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- 23. The Self-Born were the Chhayas, the shadows from the bodies of the sons of twilight. Neither water nor fire could destroy them. Their sons were (so destroyed) (a).
(a) This verse cannot be understood without the help of the Commentaries. It means that the First Root-Race, the “ Shadows ” of the Progenitors, could not be injured, or destroyed by death. Being so ethereal and so little human in constitution, they could not be affected by any element — flood or fire. But their “ Sons,” the Second Root-Race, could be and were so destroyed. As the “ progenitors ” merged wholly in their own astral bodies, which were their progeny ; so that progeny was absorbed in its descendants, the “ Sweat-born.” These were the second Humanity — composed of the most heterogeneous gigantic semi-human monsters — the first attempts of material nature at building human bodies. The ever-blooming lands of the Second Continent (Greenland, among others) were transformed, in order, from Edens with their eternal spring, into hyperborean Hades. This transformation was due to the displacement of the great waters of the globe, to oceans changing their beds ; and the bulk of the Second Race perished in this first great throe of the evolution and consolidation of the globe during the human period. Of such great cataclysms there have already been four. * And we may expect a fifth for ourselves in due course of time.
The accounts in the various Purânas about our Progenitors are as contradictory in their details as everything else. Thus while, in the Rig Veda, Ida (or Ila) is called the Instructress of Vaivasvata Manu, Sayana makes of her a goddess presiding over the Earth, and the Sathapatha Brâhmana shows her to be the Manu’s daughter, an offering of his sacrifice, and, later on, his (Vaivasvata’s) wife, by whom he begat the race of Manus. In the Purânas, again, she is Vaivasvata’s daughter, yet the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the illegitimate son of the Moon (Soma) and the planet Jupiter’s (Brihaspati’s) wife, Tara. All this, which seems a jumble to the profane, is full of philosophical meaning to the Occultist. On the very face of the narrative a secret and sacred meaning is per-
* The first occurred when what is now the North Pole was separated from the later Continents.
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ceivable, all the details, however, being so purposely mixed up that the experienced eye of an Initiate alone can follow them and place the events in their proper order.
The story as told in the “ Mahabhârata ” strikes the key-note, and yet it needs to be explained by the secret sense contained in the Bhagavad Gîtâ. It is the prologue to the drama of our (Fifth) Humanity. While Vaivasvata was engaged in devotion on the river bank, a fish craves his protection from a bigger fish. He saves and places it in a jar, where, growing larger and larger, it communicates to him the news of the forthcoming deluge. It is the well-known “ Matsya Avatar,” the first Avatar of Vishnu, the Dagon * of the Chaldean Xisuthrus, and many other things besides. The story is too well known to need repetition. Vishnu orders a ship to be built, in which Manu is said to be saved along with the seven Rishis, the latter, however, being absent from other texts. Here the seven Rishis stand for the seven Races, the seven principles, and various other things ; for there is again a double mystery involved in this manifold allegory.
We have said elsewhere that the great Flood had several meanings, and that it referred, as also does the fall, to both spiritual and physical, cosmic and terrestrial, events : as above, so it is below. The ship or ark — navis — in short, being the symbol of the female generative principle, is typified in the heavens by the Moon, and on Earth by the Womb : both being the vessels and bearers of the seeds of life and being, which the sun, or Vishnu, the male principle, vivifies and fructifies. † The First Cosmic Flood refers to primordial creation, or the formation of Heaven and the Earths ; in which case Chaos and the great Deep stand for the “ Flood,” and the Moon for the “ Mother,” from whom proceed all the life-germs. ‡ But the terrestrial Deluge and
* We must remember that at the head of all the Babylonian gods were Ea, Anu, and the primeval Bel ; and that Ea, the first, was the God of Wisdom, the great “ God of Light ” and of the deep, and that he was identified with Oannes, or the Biblical Dagon — the man-fish who rose out of the Persian Gulf.
† See Part. II. § “ The Holy of Holies.”
‡ It is far later on that the Moon became a male god ; with the Hindus it was Soma, with the Chaldeans Nannak or Nannar, and Sin, the son of Mulil, the older Bel. The “ Akkadians ” called him the “ Lord of Ghosts ” ; and he was the god of Nipoor (Niffer) in northern Babylonia. It is Mulil who caused the waters of the Flood to fall from heaven on Earth, for which Xisuthrus would not allow him to approach his altar. As the modern Assyriologists have now ascertained, it is the northern Nipoor which is the centre whence Chaldean (black) magic spread ; and Eridu (the Southern) which was the primitive seat of the worship of the culture god, the god of divine wisdom — the Sun-God being the supreme deity everywhere. With the Jews, the Moon is connected with Israel’s Jehovah and his seed, because Ur was the chief seat of the worship of the Moon-god, and because Abraham is said to have come from Ur, when from A-bra(h)m, he becomes Abraham.
