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The Pedigree of Man
By Annie Besant
The Physical Pedigree
IN DEALING WITH the physical side of man's evolution, we shall have the difficulty that is always found when we come to deal with the Physical; and that is, that we have a mass of details, details most complicated in their character; as all of you know, even Modern Science, dealing with a fraction of the whole, is fairly difficult to study, when you desire to understand thoroughly the story that it tells. How much more difficult, then, is it when you have to deal with things as they are, in all their various planes, in all their various states; and when, instead of confining yourself to the differentiation of the physical tattva, you have also to take into consideration the differentiations of those tattvas that belong to the higher planes as well. I say this because I am aware that I shall have a little to tax your attention, if you desire really to follow the stages of man's physical evolution, and if you desire to grasp the part he plays in the world in which he is the highest example 0/ life, the one from whom are drawn all seeds of life, so far as the present evolution is concerned, the one who stands at the head of the evolution of the globe, and on whom depend for their life and guidance the various kingdoms below him in nature. We shall want to discover how it comes to be that in the very body of man there exist the germs of life which populate all the great kingdoms of the globe. The only theory which seems to afford a glimpse of the truth, though the only of a fragment, is that theory of Weissman which, in its wonderful complication, is fairly difficult to fully grasp, but which shows us how, even from the standpoint of modern science, you may have complications so varied, so numerous, so inter-lacing, within the limits of a germ, that you can find there the limits of a germ, that you can find there the traces of thousands of generations, and the possibility of any one of those traces evolving and appearing in the man of today.
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Now with regard to the physical evolution, there is one great class of beings who guide it, who control it, who, in fact, give the patterns on which the whole of that evolution is moulded. This is the class known to you in Hindu literature under the general name of Pitrs, or ancestors. Now there is much confusion about these Pitrs, and that for a very simple reason. First of all, the original Pitrs - those to whom I would like, if possible, to confine the name, for the sake of clearness - reappear over and over and over again, in different characters. They appear in every Round, and when we come down to the evolution of our own Globe, they appear in the different cycles of growth upon that Globe. Then we find them almost, as it were, merging in man; then we find them again reborn in fresh characters; so that they are somewhat like the players on the stage of a theatre, who, clothing themselves in different garments, appear in different characters though the same men are under the changed clothes. This change of characters were assumed, and part of our work to-day will be trace these beings, and see how the Pitrs reappear cycle after cycle, but always with the characteristic that they are the Lords of the physical kingdom, that they are the guides, the moulders, and the architects of mortal man.
That same name of Pitrs is also used for those who are spoken of as Agnishvattas, who have nothing to do with the physical body of man. Those we shall for a moment put aside entirely. They are the three higher classes of the seven classes of Pitrs, more or less familiar to you in the Hindu Shastras, but they are distinguished as being Arupa, without form, and they belong to a different evolution. They have to do with the Devas, and are sometimes called Pitrs of the Devas. Again, they have to do with the intellectual evolution of man, and we shall have to meet them under another title, the title of Manasaputras, which includes these and many other.
The Pitrs who have to do with the pnysical ancestry of man, who are literally his physical ancestors, the ancestors of his body, are grouped into the remaining four great classes, and in the occult teachings these four classes are given a single name,
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Barhishad. Now that name appears again as the name of one class out of the four, which makes part of our confusion. The general name is the name of Barhishad Pitrs, or those possessing the creative fire. Although you find that name specially given to the sons of one of the mind-born Sons of Brahma, it is none the less true that it is also used for the whole of the four classes of the Rupa Pitrs who have to do with physical evolution, So that when I speak of the Barhishad Pitrs, if I use the term without further explanation, I shall mean all the four classes of Rupa Pitrs.
Now these four classes, the Barhishad Pitrs, come from the Moon. You know how you read of the Moon as the gate way of Svarga, as being one of the Lokas, as being the home of the Pitrs. This is indeed true as regards human beings, for they pass out of Pretaloka into Pitrloka, and thence into Svarga. In a cosmic sense the Moon serves as a gateway, through which its inhabitants pour into the earth. These Pitrs come to the Earth Chain from the Moon Chain, and therefore we speak of them as Lunar Pits, as Pits who have come from the Moon.
Now if we want to understand their nature, the first question that we naturally ask is : What did they do on the Moon, and what was the result of their living there? We already know that the lunar Chain is the Chain that preceded our own, and that we are bound by the closest ties with the evolution that was carried on the Moon, or on the lunar Chain. You will best estimate the achievements of the Lunar Pits on the lunar Chain, if, for a moment, you think of Those whom we generally speak of as the Masters on our earth. They are Masters, who, having come through human evolution here, have transcended humanity. They are the flower of humanity, as They have been called -Those who have triumphed over all the difficulties of matter and have become here the Lords of matter, the Guardians, the Protectors of humanity. Just such a function was played by the Lunar Pitrs in the evolution on the lunar Chair. They passed through all that through the equivalent human stage; they were the successes of that evolution; they rose higher and higher until they had utterly conquered all the matter of the lunar Chain, and
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could use it for their own purposes. Therefore, they are sometimes called the Cubes, because on the lunar Chain they conquered matter in its quaternary, or four-fold, form, and they brought that matter with them for its further evolution in the Earth Chain. Think of them then as the Lords of the Moon, a title which is very often given to them in the occult writings. They, are also called the 'Sons of Twilight,' for a reason we shall see in a moment, again connecting them with the Moon ; or. Again, celestial Men, Sons of the Moon, Progenitors. Do not confuse them - for here one of the difficulties of the student comes in - with those classes of Pitrs, the ex-Monads of the lunar Chain, who come from the Moon to pass into human evolution on our Globe. These have nothing to do with those great Lunar Pitrs, save that they evolved under their protecting care on the Moon, as we evolve here under the care of the Masters of Wisdom and Compassion. These ordinary Pitrs, so often confused with these others, are the ex-Monads from the Moon, who make the bulk cf our humanity at the present time, and who also are imprisoned in the animal, the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms of our Globe, the whole, indeed, of the forms of our Chain being occupied by these Monads from the Moon. These are indeed called Pitrs, but they are not the great Lunar Pitrs.
