Theosophical University Press Online Edition
In several preceding chapters of this volume an attempt has been made to draw aside, to some extent at least, the veil which for long ages has more or less closely curtained the teachings of the Esoteric Tradition as regards the fascinating subject of evolutionary unfolding; and however inadequately this has been done, it is probable that the attentive reader will have gained some notion at least of the basic idea upon which the esoteric teaching concerning evolution reposes: to wit, the gradual and secular unwrapping or rolling forth in manifestation of attributes, qualities, and powers, lying latent in the invisible essence of every entity or being progressing on its upward way along and through the ranges of Cosmic Life, and consequently along and through the Hierarchies of the Worlds Visible and Invisible.
A master-hand had already pointed to the secret teaching concerning evolution behind this Veil, and had raised it sufficiently to allow the perspicacious and intuitive reader to obtain glimpses into the scenes that this Veil hid. Yet it is doubtless no exaggeration to assert with some emphasis that, despite the presentation made by this master-hand, there are even today, nearly fifty years after this pioneer-effort, very few students, Theosophists or others, who have any clear ideas even of the fundamental principles of the esoteric teaching concerning the nature, character, and complex processes that are involved in the evolutionary theory as unfolded by the greatest exponents of the Esoteric Philosophy.
The master-hand, just alluded to, was, of course that of H. P. Blavatsky, aided by two of the Masters of Wisdom, and the literary work which was then given to the world was The Secret Doctrine.
This lack of an adequate understanding of the extremely difficult subject of evolution is certainly not to be ascribed to any imperfection, or faults, or inadequacies, of treatment, in H. P. Blavatsky's greatest literary effort; but is properly explained by two facts: first, the novelty of the teaching itself, and the unfamiliarity of esoteric thought to the minds to whom this novel teaching was given; and, second, because even in The Secret Doctrine what was delivered to the public was all that was deemed by the great Authors thereof proper and wise to give out of the Esoteric Arcanum at that time and to a generation, which, in religion, philosophy, and science too, was a generation largely of self-satisfied pharisees and sadducees -- in other words, to a generation of minds satisfied either with empty ritual or swollen with pride in the achievements of a science wholly materialistic.
H. P. Blavatsky herself pointed to the twentieth century as the time when at least the basic or fundamental thoughts contained in The Secret Doctrine would begin to be understood as having been neither invented by her nor as being merely speculative hypotheses, but as reposing on the everlasting foundations of Nature itself so far as the teachings went, and as comprising the principles of an Ancient Wisdom which far antedates the Vedas, and, indeed, runs back into the mists of prehistory.
It is perhaps the magnificent simplicity of the esoteric teaching concerning the character, nature, and processes, of evolutionary or developmental unfolding, which is at once extremely attractive to intuitive minds and in many cases repellent to other minds which, refusing to believe in their own innate powers of intuitive discernment, hesitate at each forward step, boggle over imaginary difficulties, and largely trust to the dictates issuing from the mouth of established scientific authority.
Magnificently simple as the esoteric teaching about evolution certainly is, it is none the less in its profounder ranges extremely difficult adequately to grasp because of the immense reach of the teaching into every range of Cosmic Life, and, more than anything else perhaps, because of the fact that it involves or comprises the fundamental, essential, and inseparable oneness of the root of each and every evolving entity with the life-web of the Universe itself. This last teaching alone, of the essential oneness of every evolving unit with the fabric and structure of the Universe, is so unfamiliar and novel to Western minds, that it takes no short time-period of assimilation and digestion, after comprehension, before its import can properly be seized.
An attempt, therefore, will be made in the present chapter to throw at least a little more light on the nature of the evolution of sentient and so-called non-sentient beings and things, and especially to clarify the very recondite and difficult branch of the main thought involving the evolutionary appearance of primordial man, and the origination of the animal phyla or stocks from Man. A Theosophical writer, in any attempt to unveil or to explicate a teaching of the Esoteric Tradition, is faced with really great difficulties and of several kinds, when he tries to make at least fairly clear to minds more or less untrained in philosophical and especially theosophical thought some of the far-past history not only of the human race but of the great stocks or classes of animate beings which have in the past peopled the earth and/or which people it today.
It would be a hopeless and indeed a thankless task to attempt to make any reconciliation of somewhat extensive character of modern-day scientific evolutionary hypotheses with the teachings of the Esoteric Tradition. It is probable that even an imperfect attempt at reconciliation cannot yet be satisfactorily achieved, because modern scientific evolutionary theory utterly ignores, is indeed unconscious of, vast stretches in time of the past evolutionary history of the once widely distributed stocks of living beings of many kinds which at different and successive periods of time formerly inhabited this globe. Any attempt to make even a partial reconciliation of modern-day biological thinking, whether in botany or zoology, with the esoteric records, is almost hopeless, because, although biological science has advanced far since the days when H. P. Blavatsky wrote The Secret Doctrine, it is still too early to find common bases of thought between modern biology and the Ancient Wisdom, and to erect upon it the structure of fact and theory which would be satisfactory both to the biologist and the esotericist.
The only thing that can be done is to tell the facts of past evolutionary history by drawing attention to the esoteric records and teaching, and then point in a general way to the constantly increasing new discoveries of biological and palaeontological science as being material corroborative of the secret records.
Further, when one realizes how rapidly science itself is changing, biological science especially, it will be more clearly understood that any such attempt at reconciliation of the biological theories of our own present time with the ancient science, i. e., with the ancient esoteric teaching, would also be almost a waste of time, because the biological science of ten or twenty or thirty years from now, will doubtless be very different from what it is today, and the work, if not having to be done all over again, would call for repetitive efforts in justification of the ancient records, and explication of the meaning of new facts thus discovered and explanations of new theories drawn from these new facts, which by the same token would, within a short time, be themselves replaced by something newer still.
What the present chapter has to say is therefore difficult, not from any one standpoint alone, but from several, as already stated. Moreover, it is inconvenient in plain words to explain the processes of the physical reproduction of creatures as such processes occurred in far past geologic times, because these processes are now in large part utterly unknown on earth, at least in the human kingdom -- indeed, probably also in any of the other animate phyla; and although there still remain today remnants or hang-overs, as it were, of these now far past processes, just as there still remain in the human body the vestiges, the survivals, of organs or forms of organs that were active and vitally functional in former stages of evolutionary development that the human race has passed through, nevertheless, these survivals of organs or organic functions are not yet accepted in scientific theory as proclaiming what they themselves otherwise clearly and silently prove -- that even the beings of our day are biological records of what the human race at one time passed through. Some of these organic but now non-functional remnants of a biological character would seem to show clearly that the human race at one time was androgynous or hermaphroditic in form and function, that is, in biological reproductive type; nor, even were this fact of a former androgynous condition of the human race admitted, would it carry the prehistory of the human race fully back to its primal origins. In other words, human hermaphroditism was but an intermediate or so to speak middle-way stage between the first originating protoplasts and humanity of the present-day human beings.
To begin our study: How did the animals or beasts originate from Man? In the first place, it is not the Theosophical teaching that in the present Fourth Round, this great Life-Cycle on our globe, Earth, all the animal-stocks originated from man, or mankind. Only the mammalia did so in this Fourth Round, i. e., the beasts with breasts (mammae) and with a vertebrate skeleton and reproductive functions which from the beginning up to the present day have continued to be more or less like our own -- and which underwent the same cyclical changes in structure and function that occurred in the evolutionary unfolding of the human race. All the other animal-stocks, especially the lower Orders thereof, are evolutionary hold-overs in this present Fourth Round or Life-Cycle from the great evolving animal-stocks that were in their heyday of evolution in the Third Round or Life-Cycle on this globe, Earth. To put the matter in other words, all the beasts or animals or animate entities in the many and widely differing evolutional stages beneath the human and the other non-human mammalia, are with us today as hang-overs from the Third Round, but it should not be forgotten that they are largely specialized in this present Fourth Round.
There were large numbers of stocks of beings which in long past times had their evolutional heyday on this globe Earth, and even during this Fourth Round, but which now have completely vanished from the scene, leaving only their fossil records or remnants behind. The great Reptiles are an instance in point of illustration of this statement, despite the fact that many of the reptiles which have lasted through the ages even unto our own day are evolutionary hangovers or hold-overs which, for one reason or another, managed to survive through the different geologic Eras till the present. These sishtas, or remnants, or seeds of life of these hold-overs from the Third Round above spoken of, were, in the majority of cases, already on our globe Earth at the beginning of the Fourth Round, before what the Esoteric Tradition calls the 'First Root-Race' of 'men' (133) put in its appearance on this Globe in this Fourth Round.
The First Root-Race and the early part of the Second Root-Race of protoplastic 'mankind' were, as stated in the adjoined note, astral men. Though called men by courtesy, they were not truly human as we now understand the term, because they were mindless -- i. e., the Sons of Mind, the Manasaputras, had not yet incarnated in them and thus had not yet infilled them, even in small degree, with the divine flame of self-conscious intelligence and thought. Thus, too, were they likewise unmoral beings -- not 'immoral' in the usual sense of the word, because the moral instinct had not yet awakened within them. They were as unconscious in this respect as are the beasts today. Yet this statement must not be misunderstood to signify that they were 'evil' in their lives and deliberately and wilfully chose the pathways of 'sin.' It should be obvious that if these beings were unmoral they could no more do 'immoral' acts than they could do deliberately and self-consciously noble moral acts. They were, so to speak, under the virtually infallible although unrecognised guidance and directing power of spiritual instinct, which kept them both from moral and physical injury, much as the plants today are neither moral nor immoral, but are guided with almost infallible prescience by the generalized spiritual and intuitional instinct working in and through them.
