Chapter XII: Part I: Cosmic Evolution (7)

The Monad emerges from its state of spiritual and intellectual unconsciousness; and, skipping the first two planes—too near the Absolute to permit of any correlation with anything on a lower plane—it gets directly into the plane of Mentality. But there is no plane in the whole universe with a broader margin, or a wider field of action, in its almost endless gradations of perceptive and apperceptive qualities, than this plane, which has in its turn an appropriate smaller plane for every “form,” from the Mineral Monad up to the time when that Monad blossoms forth by evolution into the Divine Monad. But all the time it is still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, throughout its ever succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or partial or total obscuration of matter—two polar antitheses—as it ascends into the realms of mental spirituality, or descends into the depths of materiality.

To return to _Esoteric Buddhism_. The second statement is with regard to the enormous period intervening between the mineral epoch, on Globe A, and the man epoch, the term “man epoch” being used because of the necessity of giving a name to that fourth kingdom which follows the animal, though in truth the “man” on Globe A, during the First Round, is no man, but only his prototype, or dimensionless image, from the astral regions. The statement runs as follows:

The full development of the mineral epoch on Globe A, prepares the
way for the vegetable development, and, as soon as this begins,
the mineral life‐impulse overflows into Globe B. Then, when the
vegetable development on Globe A is complete and the animal
development begins, the vegetable life‐impulse overflows to Globe
B, and the mineral impulse passes on to Globe C. Then finally
comes the human life impulse on Globe A.(286)

And so it goes on for three Rounds, when it slackens, and finally stops at the threshold of our Globe, in the Fourth Round; because the human period (of the true physical men to be), the seventh, is now reached. This is evident, for as said:

... There are processes of evolution which precede the mineral
kingdom, and thus a wave of evolution, indeed several waves of
evolution, precede the mineral wave in its progress round the
spheres.(287)

And now we have to quote from another article, “The Mineral Monad,” in _Five Years of Theosophy_:

There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees
of elementals, or nascent centres of forces—from the first stage
of differentiation of [from] Mûlaprakriti [or rather Pradhâna,
Primordial Homogeneous Matter] to its third degree—_i.e._, from
full unconsciousness to semi‐perception; the second or higher
group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral
kingdom thus forming the central or turning point in the degrees
of the “Monadic Essence,” considered as an evolving energy. Three
stages [sub‐physical] on the elemental side; the mineral kingdom;
three stages on the objective physical(288) side—these are the
[first or preliminary] seven links of the evolutionary chain.(289)

“Preliminary” because they are preparatory, and though belonging in fact to the natural, they would be more correctly described as the sub‐natural evolution. This process makes a halt in its stages at the third, at the threshold of the fourth stage, when it becomes, on the plane of natural evolution, the first really manward stage, thus forming with the three elemental kingdoms, the ten, the Sephirothal number. It is at this point that begins:

A descent of spirit into matter equivalent to an ascent in
physical evolution; a reäscent from the deepest depths of
materiality (the mineral) towards its _status quo ante_, with a
corresponding dissipation of concrete organism—up to Nirvâna, the
vanishing point of differentiated matter.(290)

Therefore it becomes evident, why that which is pertinently called in _Esoteric Buddhism_ “wave of evolution,” and “mineral, vegetable, animal and man‐impulse,” stops at the door of our Globe, at its Fourth Cycle or Round. It is at this point that the Cosmic Monad (Buddhi) will be wedded to, and become the vehicle of, the Âtmic Ray; _i.e._, Buddhi will awaken to an apperception of it (Âtman), and thus enter on the first step of a new septenary ladder of evolution, which will lead it eventually to the tenth, counting from the lowest upwards, of the Sephirothal Tree, the Crown.

Everything in the Universe follows analogy. “As above, so below”; Man is the microcosm of the Universe. That which takes place on the spiritual plane, repeats itself on the cosmic plane. Concretion follows the lines of abstraction; corresponding to the highest must be the lowest; the material to the spiritual. Thus, corresponding to the Sephirothal Crown, or Upper Triad, there are the three elemental kingdoms, which precede the mineral,(291) and which, using the language of the Kabalists, answer in the cosmic differentiation to the Worlds of Form and Matter, from the Super‐Spiritual to the Archetypal.

Now what is a Monad? And what relation does it bear to an Atom? The following reply is based upon the explanations given in answer to these questions in the above‐cited article, “The Mineral Monad,” written by the author. To the second question it is answered:

None whatever to the atom or molecule as at present existing in
the scientific conception. It can neither be compared with the
microscopic organisms, once classed among polygastric infusoria,
and now regarded as vegetable, and classed among algæ; nor is it
quite the _monas_ of the Peripatetics. Physically or
constitutionally the Mineral Monad differs, of course, from the
Human Monad, which is not physical, nor can its constitution be
rendered by chemical symbols and elements.(292)

In short, as the Spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and Impartite, whose Rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call the “Individual Monads” of men, so the Mineral Monad—being at the opposite curve of the circle—is also One, and from it proceed the countless physical atoms, which Science is beginning to regard as individualized.

