Masonic, Occult and Esoteric Online Library
The Secret Doctrine
By Helena P. Blavatsky
Book II-Part I- From The Semi-Divine Down To The First Human Races
§§ (24) The higher creators reject in their pride the forms evolved by the "Sons of Yoga." (25) They will not incarnate in the early "Egg-born." . . (26) They select the later androgynes. (27) The first man endowed with mind.
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24. THE SONS OF WISDOM, THE SONS OF NIGHT (issued from the body of Brahma when it became Night), READY FOR RE-BIRTH, CAME DOWN. THEY SAW THE (intellectually) VILE FORMS OF THE FIRST THIRD (still senseless Race) (a). "WE CAN CHOOSE," SAID THE LORDS, "WE HAVE WISDOM." SOME ENTERED THE CHHAYAS. SOME PROJECTED A SPARK. SOME DEFERRED TILL THE FOURTH (Race). FROM THEIR OWN ESSENCE THEY FILLED (intensified) THE KAMA (the vehicle of desire). THOSE WHO RECEIVED BUT A SPARK REMAINED DESTITUTE OF (higher) KNOWLEDGE. THE SPARK BURNT LOW (b). THE THIRD REMAINED MIND-LESS. THEIR JIVAS (Monads) WERE NOT READY. THESE WERE SET APART AMONG THE SEVEN (primitive human species). THEY (became the) NARROW-HEADED. THE THIRD WERE READY. IN THESE SHALL WE DWELL, SAID THE LORDS OF THE FLAME AND OF THE DARK WISDOM (c).
This Stanza contains, in itself, the whole key to the mysteries of evil, the so-called Fall of the angels, and the many problems that have puzzled the brains of the philosophers from the time that the memory of man began. It solves the secret of the subsequent inequalities of intellectual capacity, of birth or social position, and gives a logical explanation to the incomprehensible Karmic course throughout the aeons which followed. The best explanation which can be given, in view of the difficulties of the subject, shall now be attempted.
(a) Up to the Fourth Round, and even to the later part of the Third Race in this Round, Man -- if the ever-changing forms that clothed the Monads during the first three Rounds and the first two and a half races of the present one can be given that misleading name -- is, so far, only an animal intellectually. It is only in the actual midway Round that he develops in himself entirely the fourth principle as a fit vehicle for the fifth. But Manas will be relatively fully developed only in the following Round, when it will have an opportunity of becoming entirely divine until the end of the Rounds. As Christian Schoettgen says in Horae Hebraic, etc., the first terrestrial Adam "had only the breath of life," Nephesh, but not the living Soul.
(b) Here the inferior Races, of which there are still some analogues left -- as the Australians (now fast dying out) and some African and Oceanic tribes -- are meant. "They were not ready" signifies that the Karmic development of these Monads had not yet fitted them to occupy the forms of men destined for incarnation in higher intellectual Races. But this is explained later on.
(c) The Zohar speaks of "Black Fire," which is Absolute Light-Wisdom. To those who, prompted by old theological prejudice, may say: "But the Asuras are the rebel Devas, the opponents of the Gods -- hence devils, and the spirits of Evil," it is answered: Esoteric philosophy admits neither good nor evil per se, as existing independently in nature. The cause for both is found, as regards the Kosmos, in the necessity of contraries or contrasts, and with respect to man, in his human nature, his ignorance and passions. There is no devil or the utterly depraved, as there are no Angels absolutely perfect, though there may be spirits of Light and of Darkness; thus LUCIFER -- the spirit of Intellectual Enlightenment and Freedom of Thought -- is metaphorically the guiding beacon, which helps man to find his way through the rocks and sandbanks of Life, for Lucifer is the LOGOS in his highest, and the "Adversary" in his lowest aspect -- both of which are reflected in our Ego. Lactantius, speaking of the Nature of Christ, makes the LOGOS, the Word, the first-born brother of Satan, the "first of all creatures." (Inst. div. Book II., c. viii., "Qabbalah," 116.)