You may notice that this identity of name appears also in Hindu literature, in the Shraddhas and in ordinary talk, in speaking of the Pitrs; for every deceased man at a certain stage, after the Preta stage, passes into Pitrloka, and is numbered among the Pitrs; and yet you know very well that those human beings, who are numbered or classed with the Pitrs are rather"under their roof, under their protection, are kept, guarded and shielded by them, than share their nature ; and do not really confuse those of our humanity who pass on into Pitrloka at a certain time after death with the great and mighty Pitrs who are constantly invoked in the shraddha, and who are children of the mind-born Sons of Brahma. The confusion is thus very general, and it has persisted in our own nomenclature. Let us then, for the purpose of these lectures, keep the name of Pitrs only for the Lords of
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i the Moon, and not confuse them with our ordinary humanity, which they are going to guide as regards the physical evolution.
Now these Pitrs, at the end of their evolution on the Moon Chain, merged into the planetary Logos, the Ruler of the Chain, As we might say now, they reached Nirvana; they entered the consciousness of the great Lord under whose rule they had been evolving; they passed into His being; they became, as it were, the germs of life within His body.
When the Earth Chain is to begin, the new body of the Planetary Logos - now called because of his functions, Brahma, the Creator, the reflection of the great Brahrha of the system - these Pitrs are born from His 'Body of Twilight.' These four bodies of Brahma are the four planetary Chains; the first is His body of Darkness; the second His Body of Day; the third, the lunar, his body of Twilight, the fourth, the terrene, the turning-point, His Bodyy of Dawn. Born thus from Him, they are called the Sons of the twilight, the Will born, and the Lords of Yoga; they are ever spoken of sometimes as Swayambhuva, since they have no birth, save the coming forth from the Body of the Lord. They were born, it is written in the Vishnu Purana, from His body of Twilight, when He was meditating on Himself as the father of the world, and the coming forth of the world of men; and the Varaha Purana speaks similarly, saying that they came forth, the color of smoke, as He meditated on the bringing forth of all classes of beings. When He thus thought of Himself as the Father, then it was that these issued forth from His body of Twilight, these will-born Pitrs, the Lords of the lunar Chain.
Possessing the four-fold matter, and also the creative fire, they were able to give to man his etheric double, prana, animal kama, and animal germ of mind. Beyond this they could not go, but this sufficed for the shaping of physical evolution, for the building of animal man and all lower forms.
These Pitrs are spoken of as under the rule of Yama, the Lord of Death; he is called "Pitrpati," the Lord of the Pitrs; hence the bodies they give to man are mortal, born under the domination
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of the Lord of Change and of Death. They cannot give the Immortal, under the dominance of the Lord of death. Men are their progeny, and must therefore form part of Death's kingdom; and thus the children of earth differ from the children of Buddha, the planet Mercury, for his men are immortal, whereas the children of Earth are mortal. Moreover, these Pitrs themselves by their work on the terrene chain, and they will escape from the dominion of the Lord of death by this evolution, and in the next planetary Chain, the fifth, they will play the part of Sons of Mind and Lords of death.
Such then is our first glance of the Lunar Pitrs. We shall find them, as I said, re-emerging over and over and over again; first they appear before us in their character as Rulers of matter, when the Globes are formed, but are still devoid of living inhabitants, only the matter of the Globe being moulded into globular form. We meet them at the beginning of the first Round. How shall I give to you some picture of what might be seen by the 'Divine Eye,' if it were turned by some Yogi to that first Round? I would fain give you a picture which, however imperfect, would convey some kind of definite thought to the mind. Behold a vast mass of heaving, tossing, whirling, fiery matter, flashing, rolling, changing, in billowing masses, slowly aggregating itself according to three varying densities, into seven flimsy forms. Scarce forms indeed we can call them, for even when we descend to the fourth, the most material of the globes, we can only catch a dim glimpse of Earth's first form, a mere film of Ether, tenuous, radiant, luminous, fiery.
There is nothing visible save embodied fire in this Round. Seven of these globes we dimly see, of which this fourth, that is to be our Earth, is the most perceptible. Above it, on the descending arc, vague and vaguer shadows loom through the fiery mists. Above it, on the ascending arc, three other shadows, fiery, scarce perceptible. A vast panorama of flames, that take and lose again the form of globes, huge, wondrous, awe-inspiring, in restless force and overwhelming energy.
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The four classes of Barhishad, or Lunar Pitrs, the Rupa Pitrs, preside respectively over the four successive Rounds of our terrene Chain, those with the most subtle bodies guiding the first Round, the next the second, the denser bodies of all the fourth, the Round in which the denser matter is formed. Each of these four classes presents its own seven grades, or sub-classes, so that in any given Round, or Globe, we meet with what are called ' seven classes of Pitrs,' and many a student, noting this, has been puzzled, since he remembers another statement about seven classes of Pitrs, among whom the Agnishvatta Pitrs were named, whereas these are all Barhishad Pitrs. The puzzle is solved when he understands that in each of the first seven classes, divided into Arupa and Rupa, there are seven subclasses, marked out from each other by differences in evolution: in the four great classes of Rupa Pitrs we have thus twenty eight subclasses, seven in each class, and it is these sub-classes alone with which we have to do in each successive Round. Only one of the great classes is concerned with each Round, and it is the sub-classes of these which we meet in 'the seven classes of Lunar Pitrs.'
The four great classes are distinguished by the differences in their Upadhis; the first has no lower Upadhi than the Karana Sarira; the second has for its acting vehicle the mental body; the third uses the astral body; and the fourth is clothed in the etheric double. Thus, as the Globes grow denser in successive Rounds, the Pitrs who successively guide physical evolution bring to their work these successively denser vehicles of activity, suitable for the task entrusted to them. The more we study the plan of evolution, the more are we struck with the exquisite adaptations of part to part.