These beings of the First and Second Root-Races of 'mankind' were mentally very much like little children: just as today our little children are mindless -- not meaning, however, that our children lack mental capacity in latency, or rather the potentiality of mind. This is obvious, because mind per se does not manifest its sublime powers in the unborn child nor in the newly born child, nor even in the child in its earliest years. Mind, as such, begins to manifest itself, and progressively so, only as the years pass by, and while the child in its growth shows the opening of the functions and qualities and operations of mentality. The little child today is mindless in this sense, but nevertheless has the latent capacity and inherent but unevolved powers of mind.
The First Root-Race was astral. It was also more astral or ethereal than the Earth upon which it lived. As the ages passed, this First Root-Race slowly grew more material in structure, i. e., the astral slowly thickened or condensed, became more concreted; but still even the Second Root-Race which followed the First and which in point of fact was merely the First Root-Race become more concrete and material, was likewise distinctly semi-astral, was indeed a gelatinous, filamentoid race, physically speaking. Both the First Root-Race and the Second had neither bones, nor organs, nor hair, nor a true skin. As regards lack of bones, as offering a possible objection to the existence of a tenuous physical body having a more or less coherent form, it might be pointed out that even the grossly material shark today has no true bones, strictly speaking. Its firmer parts are cartilaginous, and so was largely the internal structure of the last part of the Second Root-Race.
In physical substance one might even go so far as to say that the Second Root-Race, so far as their bodies were concerned, were somewhat like the jelly-fish, possibly. It is not here meant that they were jelly-fishes, because they certainly were not, and any such deliberate misunderstanding of the statement would be absurd. They too were human by courtesy because they had not yet evolved or developed into functional activity the main and striking characteristics, attributes, and elements of the human stock, which are in truth, psychical faculty, mental faculty, and spiritual faculty, working in combination through tenuous and invisible sheaths, which again combine to express themselves through a physical body.
They were 'shells' in the sense that they were not yet self-consciously infilled with the spiritual-intellectual Dhyani-Chohanic essences and powers, just as a little child from its birth is a human 'shell' in the above sense, until the slowly incarnating Dhyani-Chohanic essence, or the psycho-mental fluid of the incarnating ego of it, begins to manifest itself through and in the physical body.
The First Root-Race propagated itself by fission, that is to say, by a portion of the parent breaking off, such portion growing to be like its parent: i. e., a part dissolved off, or separated itself off, from its parent, very much after the fashion that living cells today follow, i. e., by division. A living cell today is a gelatinous, (134) semi-astral, entity without organs as we understand them, without bones, without hair, and without a true skin.
Without going too deeply into the more recondite teaching which concerns the history of the First Root-Race, which would be both impermissible and probably useless because of the great difficulty in conveying the intricate ideas, it may nevertheless be said with some approach to accuracy that the First Root-Race in the earliest portions of its evolutional unfolding might almost be called huge astral cells or 'Pudding-Bags.' (135) These huge and highly ethereal or astral Cells were living creatures of course in the sense that they lived, reproduced their kind, and were infilled with the astral essence of the lowest of the Dhyani-Chohanic fluids. As time passed on, during the evolutionary career of the First Root-Race, these Cells, albeit constantly undergoing minor changes of shape and size vaguely reminiscent perhaps of the amoeba, little by little but steadily and surely, gradually became more and more alike unto the astral type around which they were slowly crystallizing through the ages; so that when the Second Root-Race appeared on the scene, this new racial stock -- really an evolutionary continuation in time of the First Root-Race -- already had begun to show a distinct although as yet highly imperfect outline in form of what was in ages later during the ending of the Third Root-Race to become bodies of human shape, possessing human characteristics, although even then, during the later Third Root-Race, still imperfect human bodies when compared with the human physical frame as it is known today.
Nature repeats herself everywhere. Just as in the case of a single human being: its first physical appearance is a microscopic cell or egg slowly passing through the repetitive stages of the evolutionary course which the race has traversed in the past, until having finished its various modifications and changes of intrauterine development, the embryo now become human is born as a child, and from birth onwards begins to manifest progressively the inner psychical, mental, intellectual, and spiritual faculties which make man truly man. Here we have in a thumbnail sketch, so to say, a close repetitive evolutionary picture, of the stages of evolutionary development passed through in successive and serial order by the First, the Second, the Third, and the Fourth Root-Races -- our own present human stock, in all its various species or varieties, being what the Esoteric Tradition calls the Fifth Root-Race.
Furthermore, here likewise may be seen the evolutionary process as hereinbefore explained, as signifying an unrolling, unwrapping, unfolding, of qualities, attributes, characteristics, powers, functions, etc., which are already innate or latent or unexpressed in the essence of the evolving being.
The Second Root-Race propagated itself by gemmation, i. e., by 'budding.' Instead of a portion of the parent separating or dividing off, as was the case in the First Root-Race, the process followed in the Second Root-Race was repetitive of the former but in the small. A small part of the body, i. e., a bud, separated from the parent, dropped off from the main trunk, and thereafter began to grow and to develop into a being which was in all important respects alike unto the parent. About the middle period of the life-cycle or duration of this Second Root-Race, these buds grew more numerous, and became what zoologists would probably call human 'spores' or 'seeds,' or what H. P. Blavatsky with even more accurate metaphor, called 'vital sweat.' Thus many of these buds at certain seasons, after the parent-entity had become mature, would leave the parent-body as do the spores or seeds of plants today. These seeds were then taken care of by Nature and were developed in what was in all respects the proper environment, quite closely similar to the manner in which the seeds of plants are cared for today. Millions might indeed perish, but other millions would successfully grow into beings alike unto the bodies of the parents which gave them birth. (136)
Then, after several millions of years, began the Third Root-Race, which was a development or evolution of the Second Root-Race; and this Third Root-Race was still more material or concreted than was the Second. The jelly-like substance of the Second Root-Race had now become what one might call tender flesh composed of cells, beginning to surround and cover bones, and to acquire skin and hair, and likewise containing either rudimentary or fairly well developed physical organs. The method of reproduction of this more advanced race, the Third Root-Race, was hermaphroditic or androgynous; that is to say, the two sexes existed in every individual of this early and middle Third Root-Race. (137) The psycho-magnetic activities within those 'human' individuals, of this far-distant geologic past, produced a fertile germ which was cast off from the body as an egg, somewhat resembling the process that takes place in birds and certain reptiles today. These creatures produce eggs from which their young grow and develop to maturity. Just so was it with the early androgynous, egg-bearing, Third Root-Race of some twenty million years agone or more. The egg was matured, and in those days it took a long, long time -- at least it would so seem to us of today -- for one of the 'human' eggs to become matured, and for the infant finally to issue forth from it, alone and unaided. At one time a year or more was required before the egg was broken and the young issued forth from it very much as the chick does today from the hen's egg.
As the ages slowly dropped one after the other into the ocean of the past, the later Third Root-Race, as stated in the adjoined footnote, gave birth to the beginnings of the Fourth or unisexual Root-Race. By this time the androgynous Race had long aeons before passed away, the sexes had 'separated,' and children were born from the womb in the manner which at present occurs. It is interesting to note that in the beginning, when the sexes first began to 'separate,' such a being might have been considered to be very unusual, a lusus naturae, a 'sport' of Nature, but finally these 'sports' found themselves to be in the majority, and the present method of reproduction became the invariable rule, or nearly so, so that an androgyne (the rule was now reversed) came to be considered a teratological monster.
Long before the appearance of the Second Root-Race, evolution was in full swing -- evolution as evolution (speaking now from the matter-side) contrasted with involution -- and it continued its work of unfolding the matter-side of beings, i. e., developing and specializing their bodies, both in organs and in organic functions, until the turning-point was reached of this present Fourth Round or great Life-Cycle, which turning-point occurred at the middle of the Fourth Root-Race, which by common agreement or convention modern Theosophists call the Atlantean Race because the center or focus of the great and brilliant civilizations which then flowered over a continental system covering the Earth more or less, was centered where now stretches the Atlantic Ocean.
Then as evolution as evolution stopped its work, and involution began -- the reverse process (138); and thereupon what is called the 'door into the human kingdom' closed. This great natural fact of biological history meant not only that no longer could entities inferior to the human kingdom enter the human kingdom by an evolving forth or unrolling forth of what was within them, but it also meant that no longer could new phyla, as the modern biologists call them -- that is to say, new racial stocks -- be produced from the then existing seeds of life, for the reason that the processes of unfolding, of starting new stocks, of originating new families, orders, and classes had come to an end. Evolution, or the differentiation of the one into the many, had ceased, i. e., its impulses had faded out, that is, for this Fourth Round; and therefore while more specializations of what already existed could and did continue, in some cases even to extreme degrees, no new orders or great stocks of distinct animal or vegetable entities could henceforth appear for the remainder of the great Life-Cycle or Round of this Planetary Chain.