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its story has also its dual application. In one case it has reference to that mystery when mankind was saved from utter destruction, by the mortal woman being made the receptacle of the human seed at the end of the Third Race, * and in the other to the real and historical Atlantean submersion. In both cases the “ Host ” — or the Manu which saved the seed — is called Vaivasvata Manu. Hence the diversity between the Purânic and other versions ; while in the Sathapatha Brâhmana, Vaivasvata produces a daughter and begets from her the race of Manu ; which is a reference to the first human Manushyas, who had to create women by will (Kriyasakti ), before they were naturally born from the hermaphrodites as an independent sex, and who were, therefore, regarded as their creator’s daughters. The Purânic accounts make of her (Ida or Ila) the wife of Budha (Wisdom), the latter version referring to the events of the Atlantean flood, when Vaivasvata, the great Sage on Earth, saved the Fifth Root-race from being destroyed along with the remnants of the Fourth.
This is shown very clearly in the Bhagavad Gîtâ, where Krishna is made to say : —
“ The Seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my essence, were born from my mind : from them sprung (were born) the human races and the world.” (Chapter X., verse 6).
Here the four preceding “ Manus,” out of the seven, are the four Races † which have already lived, since Krishna belongs to the Fifth Race, his death having inaugurated the Kali Yuga. Thus Vaivasvata
* When Narada, the virgin-ascetic, threatened to put an end to the human race by preventing Daksha’s sons from procreating it.
† This is corroborated by a learned Brahmin. In his most excellent lectures on the Bhagavad Gîtâ (see “ Theosophist,” April, 1887, p. 444) the lecturer says : “ There is a peculiarity to which I must call your attention. He (Krishna) speaks here of four Manus. Why does he speak of four ? We are now in the seventh Manvantara, that of Vaivasvata. If he is speaking of the past Manus, he ought to speak of six, but he only mentions four. In some commentaries an attempt has been made to interpret this in a peculiar manner. The word ‘ Chatvaraha ’ is separated from the word ‘ Manavaha,’ and is made to refer to Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanatkumâra, and Sanatsujata, who are also included among the mind-born sons of Prajâpati. But this interpretation will lead to a most absurd conclusion, and make the sentence contradict itself. The persons alluded to in the text have a qualifying clause in the sentence. It is well known that Sanaka and the other three refused to create, though the other sons had consented to do so ; therefore, in speaking of those persons from whom humanity has sprung into existence, it would be absurd to include those four also in the list. The passage must be interpreted without splitting the compound into two nouns. The number of Manus will then be four, and the statement would then contradict the Purânic account, though it would be in harmony with the occult theory. You will recollect that it is stated (in Occultism) that we are now in the Fifth Root-Race. Each Root-Race is considered as the Santhathi of a particular Manu. Now, the Fourth Race has passed, or, in other words, there have been four past Manus. . . . .”
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Manu, the son of Sûrya (the Sun), and the saviour of our Race, is connected with the Seed of Life, both physically and spiritually. But, at present, while speaking of all, we have to concern ourselves only with the first two.
The “ Deluge ” is undeniably an universal tradition. “ Glacial periods ” were numerous, and so were the “ Deluges,” for various reasons. Stockwell and Croll enumerate some half dozen Glacial Periods and subsequent Deluges — the earliest of all being dated by them 850,000, and the last about 100,000, years ago. * But which was our Deluge ? Assuredly the former, the one which to this date remains recorded in the traditions of all the peoples, from the remotest antiquity ; the one that finally swept away the last peninsulas of Atlantis, beginning with Ruta and Daitya and ending with the (comparatively) small island mentioned by Plato. This is shown by the agreement of certain details in all the legends. It was the last of its gigantic character. The little deluge, the traces of which Baron Bunsen found in Central Asia, and which he places at about 10,000 years B.C., had nothing to do with either the semi-universal Deluge, or Noah’s flood — the latter being a purely mythical rendering of old traditions — nor even with the submersion of the last Atlantean island ; at least, only a moral connection.
Our Fifth Race (the non-initiated portions), hearing of many deluges, confused them, and now know of but one. This one altered the whole aspect of the globe in its interchange and shifting of land and sea.