These Barhishad Pitrs belong - as stated in the first lecture - to the last of the Creative Hierarchies, or Orders, called by us the seventh, though in reality the twelfth. They have under them vast hosts of nature spirits, who are the actual builders of the forms, the masons, while the Pitrs themselves may be compared to the architects, a name which is indeed very often given to then. They give the forms, the models, the plans,
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which are followed, actually worked out, by their subordinates, the innumerable beings who select the material particles and put each in its proper place. I may remark, in passing, that since, in Hindu literature, the word 'Deva' is applied to the whole of these, the need of the familiar thirty-three crores of Devas to carry on the workings of nature becomes very obvious, and should cause no surprise.
The Puranas, when they speak of the earth and its six Globes, draw you that strange picture at which I am afraid many an Indian graduate has often laughed - the seven zones, or even the seven dvipas, as they are called, and the curious oceans of milk and curds, etc.; dividing one from the other. "What foolish tales these old men write," our modern critics say. Yet they wrote much more wisely than the scientists of the 19th century, for they give you, through a graphic picture, an idea of the appearance of the planetary Chain, and every dvipa, or world, is a Globe of the planetary Chain, and that which is called the ocean is the matter between each globe and the next, dividing them by a sea that none can cross, save those who have built their higher upadhis and are therein able to navigate those wondrous seas of matter. And if you could stand on some higher plane and look down on the Chain from above, you would see exactly what is figured in the Puranas - the seven dvipas and the seven oceans that surround them, billowy masses of matter of varying densities, heaving between the Globes, and named according to the earthly liquids they most resemble in their general appearance. The mistake has been that men have tried to identify these with things on the physical globe, whereas they are seven worlds of the Chain, differing utterly from each other, and the Jambudvipa of that Chain is our earth, our own world. These descriptions may not be according to modern ideas of precise and accurate scientific nomenclature, but they convey vivid and graphic ideas to the ordinary mind, for which they were intended; and the modem seer easily recognises the objects described when, from the standpoint at which the pauranic writer surveyed the scene, he also lets his gaze wander over the wondrous panorama, and sees the seven Globes amid their encircling oceans of unorganised matter.
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Let us return to our picture of fire, with the filmy globes rolling amid the billowing flames.
On to the first of these, vaguest, must fiery of all, the first class of Lunar Pitrs descend. Theirs to give the first models of form which all who follow after them will use as tabernacle; these are based upon Ideas in the mind of the Planetary Logos, but theirs to shape the forms, theirs to give the first moulding to the fiery matter which is to serve as the dwelling of the incoming Monads from the lunar Chain. They must assimilate the matter of the Chain, else how shall they be able to build therewith the forms? They cannot work with the matter which is not theirs. Hence the first thing to do is themselves to pass through every kind of matter, and, gathering it round their airy bodies, shape it by their creative fire into germinal forms, which will slowly develop and mature, and become in the course of ages, the forms that we know in the fourth Round on our fourth Globe. Seven typical forms must each sub-class mould in each kingdom on each Globe, for in every kingdom of nature there are seven types existing side by side, and there are the seven types in each of the seven sub-classes of the Pitrs of each Round. These are mere films of fiery matter in this first Round.
Now the characteristic of the first Globe, Globe A, is that nothing there is form as we know it; so unlike is all to the forms we know that it is even called Arupa, formless; and yet there is form though not form as known to mortal man. Archetypal forms they are called, i.e., ideal forms made out of the stuff of abstract thinking, vague, changing, and indefinite, inconceivable and ungraspable by the concrete mind, only to be known in this way, that when such a form passes to a lower plane, it bursts into innumerable concrete forms all of which bear a likeness to itself, in that they present its essential characteristics, have in them something after its image. Perhaps this will be more readily intelligible if I remind you of a curious device, resorted to in the early days of biological science, to show the type of an order. Professor Owen, dealing with the great complexity of the mammalian order, sought to find out and combine what was
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common to all. He found certain things existing in every mammal - back bone, four limbs, and so on. He connected together, from his study of many mammalian forms, all the things that were common to every one of them, and he put these together into a form that was like nothing fn heaven or earth or in the waters of the sea, and he called it the archetypal mammal. That was the exercise of scientific fancy, in order to guide and aid scientific investigation. He 'builded truer than he knew.' Such archetypal forms exist in the mind of the Logos as the ideas of every kingdom - the archetypal minerals, the archetypal vegetables, the archetypal animals, and the archetypal men. They existed as ideas - Platonic ideas they are sometimes called, because Plato laid so much stress upon them in his philosophy. These ideas are in the mind of the Logos, and the architects, who are the Barhishad Pitrs, reproduce these ideas from the mind of the Logos in the highest Globe of the planetary Chain; this is Globe A. Hence it is spoken as the archetypal Globe, for it contains in every Round the archetypes that underlie the evolution of forms in that Round.
These forms are sometimes described, or hinted at, in the Puranas, and the descriptions seem to you strange, grotesque and unintelligible. Many of our learned men, who know a little of modern science, laugh at the ancient Rshis who tried to describe these extraordinary forms, unlike anything that the human mind can conceive. But the Rshis knew something more than modern science knows; they knew archetypal forms, the basis of all forms, and those strange creatures that you read of in the early pauranic histories are archetypes, and not forms as they exist on the lower planes. I know of no language, of no description, which conveys an idea of this wondrous building, better than you can find in the pauranic accounts, dim, strange and grotesque as they may seem. They are at least the best description that human language is able to give.