Otherwise how could one account for, and explain mathematically,
the evolutionary and spiral progress of the four kingdoms? The
Monad is the combination of the last two principles in man, the
sixth and the seventh, and, properly speaking, the term “Human
Monad” applies only to the Dual Soul (Âtmâ‐Buddhi), not to its
highest spiritual vivifying principle, Âtmâ, alone. But since the
Spiritual Soul, if divorced from the latter (Âtmâ), could have no
existence, no being, it has thus been called.... Now the Monadic,
or rather Cosmic, Essence, if such a term be permitted, in the
mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the
series of cycles, from the lowest elemental up to the Deva
kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be very
misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity, trailing its
slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after
an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human
being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the
Monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a “Mineral
Monad,” the more correct phraseology in Physical Science, which
differentiates every atom, would of course have been to call it
“the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called ‘the
Mineral Kingdom’.” The atom, as represented in the ordinary
scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by
a psychic something, destined after æons to blossom into a man.
But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy, which
itself has not yet become individualized; a sequential
manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The Ocean of Matter does
not divide into its potential and constituent drops, until the
sweep of the life‐impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man‐
birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is
gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The
Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the
pantheistic sense; and the Occultists, while accepting this
thought for convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages
of the evolution of the concrete from the abstract, by terms of
which the “Mineral, Vegetable, Animal Monad,” etc., are examples.
The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution
is passing through that arc of its circuit. The “Monadic Essence”
begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual
consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. As the Monads are
uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the
Spiritual Essence which vivifies them in their degrees of
differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad—not the
atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance
through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of
intelligence.(293)

Leibnitz conceived of the Monads as elementary and indestructible units, endowed with the power of _giving and receiving_ with respect to other units, and thus of determining all spiritual and physical phenomena. It is he who invented the term apperception, which together with nerve‐ (not perception, but rather) sensation, expresses the state of the Monadic consciousness through all the kingdoms up to Man.

Thus it may be wrong, on strictly metaphysical lines, to call Âtmâ‐Buddhi a Monad, since in the materialistic view it is dual and therefore compound. But as Matter is Spirit, and _vice versâ_; and since the Universe and the Deity which informs it are unthinkable apart from each other; so in the case of Âtmâ‐Buddhi. The latter being the vehicle of the former, Buddhi stands in the same relation to Âtmâ, as Adam‐Kadmon, the Kabalistic Logos, does to Ain Suph, or Mûlaprakriti to Parabrahman.

And now a few words more on the Moon.

What, it may be asked, are the “Lunar Monads,” just spoken of? The description of the seven Classes of Pitris will come later, but now some general explanations may be given. It must be plain to everyone that they are Monads, who, having ended their Life‐Cycle on the Lunar Chain, which is inferior to the Terrestrial Chain, have incarnated on the latter. But there are some further details which may be added, though they border too closely on forbidden ground to be treated of fully. The last word of the mystery is divulged only to Adepts, but it may be stated that our satellite is only the gross body of its invisible principles. Seeing then that there are seven Earths, so there are seven Moons, the last alone being visible; the same for the Sun, whose visible body is called a Mâyâ, a reflection, just as man’s body is. “_The real Sun and the real Moon are as invisible as the real man_,” says an Occult maxim.

And it may be remarked, _en passant_, that those Ancients were not so foolish after all who first started the idea of “Seven Moons.” For though this conception is now taken solely as an astronomical measure of time, in a very materialized form, yet underlying the husk there can still be recognized the traces of a profoundly philosophical idea.

In reality the Moon is the satellite of the Earth in one respect only, viz., that physically the Moon revolves round the Earth. But in every other respect, it is the Earth which is the satellite of the Moon, and not _vice versâ_. Startling as the statement may seem, it is not without confirmation from scientific knowledge. It is evidenced by the tides, by the cyclic changes in many forms of disease, which coincide with the lunar phases; it can be traced in the growth of plants, and is very marked in the phenomena of human conception and gestation. The importance of the Moon and its influence on the Earth were recognized in every ancient religion, notably the Jewish, and have been remarked by many observers of psychical and physical phenomena. But, so far as Science knows, the Earth’s action on the Moon is confined to the physical attraction, which causes her to circle in her orbit. And should an objector insist, that this fact alone is sufficient evidence that the Moon is truly the Earth’s satellite on other planes of action, one may reply by asking whether a mother, who walks round and round her child’s cradle, keeping watch over the infant, is the subordinate of her child or dependent upon it? Though in one sense she is its satellite, yet she is certainly older and more fully developed than the child she watches.

It is, then, the Moon that plays the largest and most important part, as well in the formation of the Earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The Lunar Monads, or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself. They are the Monads, who enter on the cycle of evolution on Globe A, and who, passing round the Chain of Globes, evolve the human form, as has just been shown. At the beginning of the human stage of the Fourth Round on this Globe, they “ooze out” their astral doubles, from the “ape‐like” forms which they had evolved in the Third Round. And it is this subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds physical man. These Monads, or Divine Sparks, are thus the Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris themselves; for these Lunar Spirits have to become “men,” in order that their Monads may reach a higher plane of activity and self‐consciousness, _i.e._, the plane of the Mânasa‐Putras, those who endow the “senseless” shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with “mind,” in the latter part of the Third Root‐Race.

In the same way, the Monads, or Egos, of the men of the Seventh Round of our Earth, after our own Globes A, B, C, D, etc., parting with their life‐ energy, will have informed, and thereby called to life, other laya‐ centres, destined to live and act on a still higher plane of being—in the same way will the Terrene Ancestors create those who will become their superiors.