We may compare the traditions of the Peruvians : — “ The Incas, seven in number, have repeopled the Earth after the deluge,” they say (Coste i, IV., p. 19) ; Humboldt mentions the Mexican version of the same legend, but confuses somewhat the details of the still-preserved legend concerning the American Noah. Nevertheless, the eminent Naturalist mentions twice seven companions and the divine bird which preceded the boat of the Aztecs, and thus makes fifteen elect instead of the seven and the fourteen. This was written probably under some involuntary reminiscence of Moses, who is said to have mentioned fifteen grandsons of Noah, who escaped with their grandsire. Then again Xisuthrus, the Chaldean Noah, is saved and translated alive to heaven — like Enoch — with the seven gods, the Kabirim, or the seven divine Titans ; again the Chinese Yao has seven figures which sail with him and which he will animate when he lands, and use for “ human seed.” Osiris, when he enters the ark, or solar boat, takes seven Rays with him, etc., etc.
Sanchoniathon makes the Aletæ or Titans (the Kabirim) contemporary
* “ Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,” xviii. ; “ American Journal of Science,” III., xi., 456 ; and Croll’s “ Climate and Time.” Lemuria was not submerged by a flood, but was destroyed by volcanic action, and afterwards sank.
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with Agruerus, the great Phœnician god (whom Faber sought to identify with Noah *) ; further, it is suspected that the name of “ Titan ” is derived from Tit-Ain — “ the fountains of the chaotic abyss ” † (Tit-Theus, or Tityus is “ the divine deluge ”) ; and thus the Titans, who are seven, are shown to be connected with the Flood and the seven Rishis saved by Vaivasvata Manu. ‡
They are the sons of Kronos (Time) and Rhea (the Earth) ; and as Agruerus, Saturn and Sydyk are one and the same personage, and as the seven Kabiri are said to be the sons of Sydyk or Kronos-Saturn, the Kabiri and Titans are identical. For once the pious Faber was right in his conclusions when he wrote : “ I have no doubt of the seven Titans and Kabiri being the same as the seven Rishis of the Hindu mythology (?), who are said to have escaped in a boat along with Manu, the head (?) of the family.”
But he is less fortunate in his speculations when he adds “ The Hindoos, in their wild legends have variously perverted the history of the Noachidae (? !), yet it is remarkable that they seem to have religiously adhered to the number seven.” § Hence Captain (Col.) Wilford very judiciously observes : that perhaps the seven Manus, the seven Brahmadicas and the seven Rishis are the same, and make only seven individual persons. || The seven Brahmadicas were Prajâpatis, or lords ‘ of the prajas or creatures.’ From them mankind was born, and they are probably the same with the seven Manus. . . . These seven grand ancestors of the human race were created for the purpose of replenishing the Earth with inhabitants.” (Asiatic Researches, Vol. V. p. 246) ; and Faber adds that : — “ the mutual resemblance of the Kabirs, the Titans, the Rishis, and the Noetic family, is too striking to be the effect of mere accident.” ¶
Faber was led into this mistake, and subsequently built his entire theory concerning the Kabiri, on the fact that the name of the scriptural
* Agruerus is Kronos, or Saturn, and the prototype of the Israelitish Jehovah. As connected with Argha, the Moon or Ark of salvation, Noah is mythologically one with Saturn. But then this cannot relate to the terrestrial flood. (But see Faber’s “ Kabiri,” Vol. I., pp. 35, 43, and 45.)
† See ibid., Vol. II., p. 240.
‡ Sanchoniathon says that the Titans were the sons of Kronos, and seven in number ; and he calls them fire-worshippers, Aletæ (sons of Agni ?), and diluvians. Al-ait is the god of fire.
§ Of which seven, let us remark, the Aryans, and not the Semites, were the originators, while the Jews got that number from the Chaldeans.
|| Seven individual sons of God, or Pitars and Pitris ; also in this case the sons of Kronos or Saturn (Kâla “ time ”) and Arkites, like the Kabiri and Titans, as their name — “ lunar ancestors ” — shows, the Moon being the Ark, or Argha, on the watery abyss of space.
¶ See “ Kabiri,” Vol. I., p. 131.