Let us come to the next point. Every Round, as I told you yesterday, produces an evolution of a particular kind, elemental, mineral, vegetable, animal, human. The other forms, that are not yet born on to a Globe of the Chain, none the less exist in
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the mind of the creative Logos. They surround these globes as embryos, so that in the atmosphere of the Globe you might read its history. That is one of the things meant by the phrase ' reading in the astral light.' Thus in the first Globe, in the first Round of our Chain, the Pitrs form the archetypes of the three elemental kingdoms and of the mineral; only the types of the highest elemental kingdom are mature and complete; those of the middle and lower elemental kingdom are embryonic types, and those of the mineral kingdom are mere germs, though representing all that will be contained in the perfected mineral kingdom of the fourth Round. The first class of Barhishad Pitrs produce these archetypes in filmy matter, populating with them the fiery Globe. In the atmosphere of the Globe, surrounding it, the other three classes of Barhishads Pitrs are busy with the embryos of the future vegetable kingdom for the second Round, with the embryos of the animal kingdom for the third Round, and with the embryos of the human kingdom for the fourth Round; these have no resemblance to the future vegetable, animal, and human forms, but are mere crystallisations - if the word may be used of matter so tenuous - aggregations of material; these embryos are in the womb of nature as embryos in the womb of the mother, and truly has it been written that when we come to understand the mystery of human growth, the whole chart of creative activity will lie open before our eyes.
On that first Globe A our Pitris are busy; they form the archetypes as aforesaid, they clothe themselves in the forms they have made, and then pass rapidly through the embryonic forms in the atmosphere around, touching them with the first thrill of nascent foetal life; they pass to the second Globe, Globe B, where they shape the multiplied concrete forms which spring out from the archetypal origin. Little change is perceptible in the form in the atmosphere; the whole stress is on the elemental and mineral, in which much progress is made. Then to the third Globe of the Chain, Globe C, where they shape far denser forms; but still it is but the densification of the fire, as you might see in a fire the layers of the whiter and the yellower flame, and then a redder glow; only such differences are there in the fire of the successive Globes.
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At last they came to the Earth, whereon the mineral touches the physical, the other forms remaining still in the atmosphere around. The germinal forms of minerals dimly appear in our growing fiery earth as tenuous films, and so on until the seventh Globe is reached and the whole germinal mineral kingdom is formed, although formed only in filmy shapes, not minerals as you know them - solid, crystalline, or in many other forms - but always as glowing gaseous masses ; everything that now exists in the mineral kingdom is found on the last Globe of that first Round, in filmy, tenuous germs, to be enriched, densified, strengthened, and made complicated, in the succeeding Rounds. We may sum up their task by saying that on Globe A they give seven archetypal forms for each kingdom; on Globe B they multiply forms containing the essentials of each archetype; on Globe C they densify these forms; on Globe D they shape them in yet denser matter; on Globe E they make them more complex and slightly refine them; on Globe F they build them on finer matter; on Globe G they finally perfect them. This is the method on every Round, and thus the Pitrs work, though on the first Round only do they gather the matter round themselves, and dwell within it for awhile to assimilate it. They only use in their building the four upper sub-planes of the matter of each plane.
Now as the first class of Barhishad Pitrs do this work in each Globe, the ex-lunar Monads arriving on the terrene Chain, slip into the forms they shape and leave. The Monads flowing from the Moon pass first into the elemental kingdoms, and through them into the mineral and other forms left by the Pitrs. The seven classes of them, as we saw yesterday, are at different stages of evolution, and hence show ever decreasing powers from the highest to the lowest. Some, the youngest, had scarcely touched sentient life on the lunar Chain; others had passed through the lunar kingdoms and had reached the types of lunar animal forms. Now this difference of growth, of evolution of consciousness, has one remarkable effect. The more the Monad is evolved, the more rapid his progress through the kingdoms of forms. Hence an ever-increasing gulf divides class from class as they evolve. The lower ones fall further and
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further behind, because of the swiftness of the progress of the more developed. I can perhaps best symbolise that - only symbolise it for the difference is by 1/7 of retardation in every class - if I remind you of the arithmetical way of increasing by addition or by powers. Suppose I start with 3 and go on adding 3; then we get 3, 6, 9, 12. That might be taken as symbolical of one rate of progress. Now suppose I proceed by geometrical proportion - 3, 9, 27, 81. My first only gave me 12 at the fourth remove; and my second gives me 81 at the fogrth remove; and the difference of amount is caused by the difference of the rate of progression. Something of that sort occurs with these ex-lunar Monads; so that, on Globe A, when the first class of them has reached the lowest of the seven stages of the sub-organic human form, having passed through forty-three types of form, the last class has only passed through one stage, that of the lowest in the seven stages of the lowest elemental kingdom. The first proceeds seven times as fast as the last. At the end of the first Round, the first class of ex-lunar Monads have passed through forty-nine evolutionary stages of form, seven stages in each of the seven kingdoms. The lowest, the seventh class, have during the same time passed through only seven evolutionary changes of form, the seven which make up the lowest elemental kingdom. During the remaining Rounds those of the first class do not pass through the lower kingdoms, but enter the human directly. When the first Round is over, pralaya supervenes, and there are ages of rest, ere yet again the work of the building of forms proceeds.
Then the second Round begins; and the second great class of Barhishad Pitrs take up the work. They bring down the archetypes of the vegetable forms to Globe A, work them into concrete forms on Globe B, densify them on Globe C, and these touch the physical on Globe D, the animal and human remaining in the atmosphere, and all progressing; and the human embryos which in the first Round, only took on the strange crystalline kind of form analogous to the mineral kingdom, now spread out like a plant or a tree in a gigantic filamentous shape, nothing recognisable as human, though still to be found in human embryonic growth with the impress of the vegetable kingdom on
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it. Gaseous particles are built into all bodies throughout this Round, particles of the third sub-planes.
We pass on to the third Round; the worlds are becoming far denser than they were, though still luminous and ethereal. Now animals are developing. The third great class of the Barhishad Pitrs are in charge of this Round, and as the work of densification goes on, they bring down the archetypes of the embryonic animals, and work them into concrete forms, which, on Globe D, take more definite and exact shapes. Looking at the human embryos, which have received a large addition in numbers from the second Round, we see them, still in the atmosphere around the Globe, taking on strange animal shapes, monstrous, to our eyes repellent, and they appear as huge apelike creatures, with the stamp of the animal kingdom branded deeply into the embryonic form. The human embryo still shews this stage in his growth. Watery particles are built into all bodies during this Round, particles from the second subplanes.