It now becomes plain, that there exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme for the formation of the three _periodical_ Upâdhis; or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. These are the Monadic (or Spiritual), the Intellectual, and the Physical Evolutions. These three are the finite aspects, or the reflections on the field of Cosmic Illusion, of Âtmâ, the seventh, the One Reality.

1. The Monadic, as the name implies, is concerned with the growth and development into still higher phases of activity of the Monads, in conjunction with:

2. The Intellectual, represented by the Mânasa‐Dhyânis (the Solar Devas, or the Agnishvatta Pitris), the “givers of intelligence and consciousness” to man, and:

3. The Physical, represented by the Chhâyâs of the Lunar Pitris, round which Nature has concreted the present physical body. This body serves as the vehicle for the “growth,” to use a misleading word, and the transformations—through Manas, and owing to the accumulation of experiences—of the Finite into the Infinite, of the Transient into the Eternal and Absolute.

Each of these three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of the highest Dhyânis or Logoi. Each is represented in the constitution of Man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is the union of these three streams in him, which makes him the complex being he now is.

Nature, the physical evolutionary Power, could never evolve Intelligence unaided; she can only create “senseless forms,” as will be seen in our Anthropogenesis. The Lunar Monads cannot progress, for they have not yet had sufficient touch with the forms created by “Nature,” to allow of their accumulating experiences through its means. It is the Mânasa‐Dhyânis who fill up the gap, and they represent the evolutionary power of Intelligence and Mind, the link between Spirit and Matter—in this Round.

Also it must be borne in mind that the Monads which enter upon the evolutionary cycle upon Globe A, in the first Round, are in very different stages of development. Hence the matter becomes somewhat complicated. Let us recapitulate.

The most developed, the Lunar Monads, reach the human germ‐stage in the First Round; become terrestrial, though very ethereal, human beings towards the end of the Third Round, remaining on the Globe through the “obscuration” period, as the seed for future mankind in the Fourth Round, and thus become the pioneers of Humanity at the beginning of this, the present Fourth Round. Others reach the human stage only during later Rounds, _i.e._, in the second, third or first half of the Fourth Round. And finally the most retarded of all—_i.e._, those still occupying animal forms after the middle turning‐point of the Fourth Round—will not become men at all during this Manvantara. They will reach to the verge of Humanity only at the close of the Seventh Round, to be, in their turn, ushered into a new Chain, after Pralaya, by older pioneers, the progenitors of Humanity, or the Seed‐Humanity (Shishta), viz., the men who will be at the head of all at the end of these Rounds.

The student scarcely needs any further explanation on the part played by the Fourth Globe and the Fourth Round in the scheme of evolution.

From the preceding diagrams, which are applicable, _mutatis mutandis_, to Rounds, Globes or Races, it will be seen that the fourth member of a series occupies a unique position. Unlike the others, the Fourth has no “sister” Globe on the same plane as itself, and it thus forms the fulcrum of the “balance” represented by the whole Chain. It is the sphere of final evolutionary adjustments, the world of the Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the balance is struck which determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder of its incarnations in the Cycle. And therefore is it that, after this central turning‐point has been passed in the Great Cycle—_i.e._, after the middle point of the Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globe—no more Monads can enter the human kingdom. The door is closed for this Cycle, and the balance struck. For were it otherwise—had there been a new soul created for each of the countless milliards of human beings that have passed away, and had there been no reïncarnation—it would become difficult indeed to provide room for the disembodied “spirits”; nor could the origin and cause of suffering ever be accounted for. It is the ignorance of the Occult tenets, and the enforcement of false conceptions under the guise of religious education, which have created Materialism and Atheism as a protest against the asserted divine order of things.

The only exceptions to the rule just stated are the “dumb races,” whose Monads are already within the human stage, in virtue of the fact that these “animals” are later than, and even half descended from, man; their last descendants being the anthropoid and other apes. These “human presentments” are in truth only the distorted copies of the early humanity. But this will receive full attention in the next volume.

As the Commentary, broadly rendered, says:

_1. Every Form on earth, and every Speck [atom] in Space strives in its efforts towards self‐formation to follow the model placed for it in the __“__Heavenly Man.__”__... Its (the atom’s) involution and evolution, its __ external and internal growth and development, have all one and the same object—Man; Man, as the highest physical and ultimate form on this Earth; the __“__Monad,__”__ in its absolute totality and awakened condition—as the culmination of the divine incarnations on Earth._

_2. The Dhyânis [Pitris] are those who have evolved their Bhuta [Doubles] from themselves, which Rûpa [Form] has become the vehicle of Monads [Seventh and Sixth principles] that had completed their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas [Rounds]. Then, they [the Astral Doubles] became the men of the first Human Race of the Round. But they were not complete, and were senseless._

This will be explained in the sequel. Meanwhile man—or rather his Monad—has existed on Earth from the very beginning of this Round. But, up to our own Fifth Race, the external shapes which covered those divine Astral Doubles, have changed and consolidated with every sub‐race; the form and physical structure of the fauna changing at the same time, as they had to be adapted to the ever‐changing conditions of life on this Globe, during the geological periods of its formative cycle. And thus will they go on changing with every Root‐Race, and every _chief_ sub‐race, down to the last one of the Seventh in this Round.