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Japhet is on the list of the Titans contained in a verse of the Orphic hymns. According to Orpheus the names of the seven “ Arkite ” Titans (whom Faber refuses to identify with the impious Titans, their descendants) were Kœus, Krœus, Phorcys, Kronos, Oceanus, Hyperion, and Iapetus : —
Κοῖὸν τε, Κροῖόν τε μέλαν, Φορκύν τε κραταιὸν, |
| — (Orph. apud Proclum. In Tim. lib. v. p. 295. |
But why could not the Babylonian Ezra have adopted the name of Iapetos for one of Noah’s sons ? The Kabiri, who are the Titans, are also called Manes and their mother Mania, according to Arnobius. (Adversum Gentes, lib. III., p. 124.) The Hindus can therefore claim with far more reason that the Manes mean their Manus, and that Mania is the female Manu. (See Ramayana.) Mania is Ila or Ida, the wife and daughter of Vaivasvata Manu, from whom “ he begat the race of Manus.” Like Rhea, the mother of the Titans, she is the Earth (Sayana making her the goddess of the Earth), and she is but the second edition and repetition of Vâch. Both Ida and Vâch are turned into males and females ; Ida becoming Sudyumna, and Vâch, “ the female Virâj,” turning into a woman in order to punish the Gandharvas ; one version referring to cosmic and divine theogony, the other to the later period. The Manes and Mania of Arnobius are names of Indian origin, appropriated by the Greeks and Latins and disfigured by them.
Thus it is no accident, but the result of one archaic doctrine common to all, of which the Israelites, through Ezra, the author of the modernised Mosaic books, were the latest adapters. So unceremonious were they with other people’s property, that Berosus ( Antiquitates Libyæ, 1, fol. 8 ), shows that Titea — of whom Diodorus makes the mother of the Titans or Diluvians ( See Bibl. lib. III. p. 170) — was the wife of Noah. For this Faber calls him the “ pseudo-Berosus,” yet accepts the information in order to register one proof more that the pagans have borrowed all their gods from the Jews, by transforming patriarchal material. According to our humble opinion, this is one of the best proofs possible of exactly the reverse. It shows as clearly as facts can show, that it is the Biblical pseudo-personages which are all borrowed from pagan myths, if myths they must be. It shows, at any rate, that Berosus was well aware of the source of Genesis, and that it bore the same cosmic astronomical character as the allegories of Isis-Osiris, and the Ark, and other older “ Arkite ” symbols. For, Berosus says that “ Titea magna ” was afterwards called Aretia, * and worshipped with the Earth ; and this
* Aretia is the female form of Artes (Egyptian Mars). Thence the Chaldean (and now Hebrew) word ארע (Aretz) “ Earth.” The author of “ Beiträge zur Kenntniss ” (Art. under “ Artes ” Mars) quotes : “ Addit Cedrenus (Salem I., 3) : Stella Martis ab
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identifies “ Titea,” Noah’s consort, with Rhea, the mother of the Titans, and with Ida — both being goddesses who preside over the Earth, and the mothers of the Manus and Manes (or Tit-an-Kabiri). And “ Titea-Aretia ” was worshipped as Horchia, says the same Berosus, and this is a title of Vesta, goddess of the Earth. “ Sicanus deificavit Aretiam, et nominavit eam linguâ Janigenâ Horchiam.” ( Ibid. lib. V. fol. 64. )
Scarce an ancient poet of historic or prehistoric days who failed to mention the sinking of the two continents — often called isles — in one form or another. Hence the destruction, besides Atlantis, of the Phlegyae. (See Pausanias and Nonus, who both tell how :
“ From its deep-rooted base the Phlegyan isle |
| — Dionysius lib xviii. p. 319). |
Faber felt convinced that the “ insulæ Phlegyæ ” were Atlantis. But all such allegories are more or less distorted echoes of the Hindu tradition about that great Cataclysm, which befell the Fourth, really human, though gigantic, Race, the one which preceded the Aryan. Yet, as just said, like all other legends, that of “ the Deluge has more than one meaning. It refers in Theogony, to pre-cosmic transformations, to spiritual correlations — however absurd the term may sound to a scientific ear — and also to subsequent Cosmogony ; to the great flood of waters (matter) in chaos, awakened and fructified by those Spirit-Rays which were swamped by, and perished in, the mysterious differentiation — a pre-cosmic mystery, the Prologue to the drama of Being. Anu, Bel, and Noah preceded Adam Kadmon, Adam the Red, and Noah ; just as Brahmâ, Vishnu, and Siva preceded Vaivasvata and the rest.” (See “ Isis Unveiled.,” Vol. II., pp. 420 et seq., where one or two of the seven meanings are hinted at.)