Involution was from this turning-point the manner of Nature's universal working on this Globe, Earth; and involution means the infolding of matter and the coincident evolution or unfolding or unwrapping or coming into manifestation through the vehicles already materially evolved of hitherto latent spiritual, intellectual, psychical, and therefore consequent and effectual physical functions, processes, and senses. Evolution as here used means the unfolding of the potencies latent in matter, and the infolding or involution of spiritual qualities; this involution thus providing a treasury or repertory of faculties and functions which became progressively more recessive as the evolution, or the unfolding, of bodies proceeded. At the turning-point above mentioned there occurred the last fading out of the evolutionary process of differentiation in matter, and thereupon the involutionary process thereof began: that is to say the infolding or gradual etherealizing and final disappearance of bodies, bringing about a coincident and accompanying and gradual release or manifestation of the faculties and functions and organs infolded by the preceding process of evolution on the Downward Arc, or Shadowy Arc, into matter.
We have, then, first the evolution of matter and the accompanying involution of the spiritual; but from the turning-point the process is reversed, and we have the moving towards spirit, therefore the involution of matter and the evolution of spirit. On the Downward Arc or Shadowy Arc, matter unfolds or evolves itself in myriad forms, and spirit infolds or involves itself. From the turning-point onwards, when the Ascending Arc or Luminous Arc is begun, involution begins, which means the involving of matter and the unfolding or evolution of spirit and its faculties and powers. The two processes interwork.
The generation and birth and growth of the human child may probably be cited as an example by way of illustration. From conception until the mid-point or turning-point of adult life, it is the body which grows and develops faculty and power and organ, while the spiritual and intellectual and psychical faculties are more or less recessive or involved -- latent, if the word be preferred. From the mid-point of life, say early middle-age, the reverse procedure is seen to take place in the normal individual. The body and its functions become less active, less important for the purposes of human life; and coincidentally and pari passu, the evolution of the noble spiritual and intellectual and psychical faculties and organs occurs, as man develops mind in its strength and power, and what is commonly called 'soul' and its fine qualities and attributes.
As before said, the animate stocks which had not reached the human stage at the great turning-point above mentioned could thereafter no longer evolve upwards on the rising arc, and must in consequence wait their turn for their natural and perfectly proper evolutionary development in the manner above described, until the next great Planetary Manvantara or Life-Cycle or Round. (139) But the human stock and the higher anthropoid apes which were already in existence before this turning-point, which took place at the middle of the Fourth Root-Race, could and did continue their upward or spiritual course, involving the functions and organs of matter, and beginning, although slowly, to evolve the organs and functions of the spiritual and intellectual and psychic powers and forces latent and lying waiting within them. The single exception, therefore, to the animate stocks below man, as stated above, is the simiidae in their highest representatives, that is to say the anthropoid apes -- and possibly the cynocephalus; the reason for this being that they had a strain of genuine human blood in them before the turning-point above spoken of was reached. (140) The anthropoid apes, therefore, are an exception to this fact of a barrier to further developmental unfolding of the lower animate stocks. These apes are destined to become human beings of a low grade in the next or Fifth Chain-Round, the next great Planetary Life-Cycle, millions and millions of years hence.
Now then, after this picture we come to the direct question: How did the mammalia originate from the human stock? The mammalia originated from the human stock somewhat after the following manner, and the reader is requested to bear in mind that the outline here given is a mere sketch. Before the Lords of Mind, the Manasaputras, evolved spiritual beings of an intellectual type, had begun even their first approaches to imbodiment in the then mindless humanity (which imbodiments happened in the last part of the Second and took place fully in the middle part of the Third Root-Race during this present Fourth Round) -- before the Lords of Mind had done more than project from themselves a feeble ray of self-conscious intelligence and of ethical instinct into the then evolving Second Root-Race, this Second Root-Race was mindless, as was indeed the First. It did not possess the psychical and physical instincts and barriers that now infill and control the human consciousness and therefore act and react upon the physical bodies. This fact of psychical instincts, and the barriers raised by them, is very important. Unless one understands this idea of the natural psychical barrier or inhibition forbidding, and therefore preventing, the miscegenation of a higher with a much lower stock, he will understand with difficulty the explanation of this very important and involved and intricate theme of study.
As before said, the bodies of this mindless Second Root-Race were, as bodies, the vehicles of the life-atoms of all kinds of evolving entities seeking manifestation: seeking to unfold, to unwrap, i. e., to evolve; because in that early geologic period of time, all the stocks from the 'human' down to the protozoa were under the natural urge and instinct to evolve ever newer corporeal forms. All the entities on the planet were still running down the Arc of Descent or Shadowy Arc, and unfolding and therefore differentiating through evolution. All the stocks had an inner urge, powerful, masterful, to express themselves, i. e., to unfold what lay latent within them, exactly as the acorn is urged from inherent life-impulses to grow after germination, and thus to unwrap or evolve the oak already lying invisibly latent within it, and exactly as the human embryo must unwrap or evolve itself and produce itself as a human child.
The consequence of this evolutionary urge of all beings was that the spores, the drops of 'vital sweat' above alluded to, of the later Second Root-Race and of the early Third, were in large part guests in the 'human' bodies of these two Races, drawn to those bodies by karmic psycho-magnetic attraction, and thus helping to build the physical frames of those bodies -- exactly as the cells of man's body today are animal-cells, guests in man's body and aiding in its building and coherence, for Man is their host and uses them in his own physical vehicle. Even the human body today, one may repeat, is builded of animal-cells, each one greatly inferior to a human being, yet in their aggregate inferiority forming the human body -- or at least a large part of it -- through which the psychical and mental and spiritual apparatuses of the inner man work.
Now these cells or life-germs, using the bodies of the Second Root-Race as their hosts, were cast off in a then perfectly normal way from these human bodies, and grew, each cell, according to its own swabhava, which means according to the essential urging characteristic or individuality which is the life-center within each such cell. Even today, if the psychical bar or barrier just mentioned did not now exist with such intensity and vigor of operation, a vast number of the supposedly human spores or seeds cast off in one way or another, would grow, i. e., would evolve, and would become the starting-points in certain cases, of new phyla, although in all cases of status inferior to the human. These cells thus cast off from the protoplastic human bodies of these early races, in many cases grew and became the starting-points of new stocks of creatures which in their originating cells had passed through the human body in germ, and were cast off therefrom, exactly as germs or life-atoms pass through our bodies today and leave them in one way or another.
Every seed, every spore, is the dwelling or house or body of an evolving entity, of a psychical life-atom -- call it in its such stage an Elemental, a term which is strictly correct for this period of its existence. Of course, every life-atom has everything in it essentially that a man or a god has; but no life-atom can express on any one plane, which means on any one globe of a planetary chain, more than its then existent evolved or unfolded capacities permit it to express or unfold or evolve. Exactly as a man today cannot be a god, because he has not yet evolved forth the god within him, although the god is there, latent, or dormant, asleep -- more accurately it is we who are asleep and cannot express the god within us -- just so every vital cell, every reproductive germ, contains within itself the potentiality not only of the divinity latent within it, but it also contains within itself numerous lower quasi-psychical life-impulses, which, could they only find expression or come out, would produce an inferior creature, whether it be an elephant, a giraffe, a horse, a cat, a dog, or some biological 'sport' which past history shows has not yet appeared on earth.
The reasons therefore why such cells or reproductive germs in man today do not evolve forth into new phyla or animate stocks beneath man, are the two set forth: First, evolution, as a process of unfolding new bodies and starting new stocks has permanently ceased for the remainder of this Round. The evolutionary urge has faded out, and involution has taken its place. It should be borne in mind that whereas there can be no evolution without an accompanying involution, in one sense -- as for instance, the involution of matter and the corresponding and pari passu evolution of spirit, or vice versa -- nevertheless, using the terms as above described, during the geologic periods when one of the two is predominant, the other then and there is recessive.
The other and second reason, above alluded to, is the psychical barriers and inhibitions already described, working powerfully against such originations of new animate stocks. The influence of the human psychical fluid in man's constitution at the present time is so powerful and over-masterful in its effect on the germinal cells or life-atoms which help to build man's bodies, that these germs or cells have become passive thereto, and actually inactive so far as the ability to evolve forth from themselves the beginnings of new animate stocks -- considering likewise the effect of the 'door into the human kingdom' having closed, which door really is naught but this tremendous psychical barrier just spoken of. To adopt an expression taken from modern biological experimental science, the human life-fluid or psychic essence is dominant, whereas the hosts of germinal cells or psychical life-atoms through which the human psychic fluid works have become recessive both as individuals and as naturally divided into hosts.
If we human beings could project ourselves back into the time and into the physical laws which governed the procedures of evolution or unfolding at the time when the Second Root-Race lived, we should find things happening which would appear exceedingly strange to us with our crystallized notions of how 'things should be.' A human individual would find that the vital or reproductive germs from his body -- 'sweating,' to use H. P. Blavatsky's term -- if falling from that portion of his organism where the reproductive plasm has become seated and perfected, would reproduce a second human like unto its parent, even as at present; but if this 'vital sweat,' these spores of vital psychic-astral fluid, fell from some other portion of his body, say from what modern histology calls the somatic plasm of a cell, these falling cells or germs would not grow into human beings like unto the parent, but would, in millions of instances, if the environment were favorable, grow into beings of curiously differing characteristics who would be the beginnings of new phyla, new animate stocks.