_3. The inner, now concealed, man, was then [in the beginnings] the external man. The progeny of the Dhyânis [Pitris], he was __“__the son like unto his father.__”__ Like the lotus, whose external shape assumes gradually the form of the model within itself, so did the form of man in the beginning evolve from within without. After the cycle in which man began to procreate his species after the fashion of the present animal kingdom, it became the reverse. The human fœtus follows now in its transformations all the forms that the physical frame of man assumed, throughout the three Kalpas [Rounds], during the tentative efforts at plastic formation around the Monad, by senseless, because imperfect, matter, in her blind wanderings. In the present age, the physical embryo is a plant, a reptile, an animal, before it finally becomes man, evolving within himself his own ethereal counterpart, in his turn. In the beginning it was that counterpart [astral man] which, being senseless, got entangled in the meshes of matter._

But this “man” belongs to the Fourth Round. As shown, the Monad had passed through, journeyed and been imprisoned in, every transitional form, throughout every kingdom of nature, during the three preceding Rounds. But the Monad which becomes human, is _not the Man_. In this Round—with the exception of the highest mammals after man, the anthropoids destined to die out in this our race, when their Monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms, or the highest elementals, of the Sixth and the Seventh Races, and then into the lowest human forms in the Fifth Round—no units of any of the kingdoms are animated any longer by Monads destined to become human in their next stage, but only by the lower elementals of their respective realms. These “elementals” will become human Monads, in their turn, only at the next great planetary Manvantara.

And in fact the last human Monad incarnated before the beginning of the Fifth Root‐Race. Nature never repeats herself; therefore the anthropoids of our day have not existed at any time since the middle of the Miocene period, when, like all cross breeds, they began to show a tendency, more and more marked as time went on, to return to the type of their first parent, the gigantic black and yellow Lemuro‐Atlantean. To search for the “missing link” is useless. To the Scientists of the closing Sixth Root‐ Race, millions and millions of years hence, our modern races, or rather their fossils, will appear as those of small insignificant apes—an extinct species of the _genus homo_.

Such anthropoids form an exception because they were not intended by Nature, but are the direct product and creation of “senseless” man. The Hindûs attribute a divine origin to the apes and monkeys, because the men of the Third Race were gods from another plane, who had become “senseless” mortals. This subject had already been touched upon in _Isis Unveiled_, twelve years ago, as plainly as was then possible. The reader is there referred to the Brâhmans, if he would know the reason of the regard they have for the monkeys.

He [the reader] would perhaps learn—were the Brâhman to judge him
worthy of an explanation—that the Hindû sees in the ape but what
Manu desired he should: the transformation of species most
directly connected with that of the human family—a bastard branch
engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the
latter. He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the educated
“heathen” the spiritual or inner man is one thing, and his
terrestrial physical casket another. That physical nature, that
great combination of correlations of physical forces, ever
creeping on towards perfection, has to avail herself of the
material at hand; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and,
finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit
tabernacle for the overshadowing of the Divine Spirit.(294)

Moreover, a German scientific work is mentioned in a footnote on the same page. It says that:

A Hanoverian Scientist has recently published a work entitled,
_Ueber die __ Auflösung der Arten durch Natürliche Zucht‐wahl_, in
which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly
mistaken in tracing man back to the ape. On the contrary, he
maintains that it is the ape which is evolved from man. He shows
that, in the beginning, mankind were, morally and physically, the
types and prototypes of our present race and of our human dignity,
by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial
development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur
of ideal conceptions. This is a purely Brâhmanic, Buddhistic and
Kabalistic doctrine. His book is copiously illustrated with
diagrams, tables, etc. It asserts that the gradual debasement and
degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced
throughout ethnological transformations down to our time. And, as
one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized
man of the present day will at last, under the action of the
inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by like
descendants. If we may judge of the future by the actual present,
it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and
materialistic a race should end as Simia rather than as Seraphs.

But though the apes descend from man, it is certainly not the fact that the human Monad, which has once reached the level of humanity, ever incarnates again in the form of an animal.

The cycle of “metempsychosis” for the human Monad is closed, for we are in the Fourth Round and the Fifth Root‐Race. The reader will have to bear in mind—at any rate one who has made himself acquainted with _Esoteric Buddhism_—that the Stanzas which follow in this volume and the next speak of the evolution in our Fourth Round only. The latter is the cycle of the turning‐point, after which, matter, having reached its lowest depths, begins to strive onward and to become spiritualized, with every new race and with every fresh cycle. Therefore the student must take care not to see contradiction where there is none, for in _Esoteric Buddhism_ Rounds are spoken of in general, while here only the Fourth, or our present Round, is meant. Then it was the work of formation; now it is that of reformation and evolutionary perfection.

Finally, to close this digression anent various, but unavoidable, misconceptions, we must refer to a statement in _Esoteric Buddhism_, which has produced a very fatal impression upon the minds of many Theosophists. One unfortunate sentence, from the work just referred to, is constantly brought forward to prove the materialism of the doctrine. The author, referring to the progress of organisms on the Globes, says that:

The mineral kingdom will no more develop the vegetable ... than
the Earth was able to develop man from the ape, till it received
an impulse.(295)

Whether this sentence renders the thought of the author literally, or is simply, as we believe it is, a _lapsus calami_, may remain an open question.