All this goes to show that the semi-universal deluge known to geology (first glacial period) must have occurred just at the time allotted to it by the Secret Doctrine : namely, 200,000 years (in round numbers) after the commencement of our fifth race, or about the time assigned by Messrs. Croll and Stockwell for the first glacial period : i.e., about 850,000 years ago. Thus, as the latter disturbance is attributed by geologists and astronomers to “ an extreme eccentricity of the Earth’s
Egyptiis vocatur Ertosi (plantare, generare). Significat autem hoc omnis generis procreationem et vivificationem, omnisque substantiæ et materiæ naturam et vim ordinantem atque procreantem.” It is Earth as “ source of being ; ” or, as explained by the author of “ The Source of Measures,” Arts is the same in Hebrew and Egyptian, and both combine the primeval idea of Earth as source ; precisely as in the Hebrew itself, under another form, Adam and Madim (Mars) are the same, and combine the idea of Earth with Adam under the form of H-Adam-H.
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orbit,” and as the Secret Doctrine attributes it to the same source, but with the addition of another factor, the shifting of the Earth’s axis — a proof of which may be found in the Book of Enoch, * if the veiled language of the Purânas is not understood — all this should tend to show that the ancients knew something of the “ modern discoveries ” of Science. Enoch, when speaking of “ the great inclination of the Earth,” which “ is in travail,” is quite significant and clear.
Is not this evident ? Nuah is Noah, floating on the waters in his ark ; the latter being the emblem of the Argha, or Moon, the feminine principle ; Noah is the “ spirit ” falling into matter. We find him, as soon as he descends upon the Earth, planting a vineyard, drinking of the wine, and getting drunk on it, i.e., the pure spirit becomes intoxicated as soon as it is finally imprisoned in matter. The seventh chapter of Genesis is only another version of the First. Thus, while the latter reads : “ and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters,” in ch. 7 it is said “ . . . and the waters prevailed . . . and the ark went (with Noah, the spirit) upon the face of the waters.” Thus Noah, if identical with the Chaldean Nuah, is the spirit vivifying matter, which latter is Chaos, represented by the Deep, or the Waters of the Flood. In the Babylonian legend (the pre-cosmical blended with the terrestrial event) it is Istar (Astaroth or Venus, the lunar goddess) who is shut up in the ark and sends out “ a dove in search of dry land.” (“ Isis Unveiled ” Vol. ii, pp. 423 and 424).
George Smith notes in the “ Tablets,” first the creation of the moon, and then that of the sun : “ Its beauty and perfection are extolled, and the regularity of its orbit, which led to its being considered the type of a judge and the regulator of the world.” If this story related simply to a cosmogonical cataclysm — even were this latter universal — why should the goddess Ishtar or Astoreth, the Moon, speak of the creation of the sun after the deluge ? The waters might have reached as high as the mountain of Nizir (Chaldean version), or Jebel Djudi (the deluge mountains of the Arabian legend), or yet Ararat (of the Biblical narrative), and even the Himalaya (of the Hindu tradition), and yet not reach the sun : the Bible itself stopped short of such a miracle ! It is evident that the deluge of the people who first recorded it had another meaning, less problematical and far more philosophical than that of an universal deluge, of which there are no geological traces whatever.
As all such Cataclysms are periodical and cyclical, and as Manu Vaivasvata figures as a generic character, under various circumstances and events (vide infra : “ The Seven Manus of Humanity ”), there seems to be no
* Chap. lxiv., Sect. xi.
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serious objection to the supposition that the first “ great flood ” had an allegorical, as well as a cosmic meaning, and that it happened at the end of the Satya Yuga, the “ age of Truth,” when the Second Root Race, “ The Manu with bones,” made its primeval appearance as “ the Sweat-Born.” *
The Second Flood — the so-called “ universal ” — which affected the Fourth Root Race (now conveniently regarded by theology as “ the accursed race of giants,” the Cainites, and “ the sons of Ham ”) is that flood which was first perceived by geology. If one carefully compares the accounts in the various legends of the Chaldees and other exoteric works of the nations, it will be found that all of them agree with the orthodox narratives given in the Brahmanical books. And it may be perceived that while, in the first account, “ there is no God or mortal yet on Earth,” when Manu Vaivasvata lands on the Himavan ; in the second, the Seven Rishis are allowed to keep him company : thus showing that whereas some accounts refer to the sidereal and cosmic Flood before the so-called creation, the others treat, one of the Great Flood of Matter on Earth, and the other of a real watery deluge. In the Satapatha Brâhmana, Manu finds that “ the Flood had swept away all living creatures, and he alone was left ” — i.e., the seed of life alone remained from the previous dissolution of the Universe, or Mahapralaya, after a “ Day of Brahmâ ” ; and the Mahabhârata refers simply to the geological cataclysm which swept away nearly all the Fourth Race to make room for the Fifth. Therefore is Vaivasvata Manu shown under three distinct attributes in our esoteric Cosmogony : † (a) as the “ Root-Manu ”
* All such expressions are explained in the “ Anthropogenesis ” of this Book, and elsewhere.