The fourth Round opens. The fourth class of Barhishad Pitrs, the densest in form, possessing the ethereal body, comes to its work, and the archetypes of men are brought down to the first Globe; wondrous archetypes and beautiful are they, showing what man will be as wel! as what man is, for the archetypes of the seven Races are there. The sixth and seventh stand out radiant in the splendor of their beauty, and hint at what the developed types will be in the Races and the Rounds that lie in front. Now, coming down slowly, multiplying, densifying as they come, we see the forms which are to be produced on the fourth Globe - our earth. At last we touch the solid ground. We seem now in breathe again after our flight through space. We have come to the earth, not quite as we know it indeed, but still our own earth and therefore more familiar.
Having arrived here and taken breath, let us look at our world for a moment. Strange world, a world of such terrible turmoil, of such gigantic convulsions of nature, that you can hear nothing but the crash of falling mountain summits, the roar of volcanoes as they throw up the burning lava, the dash of giant waves
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loaded with rocks, with avalanches of lava, which they picked up as they rushed in mighty billows, and toss up as though in play, masses that are almost mountains; fire breaking out everywhere, storm, whirlwind and tornado - one vast turmoil and turbulence where you would'think that life could not exist. It recalls the first Round in miniature, save that the greater density of matter makes the crash and tumult far greater than in those subtle worlds. But here, too, fire seems the dominant agent, fire furious, tumultuous. For 20 crores [200,000,000] of years these convulsions go on 'uninterruptedly, after which they become periodical and at long intervals.' The Pitrs are here, master of all this tumultuous turmoil of matter.
Three hundred million years have passed away in this fourth Round, on Globe D, and the nature-spirits have been busy at work, forming minerals, vegetables, and animals of the lower kinds. In the midst of the great turmoil they labor, and out of the remnants of the preceding Round they have taken the empty shells of forms, left when the life-wave left Globe D, and have tried to shape them into new living organisms - they are strange hybrid monsters of all mixed kinds of generations, half human and half animal; reptilian forms of all sorts and kinds appear, amid the fires and the whirling spray and clouds; they were produced by the 'prentice hand of nature' as science might say, but we see them as works of the lower Devas, the nature-spirits, unassisted by the guidjng power of the Lords of form. The Lords come to look if the earth is ready for the making of man, when.the incessant turmoil is nearing its ending; all these lower forms are swept away, and there the earth lies, a vast ocean of heaving tepid water, emptied of inhabitants, solid hard ground beneath the watery desert. At one point, gradually, the first land appears. It is the peak of Mount Mem; it is the cap of the North Pole; it is the beginning of the imperishable Sacred land, the Holy land, the Land of the devas, called also Svetadvipa, the White Island, the Central land, and sometimes Jambudvipa, the name given to the earth as a whole. The Parsis call it Airyana Vaejo, and say truly that their great prophet Zarathushtra was born there. Mount Meru, the axis of the globe, though emerging at the Pole, has its roots struck deep in the Himalayan chain, the
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'belt of the earth.' Slowly that land emerges from the swelling waves of the tepid watery globe, and like the lotus of seven leaves, their centre Mount Mem, at the Pole, seven great promontories of land appear, to the edges of which the name Pushkara is sometimes given, though this name belongs more accurately to the seventh continent, and those promontories and their centre form the Imperishable Land. On that Land every human Race in turn is to be born, no matter whither it be led after its birth. It is the birth place of every Race under the rule of Dhruva, who is Lord of the Pole-Star. The Pole-Star has in its watchful eye upon it, from the dawn to the close of the twilight of a Day of the Great Breath.' That land appears, and is ready to receive its inhabitants, and the climate is an exquisite spring; and the cry goes out, the ringing cry of the Lords who are the Governors of all. List to the stately rhythm of the Stanzas of the Book of the Wisdom:
" The great Chohans called the Lords of the Moon, of the airy bodies: ' Bring forth men, men of your nature. Give them their forms within. She will build coverings without. Males-Females will they be. Lords of the Flame also' — They went each on his allotted land; seven of them, each on his lot. The Lords of the Flame remain behind. They would not go, they would not create. The Seven Hosts, the Will-born Lords, propelled by the spirit of Life-giving, separate men from themselves, each on his own zone. Seven times seven shadows of future men were born, each of his own color and kind, each inferior to his Father. The fathers, the boneless, could give no life to beings with bones. Their progeny were Bhuta, with neither form nor mind. Therefore they are called the chhaya."
There are four classes of lunar Monads ready for human incarnation, and the Barhishad Pitrs, descending on our earth on the Imperishable Land, separate off from their own ethereal bodies, a chhaya, a 'shadow,' a seed of life, which contains within it the potentialities of developing into the human form. It is huge, filamentous, sexless, an empty Bhuta, floatong about in the dense atmosphere, and in the seething seas. They sway and drift about, huge, indefinite, protista-like forms in ethereal
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matter, with changing outline, containing the seeds of all forms, gathered up by the Pitrs during preceding evolution, of a moon-like color, yellow-white of varying shades. Within the fourth classes of Barhishad Pitrs, who thus gave the seed of life for the shaping of the form of their progeny, physical man, there were, as we have seen, seven distinct sub-classes, and each subclass populates one of the seven promontories: "Seven of them each on his lot ... separate men from themselves, each on his own zone." But the phrase occurs: "Seven times seven shadows of future men were born," and the question naturally arises: whence this seven-fold increase? Each class of Barhishad Pitrs not only showed its seven sub-classes, as previously mentioned, at different stages of growth; but each of these seven sub-classes, successive grades of evolution, also contained members of each of the seven types, also spoke of earlier, and thence the "seven times seven." The ex-lunar Monads , being themselves at such different grades of evolution, could not have found fitting tabernacles in chhayas of one evolutionary grade. According to the respective stages reached by the four classes in their upward climbing through the preceding three and a half Rounds, were the respective chhayas into which they passed. Many forms, many kinds, many shades, were needed, so that each Monad might find his appropriate tabernacle, and the forty-nine orders provided yielded the necessary conditions.