It is really with surprise that we have ascertained the fact, that _Esoteric Buddhism_ was so little understood by some Theosophists, as to have led them into the belief that it thoroughly supported Darwinian evolution, and especially the theory of the descent of man from a pithecoid ancestor. As one member writes: “I suppose you realize that three‐fourths of Theosophists and even outsiders imagine that, as far as the evolution of man is concerned, Darwinism and Theosophy kiss one another.” Nothing of the kind was ever realized, nor is there any great warrant for it, so far as we know, in _Esoteric Buddhism_. It has been repeatedly stated, that evolution as taught by Manu and Kapila was the groundwork of the modern teachings, but neither Occultism nor Theosophy has ever supported the wild theories of the present Darwinists—least of all the descent of man from an ape. Of this, more hereafter. But one has only to turn to p. 47 of the work named, to find the statement that:

Man belongs to a kingdom distinctly separate from that of the
animals.

With such a plain and unequivocal statement before him, it is very strange that any careful student should have been so misled, unless he is prepared to charge the author with a gross contradiction.

Every Round repeats the evolutionary work of the preceding Round, on a higher scale. With the exception of some higher anthropoids, as just mentioned, the Monadic inflow, or inner evolution, is at an end till the next Manvantara. It can never be too often repeated that the full‐blown human Monads have to be first disposed of, before the new crop of candidates appears on this Globe at the beginning of the next Cycle. Thus there is a lull; and this is why, during the Fourth Round, man appears on Earth earlier than any animal creation, as will be described.

But it is still urged that the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ has “preached Darwinism” all along. Certain passages would undoubtedly seem to lend countenance to this inference. Besides which, the Occultists themselves are ready to concede _partial_ correctness to the Darwinian hypothesis, in later details, bye‐laws of evolution, and after the midway point of the Fourth Race. Of that which has taken place, Physical Science can really know nothing, for such matters lie entirely outside of its sphere of investigation. But what the Occultists have never admitted, nor will they ever admit, is that man was _an ape in __ this or any other Round_; or that he ever could be one, however much he may have been “ape‐like.” This is vouched for by the very authority from whom the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ got his information.

Thus to those who confront the Occultists with these lines from the above‐ named volume:

It is enough to show that we may as reasonably—and that we must,
if we would talk about these matters at all—conceive a life‐
impulse giving birth to mineral forms, as of the same sort of
impulse concerned to _raise a race of apes into a race of
rudimentary men_.

To those who bring this passage forward as showing “decided Darwinism,” the Occultists answer by pointing to the explanation of the Master, Mr. Sinnett’s Teacher, which would contradict these lines, were they written in the spirit attributed to them. A copy of this letter was sent to the writer, together with others, two years ago (1886), with additional marginal remarks, to quote from, in the _Secret Doctrine_.

It begins by considering the difficulty experienced by the Western student, in reconciling some facts, previously given, with the evolution of man from the animal, _i.e._, from the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, and advises the student to hold to the doctrine of analogy and correspondences. Then it touches upon the mystery of the Devas, and even Gods, having to pass through states, which it was agreed to refer to as “Immetallization, Inherbation, Inzoönization and finally Incarnation,” and explains this by hinting at the necessity of failures even in the ethereal races of Dhyân Chohans. Concerning this it says:

“_These __‘__failures__’__ are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from Dhyân Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms_....”

After which, a hint only is given about the mystery contained in the allegory of the fallen Asuras, which will be expanded and explained in Volume II. When Karma has reached them at the stage of human evolution:

“_They will have to drink it to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active force and commingle with the elementals, the progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom, to develop little by little the full type of humanity._”

These Dhyân Chohans, as we see, do not pass through the three kingdoms as do the lower Pitris; nor do they incarnate in man until the Third Root Race. Thus, as the teaching stands:

“_Round I. Man in the First Round and First Race on Globe D, our __ Earth, was an ethereal being (a Lunar Dhyâni, as man), non‐intelligent but super‐ spiritual; and correspondingly, on the law of analogy, in the First Race of the Fourth Round. In each of the subsequent races and sub‐races, ... he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly ethereal.... He is sexless, and, like the animal and vegetable, he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarser surroundings._

“_Round II. He [man] is still gigantic and ethereal, but growing firmer and more condensed in body; a more physical man yet still less intelligent than spiritual (1), for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than is the physical frame...._

“_Round III. He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body, at first the form of a giant‐ape, and now more intelligent, or rather cunning, than spiritual. For, on the downward arc, he has now reached a point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent mentality (2). In the last half of the Third Round, his gigantic stature decreases, and his body improves in texture, and he becomes a more rational being, though still more an ape than a Deva.... [All this is almost exactly repeated in the Third Root‐Race of the Fourth Round.]_

“_Round IV. Intellect has an enormous development in this Round. The [hitherto] dumb races acquire our [present] human speech on this Globe, on which, from the Fourth Race, language is perfected and knowledge increases. At this half‐way point of the Fourth Round [as of the Fourth, or Atlantean, Root‐Race], humanity passes the axial point of the minor manvantaric cycle ... the world teeming with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease...._”

This is from the authentic letter; what follows are the later remarks and additional explanations traced by the same hand in the form of footnotes.

