The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 2 of 4 The Synthesis of...

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

It does not mean that Monads entered Forms in which other Monads already were. They were “Essences,” “Intelligences,” and Conscious Spirits; Entities seeking to become still more conscious by uniting with more developed Matter. Their essence was too pure to be distinct from the Universal Essence; but their “Egos,” or Manas (since they are called Mânasaputra, born of Mahat, or Brahmâ) had to pass through earthly human experiences to become all-wise, and be able to start on the returning ascending cycle. The Monads are not discrete principles, limited or conditioned, but rays from that one universal absolute Principle. The entrance of one ray of sunlight following [pg 177] another through the same aperture into a dark room will not constitute two rays, but one ray intensified. It is not in the course of natural law that man should become a perfect Septenary Being before the Seventh Race in the Seventh Round. Yet he has all these principles latent in him from his birth. Nor is it part of the evolutionary law that the Fifth Principle (Manas), should receive its complete development before the Fifth Round. All such prematurely developed intellects (on the spiritual plane) in our Race are abnormal; they are those whom we have called the “Fifth-Rounders.” Even in the coming Seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was reached during the Fourth Root-Race.

Thus, those who were “half ready,” who received “but a spark,” constitute the average humanity which have to acquire their intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution, after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the “Sons of Wisdom.” While those which “were not ready” at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower animal forms at the close of the Third Round, remained the “narrow-brained” of the Stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees of intellectuality among the various races of men—the savage Bushman and the European—even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly disinherited, or the “unfavoured,” as some may think—nothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the human Monads, which “were not ready”; which have to evolve during the present Round, as also on the three remaining Globes—hence on four different planes of being—so as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the Fifth Round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in this connection. The Monads of the lowest specimens of humanity—the “narrow-brained”387 savage South-Sea Islander, the [pg 178] African, the Australian—had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favoured brethren in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only now; the latter are burdened with past, present and future Karma.

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.

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

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

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

As regards the other question, of the priority of man to the animals in the order of evolution, the answer is as promptly given. If man is really the Microcosm of the Macrocosm, then the teaching has nothing so very impossible in it, and is but logical. For, man becomes that Macrocosm for the three lower kingdoms under him. Arguing from a physical standpoint, all the lower kingdoms, save the mineral—which is light itself, crystallized and immetallized—from plants to the creatures which preceded the first mammalians, all have been consolidated in their physical structures by means of the “cast-off dust” of those minerals, and the refuse of the human matter, whether from living or dead bodies, on which they fed and which gave them their outer bodies. In his turn also, man grew more physical, by reäbsorbing into his system that which he had given out, and which became transformed in the living animal crucibles through which it had passed, owing to Nature's alchemical transmutations. There were animals in those days of which our Modern Naturalists have never dreamed; and the stronger became physical material man—the giants of those times—the more powerful were his emanations. Once that Androgyne Humanity separated into sexes, transformed by Nature into child-bearing engines, it ceased to procreate its like through drops of vital energy oozing out of the body.

But while man was still ignorant of his procreative powers on the human plane—before his Fall, as a believer in Adam would say—all this vital energy, scattered far and wide from him, was used by Nature for the production of the first mammal-animal forms. Evolution is an eternal cycle of becoming, we are taught; and Nature never leaves an atom unused. Moreover, from the beginning of the Round, all in Nature tends to become Man. All the impulses of the dual, centripetal and centrifugal Force are directed towards one point—Man. The progress in the succession of beings, says Agassiz:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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