The main point is the following: every vital cell or reproductive germ is in itself a storehouse or repertory of unexpressed types; and if there be no natural inhibition, no psychical barrier or bar to its expression, the type having the strongest urge for manifestation would be the one to emerge as dominant, and grow into a representative entity which would be the beginning of a new stock of creatures. (141) This no longer occurs because of the strong psychical-vital human force which over-masters and thus controls every such reproductive germ, barring or inhibiting the self-expression or manifestation of all types inferior to the parent, which inferior types thus become utterly recessive and in consequence non-self-expressing, and whose function at present is merely to aid in forming and holding in vital coherence the physical body as a whole.
Now all these animals or beasts that came forth from the then human bodies in the manner described, many of them the far-distant 'parents' of the beast-stocks which now are on Earth, and beginning with the last part of the Second Root-Race and continuing up to the central part of the Third Root-Race -- all these animals or beasts were mammals. Why? Because they were the highest kinds of evolving beast-monads, although inferior to the evolving human monads, and which naturally drifted -- drawn thereto by psycho-magnetic attraction -- to the Kingdom next above themselves -- the Human Kingdom, which already at that time was beginning to take unto itself the foreshadowings of the mammalian type or character.
But did not the animals, like the human stock, have an inner urge behind them, causing them to evolve along their own lines, once that their originating individuals had appeared? The answer is obvious: Yes, certainly. The important thing to remember in this complicated natural fact, is the following: all the Kingdoms of Nature below the Human Kingdom aspire towards the Human Kingdom, psychically yearn upwards to become human; and during their aeons-long evolutionary pilgrimage, the Monads evolving in the beast-bodies cast off beast-body after beast-body, gradually rising along the scale or Ladder of Life until the Human Kingdom is reached, at which point they enter into the lowest class of human vehicles, but not as beast-monads, but as human monads, albeit of the lowest type. (142) It is the human type to which all the lower kingdoms tend in evolutionary course; and this wonderful truth of Nature, so suggestive and instructive when properly understood, is now becoming so obvious that certain intuitive biologists and biological palaeontologists are beginning to recognise it, or at least to have some adumbration of it. They are, however, as yet but few. Men like Dr. Robert Broom, President of the South African Association for the Advancement of Science, are noteworthy instances in point; although, indeed, Dr. Broom's theory differs from the Theosophical teaching inasmuch as he makes Man to be a descendant of some formerly living anthropoid ape. This idea Theosophy or the Esoteric Tradition does not accept. Theosophy shows the apes as derivative from man, in their case more particularly from certain degenerate groups of the great Fourth Root-Race -- an occurrence which took place probably in the Miocene geologic period; although here it should be pointed out with some emphasis that the Theosophist does not give to the duration of the Tertiary Age the over-long time-extension which modern palaeontologists give. (143)
The matter of time-periods is here touched upon with great reserve, and this for several reasons. When H. P. Blavatsky first wrote The Secret Doctrine geologists then very grudgingly gave to the different geologic periods what Theosophists looked upon as sufficient time for the evolution of the First, Second, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Root-Races respectively. But today modern geologists give us a great deal more time than is required even by our occult records. Our records show that it is some 320,000,000 years since sedimentation began on this globe in this Fourth Round, nor does this long lapse of time fully include the evolution of the three Kingdoms of the Elementals which preceded the mineral activities beginning such sedimentation mentioned above. Of course the four Root-Races which preceded ours, the Fifth, did not require all these 320,000,000 years for their evolution, because the First Root-Race appeared on this globe in the Fourth Round long after the mineral-activity had begun; long after the Vegetable Kingdom had awaked; and even after the Animal Kingdom had awaked from its obscuration -- except of course, the higher division of the Animal Kingdom, the Mammalia, which in this Fourth Round followed man, as has already been stated, and whose appearance was brought about in the manner hereinbefore sketched. (144)
For when the First (or distinctly astral) Root-Race appeared on this Globe, there were then present on it many groups of the Vegetable Kingdom which were the sishtas or remnants of the Vegetable Kingdom as it was in the preceding or Third Round; and also there were a number of groups of different animals, although these were animals below that stage which is now called the 'mammalian.' There was, in fact, an amazing welter of protozoa and crustacea, and fishes, and reptiles, and birds -- although very few reptiles and birds -- but no mammals. The first mammals appeared as unimportant 'sports' in the very last part of the Second Root-Race -- or it is possible that these first and unimportant mammalian representatives appeared during the first third of the Third Root-Race.
A little may be said, by way of two or three more hints, with respect to geologic time-periods. Mankind 'separated' into opposite sexes about eighteen million years ago, during the Third Root-Race, according to the occult records, or in what geologists in H. P. Blavatsky's time called, in defining geologic time-periods, the late Triassic or early Jurassic of the Secondary Age. (145) Humanity was then a fully physicalized Race, although not so grossly physical as was the Fourth Root-Race of the Atlantean Era which followed the Third Root-Race of some eighteen million years ago. The early Third, as well as all the Second, stretched back even to a longer period in bygone geological time than the eighteen million years spoken of, possibly as far back as twenty-five or thirty million years from the present era of the Fifth Root-Race. Some twenty-five or thirty million years ago mankind was in the Second Root-Race, whereas the First Root-Race stretched still farther back into the remote mists of geologic time.
It is extremely difficult also from another point of view for a Theosophist to locate these different Root-Races in the modern geologic Ages, for the reason that geologists themselves disagree as to the length of these different geological time-periods. Then, also, it must be remembered that preceding even the beginnings of the purely astral, or ethereal, First Root-Race, there were between two and three hundred million years of evolutional development belonging to the Animal Kingdom (but not including the mammals), the Vegetable Kingdom, the Mineral Kingdom, and the three Elemental Kingdoms.
Geologists today are basing what are to the Theosophist their exaggerated time-periods on the fairly recent discovery of radio-activity in the rocks, which they believe provides a reasonably trustworthy method of calculating the time elapsed since the rocks were formed. This radio-activity, which is the disintegration of certain heavy elements, is supposed to have taken place with no change of speed during all the ages during which these radio-active minerals have lain in the rocks where we now find them. As a reason for rejecting the modern time-periods estimated by this method (and on which there is such disagreement that the best modern textbooks of geology point out carefully that they depend upon yet unproved assumptions), it is necessary to point out the following: the radio-active changes referred to were brought about and are now continuing, as elsewhere explained, because of the fact that the Earth and all on it are now on the Ascending Arc or Luminous Arc, and consequently undergoing the processes of dematerializing, thus bringing about the breaking up or disintegration, which modern physics and chemistry call 'radiation,' of the coarsest, grossest, heaviest, of the chemical elements. On the Descending Arc, the Shadowy Arc, up to the middle of the Atlantean Race, all the chemical elements (which means the body of the Earth) were condensing and therefore concreting; and radio-activity as now understood was unknown as a fact in Nature. From the turning-point at the middle of the Fourth Root-Race, the Earth and all on it has been steadily albeit slowly etherealizing; and consequently radio-activity will become more and more pronounced, and chemical elements and chemical compounds will become, and are indeed becoming, albeit very slowly, less heavy and less concreted. The heaviest now known which are not at present radio-active, will soon -- speaking in terms of geological time-thought -- also become radio-active. In other words, the process of radio-activity will in future ages take place in all the chemical elements and compounds, beginning with the heaviest and grossest, and running up the scale towards the lightest and simplest. Consequently, when the geologists base their presently exaggerated time-periods on what they understand of radio-activity, they should properly so do, i. e., make their beginning only from the mid-point of the Atlantean Race, when this radio-activity first began. (146) But because they do not know of a Descending Arc and an Ascending Arc, they think that radio-activity began with the first incrustation of our globe. For this reason, to the student of the Esoteric Philosophy, the geological time-periods, reckoned as based upon radio-activity, are highly speculative and inaccurate at the best, and at the worst thoroughly wrong.
To return to the main argument or theme of this chapter, it is to be remembered that the lower Kingdoms tend towards man as their evolutionary goal on this Earth, and this not only because man has preceded them: man is far older than they, man has blazed the trail, which they instinctively and unconsciously follow. He has made and left the astral molds behind him out of which he has grown to greater things; and the inferior beings of the Animal Kingdom, trailing along behind, follow the path that he has made and thus copy him, as we humans indeed copy those beings now far in advance who have preceded us, i. e., the Dhyani-Chohanic Races -- and these Dhyani-Chohanic Races, because manifesting or self-expressing a portion of the septenary constitution which in man is still but slightly active, might with truth be said to form a Kingdom above the Human, just as man can truthfully be said to form a Kingdom above the Animal, and for precisely the same reason.