The Vishnu Purana describes these primeval creatures (the Arvaksrota) with crooked digestive canals: They were "endowed with inward manifestations, but mutually in ignorance about their kind and nature." The twenty-eight kinds of Badha, or imperfections, do not apply, as Wilson thought, to the animals now known and specified by him,* for these did not exist in those geological periods. This is quite plain in the said work, in which the first created (on this globe) are the "five-fold immovable creation," minerals and vegetables; then come those fabulous animals, Tiryaksrota, (the monsters of the abyss slain by the "Lords," see Stanzas II. and III.); then the Urdhwasrotas, the happy celestial beings, which feed on ambrosia; then lastly, the Arvaksrotas, human beings -- Brahma's seventh creation so-called. But these "creations," including the latter, did not occur on this globe, wherever else they may have taken place. It is not Brahma who creates things and men on this Earth, but the chief and Lord of the Prajapati, the Lords of Being and terrestrial Creation.* Obeying the command of Brahma, Daksha (the synthesis, or the aggregate, of the terrestrial creators and progenitors, Pitris included) made superior and inferior (vara and avara) things "referring to putra" progeny, and "bipeds and quadrupeds, and subsequently by his will (the Sons of Will and Yoga) made females," i.e., separated the androgynes. Here again, we have "bipeds" or men, created before the "quadrupeds" as in the esoteric teachings. (Vide supra and Stanza XII as explained.)
Since, in the exoteric accounts, the Asuras are the first beings created from the "body of night," while the Pitris issue from that of Twilight; the "gods" being placed by Parasara (Vishnu Purana) between the two, and shown to evolve from the "body of the day," it is easy to discover a determined purpose to veil the order of creation. Man is the Arvaksrota coming from the "Body of the Dawn"; and elsewhere, man is again referred to, when the creator of the world, Brahma, is shown "creating fierce beings, denominated Bhutas and eaters of flesh," or as the text has it, "fiends frightful from being monkey-coloured and carnivorous."** Whereas the Rakshasas are generally translated by "Evil Spirits" and "the enemies of the gods," which identifies them with the Asuras. In the Ramayana, when Hanuman is reconnoitering the enemy in Lanka, he finds there Rakshasas, some hideous, "while some were beautiful to look upon," and, in Vishnu Purana, there is a direct reference to their becoming the Saviours of "Humanity," or of Brahma.
The allegory is very ingenious. Great intellect and too much knowledge are a two-edged weapon in life, and instruments for evil as well as for good. When combined with Selfishness, they will make of the whole of Humanity a footstool for the elevation of him who possesses them, and a means for the attainment of his objects; while, applied to altruistic humanitarian purposes, they may become the means of the salvation of many. At all events, the absence of self-consciousness and intellect will make of man an idiot, a brute in human form. Brahma is Mahat -- the universal Mind -- hence the too-selfish among the Rakshasas showing the desire to become possessed of it all -- to "devour" Mahat. The allegory is transparent.
At any rate, esoteric philosophy identifies the pre-Brahmanical Asuras, Rudras,* Rakshasas and all the "Adversaries" of the Gods in the allegories, with the Egos, which, by incarnating in the still witless man of the Third Race, made him consciously immortal. They are, then, during the cycle of Incarnations, the true dual Logos -- the conflicting and two-faced divine Principle in Man. The Commentary that follows, and the next Stanzas may, no doubt, throw more light on this very difficult tenet, but the writer does not feel competent to give it out fully. Of the succession of Races, however, they say: --
"First come the SELF-EXISTENT on this Earth. They are the 'Spiritual Lives' projected by the absolute WILL and LAW, at the dawn of every rebirth of the worlds. These LIVES are the divine 'Sishta,' (the seed-Manus, or the Prajapati and the Pitris)."
From these proceed --
1. The First Race, the "Self-born," which are the (astral) shadows of their Progenitors.** The body was devoid of all understanding (mind, intelligence, and will). The inner being (the higher self or Monad), though within the earthly frame, was unconnected with it. The link, the Manas, was not there as yet.
2. From the First (race) emanated the second, called the "Sweat-born"*** and
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* Whom Manu calls "our paternal grandfathers" (III., 284). The Rudras are the seven manifestations of Rudra-Siva, "the destroying god," and also the grand Yogi and ascetic.