† One has to remember that, in the Hindu philosophy, every differentiated unit is such only through the cycles of Maya, being one in its essence with the Supreme or One Spirit. Hence arises the seeming confusion and contradiction in the various Purânas, and at times in the same Purâna, about the same individual. Vishnu — as the many-formed Brahmâ, and as Brahma (neuter) — is one, and yet he is said to be all the 28 Vyasas ( Vishnu Purâna ). “ In every Dvapara (third) age, Vishnu, in the person of Vyasa, divides the Veda, which is one, into four and many portions. Twenty-eight times have the Vedas been arranged by the great Rishis in the Vaivasvata Manvantara, in the Dvapara Yuga . . . and, consequently, twenty-eight Vyasas have passed away . . . they who were all in the form of Veda-Vyasas, who were the Vyasas of their respective eras. . . .” ( Book III., Ch. III. ) “ This world is Brahmâ in Brahmâ, from Brahmâ . . . nothing further to be known.” Then, again . . . “ There were in the First Manvantara seven celebrated sons of Vasishta, who in the Third Manvantara, were sons of Brahmâ (i.e., Rishis), the illustrious progeny of Urja.” This is plain : the Humanity of the First Manvantara is that of the seventh and of all the intermediate ones. The mankind of the First Root-Race is the mankind of the second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. To the last it forms a cyclic and constant reincarnation of the Monads belonging to the Dhyan Chohans of our Planetary chain.
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on Globe A in the First Round ; (b) as the “ seed of life ” on Globe D in the Fourth Round ; and (c) as the “ Seed of Man ” at the beginning of every Root-Race — in our Fifth Race especially. The very commencemen of the latter witnesses, during the Dvapara Yuga, * the destruction of the accursed sorcerers ; “ of that island (Plato speaking only of its last island) beyond the Pillars of Hercules, in the Atlantic Ocean, from which there was an easy transition to other islands in the neighbourhood of another large Continent ” (America). It is this “ Atlantic ” land which was connected with the “ White Island,” and this White Island was Ruta ; but it was not the Atala and the “ White Devil ” of Colonel Wilford (see “ Asiatic Researches,” Vol. VIII., p. 280), as already shown. It may well be remarked here that the Dvapara Yuga lasts 864,000 years, according to the Sanskrit texts ; and that, if the Kali Yuga began only about 5,000 years ago, that it is just 869,000 since that destruction took place. Again, these figures are not very widely different from those given by the geologists, who place their “ glacial period ” 850,000 years ago.
Then “ a woman was produced who came to Manu and declared herself his daughter, with whom he lived and begat the offspring of Manu.” This refers to the physiological transformation of sexes during the Third Root-Race. And the allegory is too transparently clear to need much explanation. Of course, as already remarked, in the separation of sexes an androgyne being was supposed to divide his body into two halves (as in the case of Brahmâ and Vâch, and even of Adam and Eve), and thus the female is, in a certain sense, his daughter, just as he will be her son, “ the flesh of his (and her) flesh and the bone of his (and her) bone.” Let it be also well remembered that not one of our Orientalists have yet learned to discern in those “ contradictions and amazing nonsense,” as some call the Purânas, that a reference to a Yuga may mean a Round, a Root-Race, and often a Sub-Race, as well as form a page torn out of pre-cosmic theogony. This double and triple meaning is proved by various references to one and the same individual apparently, under an identical name, while it refers, in fact, to events divided by entire Kalpas. A good instance is that of Ila. She is first represented as one thing and then as another. In the exoteric legends it is said that Manu Vaivasvata, desiring to create sons, instituted a sacrifice to Mitra and Varuna ; but, through a mistake of the officiating
* The Dvapara Yuga differs for each Race. All races have their own cycles, which fact causes a great difference. For instance, the Fourth Sub-Race of the Atlanteans was in its Kali-Yug, when destroyed, whereas the Fifth was in its Satya or Krita Yuga. The Aryan Race is now in its Kali Yuga, and will continue to be in it for 427,000 years longer, while various “ family Races,” called the Semitic, Hamitic, etc., are in their own special cycles. The forthcoming 6th Sub Race — which may begin very soon — will be in its Satya (golden) age while we reap the fruit of our iniquity in our Kali Yuga.
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Brahman, a daughter only was obtained — Ila. Then, “ through the favour of the gods,” her sex is changed and she becomes a man, Su-dyumna. Then she is again turned into a woman, and so on ; the fable adding that Siva and his consort were pleased that “ she would be male one month and female another.” This has a direct reference to the Third Root-Race, whose men were androgynes. But some very learned Orientalists think (see “ Hindu Classical Dictionary ”) and have declared that “ Ila was 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.