“_(1) ... The original letter contained general teaching—a __‘__bird’s‐eye view__’__—and particularized nothing.... To speak of __‘__physical man,__’__ while limiting the statement to the early Rounds, would be drifting back to the miraculous and instantaneous __‘__coats of skin.__’__... The first __‘__Nature,__’__ the first __‘__body,__’__ the first __‘__mind__’__ on the first plane of perception, on the first Globe in the first Round, is what was meant. For Karma and evolution have:_

‘_... centred in our make such strange extremes,_
_From different Natures_(_296_)_ marvellously mixed ..._’

“_(2) Restore: he has now reached the point [by analogy, and as the __ Third Root Race in the Fourth Round], where his [the angel‐man’s] primordial spirituality is eclipsed and overshadowed by nascent human mentality, and you have the true version on your thumb‐nail...._”

These are the words of the Teacher; text, words and sentences in brackets, and explanatory footnotes. It stands to reason that there must be an enormous difference in such terms as “objectivity” and “subjectivity,” “materiality” and “spirituality,” when the same terms are applied to different planes of being and perception. All this must be taken in its relative sense. And therefore there is little to be wondered at, if, left to his own speculations, an author who, however eager to learn, was yet quite inexperienced in these abstruse teachings, has fallen into an error. Nor was the difference between the Rounds and the Races sufficiently defined in the letters received, since nothing of the kind had been required before, as the ordinary Eastern disciple would have found out the difference in a moment. Moreover, to quote from a letter of the Master:

“_The teachings were imparted under protest.... They were, so to say, smuggled goods ... and when I remained face to face with only one correspondent, the other, Mr. ... had so far tossed all the cards into confusion, that little remained to be said without trespassing upon law._”

Theosophists “whom it may concern” will understand what is meant.

The outcome of all this is, that nothing had ever been said in the letters to warrant the assurance, that the Occult doctrine has ever taught, or any Adept believed in, unless metaphorically, the preposterous modern theory of the descent of man from a common ancestor with the ape—an anthropoid of the actual animal kind. To this day the world is more full of ape‐like men than the woods are of men‐like apes. The ape is sacred in India because its origin is well known to the Initiates, though concealed under a thick veil of allegory. Hanumâna is the son of Pavana (Vâyu, “God of the wind”) by Anjanâ, wife of a monster called Kesarî, though his genealogy varies. The reader who bears this in mind, will find in Volume II, _passim_, the whole explanation of this ingenious allegory. The “men” of the Third Race (who separated) were “Gods,” by their spirituality and purity, though senseless, and as yet destitute of mind, as men.

These “men” of the Third Race, the ancestors of the Atlanteans, were just such ape‐like, intellectually senseless, giants as were those beings, who, during the Third Round, represented Humanity. Morally irresponsible, it was these Third Race “men” who, through promiscuous connection with animal species lower than themselves, created that missing link which became ages later (in the Tertiary period only), the remote ancestor of the real ape, as we find it now in the pithecoid family.

And if this is found clashing with the statement which shows the animal later than man, then the reader is asked to bear in mind that the _placental mammal_ only is meant. In those days, there were animals of which Zoölogy does not even dream in our own; _and the modes of reproduction were not identical_ with the notions which modern Physiology has upon the subject. It is not altogether convenient to touch upon such questions in public, but there is _no_ contradiction or impossibility in this whatever.

Thus the earlier teachings, however unsatisfactory, vague and fragmentary, did not teach the evolution of “man” from the “ape.” Nor does the author of _Esoteric Buddhism_ assert it anywhere in his work in so many words; but, owing to his inclination towards Modern Science, he uses language which might perhaps justify such an inference. The man who preceded the Fourth, the Atlantean, Race, however much he may have looked physically like a “gigantic ape”—“the counterfeit of man who hath not the life of a man”—was still a thinking and already a speaking man. The Lemuro‐Atlantean was a highly civilized Race, and if one accepts tradition, which is better history than the speculative fiction which now passes under that name, he was higher than we are with all our sciences and the degraded civilization of the day: at any rate, the Lemuro‐Atlantean of the closing Third Race was so.

And now we may return to the Stanzas.

Stanza VI.—_Continued_.

5. AT THE FOURTH(297) (_a_), THE SONS ARE TOLD TO CREATE THEIR IMAGES. ONE THIRD REFUSES. TWO(298) OBEY.

THE CURSE IS PRONOUNCED (_b_); THEY WILL BE BORN IN THE FOURTH,(299) SUFFER AND CAUSE SUFFERING. THIS IS THE FIRST WAR (_c_).

The full meaning of this Shloka can only be fully comprehended after reading the additional detailed explanations, in the Anthropogenesis and its Commentaries, in Volume II. Between this Shloka and Shloka 4, extend long ages; and there now gleams the dawn and sunrise of another æon. The drama enacted on our planet is at the beginning of its fourth act; but for a clearer comprehension of the whole play the reader will have to turn back before he can proceed onward. For this verse belongs to the general Cosmogony given in the archaic volumes, whereas Volume II will give a detailed account of the “creation,” or rather formation, of the first human beings, followed by the second humanity, and then by the third; or, as they are called, the First, Second, and the Third Root‐Races. As the solid Earth began by being a ball of liquid fire, of fiery dust and its protoplasmic phantom, so did man.

(_a_) That which is meant by the qualification the “Fourth,” is explained as the Fourth Round, only on the authority of the Commentaries. It can equally mean Fourth Eternity as Fourth Round, or even our Fourth Globe. For, as will repeatedly be shown, the latter is the fourth sphere, on the fourth or lowest plane of material life. And it so happens that we are in the Fourth Round, at the middle point of which the perfect equilibrium between Spirit and Matter had to take place.