** See § II, §§ 1, Commentary.
*** To speak of life as having arisen, and of the human race as having originated, in this absurdly unscientific way, in the face of the modern Pedigrees of Man, is to court instantaneous annihilation. The esoteric doctrine risks the danger, nevertheless, and even goes so far as to ask the impartial reader to compare the above hypothesis (if it is one) with Haeckel's theory -- now fast becoming an axiom with science -- which is quoted verbatim: --
". . . How did life, the living world of organisms, arise? And, secondly, the special question: How did the human race originate? The first of these two inquiries, that as to the first appearance of living beings, can only be decided empirically (! !) by proof of the so-called Archebiosis, or equivocal generation, or the spontaneous production of organisms of the simplest conceivable kind. Such are the Monera (Protogenes, Protamoeba, etc), exceedingly simple microscopic masses of protoplasm without structure or organisation, which take in nutriment and reproduce themselves by division. Such a Moneron as that primordial organism discovered by the renowned English zoologist Huxley, and named Bathybius Haeckelii, appears as a continuous thick protoplasmic covering at the greatest depths of the ocean, between 3,000 and 30,000 feet. It is true that the first appearance of such Monera has not up to the present moment been actually observed; but there is nothing intrinsically improbable in such an evolution." (The "Pedigree of Man," Aveling's translation, p 33.)
The Bathybius protoplasm having recently turned out to be no organic substance at all, there remains little to be said. Nor, after reading this, does one need to consume further time in refuting the further assertion that . . . . "in that case man also [[Footnote continued on next page]]
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 165 TO THE MONERON THE CREATOR.
the "Boneless." This is the Second Root-Race, endowed by the preservers (Rakshasas)* and the incarnating gods (Asuras and the Kumaras) with the first primitive and weak spark (the germ of intelligence) . . And from these in turn proceeds: --
3. The Third Root-Race, the "Two-fold" (Androgynes). The first Races hereof are shells, till the last is "inhabited" (i.e., informed) by the Dhyanis.
The Second Race, as stated above, being also sexless, evolved out of itself, at its beginning, the Third Androgyne Race by an analogous, but already more complicated process. As described in the Commentary, the very earliest of that race were: --
"The 'Sons of Passive Yoga.* They issued from the second Manushyas (human race), and became oviparous. The emanations that came out of their bodies during the seasons of procreation were ovulary; the small spheroidal nuclei developing into a large soft, egg-like vehicle, gradually hardened, when, after a period of gestation, it broke and the young human animal issued from it unaided, as the fowls do in our race."
This must seem to the reader ludicrously absurd. Nevertheless, it is strictly on the lines of evolutionary analogy, which science perceives in the development of the living animal species. First the moneron-like procreation by self-division (vide Haeckel); then, after a few stages, the oviparous, as in the case of the reptiles, which are followed by the birds; then, finally, the mammals with their ovoviviparous modes of producing their young ones.
If the term ovoviviparous is applied to some fish and reptiles, which hatch their eggs within their bodies, why should it not be applied to female mammalians, including woman? The ovule, in which, after impregnation, the development of the foetus takes place, is an egg.
At all events, this conception is more philosophical than that of Eve with a suddenly created placenta giving birth to Cain, because of the Apple, when even the marsupial, the earliest of mammals, is not placental yet.
Moreover, the progressive order of the methods of reproduction, as unveiled by science, is a brilliant confirmation of esoteric Ethnology. It is only necessary to tabulate the data in order to prove our assertion. (Cf. especially Schmidt's "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p. 39, et. seq., and Laing's "A Modern Zoroastrian," pp. 102-111.)I
1. Fission: --
(a) As seen in the division of the homogeneous speck of protoplasm, known as Moneron or Amoeba, into two.
(b) As seen in the division of the nucleated cell, in which the cell-nucleus splits into two sub-nuclei, which either develop within the original cell-wall or burst it, and multiply outside as independent entities. (Cf., the First Root-Race.)
II. Budding: --
A small portion of the parent structure swells out at the surface and finally parts company, growing to the size of the original organism; e.g., many vegetables, the sea-anemone, etc. (Cf., the Second Root-Race.)*
III. Spores: --
A single cell thrown off by the parent organism, which develops into a multicellular organism reproducing the features of the latter, e.g., bacteria and mosses.
IV. Intermediate Hermaphroditism: --
Male and female organs inhering in the same individual; e.g., the majority of plants, worms, and snails, etc.; allied to budding. (Cf. Second and early Third Root-Races.)
V. True sexual union: --
(Cf. later Third Root-Race.)
We now come to an important point with regard to the double evolution of the human race. The Sons of Wisdom, or the spiritual Dhyanis, had become "intellectual" through their contact with matter, because they had already reached, during previous cycles of incarnation, that degree of intellect which enabled them to become independent and self-conscious entities, on this plane of matter. They were reborn only by reason of Karmic effects. They entered those who were "ready," and became the Arhats, or sages, alluded to above. This needs explanation.