In their most mystical meanings, the union of Swâyambhûva Manu with Vâch-Sata-Rupa, his own daughter (this being the first “ euhemerization ” of the dual principle of which Vaivasvata Manu and Ila 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, Brahmins may agree with our teaching, we are not so sure that some of them, orthodox conservatives, may not raise objections to the modes of procreation attributed to their Pitar Devatas. We shall be called upon to produce the works from which we quote, while they will be invited by us 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 : —
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
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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, * not to speak of the accumulated testimony of the ages, and that of the 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 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 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. † 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 first 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 last 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. ‡
* “ Posthumous Humanity ” — translated by H. S. Olcott, London, 1887.
† Professor Newcomb says : “ The heat evolved by contraction would last only 18,000,000 years ” ( “ Popular Astronomy,” p. 500 ) ; but “ a temperature permitting the existence of water could not be reached earlier than 10,000,000 years ago ” (Winchell’s “ World-Life,” p. 356). But Sir W. Thomson says that the whole age of the incrustation of the Earth is 18,000,000 years, though, t his year, he has again altered his opinion and allows only 15,000,000 years as the age of the Sun. As will be shown in the Addenda, the divergence of scientific opinions is so great that no reliance can ever be placed upon scientific speculation.
‡ The essay on “ The Plurality of Worlds ” (1853) — an anonymous work, yet well known to have been the production of Dr. Whewell — is a good proof of this. No Christian ought to believe in either the plurality of worlds or the geological age of the globe, argues the Author ; because, if it is asserted that this world is only one among the many of its kind, which are all the work of God, as it is itself ; that all are the seat
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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, during those periods when there must have been insufferable heat, even at the two poles, 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 the 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 Nazarean 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 Sishta 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
of life, all the realm and dwelling of intelligent creatures endowed with will, subject to law and capable of free-will ; then, it would become extravagant to think that our world should have been the subject of God’s favours and His special interference, of His communications and His personal visit. . . . . . . Can the Earth presume to be considered the centre of the moral and religious Universe, he asks, if it has not the slightest distinction to rely upon in the physical Universe ? Is it not as absurd to uphold such an assertion (of the plurality of inhabited worlds), as it would be to-day to uphold the old hypothesis of Ptolemy, who placed Earth in the centre of our system ?. . . . The above is quoted from memory, yet almost textually. The author fails to see that he is bursting his own soap-bubble with such a defence.
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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 and show that they have none. The question is so far left sub judice, as well as that other one “ 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 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 sauria, 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 those 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
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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). “ 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 that 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 ? “ Each . . . . 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,” writes Prof. Huxley ; “ 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 ” ! ! 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
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to the outward, physical man. As remarked in “ Isis Unveiled,” Darwin’s evolution begins at the middle point, instead of commencing for man, as for everything else, from the universals. The Aristotle-Baconian method may have its advantages, but it has undeniably already demonstrated its defects. Pythagoras and Plato, who proceeded from the Universals downwards, are now shown more learned, in the light of modern science, than was Aristotle. For he opposed and denounced the idea of the revolution of the earth and even of its rotundity. “ Almost all those,” he wrote, “ 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. . . .” Because (a) the Pythagoreans were Initiates, and (b) they 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 ” ( Vide De Cœlo, Book II., c. 13.) The same with regard to man. The theory taught in the Secret Doctrine, and now expounded, is the only one, which can — 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) — 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 becoming gradually — as it rolls through æons of time in the inter-stellar spaces — 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 sarcode * of the moneron, then passes from its protistic state † into the form of an animal, to grow into a gigantic reptilian monster of the Mesozoic times ; then dwindles again into the (comparatively) dwarfish crocodile, now confined solely to tropical
* Or what is more generally known as Protoplasm. This substance received its name of “ Sarcode ” from Prof. Dujardin Beaumetz far earlier.
† The Monera are indeed Protista. They are neither animals “ nor plants,” writes Hæckel ; “ . . . the whole body of the Moneron represents nothing more than a single thoroughly homogeneous particle of albumen in a firmly adhesive condition.” (“ Journal of Microscopical Science,” Jan., 1869, p. 28.)
