. If it could be analyzed—by the microscope or otherwise—of what ought we to expect to find it composed? Analogically, we should say, of a nucleus of inorganic matter, deposited from the circulation at the germinating point, and united with a deposit of organic matter. In other words, this infinitesimal nucleus of the future man is composed of the same elements as a stone—of the same elements as the Earth, which the man is destined to inhabit. Moses is cited by the Kabalists as authority for the remark, that it required earth and water to make a living being, and thus it may be said that man first appears as a stone.

At the end of three or four weeks the ovum has assumed a plant-like appearance, one extremity having become spheroidal and the other tapering, like a carrot. Upon dissection it is found to be composed, like an onion, of very delicate laminæ or coats, enclosing a liquid. The laminæ approach each other at the lower end, and the embryo hangs from the root of the umbilicus almost like the fruit from the bough. The stone has now become changed, by “metempsychosis,” into a plant. Then the embryonic creature begins to shoot out, from the inside outward, its limbs, and develops its features. The eyes are visible as two black dots; the ears, nose, and mouth form depressions, like the points of a pineapple, before they begin to project. The embryo develops into an animal-like fœtus—the shape of a tadpole—and, like an amphibious reptile, lives in water and develops from it. Its monad has not yet become either human or immortal, for the Kabalists tell us that this only occurs at the “fourth hour.” One by one the fœtus assumes the characteristics of the human being, the first flutter of the immortal breath passes through its being: it moves; ... and the divine essence settles in the infant frame, which it will inhabit until the moment of physical death, when man becomes a spirit.

This mysterious process of a nine-months' formation, the Kabalists call the completion of the “individual cycle of evolution.” As the fœtus develops amidst the liquor amnii in the womb, so the Earths germinate in the Universal Ether, or [pg 199]Astral Fluid, in the Womb of the Universe. These cosmic children, like their pigmy inhabitants, are first nuclei; then ovules; then gradually mature; and becoming mothers, in their turn, develop mineral, vegetable, animal, and human forms. From centre to circumference, from the imperceptible vesicle to the uttermost conceivable bounds of the cosmos, those glorious thinkers, the Occultists, trace cycle merging into cycle, containing and contained in an endless series. The embryo evolving in its pre-natal sphere, the individual in his family, the family in the state, the state in mankind, the earth in our system, that system in its central universe, the universe in the Kosmos, and the Kosmos in the One Cause—the Boundless and Endless.430

Thus runs their philosophy of evolution, differing as we see, from that of Hæckel.

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,

Whose body Nature is, and (Parabrahm) the Soul.

These are the proofs of Occultism, and they are rejected by Science. But how is the chasm between the mind of man and animal to be bridged in this case? How, if the anthropoid and homo primigenius had, argumenti gratiâ, a common ancestor—in the way modern speculation puts it—how did the two groups diverge so widely from one another as regards mental capacity? True, the Occultist may be told that in every case Occultism does what Science repeats; it gives a common ancestor to ape and man, since it makes the former issue from Primæval Man. Aye, but that “Primæval Man” was man only in external form. He was mindless and soulless at the time he begot, with a female animal monster, the forefather of a series of apes. This speculation—if speculation it be—is at least logical, and fills the chasm between the mind of man and animal. Thus it accounts for and explains the hitherto unaccountable and inexplicable. The fact—of which Science is almost certain—that, in the present stage of evolution, no issue can follow from the union of man and animal, is considered and explained elsewhere.