It does not mean that Monads entered forms in which other Monads already were. They were "Essences," "Intelligences," and conscious spirits; entities seeking to become still more conscious by uniting with more developed matter. Their essence was too pure to be distinct from the universal essence; but their "Egos," or Manas (since they are called Manasaputra, born of "Mahat," or Brahma) had to pass through earthly human experiences to become all-wise, and be able to start on the returning ascending cycle. The Monads are not discrete principles, limited or conditioned, but rays from that one universal absolute Principle. The entrance into a dark room through the same aperture of one ray of sunlight following another will not constitute two rays, but one ray intensified. It is not in the course of natural law that man should become a perfect septenary being, before the seventh race in the seventh Round. Yet he has all these principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it part of the evolutionary law that the Fifth principle (Manas), should receive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such prematurely developed intellects (on the spiritual plane) in our Race are abnormal; they are those whom we call the "Fifth-Rounders." Even in the coming seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was reached during the Fourth Root-Race. Thus, those who were "half ready," who received "but a spark," constitute the average humanity which has to acquire its intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution, after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the "Sons of Wisdom." While those which "were not ready" at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower animal forms at the close of the Third Round, remained the "narrow-brained" of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees of intellectuality among the various races of men -- the savage Bushman and the European -- even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly disinherited, or the unfavoured, as some may think -- nothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the human Monads, which were not ready: which have to evolve during the present Round, as on the three remaining globes (hence on four different planes of being) so as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in this connection. The MONADS of the lowest specimens of humanity (the "narrow-brained"* savage South-Sea Islander, the African, the Australian) had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only now; the latter are burdened with past, present, and future Karma. In this respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of civilised countries.
Let us pause before giving any more such strange teachings. Let us try and find out how far any ancient Scriptures, and even Science, permit the possibility of, or even distinctly corroborate, such wild notions as are found in our Anthropogenesis.
Recapitulating that which has been said we find: -- That the Secret Doctrine claims for man, (1) a polygenetic origin. (2) A variety of modes of procreation before humanity fell into the ordinary method of generation. (3) That the evolution of animals -- of the mammalians at any rate -- follows that of man instead of preceding it. And this is diametrically opposed to the now generally accepted theories of evolution and the descent of man from an animal ancestor.
Let us, by giving to Caesar what is Caesar's, examine, first of all, the chances for the polygenetic theory among the men of science.
Now the majority of the Darwinian evolutionists incline to a polygenetic explanation of the origin of Races. On this particular question, however, scientists are, as in many other cases, at sixes and sevens; they agree to disagree.
"Does man descend from one single couple or from several groups -- monogenism or polygenism? As far as one can venture to pronounce on what in the absence of witnesses (?) will never be known (?), the second hypothesis is far the most probable."* Abel Hovelacque, in his "Science of Language," comes to a similar conclusion, arguing from the evidence available to a linguistic enquirer.
In an address delivered before the British Association, Professor W. H. Flower remarked on this question: --
"The view which appears best to accord with what is now known of the characters and distribution of the races of man . . . . is a modification of the monogenistic hypothesis (!). Without entering into the difficult question of the method of man's first appearance upon the world, we must assume for it a vast antiquity, at all events as measured by any historical standard. If we had any approach to a complete palaeontological record, the history of Man could be re-constructed, but nothing of the kind is forthcoming."
Such an admission must be regarded as fatal to the dogmatism of the physical Evolutionists, and as opening a wide margin to occult speculations. The opponents of the Darwinian theory were, and still remain, polygenists. Such "intellectual giants" as John Crawford and James Hunt discussed the problem and favoured polygenesis, and in their day there was a far stronger feeling in favour of than against this theory. It is only in 1864 that Darwinians began to be wedded to the theory of unity, of which Messrs. Huxley and Lubbock became the first coryphai.