These protista-like forms, oozed out from the ethereal bodies of their progenitors - as the etheric double may be seen oozing out from the side of a medium - were the first human Race. "Human?" you say. "But what is this, that calls itself human, this strange spreading indefinite form, more like a piece of slimy ooze, like the supposed Bathybius, than a human being. Why do you call it human?" Why do you call human, in the womb of the mother, the first foetal conglomeration of cells, unlike the human form? Because in that form, which is not human, the future man is evolving and the development must be human, can be nothing else. And therefore, though the form has nothing of human appearance in it, though it be but the mere embryo of the coming man, none the less we stamp it "human," for the
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Monad brooding over it has reached the human stage, and we name the form by the life within it and not by the mere outward similitude. And therefore we also say that the first human Race is here.
These huge forms are drifted about hither and thither, senseless and passive. As we have seen, the consciousness, being on the atmic level, can very slightly affect these clumsy bodies, which only show vaguely the sense of hearing and a dim consciousness of fire. Because such consciousness as touched them was of so lofty a character, they are sometimes spoken of as the Race of the Gods; also as sons of Yoga - the Pitrs sending out their chhayas when immersed in yogic meditation -and even the self-born, as not being produced of human parents. They are the second Adam of the Jewish Scriptures. The Pitrs have given out their etheric chhayas, have animated them with their own electric fire, galvanised them, as it were, into activity; the Sun aided in the task by sending upon them his vivifying beams, the solar fire, in answer to the cry of the Ruler of the nature-spirits for his help: "These three produced by their joint efforts a good rupa. It could stand, walk, run, recline or fly. Yet it was still but a chhaya, a shadow with no sense." The presiding planet of the first Race is the Sun, or rather the mystic planet Uranus, that he represents.
Multiplication of these beings was by fission or by budding, the only forms of reproduction possible for them, as even today for the protista, their nearest physical likeness. They grew, expanding in size, and then divided, at first into two equal halves, and in their later stages into unequal portions budding off progeny smaller than themselves, that grew in their turn and again budded off their young. A study of the amoeba and the hydra will make the reproduction methods clear. No definite sub-races can be spoken of in this first Race, though you may mark seven stages of growth, or evolutionary changes. Nor does any die; "neither fire nor water could destroy them," fire was their element, of water they were unconscious. When the time is ripe for the second Root Race to appear, the nature-spirits build round the chhayas denser particles of matter.
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forming a kind of stiffer shell on the outside, and "the outer of the first became the Inner of the second." Thus imperceptibly the first Race vanished into, merged in, became, the second, and the chhaya, which was all the body of the first, became the etheric double of the second.
During the ages of unknown length through which the first Race lived, the earth was settling down into quieter conditions, and cataclysms were local, no longer general. More land slowly appeared above the surface of the watery desert, stretching out from the promontories of the first continent, and forming a vast horseshoe, the second continent, called the Hyperborean, or Plaksha. It occupied the area now called northern Asia, joining Greenland and Kamschatka, and was bounded on the south by the great sea which rolled where the Gobi desert now stretches its wastes of sand; Spitzbergen formed part of it, together with Sweden and Norway, and it extended south-westwards over the British Isles; Baffin's Bay was then land, which included the islands now existing there. The climate was tropical, and richly luxuriant vegetation clothed the sunny plains. We must not connect with the name Hyperborean the associations now carried with it, for it was a glowing gladsome land, full of exuberant vitality. The name Hyperborean took on its gloomy associations in later days, when the land had been swept of its inhabitants by a change of climate, and many cataclysms had broken it up.
The second Race appears, as we have seen, and it shows during its existence two marked types, responding slightly to the buddhic consciousness; it shows the duality which is characteristic of that consciousness, coming out in its physical changes, as in its two senses of hearing and touch, and its consciousness of fire and water, already noted in following the Monadic evolution. They are called Kimpurushas, the children of the Sun and the Moon, "the yellow Fattier and the White mother," hence of fire and water, and they were born under the planet Brihaspati, Jupiter. Their color was a golden-yellow, sometimes glowing almost into orange, sometimes of palest lemon shades, and these gorgeously-hued forms, filamentous,
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tree-like often in shape, some approaching animal types, others semi-human in outline, very heterogeneous in appearance, drifting, floating, gliding, climbing, crying to each other in flute-like notes, through the splendid tropical forests, brilliantly green in the sunlight, with flowering creepers starred with dazzling blossoms - all these make up a picture of gorgeous hues, the splendour of nature in her exuberant youth, running over with life, movement, color, outlines sketched in with a giant's hand, colors flung from an overflowing palette.
Two main types appear as just said, in this second Race, the earlier and the later. In the first type there is no trace of sex, they are a-sexual, and it multiplies by expansion and budding like the first Race; as the forms become harder, coated with a thicker shell of earthy particles, this form of reproduction becomes impossible, and small bodies are extruded from them, figuratively termed "drops of sweat," since they ooze out like sweat from the human skin, viscid, opalescent, and these gradually harden, grow, and take on various shapes. You may remember how it is said in the Puranas that all races were born from the pores of the skin of their ancestors. You may remember how Virabhadra, sent by Mahadeva to break up Daksha's sacrifice, produced myriads of strange forms from the pores of his skin. Many traces of this mode of reproduction are to be found in the pauranic stories, and these facts in the evolution of the physical side of man will enable you to understand the meaning of those stories better than you did before. In process of time slight indications of sexuality begin to appear in these "sweat-born" of the second Race, and they shew within themselves adumbrations of the two sexes, and hence are spoken of as latent androgynes. As we study the development of the lower kingdoms to-day, we see ail these stages still persisting, and realise how steadily the nature-spirits have been guided along a single plan, endlessly modified in details but ever the same in principles. From germs thrown off by these second Race "men," the mammalian kingdom was gradually developed in all its immense variety of forms; the animals below the mammalian being shaped by the nature-
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spirits from the types elaborated in the third Round, sometimes aided by human emanations.