Man preceded the mammalia and also gave birth to their original phyla or stocks in the manner hereinbefore outlined or sketched. Once these mammalian stocks were begun, thereafter each pursued its own rapid evolutionary unfolding from within, breeding true to type, and yet developing, i. e., evolving, each one such stock, along its own particular swabhavic or characteristic line of developmental evolution. But when the turning-point, the middle point of the Fourth Root-Race, was reached, thereafter all that the evolutionary impulse or urge working in and through and behind these various animal stocks could produce, was -- what? Specialization -- specialization, indeed, in all its manifold and mysterious and intriguing complexities, aiding in producing the fascinating varieties and species and classes of beings which formerly existed and those which at present exist and are discoverable around us. It was evolution on large and 'creative' lines until the 'door into the Human Kingdom' closed, and thereafter the evolutionary impulses produced bewildering specializations, this being evolution in the particular as contrasted with evolution in the general. The animate stocks beneath the anthropoids, as already has been stated, cannot go higher for the rest of this Round-Manvantara or Planetary Life-Cycle. They will die out before the last, or Seventh, Round is reached, because they will not be able to rise along the Ascending or Luminous Arc; to speak in the vernacular of today, they will not be able to 'make the grade.' As long as they live and propagate their kind, if there be any evolution or unfolding towards a higher phylum on the scale of life, it will be extremely limited only, nevertheless there will continue to be a large amount of specialization in many directions. All that these animate stocks can do is henceforth to specialize. The elephant, for instance, with its long so-called 'trunk' or proboscis, and its huge ears, is highly specialized in proboscis and ears, but it will nevertheless always be an elephant as long as the elephant-stock lives during the remainder of this Planetary Life-Cycle.
Two more examples of minor evolution, called specialization, as contrasted with grander evolution proper, i. e., unwrapping and unfolding of impulses on general lines towards higher kinds of beings, are the bat and the whale. Both are mammals, both are of the mammalian type, as much as man is. Yet one, the bat, left the earth, took to the air, and became a flying creature with a flight which, in its ease and swiftness and silence, is more perfect than the flight of most of the true birds. The other, the whale, left the land and took to the water. Although as much a mammal in type as man is, it took to the water and therein it acts like a fish, looks like a fish, swims like a fish. These are strange and vastly interesting specializations, and they are 'evolution' in the etymological sense of the unfolding of innate faculty; but they are not, strictly speaking, evolution in the larger and more technical sense of the unfolding of future type-characters including larger capacities. For all the rest of this Manvantara or Planetary Life-Cycle, that is to say, for the remainder of this Fourth Round and for the Fifth and the Sixth Rounds, the animals, if they continue in existence as a Kingdom until the Sixth Round, will be specializing in multimyriad ways, but truly evolving no more. The human race, however, will 'evolve' by 'involving,' paradoxical as it may sound: evolve forth spirit, and involve matter.
It should be evident to the perspicacious reader and student that the tenor or argument of the present chapter is one dealing largely if not wholly with the developmental evolution of physical bodies, whether of man or beast or plant. The reason is that it is necessary for any extending of the teachings of the Esoteric Tradition to include physical evolution in this work of exegesis in order to explain its cause, its character, and something at least of the time-periods in which it takes place. Yet it is of the first importance to remember that the evolution of the physical body, whether of man or of beast or of plant, or indeed of the mineral, is but the result, an effectual consequence, of the causal evolutionary processes which arise in the invisible constitution of evolving beings, and merely expresses such results thereof through the physical body as the physical body is capable of following.
In other words, and selecting man as an example in point, it is the inner man which really is evolving, and who passes from life to life through the ages selecting in each new imbodiment such body as in each instance happily may be somewhat improved over its last physical vehicle. It must never be supposed that it is the physical man which evolves primarily, and that it is the inner, spiritual, intellectual, and psycho-mental, Man which trails after or follows the evolution of the physical vehicle, as one whose mind has been colored by modern scientific evolutionary teaching might at first superficially suppose. It is the exact opposite of this which happens. It is the inner man, the Monad, which through the ages and by slow but progressive stages unrolls or unwraps or unfolds from within its own essence ever larger measures of spirituality, of intellectual power, of psycho-mental sensitivity, and of astral ethereality. All these combine in expressing, however feebly, their powers through the physical vehicle, and slowly through the ages refine and improve such physical vehicle both in functions and in organs, for the physical vehicle is plastic, and follows and copies the molding of the invisible inner Worker.
How can one explain these things easily to a modern scientist who knows nothing of the astral worlds and still less of the spiritual and intellectual worlds, although indeed he may be beginning to point to what even now remains in botany and zoology -- in biology, in other words -- of the vestiges or records of what took place in these now distant ages of the past? How can one explain that what now remains as remnants or vestiges of disused organs, were the regular and common appendages and procedures of fully functional organs in that distant past; or again that the stock which has been longest on the earth obviously is the oldest and therefore the most advanced stock, and this stock is the Human. It obviously takes time to grow, i. e., to evolve; and it is only the rolling ages which in their revolving courses have conducted man from the Elemental he was in the opening or beginning of the Drama of Evolution in this Solar System, to his present status of being the most important because most evolved or unfolded animate stock on the earth today.
It is indeed no easy task, nor work of a day, to convince a generation of hard-headed scientific men of the esoteric teachings concerning evolution, except first, along the lines of general reason and logic, and by insisting that all known facts in the case be given their due meed of consideration courageously; and that all such facts must be taken into account and not shelved because of already ingrained scientific prejudice or preconception; and second, by pointing to what is after all a vast number of hitherto unexplained biologic facts, which if they are not forced into an unnatural setting of modern scientific dogma, nor forgotten, are eloquent in mute testimony of modern scientific evolutionary hypothesis and theory as being imperfect because inadequate to cover all the facts; and what is much worse, because unphilosophical, that such modern hypothesis or theory more or less completely ignores what is by far the larger part of man's constitution -- spirituality, the moral sense, the powers and characteristics of intellect, the faculties of judgment, discrimination, and the power of analysis; and most important of all, those moral faculties which are always found where true spirituality exists, which to any thoughtful mind no evolutionary theory yet propounded has ever endeavored to explain: and with the moral sense, those other qualities or human attributes which men call love, devotion, self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, and others like unto these.
Now what is the process of consolidation by which the early astral and semi-astral Races of mankind evolved or unfolded into the physical condition -- and of course the reference is here made to the physical bodies or vehicles? Any difficulty in understanding the principles involved lies in the fact that students of H. P. Blavatsky's teachings are too prone to take literally the words in which her teachings are given, rather than generally and constructively and synthetically as teachings: i. e., their thoughts are led away by the words that she uses in attempting to describe difficult things. Thus they omit to synthesize or bring together in proper co-ordination the many statements she makes -- most of them from the esoteric records. Yet nothing is really more simple or more easy.
What is now and here said has reference to this Fourth Globe in this Fourth or present Round only, omitting other than fugitive references to preceding Rounds in order to avoid confusion of thought. The First Root-Race, then, was a highly ethereal race of beings vaguely yet more or less distinctly having the present human shape, reminding one strongly of the present human shape in fact: but could one see individuals of this First Root-Race today, our attention would be immediately caught by what would be to us strange differences and remarkable yet fugitive shiftings or changings in outward lineament or form -- a quasi-fluid Race, in fact; an astral race, therefore, just beginning to be physicalized in matter. They were likewise translucent or transparent -- or would be so to our present Fifth-Race vision. The nearest present-day thing to which one may liken them, perhaps, would be a cloudiness in the air, or a highly heated air-current with its dancing effect on the eye, or again, perhaps, a cloudy gas. This does not mean, however, that they were formless in outline as is air or a cloudy gas. They indeed had a form, but far less fixed than is the gross heavy body of man today, and they were transparent because ethereal in texture, and consequently made no fossil-impression on the earth at that time, the reason for which appears in the following paragraph.
The Earth at the opening of this Fourth Round, i. e., this Fourth Globe itself at that time, was also more ethereal than now it is, nevertheless as compared with this First Race of 'human' protoplasts, it was relatively hard and condensed; in other words, the First Root-Race in its beginning, and indeed throughout its entire course, was more ethereal than the Earth then was. Both the Earth and the Races which inhabited it, consolidated steadily until the middle period of the Fourth Root-Race, when the maximum of condensation or consolidation was reached, i. e., the extreme degree of consolidation or physicalization of matter possible during the present Chain-Manvantara of seven Rounds. Since the time of the middle of the Fourth Root-Race, which also happened to be the middle of the Fourth Round and therefore likewise the middle of the entire Chain-Manvantara -- for the time-periods in this case converged to a point -- both the Earth and its inhabitants, such as man, have become somewhat etherealized again. The flesh of the men of the Atlantean Race, for instance, was grosser and coarser and more solid than is the flesh of our Fifth-Race folk, and both the Earth and its inhabitants will become more and more ethereal as the aeons of time in the future slowly drop one after the other into the past; until, at the end of the Seventh Round, aeons upon aeons hence, the Earth and its then future humanity will have reached the highly ethereal stage, more or less, that prevailed during the First Round.
Another reflexion which it may be useful here to state: when the astral First Root-Race of humanity began to concrete or consolidate and thus to become more physical, it of necessity and naturally used material already existent on this globe, and this was material which had been cast off and left behind by the forwards-evolving human stock during the preceding or Third Round. The use of this material by evolving humanity in this Fourth Round naturally aided the evolution of the life-atoms composing such formerly used substance, and the life-atoms of such material or substance naturally were impregnated with the influence of the higher astral material of the growing and evolving human stock during its evolutionary course in this Fourth Round.