As regards that other question, of the priority of man to the animals in the order of evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very impossible in it, and is but logical. For, man becomes that Macrocosm for the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a physical standpoint, all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral -- which is light itself, crystallised and immetallised -- from plants to the creatures which preceded the first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical structures by means of the "cast-off dust" of those minerals, and the refuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead bodies, on which they fed and which gave them their outer bodies. In his turn, man grew more physical, by re-absorbing into his system that which he had given out, and which became transformed in the living animal crucibles through which it had passed, owing to Nature's alchemical transmutations. There were animals in those days of which our modern naturalists have never dreamed; and the stronger became physical material man, the giants of those times, the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne "humanity" separated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child-bearing engines, it ceased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of the body. But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on the human plane, (before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say,) all this vital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the production of the first mammal-animal forms. Evolution is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught; and nature never leaves an atom unused. Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are directed towards one point -- MAN. The progress in the succession of beings, says Agassiz, "consists in an increasing similarity of the living fauna, and, among the vertebrates, especially, in the increasing resemblance to man. Man is the end towards which all animal creation has tended from the first appearance of the first palaeozoic fishes."*
Just so; but "the palaeozoic fishes" being at the lower curve of the arc of the evolution of forms, this Round began with astral man, the reflection of the Dhyan Chohans, called the "Builders." Man is the alpha and the omega of objective creation. As said in "Isis Unveiled," "all things had their origin in spirit -- evolution having originally begun from above and proceeding downwards, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory."** Therefore, the tendency spoken of by the eminent naturalist above quoted, is one inherent in every atom. Only, were one to apply it to both sides of the evolution, the observations made would greatly interfere with the modern theory, which has now almost become (Darwinian) law.
But in citing the passage from Agassiz' work with approval, it must not be understood that the occultists are making any concession to the theory, which derives man from the animal kingdom. The fact that in this Round he preceded the mammalia is obviously not impugned by the consideration that the latter (mammalia) follow in the wake of man.
25. HOW DID THE MANASA, THE SONS OF WISDOM ACT? THEY REJECTED THE SELF-BORN, (the boneless). THEY ARE NOT READY. THEY SPURNED THE (First) SWEAT-BORN.* THEY ARE NOT QUITE READY. THEY WOULD NOT ENTER THE (First) EGG-BORN.**
To a Theist or a Christian this verse would suggest a rather theological idea: that of the Fall of the Angels through Pride. In the Secret Doctrine, however, the reasons for the refusal to incarnate in half-ready physical bodies seem to be more connected with physiological than metaphysical reasons. Not all the organisms were sufficiently ready. The incarnating powers chose the ripest fruits and spurned the rest.***
By a curious coincidence, when selecting a familiar name for the continent on which the first androgynes, the Third Root-Race, separated, the writer chose, on geographical considerations, that of "Lemuria," invented by Mr. P. L. Sclater. It is only later, that reading Haeckel's "Pedigree of Man," it was found that the German "Animalist" had chosen the name for his late continent. He traces, properly enough, the centre of human evolution to "Lemuria," but with a slight scientific variation. Speaking of it as that "cradle of mankind," he pictures the gradual transformation of the anthropoid mammal into the primeval savage!! Vogt, again, holds that in America Man sprang from a branch of the platyrrhine apes, independently of the origination of the African and Asian root-stocks from the old world catarrhinians. Anthropologists are, as usual, at loggerheads on this question, as on many others. We shall examine this claim in the light of esoteric philosophy in Stanza VIII. Meanwhile, let us give a few moments of attention to the various consecutive modes of procreation according to the laws of Evolution.
Let us begin by the mode of reproduction of the later sub-races of the Third human race, by those who found themselves endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as, "towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositories of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth." Have they likewise fallen, if, then, incarnation was the Fall?
Of this presently. The only thing now to be noted of these is, that the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity. They were the pre-Adamite and the divine Races, with which even theology, in whose sight they are all "the accursed Cainite Races," now begins to busy itself.
But the action of "spiritual progenitors" of that Race has first to be disposed of. A very difficult and abstruse point has to be explained with regard to Stanzas 26 and 27. These say: --
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26. WHEN THE SWEAT-BORN PRODUCED THE EGG-BORN, THE TWO-FOLD (androgyne Third Race*), THE MIGHTY, THE POWERFUL WITH BONES, THE LORDS OF WISDOM SAID: "NOW SHALL WE CREATE" (a).
Why "now" -- and not earlier? This the following sloka explains.
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27. (Then) THE THIRD (race) BECAME THE VAHAN (vehicle) OF THE LORDS OF WISDOM. IT CREATED SONS OF "WILL AND YOGA," BY KRIYASAKTI (b), IT CREATED THEM, THE HOLY FATHERS, ANCESTORS OF THE ARHATS. . . .