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regions, and the universally common lizard * — 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 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 Brahmins preposterous in the question of Chronology ; 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 W. 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 ” (Burmeister). “ We must therefore assume that the starry heaven is not merely in space, what no astronomer doubts, but also in time, without beginning or end ; that it never was created, and is imperishable.” (See Czolbe). †
Czolbe repeats exactly what the Occultists say. But the Aryan Occultists, we may be told, knew nothing of these later speculations. “ They were even ignorant of the globular form of our earth.”
* Behold the Iguanodon of the Mesozoic ages — the monster 100 feet long — now transformed into the small Iguana lizard of South America. Popular traditions about giants in days of old, and their mention in every mythology, including the Bible, may some day be shown to be founded on fact. In nature, the logic of analogy alone ought to make us accept these traditions as scientific verities.
† “ Force and Matter ” ; by L. Büchner, edited by J. F. Collingwood, F.R.S.L., p. 61.
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(Coleman.) To this the Vishnu Purâna contains a reply, which has forced certain Orientalists to open their eyes very widely.
. . . “ The Sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and over against midnight, in all the Dwipas (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.” (Vishnu Purâna, Book II., ch. viii.)
To this Fitzedward Hall remarks, “ The Heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is contradicted, however, a little further on.” Contradicted purposely, because it was a secret temple-teaching. Martin Haug remarked the same teaching in another passage. It is useless to calumniate the Aryans 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. * But even supposing his existence in the Eocene period is not yet demonstrated, what period of time has elapsed since the Cretaceous period ? We are aware of the fact that only the boldest geologists dare to 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 Prof. Huxley, “ the time represented by the coal formation would be six millions of years, † how many more millions would be required to cover
* “ Introduction à l’Etude des Races Humaines.”
† “ Modern Science and Modern Thought,” by S. Laing, p. 32.
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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 ? *
The writer is well aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages of the globe and man are the most liberal, 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 one’s respect for that majority, when one sees the ease and unconcern with which its members treat of “ Hypnotism,” “ Telepathic Impacts,” and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they had believed in it since the days of Solomon, and had never called its votaries, only a few years ago, “ lunatics and impostors ! ” †
The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years, claimed by esoteric philosophy as the age of sexual and physiological mankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says : —
“ 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 XIXth 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, to the effect 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
* “ Esoteric Buddhism,” p. 70.
† The same fate is in store for spiritualistic phenomena and all the other psychological manifestations of the inner Man. Since the days of Hume, whose researches culminated in a nihilistic idealism, Psychology has gradually shifted its position to one of crass materialism. Hume is regarded as a psychologist, and yet he denied a priori the possibility of phenomena in which millions now believe, including many men of science. The Hylo-idealists of to-day are rank Annihilationists. The schools of Spencer and Bain are respectively positivist and materialist, and not metaphysical at all. It is psychism and not psychology ; it reminds one as little of the Vedantic teaching as the pessimism of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann recalls the esoteric philosophy, the heart and soul of true Buddhism.
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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, * though developing on parallel lines, had 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 Upadhi 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.
* It must be noted that, though the astral and physical planes of matter ran parallel with one another even in the earliest geological ages, yet they were not in the same phases of manifestation in which they are now. The Earth did not reach its present grade of density till 18,000,000 years ago. Since then both the physical and astral planes have become grosser.
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There was a time when even the Haeckelian 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 W. Thomson’s wild theory to this effect, notwithstanding. And if they have so fallen ; if our Earth got its supply of life-germs from other planets ; who, or what, had carried them into those 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 Aryan 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 two it stands on its own entirely neutral ground. 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. * 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
* The conception and definition of the Absolute by Cardinal Cusa may satisfy only the Western mind, prisoned, so unconsciously to itself, and entirely degenerated by long centuries of scholastic and theological sophistry. But this “ Recent philosophy of the Absolute,” traced by Sir W. Hamilton to Cusa, would never satisfy the more acutely metaphysical mind of the Hindu Vedantin.
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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, — αὐτουρνεῖν ἅπαντα. This Cudworth calls “ Hylozoism.” As old Zeno is credited by Laertius 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.” *
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 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 hypothesised 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 latter 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
* Cudworth’s “ Intellectual System,” I. p. 328.
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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 Moneron in its drops, called Oceans — needed no “ elements.” The “ Manu with soft bones ” could well dispense with calcic 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 undreamt of by science, could well remain impervious to any state of atmospheric conditions around him. The primitive ancestor, in Brasseur de Bourbourg’s “ Popul-Vuh,” who — in the Mexican legends — could act and live with equal ease under ground and 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 ? “ Universal Genesis starts from the one, breaks into three, then five, and finally culminates into seven, to return into four, three, and one.” (Commentary.)
For additional proofs consult Part II. of this Volume, “ The Septenary in Nature.”