From the foregoing, the beauty of the archaic teaching that man is a microcosm, a copy in the small of the Macrocosm, should be apparent. Man, both as an individual and as a stock, or humanity, is the repertory, the depositary, the treasure-house, of only the gods know how many as yet unmanifested future great phyla of animate beings, who will in the future far, far distant ages yet to come, in a new Chain-Manvantara or Great Planetary Life-Cycle, then flow forth from him as his off-throwings, in a manner more or less identic with that which brought about the origination of the great animate stocks hereinbefore briefly explained. Just as we are children of the gods, so are the beasts, the higher beasts, the mammalians especially, our off-throwings or offsprings; all belonging to a lower Kingdom than the Human, yet both collectively and individually on their upward way to become in future ages members of a new Human Kingdom -- not the bodies alone, but definitely and positively the as yet imperfectly evolved Monads, now inhabiting their imperfectly evolved animal bodies. As a matter of fact, all the creatures of the Third Round which at that time filled the Earth, were the offsprings or off-throwings of the then imperfectly evolved human stock; and in those now far distant times of the past, all the then beings of the lower Kingdoms were unconsciously produced, unconsciously thrown off, from the then 'mankind,' thus owing their origin to the then imperfect, because imperfectly evolved, 'human' physical stock. In other words, it was man who threw off at various periods during his long past aeonic evolution the root-types which later specialized into the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms. Indeed, the same thing is true of the Mineral Kingdom, but in the First Round, which preceded the Third and Second counting backwards. All of which is equivalent to saying that MAN is the oldest of all the stocks on Earth . (147)
To continue: the Second Root-Race was more condensed, more material, more physicalized, than was the First -- considerably more so. The Second Root-Race, especially at its middle part and towards its end, was no longer transparent, nor would it seem so even to our Fifth-Race vision today. One might look upon the bodies of the individuals of the middle Second Root-Race, for instance, as being albuminous, somewhat like the white of an egg, having a definite form, having even the rudimentary beginning of bones and organs, hair and skin; but all as yet imperfectly developed, imperfectly condensed -- mere sketches or foreshadowings. But although it was consolidating or physicalizing, it was still too ethereal to leave any fossil impression or fossil records on the then Earth, which, although itself physicalizing or consolidating, was not doing so as rapidly as was the Second Root-Race itself.
In all this description, it should be remembered that this whole process of condensation is not that of an astral 'meeting' a physical, and joining with it, but of astral beings physicalizing themselves, or materializing themselves, from astral into physical or material beings.
At about the beginning of the Third Root-Race, and continuing on to the middle of this Race, this process of consolidation or physicalization meant that the bodies of the latest Second and early Third were changing over from astral into physical substance; and as those early Third Root-Race beings were becoming distinctly physical -- indeed now heavily gelatinous -- the bones were making their distinct appearance, although as yet soft. Organs and their respective functional activity were now beginning to appear. The filamentoid structure of the Second Root-Race had thus given place to tendon and muscle and organ and flesh, although still quite gelatinous or cartilaginous. From the middle to the end of the Third Root-Race, this process of condensation of the astral into the physical, or the changing over of astral into the physical substance, proceeded apace, so that at the end of the Third Root-Race, when the androgynes of the middle Third had already become the sexed beings of the latest Third, this latest part of the Third Root-Race was a fully developed and physicalized humanity as we now understand it, with bodies of fairly solid flesh, with organs relatively fully developed, with skin and hair and bones and all the other zoological characters that we now possess; and this process of physicalization or condensation thereafter continued without interruption to the middle of the Fourth Root-Race, when the reverse process, or etherealization, entered into activity; and although very slight in its beginning, this etherealization of the Earth and all on it has continued ever since and uninterruptedly, although slowly, up to the present time, and will proceed henceforth to the end of the Chain-Manvantara -- to the end of the Seventh Round.
Another point of noteworthy importance is the fact that the First Root-Race were titanic in size when compared with the stature of our present humanity. They had form, indeed, but no physical appearance, as we now understand the term, as already stated. The Second Race were still titanic in size, but smaller than the First. The Third Root-Race comprised beings who were still huge in size as compared with our own pygmy-humanity of today; and finally, the grossest and coarsest Race of all, the Fourth Root-Race, even more physicalized and dense than we are, were, at least up to the middle-point of their growth, relatively huge creatures, thirty to twenty to ten or twelve feet in stature, thus showing the progressive decrease in physical size down to our own Fifth Root-Race humanity with its five or six feet average in size.
Thus we see that, following this thumb-nail sketch of these earlier Races of evolving 'mankind,' we notice not only a progressive increase in materiality or condensation or thickening or consolidating of bodies, but a coincident and regular and progressive decrease in size from the First to the present Fifth Root-Race. Thus as the Races consolidated and grew more material, their physical stature coincidently steadily decreased. It should be noted, however, that although from the beginning of the point of etherealization at the middle of the Fourth Root-Race the remainder of the Fourth, and the Fifth up to the present, have been slowly becoming less grossly material or dense in physical substance or structure, nevertheless the decrease in size has continued during the Fifth Root-Race up to the present day -- an interesting detail which is worth noting. This does not necessarily imply that the succeeding Sixth and Seventh Root-Races will continue to grow smaller until the end of the Globe-Manvantara closes with a pygmy or Seventh Root-Race. At any rate, the important thing to note in this connexion is that spiritual and intellectual and psychic faculty and capacity do not of necessity depend upon bulk or magnitude, for bulk in point of fact has little bearing on the matter.
The difficulty of the foregoing picture lies perhaps in the visioning to oneself of the gradual solidifying of an originally ethereal series of Races through the ages into a physical series; but this difficulty, once the general idea is grasped, should vanish. Of course it is difficult, on the other hand, adequately to picture to ourselves all the details of the physical structure and functions and organs of these early Races, because there is little if anything on Earth today to give us exact ideas of what their details of structure and function were. But reasoning by analogy and keeping in mind the gradual physicalization of the astral -- i. e., the consolidation or solidifying of the astral into the physical -- some fairly clear notion ought to be grasped by any thoughtful student.
As a matter of fact, the same process, but in the small and greatly foreshortened, so to speak, does take place even today in the growth of the human embryo. The embryo begins its existence as a microscopic speck of human protoplasm, a life-germ thinly gelatinous, which gradually hardens as it grows until it becomes a fleshy embryo, which in turn hardens still more, and finally is born as a human babe. The hints that embryology gives to the thoughtful student are illuminating. For instance, back of and behind and within this consolidation of the astral into the physical, there is the constant evolutionary urge towards growth and developmental unfolding of the growing human embryo, continuing later in the growing child, urging and guiding it in its evolution to full manhood. Here, then, is the picture in the small of the general process that takes place.
The student should see here, therefore, and taking into consideration the various points of teaching that have been briefly elaborated in this chapter, how it is that the earliest Root-Races could have left no geological record in the rocks. They could not do so, because they were too ethereal to make an impression on the then comparatively more condensed Earth when their bodies died and were cast off. It should also be remembered that the First Root-Race strictly speaking did not 'die' at all, but each 'generation' melted into its own progeny in the very beginning; and even in the later parts of the First Root-Race when fission took place, the parent became as it were a sister to its daughter, thus, as said above, 'melting into' the next generation.
Towards the end of the First Root-Race and during the beginning of the Second Root-Race, when fission gave place to budding, the process was pretty much the same because 'death' had not yet come upon the scene, the older generation in almost all cases simply disappearing into its daughter buds, leaving no physical trace or remnant or what is now called 'fossil' behind. Towards the end of the Second Root-Race, however, the bodies had become sufficiently condensed or solidified or concreted or 'individualized' actually to die, so to speak, when their store of vital activity had been exhausted; and in this case, had circumstances been favorable, the relatively solidified bodies of the last Second and early Third could indeed have left impressions or 'fossils.'
The bodies of the late Third Root-Race easily could have made a physical impression or left fossilized remnants behind, and there is a possibility that some such fossil remains may ultimately be discovered or uncovered; but this is a bare possibility, and one might almost say that it is extremely unlikely, having in view the tremendous volcanic and seismic and cataclysmic geologic events that have occurred secularly and at periodic intervals geologically speaking since the days of the middle and later Third Root-Race. Continents since then have sunken beneath the oceans, and new lands have arisen from beneath the waves in many parts of the globe, and the constant grinding of rocks through volcanic and seismic activities would have tended almost infallibly to break up and ruin any such geologic records of the fossil-remnants that ages ago doubtless existed.
All the astral processes that took place in these early ethereal astral Races, were perfectly harmonious with life on the physical plane as it then was, just as much so as is the life of the gelatinous jelly-fish today; and the reader should note with attention that there is nothing at all that is miraculous or marvelous or contrary to Nature about it. Simply figurate first, the incorporeal Races becoming ethereal, i. e., astral, and then, second, slowly becoming condensed and physicalized into relative solidity through the geologic Ages that have elapsed since this globe became the scene for activities of the Life-Waves of this Fourth Round.
The student should bear in mind also the esoteric teaching concerning the life-waves following each other around the planetary chain from globe to globe and through them all in serial order omitting no single globe; and the manner in which each Kingdom or life-wave follows the one preceding it. It is in this manner that he can get some idea of the way in which a globe awakens from its obscuration or dormancy, to become anew the scene of the evolutionary cyclical courses of incoming life-waves, each such life-wave comprising its own several or characteristic types or stocks of Races, minor races, and family-groups.