(a) How did they create, since the "Lords of Wisdom" are identical with the Hindu Devas, who refuse "to create"? Clearly they are the
[[Footnote(s)]] -------------------------------------------------
* The evolutionist Professor Schmidt alludes to "the fact of the separation of sexes, as to the derivation of which from species once hermaphrodite all (the believers in creation naturally excepted) are assuredly of one accord." Such indeed is the incontestable evidence drawn from the presence of rudimentary organs. (Cf., his "Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," p. 159.) Apart from such palpable traces of a primeval hermaphroditism, the fact may be noted that, as Laing writes, "a study of embryology. . . . shows that in the human higher animal species the distinction of sex is not developed until a considerable progress has been made in the growth of the embryo." ("A Modern Zoroastrian," p.106.) The Law of Retardation -- operative alike in the case of human races, animal species, etc., when a higher type has once been evolved -- still preserves hermaphroditism as the reproductive method of the majority of plants and many lower animals.
[[Vol. 2, Page]] 173 THE SONS OF KRIYASAKTI.
Kumaras of the Hindu Pantheon and Puranas, those elder sons of Brahma, "Sanandana and the other sons of Vedhas," who, previously created by him "without desire or passion, remained chaste, full of holy wisdom and undesirous of progeny?"*
The power, by which they first created, is just that which has since caused them to be degraded from their high status to the position of evil spirits, of Satan and his Host, created in their turn by the unclean fancy of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyasakti, that mysterious and divine power latent in the will of every man, and which, if not called to life, quickened and developed by Yogi-training, remains dormant in 999,999 men out of a million, and gets atrophied. This power is explained in the "Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,"** as follows: --
(b) "Kriyasakti -- the mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally, if one's attention (and Will) is deeply concentrated upon it; similarly, an intense volition will be followed by the desired result. A Yogi generally performs his wonders by means of Itchasakti (Will-power) and Kriyasakti."
The Third Race had thus created the so-called SONS OF WILL AND YOGA, or the "ancestors" (the spiritual forefathers) of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or Mahatmas, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the Fall of Man. For creation is but the result of will acting on phenomenal matter, the calling forth out of it the primordial divine Light and eternal Life. They were the "holy seed-grain" of the future Saviours of Humanity.
Here we have to make again a break, in order to explain certain difficult points, of which there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such interruptions. For explanations and a philosophical account of the nature of those beings, which are now viewed as the "Evil" and rebellious Spirits, the creators by Kriyasakti, the reader is referred to the chapters on "The Fallen Angels" and "The Mystic Dragons," in Part II. of this Volume.
The order of the evolution of the human Races stands thus in the Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and was already given: --
The First men were Chhayas (1) ; the second, the "Sweat-born" (2), the Third, "Egg-born," and the holy Fathers born by the power of Kriyasakti (3); the Fourth were the children of the Padmapani (Chenresi) (4).
Of course such primeval modes of procreation -- by the evolution of one's image, through drops of perspiration, after that by Yoga, and then by what people will regard as magic (Kriyasakti) -- are doomed beforehand to be regarded as fairy-tales. Nevertheless, beginning with the first and ending with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in them, nor anything which could not be shown natural. This must be proven.
1. Chhaya-birth, or that primeval mode of sexless procreation, the first Race having oozed out, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris, is hinted at in a Cosmic allegory in the Puranas.* It is the beautiful allegory and story of Sanjna, the daughter of Viswakarman -- married to the Sun, who, "unable to endure the fervours of her lord," gave him her chhaya (shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the "chhaya" to be his wife begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith -- an ethereal shadow also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster millions of years ago.
But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of the Puranic authors. We have another proof ready. If the materialised forms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the bodies of certain mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid -- the creation of the first Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind of procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the mystery nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any greater -- while it is far more comprehensible to the mind of the true metaphysical thinker - than the mystery of the conception of the foetus, its gestation and birth as a child, as we now know it.
Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the Puranas about the "Sweat-born."