It was, as we shall see, at this period—during the highest point of civilization and knowledge, and also of human intellectuality, of the Fourth, Atlantean Race—that, owing to the final crisis of the physiologico‐spiritual adjustment of the races, humanity branched off into two diametrically opposite paths: the _Right‐_ and the _Left‐hand_ Paths of Knowledge or Vidyâ. In the words of the Commentary:

_Thus were the germs of the White and the Black Magic sown in those days. The seeds lay latent for some time, to sprout only during the early period of the Fifth [our Race]._

Says the Commentary explaining the Shloka:

_The Holy Youths [the Gods] refused to multiply and create species after their likeness, after their kind. __“__They are not fit Forms [Rûpas] for us. They have to grow.__”__ They refuse to enter the Chhâyâs [Shadows or Images] of their inferiors. Thus had selfish feeling prevailed from the beginning, even among the Gods, and they fell under the eye of the Karmic Lipikas._

They had to suffer for it in later births. How the punishment reached the Gods will be seen in Volume II.

It is a universal tradition that, before the physiological “Fall,” propagation of one’s kind, whether human or animal, took place through the _Will_ of the Creators, or of their progeny. This was the Fall of Spirit into generation, not the Fall of mortal Man. It has already been stated that, to become self‐conscious, Spirit must pass through every cycle of being, culminating in its highest point on earth in Man. Spirit _per se_ is an unconscious negative _abstraction_. Its purity is inherent, not acquired by merit; hence, as already shown, to become the highest Dhyân Chohan, it is necessary for each Ego to attain to full self‐consciousness as a human, _i.e._, conscious, being, which is synthesized for us in Man. The Jewish Kabalists, arguing that no Spirit can belong to the divine Hierarchy unless Ruach (Spirit) is united to Nephesh (Living Soul), only repeat the Eastern Esoteric teaching:

_A Dhyâni has to be an Âtmâ‐Buddhi; once the Buddhi‐Manas breaks loose from the immortal Âtmâ, of which it (Buddhi) is the vehicle, Âtman passes into Non‐Being, which is Absolute Being._

This means that the purely Nirvânic state is a passage of Spirit back to the ideal abstraction of Be‐ness, which has no relation to the plane on which our Universe is accomplishing its cycle.

(_b_) “The Curse is pronounced” does not mean, in this instance, that any Personal Being, God, or Superior Spirit, pronounced it, but simply that the cause, which could but create bad results, had been generated; and that the effects of this Karmic cause could lead the Beings that counteracted the laws of Nature, and thus impeded her legitimate progress, only to bad incarnations, hence to suffering.

(_c_) “There were many Wars,” all referring to struggles of adjustment, spiritual, cosmical and astronomical, but chiefly to the mystery of the evolution of man, as he is now. The Powers or pure Essences that were “told to create,” relate to a mystery explained, as already said, elsewhere. It is not only one of the most hidden secrets of Nature—that of generation, over whose solution the Embryologists have vainly put their heads together—but likewise a divine function which involves that great religious, or rather dogmatic, mystery, the so‐called “Fall” of the Angels. Satan and his rebellious host, when the meaning of the allegory is explained, will thus prove to have refused to create physical man, only to become the direct Saviours and Creators of divine Man. The symbolical teaching is more than mystical and religious, it is purely scientific, as will be seen later on. For, instead of remaining a mere blind functioning medium, impelled and guided by fathomless Law, the “rebellious” Angel claimed and enforced his right of independent judgment and will, his right of free‐agency and responsibility, since Man and Angel are alike under Karmic Law.

Explaining Kabalistic views, the author of _New Aspects of Life_ says of the Fallen Angels that:

According to the symbolical teaching, Spirit, from being simply a
functionary agent of God, became volitional in its developed and
developing action; and, substituting its own will for the divine
desire in its regard, so fell. Hence the kingdom and reign of
spirits and spiritual action, which flow from and are the product
of spirit‐volition, are outside, and contrasted with, and in
contradiction to, the kingdom of souls and divine action.(300)

So far, so good; but what does the author mean by saying:

When man was created, he was human in constitution, with human
affections, human hopes and aspirations. From this state he
fell—into the brute and savage.

This is diametrically opposite to our Eastern teaching, and even to the Kabalistic notion, so far as we understand it, and to the _Bible_ itself. This looks like Corporealism and Substantialism colouring Positive Philosophy, though it is rather difficult to feel quite sure of the author’s meaning. A _fall_, however, “from the natural into the supernatural and the animal”—supernatural meaning the purely spiritual in this case—implies what we suggest.