The different life-waves which thus succeeded each other in the past history of our globe and which will in precisely identic manner succeed each other in the future history of our globe, and indeed of all the globes of the planetary chain, are composed of or formed of groups or classes of spiritual, intellectual, psycho-mental, and astral Monads, each such group or class of Monads comprising individuals more or less holding the same degree or stage of developmental evolutionary unfolding. These Monads, speaking generally and collectively, are called by various names in the Esoteric Tradition -- in the Esoteric Philosophy. The highest classes of them we may group under the generalizing term of Dhyani-Chohans, spiritual beings of the most advanced or progressed evolutionary type that belong to our planetary chain; the second general class we may group together under the name of Manasaputras, whose predominant characteristic or attribute is intellectual; the third group or class, inferior to the latter just mentioned, and comprising beings of what we may truly term a psycho-mental type or character are commonly called, for descriptive purposes, Pitris, a Sanskrit term meaning Fathers -- just as the superior preceding class, the Manasaputras, likewise a Sanskrit term, are grouped under this name which means Sons of Mind; the lowest general class or group we may briefly describe as psycho-vital-astral Monads, likewise technically called Pitris, and forming the lowest or last evolved of all the four general classes just mentioned.
The above paragraph outlines the four main Groups into which the Monads naturally fall. Nevertheless, and speaking in a more accurately distributive manner, there are ten or seven Groups or Classes or Types into which the evolving Monads find themselves as evolving or unfolding beings, pursuing each one its evolutionary journey, and distinct from the others, yet all intimately and very closely interlocked and interlinked and in a sense interblended.
It is these seven (or ten) Classes thus grouped, according to the innate capacities of the individuals composing each group, which form the entirety of the hosts of Monads thus evolving in seven (or ten) hierarchies through the visible and invisible worlds or spheres to which allusion has been made in a former part of this work, these invisible and visible worlds or spheres in the case of our planetary chain being the seven manifest and the five unmanifest globes of this planetary chain.
Speaking in a more technical theosophical manner, there were, as already stated, seven (or really ten) classes of Monads or Pitris using the word pitris here as a generally descriptive term -- four of these seven classes being relatively gross or inferior to the higher three. (148) These four lower classes are the ones which builded the physical and the vital-astral bodies or sheaths which became in far later ages the evolving physical mankind; the three higher classes of these manifest seven supplied man's highest and intermediate principles. These higher and these lower classes worked together through the ages, and in due course of cycling time, and strictly following lines of karman, builded or produced the First, Second, Third, and Fourth Root-Races, as each played out its drama on the stage of time; and these likewise are the same monadic individuals which compose our own Fifth Root-Race, and will compose the Sixth and the Seventh Root-Races to follow us.
The Chhayas or 'Shadows' -- that is to say the astral bodies of the lower Pitris (who are the four lower classes just above referred to) -- were projected into the physical: which simply means that they consolidated or solidified or condensed into the physical. Thus the astral-ethereal bodies of these, the lower Pitris, finally grew into the physical bodies, or, more accurately, finally became the physical bodies, by condensation, of the late Second and early Third Root-Races.
For the reader interested in the processes of evolution as taught in the esoteric records of the archaic ages, no study could be more profitable than that of H. P. Blavatsky's great work, The Secret Doctrine -- the first volume if his interest is captivated by more cosmogonic matters, and the second volume thereof if his interest runs rather to matters of the evolution of the human and animal races or stocks.
While it is perfectly true that the Great Theosophist left unsaid vast portions of the teaching of the Esoteric Philosophy in this matter, nevertheless she gave innumerable hints of, and made as many illuminating allusions to, those portions of the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition which she and her Teachers thought improper to give out more fully at that time to a highly materialistic and skeptical generation. There are few studies more illuminating that the student, Theosophical or other, can undertake, and few more instructive, than a rigorously logical and continued investigation of the roots of the evolutionary teaching as given in H. P. Blavatsky's master-work, wherein are unworked mines of esoteric doctrine.
FOOTNOTES:
133. They were 'men' only by courtesy, as it were, or, speaking still more accurately, they were the original protoplastic sketches of the true Man or mankind that was to follow in far later ages. They are called 'men' simply to identify them as having been in their own evolutionary time-period the true roots or originants of what their descendants in strict line later became -- mankind; nor is this 'First Root-Race' to be considered in any wise as being animals or beasts, or the primordial supposititious beast-stock from which mankind of today derived in evolutional series, to which present mankind should trace back its direct evolutional ancestry. We repeat: They were not beasts, whether mammalian or non-mammalian, but were the astral prototypes, the protoplastic originants, and existing in different great Families or Orders, from which present mankind has descended in lineal and uninterrupted life-stream. (return to text)
134. The word 'gelatinous' is here used because fairly descriptive of that intermediate stage between solid flesh and the ethereal yet quasi-visible tenuity of the lower astral. Flesh is, in fact, thickened or condensed astral. There is no need to boggle over a difficulty here, for the reason that the thickest or densest astral and the most tenuous physical matter are virtually the same. The two realms, the lower astral and the ethereal-physical, here melt or merge into each other; and there is absolutely no division-line between them. The heavier astral is so close to the tenuous physical, that, as said above, the distinction is impossible to make except theoretically. These two merge into one. Consequently, it is correct to speak of a thinly gelatinous substance as a thickened or condensed astral substance; and this statement is made deliberately and without reserve. There is no true dividing-line between astral and physical. (return to text)
135. This is a semi-humorous but graphically descriptive term originally given, it would seem, by H. P. Blavatsky to the individuals of this Root-Race. The term could likewise to a certain extent be applied to the individuals even of the early part of the Second Root-Race, but not much later than this. (return to text)
136. The reader is requested carefully to note and carefully to retain the fact that in the above description of the different methods of what were in those far-distant and earliest periods of the human race perfectly natural methods of reproduction, however strange they may appear to the modern man, the argument in the text for the time being, as is sufficiently obvious, is concentrated upon this fact of physical reproduction more or less exclusively. But not for an instant should the far more important fact be lost sight of, or forgotten, that these methods of reproduction were connected with the then 'physical' bodies of earliest mankind, the argument or picture drawn in the text ignoring for the time being all matters pertaining to the inner or invisible constitution of early mankind, touching upon matters connected with this last only lightly and inferentially.
The truth is -- just as it is also the truth today -- that the physical body copies servilely, slavishly, and as best it can in its poor way, the inner and far more important evolution of the real man which is continuously in action in the invisible and intangible parts of the very complex human constitution. (return to text)
137. This matter is not so easy to explain, and the reader is requested to overlook inadequacies or insufficiencies in exposition which cannot be avoided in view of the lack of space. In strict accuracy, it is really wrong to say that 'the two sexes existed in every individual,' because this confuses the idea: if the phrase be understood literally, it says that every individual of the Third Root-Race was a man and a woman in one body, which was not true -- at any rate not true for the greater portion of the history of the Third Root-Race, and possibly not exactly true even in the period immediately preceding the so-called 'separation of the sexes' and the appearance of true sexual mankind in the last portion of the Third Root-Race.
The idea rather is that for the greater part of the time through which the Third Root-Race lasted, the hermaphroditic or androgynous condition was rather that of a double functioning of organs appropriate for hermaphroditic reproduction, somewhat as it may still be seen in certain lower representatives of the animal kingdom and among certain plants.
During the last portion of the Third Root-Race, however, this double function or hermaphroditic condition slowly modified itself or changed over into a state of things in which in each individual the particular characteristics of one or of the other sex became predominant, this in turn finally resulting in the birth from the womb of individuals of distinct unisexual or one-sex type. (return to text)
138. As is explained several times elsewhere in the present work, the idea is that on the downward arc of descent into matter, the evolving and revolving monads or 'souls' evolve or unfold or unroll forth matter and involve and inroll spirit; but when the turning-point alluded to in the text above is reached, the reverse process automatically ensues, spirit evolving, albeit slowly, its transcendent powers, while matter pari passu involves its own characteristics. The result of this wonderful process of Nature thus gives us a picture of spiritual beings gradually clothing themselves or investing themselves in the garments or veils of material substance, otherwise 'bodies'; and on the upward arc, gradually through the evolution of spirit, etherealizing these bodies slowly to become as the ages pass, and on the ascending arc towards spirit, vestments of what we may truly call 'light' -- at least towards the end of the Chain-Manvantara.
The planetary chain with its seven (or twelve) globes, itself follows the same downward and upward course; so that the globes of such planetary chain are at one period in the beginning of their evolutionary course spiritual, then ethereal, then astral, then physical, and on the upward course, etherealize themselves again as matter slowly resolves itself towards the spiritual substances from which it was originally born, and which it again thus slowly rebecomes. (return to text)
139. Here again one encounters a difficulty, not in the teaching itself, but in any adequate explanation of it in the compass of a single chapter of a work like the present. What is stated in the text is perfectly correct; but the reader should remember the following really important point if he is interested in matters of which the present chapter treats. While it is true that during the next or Fifth Chain-Round, the animate stocks below man, which means the beasts in this connexion, will again appear on this Earth and continue their evolutionary course, repeating what happens during this Fourth Round, but in conditions and circumstances which the Fifth Round will bring forth, nevertheless because the entire Planetary Chain itself is now in the process of involution, the barrier into the human kingdom will become ever more difficult to pass, so that, as a matter of fact, the lower animate stocks beneath the human, dating even from the turning-point above spoken of in this present Fourth Round, will all show a tendency to die out and disappear from the evolutionary life-stream.
