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

No greater riddle exists in Science, no problem is more hopelessly insoluble, than the question: How old—even approximately—are the Sun and Moon, the Earth and Man? What does Modern Science know [pg 070] of the duration of the Ages of the World, or even of the length of Geological Periods?

If one turns to Science for chronological information, one is told by those who are straightforward and truthful, as for instance Mr. Pengelly, the eminent Geologist, “We do not know.”143 One will learn that, so far, no trustworthy numerical estimate of the ages of the World and Man could be made, and that both Geology and Anthropology are at sea. Yet when a student of Esoteric Philosophy presumes to bring forward the teachings of Occult Science, he is at once sat upon. Why should this be so, since, when reduced to their own physical methods, the greatest Scientists have failed to arrive even at an approximate agreement?

It is true that Science can hardly be blamed for it. Indeed, in the Cimmerian darkness of the prehistoric ages, the explorers are lost in a labyrinth, whose great corridors are doorless, allowing no visible exit into the archaic past. Lost in the maze of their own conflicting speculations, rejecting, as they have always done, the evidence of Eastern tradition, without any clue, or one single certain milestone to guide them, what can Geologists or Anthropologists do but pick up the slender thread of Ariadne where they first perceive it, and then proceed at perfect random? Therefore we are first told that the farthest date to which documentary record extends is now generally regarded by Anthropology as but “the earliest distinctly visible point of the pre-historic period”—in the words of the writer of the article in the Encyclopædia Britannica.

It is with those specified “ages” that we shall begin. They are “pre-historic” to the naked eye of Matter only. To the spiritual eagle eye of the Seer and the Prophet of every race, Ariadne's thread stretches beyond that “historic period” without break or flaw, surely and steadily, into the very night of time; and the hand which holds it is too mighty to drop it, or even let it break. Records exist, although they may be rejected as fanciful by the profane; though, indeed, many of them are tacitly accepted by Philosophers and men of great learning, and meet with an unvarying refusal only from the official and collective body of orthodox Science. And since the latter refuses to give us even [pg 071] an approximate idea of the duration of the geological Ages—save in a few conflicting and contradictory hypotheses—let us see what Âryan Philosophy can teach us.

Such computations as are given in Manu and the Purânas—save trifling and most evidently intentional exaggerations—are, as already stated, almost identical with those taught in Esoteric Philosophy. This may be seen by comparing the two in any Hindû calendar of recognized orthodoxy.

The best and most complete of all such calendars, at present, as vouched for by the learned Brâhmans of Southern India, is the already mentioned Tamil calendar called the Tirukkanda Panchanga, compiled, as we are told, from, and in full accordance with, secret fragments of Asuramaya's data. As Asuramaya is said to have been the greatest Astronomer, so he is whispered to have also been the most powerful “Sorcerer” of the “White Island, which had become Black with sin,” i.e., of the islands of Atlantis.

The “White Island” is a symbolical name. Asuramaya is said to have lived, as in the tradition of the Jñâna-bhâskara, in Romaka-pura, in the West; because the name is an allusion to the land and cradle of the “Sweat-born” of the Third Race. That land or continent had disappeared ages before Asuramaya lived, since he was an Atlantean; but he was a direct descendant of the Wise Race, the Race that never dies. Many are the legends concerning this hero, the pupil of Sûrya, the Sun-God, himself, as the Indian accounts allege. It matters little whether he lived on one or another island, but the question is to prove that he was no myth, as Dr. Weber and others would make him. The fact of Romaka-pura, in the West, being named as the birthplace of this hero of the Archaic Ages, is the more interesting because it is so very suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching about the Sweat-born Races, the men born from the “pores of their parents.” “Roma-kûpas” mean “hair-pores” in Sanskrit. In the Mahâbhârata,144 a people named Raumas are said to have been created from the pores of Vîrabhadra, the terrible giant, who destroyed Daksha's sacrifice. Other tribes and people are also represented as born in this way. All these are references to the later Second and the earlier Third Root-Races.

These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles, never mentioned in Brâhmanical popular writings—one of which, the division of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, nevertheless, known to every “Twice-born” (Dvija, or Initiated) Brâhman, and the Purânas contain references to some of them in veiled terms, which no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would.

These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Nârada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. But the Antediluvian Giants—the Gibborim of the Bible—were not all bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist [pg 074] a servant of the Evil One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of “the faithful sons of the Church.” A Torquemada and a Catherine de Médicis certainly did more harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean Giant or Demigod of antiquity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There were good “giants” in days of old just as there are bad “pigmies” now; and the Râkshasas and Yakshas of Lankâ are no worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modern wars. Nor are they myths.

In the Encyclopædia Britannica we find, as the last word of Science, that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretch only over “tens of thousands of years.” It becomes evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man in the “pre- or post- glacial drift,” if we are told at the same time that the so-called “Ice Age” is simply a long succession of ages which