Meanwhile the earth is slowly changing; "The great Mother
travailed under the waves......she travailed harder for the third
(Race), and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the Belt, the sacred Himavat, which stretches round the world." The huge sea to the south of Plaksha covered the desert of Gobi, Tibet and Mongolia, and from the southern waters of this the vast Himalayan chain emerged. Southwards the land slowly appeared, stretching from the foot of the Himalayan range, southward to Ceylon, Sumatra, to far off Australia and Tasmania and Easter Island; westwards, till Madagascar and part of Africa emerge, and claiming Norway, Sweden, east and west Siberia and Kamschatka from its predecessor - a vast continent, the huge Lemuria, cradle of the Race in which human intelligence appeared. Shalmali, it is called in ancient story. In the course of ages, the vast continent undergoes many disruptions, and is broken up into great islands. Volcanic outbreaks, mighty earthquakes, from time to time shiver huge fragments from its giant bulk. A slow sinking begins at Norway, and that ancient land disappears for a while from sight, 700,000 years before the Tertiary, the Eocene of the Tertiary, began, there was a great outburst of volcanic fire, chasms opened up in the ocean floor, and Lemuria, as Lemuria, disappeared, leaving only such fragments as Australia and Madagascar behind, as traces of its story, which Easter Island, submerged and re-uplifted. During the life of Lemuria, at about the middle of its racial development, took place the great change of climate, which slew the remnants of the second Race, together with their progeny, the early third. The axle of the wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of that portion of the sweat-born; people knew snow, ice, frost, and men, plants and animals were dwarfed in their growth." The gorgeous hues of the tropics faded away before the breath of the ice-kind; the polar days and nights of six months began, and for a while the remnants of Plaksha showed but a scanty population. Beyond it, in the polar region, smiled ever the Imperishable Sacred Land.
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The third Race showed out, as we might expect from analogy, three strongly marked types, which we will call the early, middle, and later third. As the first Race, in touch with Atma, showed a unity; as the second, in touch with Atma-Buddhi, a duality; so did the third, in touch with Atma-Buddhi-Manas, show a triplicity.
In type I, the early third, the mode of reproduction is similar to that of the later second- the extrusion of soft, viscid bodies, the "sweat," these bodies harden during the second sub-race:" the drops become hard and round. The Sun warmed it; the Moon cooled and shaped it; the wrnd fed it until its ripeness". The soft bodies gradually became encrusted, and took the form of eggs, the ovum, which thenceforth, even to the present day, is the natal home of the germ. Within the egg, now the form passed its earlier stages of growth, more human in outline, latently androgyne. The early third includes two sub-races; the first sub-race was sweat-born, and the sexes scarcely showed within the body; the second sub-race was still sweat-born, and evolved into definitely androgynous creatures, distinctly human in type, the outer covering of the envelope hardening. Sons ef passive Yoga these are called, so abstracted they seem from outer things. In type II, the middle third, in the third sub-race, the young creature developed within the envelope, which was now a shell, evolved double sexual organs, and when born, by the breaking of the envelope, was fully developed -like the chick of the present day-able to walk and run; they were the hermaphrodites, of whom we shall hear.again presently, for they became the vehicles of the Lords of Wisdom, and this phase is taken as the name of the middle third; in the fourth sub-race, reproduction was still by eggs, but in the developing creature one sex began to predominate over the other, until, from the egg, males and females were born; as this process went on, the babes became more helpless, and by the end of the fourth sub-race, the young creature could no longer walk, on emerging from the protective envelope. The human embryo still reproduces these stages in its developments; it shows the amaeba-like form of the first Race; the filamentoid form of the second; the sexlessness of the early stages is replaced by a
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androgynous state, and slowly male or female predominates, determining the sex, as in the third; it may be noted that the traces of sex-duality never disappear, even in maturity, the male retaining the rudimentary organs of the female, the female of the male.
It is interesting to notice the many traces in Hindu literature, in the "myths" that are truer than history, of the varied modes of reproduction current in early days; in the account of Daksha's sacrifice various modes are given: "from the egg, from the vapour, vegetation, pores of the skin, and, finally, only, from the womb."
In type III, the later third, the fifth sub-race at first still reproduces itself by extruded eggs, within which the human babe matures, but gradually the egg is retained within the mother, and the child is born, as at present, feeble and helpless; in the sixth and seventh sub-race, sexual reproduction is universal. This later third is ready for the reception of the Manasaputras.
The separation of the sexes, in the fourth sub-race, in the middle third, took place in the later part of the Secondary Period, 18,000,000 years ago, the race having then existed for at least 18,000,000 years and perhaps for much longer; for it began in the Jurassic period of the Secondary, or Mesozoic, age, the Reptilian period, as it is sometimes called. After this the earlier sub-races perished off quickly, chiefly in the catastrophe already spoken of. The Divine Kings, as we shall see, came to earth before the separation of the sexes, taking from the middle third their best forms; the Divine Androgynes, the Divine Hermaphrodites, they were called, and they moulded these forms into divinest beauty, towering giants, splendid in figure and feature. With their coming, and the subsequent separation of the sexes, ended the Satya Yuga of the earth.