2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogi, eminent in holy wisdom and pious austerities, which, finally, awaken the jealousy of the gods, who are represented in the Hindu Scriptures as being in never-ending strife with the ascetics. Indra, the "King of the Gods,"** finally sends one of his female Apsarasas to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah sending Sarah, Abraham's wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but in truth it is those gods (and god), who are ever trying to disturb ascetics and thus make them lose the fruit of their austerities, who ought to be regarded as "tempting demons," instead of applying the term to the Rudras, Kumaras, and Asuras, whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing reproach to the Don Juanic gods of the Pantheon. But it is the reverse that we find in all the Puranic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.
The king of the gods (or Indra) sends a beautiful Apsarasas (nymph) named Pramlocha to seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her unholy purpose and "907 years six months and three days"* spent in her company seem to the sage as one day. When this psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni curses bitterly the creature who seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. "Depart, begone!" he cries, "vile bundle of illusions!" . . . And Pramlocha, terrified, flies away, wiping the perspiration from her body with the leaves of the trees as she passes through the air. She went from tree to tree, and as, with the dusky shoots that crowned their summits, she dried her limbs, the child she had conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews; and the winds collected them into one mass. "This," said Soma (the Moon), "I matured by my rays; and gradually it increased in size, till the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely girl named Marisha."**
Now Kandu stands here for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one devoid of mind, which is hinted at by his being unable to discern a period of nearly one thousand years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so easily deluded and blinded. Here is a variant of the allegory in Genesis, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the "Lord-god" breathes the breath of life but not of intellect and discrimination, which are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first development of Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect is of the Earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and the divine Soul. Pramlocha is the Hindu Lilith of the Aryan Adam; and Marisha, the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the "sweat-born," and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of Mankind.
As remarked in the foot note (vide supra) it is not Indra, who now figures in the Puranas, but Kamadeva, the god of love and desire, who sends Pramlocha on Earth. Logic, besides the esoteric doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kama is the king and lord of the Apsarasas, of whom Pramlocha is one; and, therefore, when Kandu, in cursing her, exclaims "Thou hast performed the office assigned by the monarch of the gods, go!" he must mean by that monarch Kama and not Indra, to whom the Apsarasas are not subservient. For Kama, again, is in the Rig Veda (x. 129) the personification of that feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the first movement that stirred the ONE, after its manifestation from the purely abstract principle, to create, "Desire first arose in It, which was the primal germ of mind; and which sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non-Entity." A hymn in the Atharva Veda exalts Kama into a supreme God and Creator, and says: "Kama was born the first. Him, neither gods nor fathers (Pitara) nor men have equalled." . . . . The Atharva Veda identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to that god. The Taittariya Brahmana makes him allegorically the son of Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Sraddha (faith). Elsewhere Kama is born from the heart of Brahma; therefore he is Atma-Bhu "Self-Existent," and Aja, the "unborn." His sending Promlocha has a deep philosophical meaning; sent by Indra -- the narrative has none. As Eros was connected in early Greek mythology with the world's creation, and only afterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kama in his original Vedic character, (Harivansa making him a son of Lakshmi, who is Venus). The allegory, as said, shows the psychic element developing the physiological, before the birth of Daksha, the progenitor of real physical men, made to be born from Marisha and before whose time living beings and men were procreated "by the will, by sight, by touch and by Yoga," as will be shown.
This, then, is the allegory built on the mode of procreation of the Second or the "Sweat-born." The same for the Third Race in its final development.
Marisha, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the Prachetasas, the production of the "Mind-born" sons of Brahma also*, from whom they beget the Patriarch Daksha, a son of Brahma also, in a former Kalpa or life, explain and add the Puranas, in order to mislead, yet speaking the truth.
(3.) The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of "sweat," which, after many a transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more difficult to imagine or realise than the growth of the foetus from an imperceptible germ, which foetus develops into a child, and then into a strong, heavy man. But this race again changes its mode of procreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a vis formativa, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater drops, which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies -- huge eggs. In these the human foetus gestated for several years. In the Puranas, Marisha, the daughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetasas and the mother of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first human-like progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The evolution of man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the Universe, the macrocosm. His evolution stands between that of the latter and that of the animal, for which man, in his turn, is a macrocosm.