This does not imply in any sense, however, that Nature here shows any favoritism to the human stock and to the anthropoid apes, for such favoritism is merely a human quality, and Nature knows it not. This will happen to the Kingdoms beneath the Human because they are belated in their respective evolutionary courses, whereas the Human Kingdom and the anthropoid apes, being 'on time' so to speak, when the turning-point arrived, were enabled to press steadily forwards because having within themselves already awakened those spiritual and intellectual and psychical faculties and powers which fitted them to swim in the upwards-rising evolutionary stream, comprising and bringing about the unfolding of the faculties and functions of spirit as hereinbefore described.
The turn of the Kingdoms below the Human will come in the next imbodiment of the entire planetary chain; and then the Kingdoms inferior to the human, etc., will find the fields of life ready for them for their own respective evolutionary expansion in power and faculty, with the added compensation, if the term be permissible, of becoming unfolded human beings on a chain imbodied on planes superior to what exists at present.
To the reader who knows little or nothing of the teaching of the Esoteric Tradition concerning planetary chains and their individual reimbodiments, it is suggested that he read pertinent passages in H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, Volume I. (return to text)
140. See The Secret Doctrine, Volume II. (return to text)
141. The reader will kindly note the word 'type' used in the sentence in the text. The text briefly describes or outlines the case of a single life-germ or psycho-vital reproductive spore falling from its parent and growing into a creature or being different, perhaps in large degree, from its parent, the reason being the inherent swabhavic impulsion of a psycho-vital character, latent in the invisible fluid of such falling reproductive spore. This does not mean that the Esoteric Tradition teaches the unity of genesis of the human race from a single individual or from two individuals somewhat after the type of the Hebraeo-Christian mythos of the romantic event which took place in the 'Garden of Eden'; but, to the contrary, teaches a distinct polygeny, meaning by this term that an indefinitely large number of such reproductive spores might, could, or did, fall from the bodies of the early humanity contemporaneously, and as these psycho-vital reproductive spores themselves belong to classes or families, it becomes obvious that thus would appear the beginning of new stocks of creatures, individual, of course, born from another parent or possibly from the same parent; and, furthermore, that as these psycho-vital reproductive spores or germs were, as just stated, themselves members of widely various classes, a single 'human' individual body could thus have shed from itself, or cast off from itself, or 'sweated' out, offsprings of lower evolutionary kinds at different times.
Nor should this last statement be misunderstood to mean that these protoplastic 'humans' did not give birth to 'children' like unto themselves -- 'humans,' for they most certainly did, as stated above in the text. If the life-germ which fell or was 'sweated' out came from a portion of the parent-body which already had become adapted to or set apart for 'human' reproduction, the 'human' spores falling from this part grew into 'human' beings like unto their parents.
And, finally, the Esoteric Tradition does not teach a monogenesis of any of the stocks which were thus originally 'born' and 'filled the earth.' Polygeny was the rule throughout, in all cases in those very early ages. (return to text)
142. It will be fatal to a proper understanding of this complicate teaching if the reader supposes that the beast-monads are essentially different from monads of any other kind. This is entirely wrong. The difference between 'monad' and 'monad' is solely a difference in the evolutionary stage reached by any monad because of its having brought forth from itself some of its inner spiritual-psychic essence or fluid. We speak of the 'Mineral Monad,' 'Vegetable Monad,' 'Animal Monad,' 'Human Monad,' 'God-Monad,' etc., only by way of description or for descriptive purposes. All these different Classes of Monads are sprung from the same primordial Cosmic Spirit and therefore each one has within itself, or locked up within itself, infolded within itself, all the capacities, powers, faculties, attributes, etc., that all others have. These different classes of Monads are therefore classified in the above manner solely to describe their different standings or stages in the evolutionary ladder of life.
Thus the beast today is not a Man because it has not as yet unfolded or unwrapped from within its own essence those characteristics or qualities or attributes which we call human; but some day it will unwrap them all and then it will be a Human Monad and will take unto itself a human body.
Distinguish carefully therefore between this teaching and the utterly erroneous idea that these different classes are from eternity Monads of essentially distinct and different type or kind. They are one in Spirit, many in manifestation. (return to text)
143. Consult footnote No. 145, infra. (return to text)
144. It should be remembered in connexion with the serial appearance of the different Kingdoms, that, so far as Man and the Animal Kingdom are concerned, the animals -- but not the mammalia -- preceded man in their appearance on this Globe D on the Downward Arc, that is to say they fell into matter more rapidly than did the Human Kingdom, because being of a more material type, the attraction of the material Globe D was stronger upon them than upon the Human Monads.
Furthermore, it may just as well be stated here that the separation of the sexes occurred among the animals or beasts before the same event took place in the Human Family. Thus it was that not only did the huge beasts of various kinds of that early geologic period clothe themselves with gross physical vestures before the Astral Man did the same, but they likewise separated into male and female from the preceding androgynous state before the human stock followed the example set by what were then its forerunners -- the beasts.
At the beginning of the Ascending Arc, the position of forerunners became reversed; for, the climb towards spirit having begun, the spiritual attractions consequently acted most strongly on the most spiritually developed stock of that time; so that man, from the beginning of this ascent, slowly took the place which he now holds as the leader and forerunner of all the Kingdoms behind him, all of which unconsciously aspire to the human stage. (return to text)
145. In regard to the use of geological terms by H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine, it is a matter of importance in order to be prepared for any possible scientific criticism, for interested readers to remember that the Great Theosophist spoke in terms of the time-measurements adopted by geologists and astronomers of fifty years ago, more or less, which were, however, really nearer the truth than most of the guesses tentatively accepted by geologists today. When H. P. Blavatsky spoke of 'Jurassic,' etc., and stated that man existed at such-and-such periods, using the geologic terms then popular and in vogue, she was using the short calculation then current, which could fit in, in a general way, with the age of 'separated' humanity ('Vaivasvata's humanity') as given in the esoteric records -- let us say, 18,600,000 years and odd centuries. But retaining the same names for the time-periods that H. P. Blavatsky then used is too apt to create confusion, because of the lengthened time-periods that modern geologists give to those same geologic Eras, and thus the esoteric statements and those of the most modern geology, in regard to the number of years in the respective geologic periods, no longer harmonize.
H. P. Blavatsky, however, was well aware of the possibility of such enlargement in time of the geologic Eras by modern geologists, and she specially referred to it on page 693 of the second volume of The Secret Doctrine, where she writes:
"It may make our position plainer if we state at once that we use Sir C. Lyell's nomenclature for the ages and periods, and that when we talk of the Secondary and Tertiary age, of the Eocene, Miocene, and Pliocene periods -- this is simply to make our facts more comprehensible. Since these ages and periods have not yet been allowed fixed and determined durations, . . . Esoteric teachings may remain quite indifferent to whether man is shown to appear in the Secondary or the Tertiary age."
As the Tertiary has now been extended far beyond the few million years accepted in 1888, the 'Vaivasvata-humanity' would be included in its more recent epochs, provided of course that the modern geologic time-estimate be accepted. (return to text)
146. When was this mid-point of the Atlantean Race? In view of the close secrecy that has always veiled in obscurity all accurate chronological computations by the Guardians of the secret records of the Ancient Wisdom, it is very difficult in a work intended for the public to venture upon accurate statements of this character. However, a hint may be given, and it may be said that as we are at the present time almost at the mid-point of our present or Fifth Root-Race, and taking into account certain other time-factors which need not be mentioned here -- it may be said that the mid-point of the Fourth or Atlantean Race took place between 8,000,000 and 9,000,000 years ago. When radio-activity first began in this already remote period, it was but slight, but very slowly increased in extent. It will continue to increase for the range of chemical elements and compounds running up the scale towards the simpler, as before said, as the millennia of the future slowly drop one by one into the past.
Thus it comes about that in the etherealizing process which our Earth-globe is now undergoing, the heaviest and grossest of the chemical elements and compounds will first become radio-active, radiating their substance away with increasing speed, and will be followed by the next or less heavy and gross, the process continuing until the end of the present Fourth Round in particular, and, with intervals of the reverse process during the downward arcs of the succeeding Rounds, proceeding until the Seventh Round will have reached its climax or end. By that time, the Globe and all on it will have returned to the highly ethereal state or condition of matter that prevailed through the First Round. (return to text)
147. The MAN here referred to must not be misunderstood to mean the highly evolved human being that he is now, for the man of the present time is the last word in evolution that the developmental processes of unfolding have as yet brought forth -- the highest type attained up to the present. The MAN referred to in the text signifies the great Family or Hierarchy of evolving Monads which through those long past periods were individually and collectively passing through all the intermediate stages between their first appearance in the Solar System and Man as he is today. The Man of that far past time is called 'Man' only by courtesy, for the innate, latent, locked up powers, capacities, potencies, functions, and organs which make man man as he is today, were as yet not unfolded, as yet not unwrapped, and therefore man was merely the 'presentment' of what he was to become, and now actually has become. (return to text)
148. These four Classes mentioned in the present paragraph should not be confused with the four general groups or classes of Monads spoken of in the preceding paragraph. In that preceding paragraph the thought concerned the four great types of the Monads; in the present paragraph the reference is restricted to the four lowest classes of the seven manifest groups. (return to text)