The early third was born under Shukra, Venus, and under this influence the hermaphrodites were evolved; the races separated under Lohitanga, Mars, who is the embodiment of Kama, the
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passion-nature. Like all the forms then on earth, man was gigantic in bulk, compared with his present size; he was the contemporary of the pterodactyl, the megolosaurus, and other gigantic animals, and had to hold his own among them. Organs of vision were evolved in this third Race, at first the single eye in the midst of the forehead-later called "the third eye"-and then the two eyes; but these were little used by third Race men till the seventh sub-race, and only in the fourth Race-the third eye having retreated inwards, to become the pineal gland-did they become the normal organs of vision. The color of the third Race is red, varying much in its shades. The Divine Androgynes are of a glorious red-gold hue, indescribably glowing and splendid, and adding largely to the glory of their general aspect, the single eye flashing like a jewel from its dazzling setting. It is a shock to turn from them to the earthen reds of the crude and clumsy forms of the first men and women after the separation. Gigantic in height and correspondingly broad, they give the impression of tremendous power, as far beyond the men of our own generation as the Anoplatheridae and Paleotheridae, which surround them in their later days, are beyond the oxen, deer and pigs, and the horses, tapirs and rhinoceroses that have descended from them. The head with retreating forehead, the dully lurid eye, glowing redly over the flattened nose, the projecting heavy jaws, offer a repulsive ensemble according to the modern taste. The memory of the third eye persisted in Grecian story, where we read of the one-eyed "Cyclops," as the one-eyed were called in later days, and of Ulysses, a man of the fourth Race, slaying a Cyclops of the third-he who had a central eye. That third eye, developed under the influence of the Monad, of the Spirit in man, possessed far greater powers of vision than the two later eyes, or, to speak more accurately, offered less obstruction to the perceptive power of the Monad; but as the Monad drew back before the intellect, the physical triumphed, and the two feeble organs of vision, that are called our eyes, were gradually developed, greater obstacles to the wide power of perception of the Monad, but yet giving a sharper definition of objects, and on the way to a keener vision than before. The third eye gave impressions of the physical in the mass rather than in detail, and the temporary closing in was the
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way to clearer sight. These apparent savages, savages in form, were none the less intuitional, responding quickly to the impulses sent out by the Divine Kings who ruled them, under whose tutelage they build mighty cities, huge cyclopean temples, mighty and massive, builded so that fragments yet remain, and Shamballah itself, the Holy City, the Sacred Dwelling-place, stands still unshaken, to tell of the strength that built, of the skill that planned. Of this civilisation a little must be said in dealing with intellectual Evolution.
Let us, ere leaving Physical Evolution, in which the Barhishad Pitrs play so great a part, glance at their subsequent share in racial evolution. After giving out their chhayas for the first Race, they leave the earth, ascending to Mahaloka for a while. "Having projected their shadows and made men of one element, the Progenitors re-ascend to Mahaloka: whence they descend periodically, when the world is renewed, to give birth to new men." To a new Race, that is, and for the birth of a new Race they ever descend, guiding it for a while, and taking birth in it, to aid the Manu of the Race. They are reborn as the children of some of the Mind-born Sons of Brahma, the Planetary Logos, the Sons called the Sapta Rshis, the seven Rshis, and take up their function in the shaping of forms, elaborating the forms of the third Race for the coming changes, and preparing the A Androgynes to become the vehicles of the Sons of Wisdom. After the separation into sexes, the sons of Atri, to whom the specific name of Barhishads is given-called in some Puranas also the sons of Marichi-preside over the further evolution of the third Race, to whom the name of Danavas is given in Hindu literature. You may remember the story of the moral deterioration of the Danavas, told in the Mahabharata, as ahamkara-the intellectual principle-takes possession of them; how the Devi Shri dwelt with them in their early days, when they were pure and pious, and left them as they grew selfish and grasping. The Pitrs became the Divine Kings of these later. Lemurians, ruling under the sway of the Divine Androgynes, and teaching arts and sciences to the infant humanity in their charge. They are therefore called "the Pitrs of the Danavas," and these
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same beings are also "the Pitrs of the Daityas," the Atlanteans, appearing among them also as the early Divine Kings.
In the firth Race, members of the four great classes appear, to aid Vaivasvan Manu in His building of the polity of the first family of that Race.The sons of Bhrigu, they in whom the causal body is the active vehicle, are the Somapas, the Kavyas, and the Saumyas; and these are they who give their chhayas for the typical Sukshma Sharira of the most advanced Egos then ready for incarnation, who formed the caste of Brahmanas in those early days. The sons of Angiras, the Havishmats, in whom the mental body is the active vehicle, give their chhayas for the type of the Sukshma Shrira of the warrior caste, the Kshattriyas. The sons of Pulastya, the Ajapas, in whom the astral body is the active vehicle, give their chhayas for the type of the Sukshma Sharira of the Vaishyas. The sons of Vashishta-sometime called the sons of Daksha-the Sukalins, in whom the etheric double is the active vehicle, give their chhayas as the type of the Sukshma Sharira of the Shudras. Each of these types having a different color predominating in it, the four castes were called the four Varnas, or the four colors, and to the clairvoyant eye the Sukshma Sharira of each caste was at once recognisable by its dominant color, due to the relative density of its materials.
This is the secret of the difficulty of the change of caste, apart from all moral qualifications, The Sukshma Sharira, shaped by karma for the new incarnation, has to be rebuilt if the caste is to be changed. It is not a thing that can be done by a legislative enactment, nor by the decision of any body of men. None the less it can be done-it has been done in the past, it is done in the present-but only by the help of the Pitrs. That was the help that Vishvamitra sought by tapas and by yoga, until he won their assistance, and they gave a new chhaya, the chhaya of the Brahmana. It is not then true that change from one caste to another is impossible, nor could you regard it as impossible, if you really believed your sacred books. But it is difficult, very difficult, and can only be done by the aid of the Pitrs, not by the word of man. There is the truth which lies between the two extremes, between the man who says that caste is nothing but
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birth, and the man who says that caste is nothing but merit. Neither of them speaks the full truth. Birth has a great deal to do with it, because the physical body and the Sukshma Sharira are modelled upon a similar plan and because the Ego, coming with the Sukshma Sharira of one type, has the body moulded as far as possible on the same type.
So far we have traced the spiritual, we have traced the physical. To-morrow we will bring in the bridge that unites the two-the intellectual ancestry of man.
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