Then the race becomes: --
(4.) The androgyne, or hermaphrodite. This process of men-bearing explains, perhaps, why Aristophanes* describes the nature of the old race as androgynous, the form of every individual being rounded, "having the back and sides as in a circle," whose "manner of running was circular . . . . terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition." Therefore, to make them weaker, "Zeus divided them (in the Third Root-Race) into two, and Apollo (the Sun), under his direction, closed up the skin." The Madagascans (the island belonged to Lemuria) have a tradition about the first man, who lived at first without eating, and, having indulged in food, a swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, there emerged from it a female, who became the mother of their race. Truly . . . "We have our sciences of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet open. . . . . The polyps . . . . produce their offspring from themselves, like the buds and ramifications of a tree. . . . " Why not the primitive human polyp? The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation into the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately develop into a sea-nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to its parent-organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia once more put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to understand that a form may be evolved -- as in the sexual Lemurians from Hermaphrodite parentage -- quite unlike its immediate progenitors. It is, moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of "Heredity," its servant.
The meaning of the last sentence in the above-quoted Commentary on Stanza 27, namely, that the Fourth Race were the children of Padmapani, may find its explanation in a certain letter from the Inspirer of "Esoteric Buddhism" quoted on p. 68. "The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub-race of the Fourth Root-Race -- the above-mentioned Chinamen and their off-shoots and branchlets. (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux are all remnants of this last offshoot.)"
Padmapani, or Avalokiteswara in Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now, Avalokiteswara is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine regions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men. Padmapani-Avalokiteswara is called esoterically Bhodhisatva (or Dhyan Chohan) Chenresi Vanchug, "the powerful and all-seeing." He is considered now as the greatest protector of Asia in general, and of Tibet in particular. In order to guide the Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, and preserve the great Arhats in the world, this heavenly Being is credited with manifesting himself from age to age in human form. A popular legend has it that whenever faith begins to die out in the world, Padmapani Chenresi, the "lotus-bearer," emits a brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two great Lamas -- the Dalai and Teschu Lamas; finally, it is believed that he will incarnate as "the most perfect Buddha" in Tibet, instead of in India, where his predecessors, the great Rishis and Manus had appeared in the beginning of our Race, but now appear no longer. Even the exoteric appearance of Dhyani Chenresi is suggestive of the esoteric teaching. He is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and the progenitor of all the human Races after the Third, the first complete one, and thus is represented as the culmination of the four primeval races in his eleven-faced form. It is a column built in four rows, each series having three faces or heads of different complexions: the three faces for each race being typical of its three fundamental physiological transformations. The first is white (moon-coloured); the second is yellow; the third, red-brown; the fourth, in which are only two faces -- the third face being left a blank -- (a reference to the untimely end of the Atlanteans) is brown-black. Padmapani (Daksha) is seated on the column, and forms the apex. In this reference compare Stanza 39. The Dhyan Chohan is represented with four arms, another allusion to the four races. For while two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus (Padmapani, "the lotus-bearer"), this flower symbolizing generation, and the fourth holds a serpent, emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and on his head the sign of water -- matter, deluge -- while on his brow rests the third eye (Siva's eye, that of spiritual insight). His name is "Protector" (of Tibet), "Saviour of Humanity." On other occasions when he has only two arms, he is Chenresi, the Dhyani and Bhodisatva, Chakna-padmakarpo, "he who holds a lotus." His other name is Chantong, "he of the 1,000 eyes," when he is endowed with a thousand arms and hands, on the palm of each of which is represented an eye of Wisdom, these arms radiating from his body like a forest of rays. Another of his names is Lokapati and Lokanatha (Sanskrit) "Lord of the World"; and Jigtengonpo (Tibetan), "Protector and Saviour against evil" of any kind.
Padmapani, however, is the "lotus-bearer" symbolically only for the profane; esoterically, it means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of which, the present Maha-Kalpa (the Varaha), is called Padma, and represents one half of the life of Brahma. Though a minor Kalpa, it is called Maha, "great," because it comprises the age in which Brahma sprang from a lotus. Theoretically, the Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and sub-divided in Space and Time, each division -- down to the smallest -- having its own Dhyani as patron or regent. Padmapani (Avalokiteshwara) becomes, in China, in his female aspect, Kwan-yin, "who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to save mankind." The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the constellations on the respective "birth-days" of these Dhyanis -- Amitabha (the O-mi-to Fo, of China), included: e.g., on the 19th day of the second month, on the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day of the third month, etc., etc. -- gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for performing what are called "magic" feats. The future of an individual is seen, with all its coming events marshalled in order, in a magic mirror placed under the ray of certain constellations. But -- beware of the reverse of the medal, SORCERY.