The _New Testament_ speaks of one of these “Wars,” as follows:

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against
the Dragon; and the Dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed
not; neither was their place found any more in Heaven. And the
great Dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil and
Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.(301)

The Kabalistic version of the same story is given in the _Codex Nazaræus_, the scripture of the Nazarenes, the real mystic Christians of John the Baptist, and the Initiates of Christos. Bahak Zivo, the “Father of the Genii,” is ordered to construct creatures—to “create.” But, as he is “ignorant of Orcus,” he fails to do so, and calls in Fetahil, a still purer spirit, to his aid, who fails still worse. This is a repetition of the failure of the “Fathers,” the Lords of Light, who fail one after the other.(302)

We will now quote from our earlier volumes:(303)

Then steps on the stage of creation the Spirit(304) (of the Earth
so‐called, or the Soul, Psyche, which St. James calls “devilish”),
the lower portion of the Anima Mundi or Astral Light. [See the
close of this Shloka.] With the Nazarenes and the Gnostics this
Spirit was _feminine_. Thus the Spirit of the Earth, perceiving
that for Fetahil,(305) the newest man (the latest), the splendour
was “changed,” and that for splendour existed “decrease and
damage,” she awakes Karabtanos,(306) “who was frantic and _without
sense and judgment_,” and says to him: “Arise, see, the Splendour
(Light) of the _Newest_ Man (Fetahil) has failed (to produce or
create men), the decrease of this Splendour is visible. Rise up,
come with thy Mother (the Spiritus) and free thee from limits by
which thou art held, and those more ample than the whole world.”
After which, follows the union of the frantic and blind matter,
guided by the insinuations of the Spirit (not the _Divine_ Breath
but the _Astral_ Spirit, which by its double essence is already
tainted with matter); and the offer of the Mother being accepted,
the Spiritus conceives “Seven Figures,” and the Seven Stellars
(Planets), which represent also the _seven capital sins_, the
progeny of an Astral Soul, separated from its divine source
(spirit), and _matter_, the blind demon of concupiscence. Seeing
this, Fetahil extends his hand towards the abyss of matter, and
says: “Let the earth exist, just as the abode of the Powers has
existed.” Dipping his hand in the chaos, which he condenses, he
creates our planet.

Then the _Codex_ proceeds to tell how Bahak Zivo was separated
from the Spiritus, and the Genii or Angels from the Rebels.(307)
Then (the greatest) Mano,(308) who dwells with the greatest Ferho,
calls Kebar Zivo (known also by the name of Nebat Iavar bar Iufin
Ifafin), the Helm and Vine of the Food of Life(309)—he being the
third Life, and commiserating the rebellious and foolish Genii, on
account of the magnitude of their ambition, says: “Lord of the
Genii(310) (Æons), see what the Genii (the Rebellious Angels) do,
and about what they are consulting.(311) They say: ‘Let us call
forth the world, and let us call the “Powers” into existence. The
Genii are the Princes (Principes), the Sons of Light, but Thou art
the Messenger of Life’.”

And in order to counteract the influence of the seven “badly
disposed” principles the progeny of Spiritus, Kebar Zivo (or Cabar
Zio), the mighty Lord of Splendour, produces _seven other lives_
(the cardinal virtues), who shine in their own form and light
“from on high,”(312) and thus reëstablish the balance between good
and evil, light and darkness.

Here one finds a repetition of the early _allegorical_ dual systems, such as the Zoroastrian, and detects a germ of the dogmatic and dualistic religions of the future, a germ which has grown into such a luxuriant tree in ecclesiastical Christianity. It is already the outline of the two “Supremes”—God and Satan. But in the Stanzas no such idea exists.

Most of the Western Christian Kabalists—preëminently Éliphas Lévi—in their desire to reconcile the Occult Sciences with Church Dogmas, did their best to make of the “Astral Light” only and preeminently the Plerôma of the early Church Fathers, the abode of the Hosts of the Fallen Angels, of the Archôns and Powers. But the Astral Light, though only the lower aspect of the Absolute, is still dual. It is the Anima Mundi, and ought never to be viewed otherwise, except for Kabalistic purposes. The difference which exists between its “Light” and its “Living Fire,” ought ever to be present in the mind of the Seer and the Psychic. The higher aspect of this “Light,” without which only creatures of matter can be produced, is this Living Fire, and its Seventh Principle. It is stated in _Isis Unveiled_, in a complete description of it:

The Astral Light or Anima Mundi is dual and bi‐sexual. The (ideal)
male part of it is purely divine and spiritual, it is Wisdom, it
is Spirit or Purusha; while the female portion (the Spiritus of
the Nazarenes) is tainted, in one sense, with matter, _is_ indeed
matter, and therefore is evil already. It is the life‐principle of
every living creature, and furnishes the astral soul, the fluidic
_perisprit_, to men, animals, fowls of the air, and everything
living. Animals have only the latent germ of the highest immortal
soul in them. This latter will develop only after a series of
countless evolutions; the doctrine of which evolutions is
contained in the Kabalistic axiom: “A stone becomes a plant; a
plant, a beast; a beast, a man; a man, a spirit; and the spirit, a
god.(313)”

The seven principles of the Eastern Initiates had not been explained when _Isis Unveiled_ was written, but only the three _Kabalistic Faces_ of the semi‐exoteric _Kabalah_.(314) But these contain the description of the mystic natures of the first Group of Dhyân Chohans in the _regimen ignis_, the region and “rule (or government) of fire,” divided into three classes, synthesized by the first, which makes _four_ or the “Tetraktys.” If one studies the commentaries attentively, he will find the same progression in the angelic natures, _viz_., from the _passive_ down to the _active_; the last of these Beings are as near to the Ahamkâra Element—the region or plane wherein _Egoship_, or the feeling of _I‐am‐ness_, is beginning to be defined—as the first are near to the undifferentiated Essence. The former are Arûpa, incorporeal; the latter, Rûpa, corporeal.