The Theosophical Forum – September 1944

THE CHILD MIRRORS THE RACE — G. de Purucker

There are literally innumerable evidences already known to scientific men of at least a large part of the past history of mankind; and as the greater part of mankind is his spirit and his mind, I include these also. But I refer now especially to the scientific evidences that man physically has passed in ages bygone through phases of his aeons-long evolutionary pilgrimage which have left their imprint upon him. And there are, as a matter of fact, a great many scientific facts which are not known.

I will refer here to one thing only, to a fact which used to have more scientific weight than it has today merely because the more modern scientific ideas are not so favorable to this fact; but I believe the scientists of the future will come back to the former ideas. It is called in embryology the theory of Recapitulation: that the human unborn child, the embryo, passes through in the small every phase of evolutionary development that the human race as a race has passed through in bygone times. Thus, is a child born today in full possesion of mind, a thinking, reasoning entity? You all know the child is not. In the child's intra-uterine life we know it passes briefly through many evolutionary physical phases that the race as a whole passed through in bygone times; but it is not for years after the child is physically born that it begins to think, I mean to think self-consciously, to meditate thoughts of grandeur, to make decisions of great worth and value. These come with the growing lad advancing into manhood, for with manhood the greater powers of mind and intellect grow progressively, and also the spiritual and ethical faculties in man.

Now then, you have heard the phrase, "the descent of mind into the early Third Root-race of mankind." It was just that. Up to that time the race had developed bodies formed by evolution to meet the needs of their as yet unintellectual state, but you must not suppose that these unintellectual early men were absolutely without consciousness. Not at all. No more so than an unthinking child is up to say five or six or seven years. Mind at that age is, in fact, already beginning to show itself; and the showing advances progressively as the child grows into boyhood, and from boyhood into manhood, and from manhood into mature years. Now the early races were just like that, like little children.

They had instinct, they had flashes of intuition, they had feeling, they had consciousness, the vague diffuse consciousness of the human child today, but they were not thinkers. The child today does not sit down at a desk and write a noble essay or plan out a campaign of thought which will help and enlighten mankind. Why? The mind has not yet fully expressed itself through the as yet infantile brain. The brain needs further hardening, forming, to carry the current from the mind within-above the man.

The early Third Root-race were just like children in that respect. They had consciousness. They had flashes of intuition; they had instinct highly developed. But the self-conscious thinking mind had not yet come to them. Then there happened one of the most marvelous events in all evolutionary history. We call it the "descent of the Manasaputras," the Sons of Mind, which took place not over night as it were, nor in an instant, nor through even a hundred thousand or several hundred thousand years. But it was a progressive process, exactly as on a small scale, the child does not wake up some morning and suddenly find itself in the possession of a mature mind. It is a matter of growth. Thus did the Manasputras gradually over-enlighten or overshadow the minds of the nascent mankind, permeating these brains, even their nervous systems with its divine fire of thought, until finally men thought, they were awakened. The mind had come into function. This was done by these Manasaputras, our own intellectual selves so to speak, incarnating through the ages for several hundred thousand years; and when it was ended, from the merely instinctual conscious but non-intellectual and as yet non-self-conscious early man, you have a race which thought, which could contemplate divinity; and this was possible because the link with the divine had been made. Mind was awakened.

And not only this: into a number of these prepared human beings, the most highly developed mankind of the time, there incarnated certain spiritual-intellectual entities, beings, highly evolved, who became the teachers and the guides of the then newly awakened mankind, who taught them, who showed them the ways of civilization, the mysteries, the secrets of science, the verities of philosophy. These were the days of the divine authority of our far past forefathers. It was they who founded the Mystery-Schools when they first began on this earth, and who lived and taught mankind, and were, as said, their guides, their teachers, their protectors, their instructors. And that same body, or their descendants if you wish, their successors, still remain on earth today as mankind's guides, illuminators, initiators, teachers, elder brothers, friends.

Thus does the child recapitulate in its own growth from infancy to manhood what the race has attained today. It is natural, it must be, because there is but one fundamental law in the universe, one fundamental course of action, which with its universally wide sweep touches all and everything with dynamic power. Thus we find today a key to understand those ancient and earliest thinking men: how they came to be born, how it came that the mind suddenly awaked so that they could contemplate the universe and understand it instead of being like children, or like the higher animals, instinctual, intuitionally conscious, but not self-conscious. It is a marvelous thing that happens to the little child: it grows from instinct and intuition to receive the entrance into itself, the infilling, of the inspiration from the inner god. The waiting brain, the nervous system, the body, are infilled and enlightened. Mysteries and marvels take place around us all the time!

Now, while it is very marvelous, very wonderful indeed, and fills us with great reverence for what is in the universe, to look back into the past along the annals of the race, and see the stages that our feet have trodden, yet do not forget the future. We are but at the middle point of our evolution on this earth. We must come back to earth again and again and again to repeat and to learn ever more and more perfectly what we have already known, and to gain new wisdom. What, then, does the future hold? I will tell you. As our minds were awakened in the past by the manasaputric gods — for they are gods to men — so our minds themselves in the future shall be awakened by angels of the spirit. Even our minds which raise us from our unconsciousness to self-consciousness, and have brought us to the stage where we are now, so that we may contemplate the universe and sense divinity behind it, think grand and noble thoughts which raise our lives towards the gods — even our minds themselves need a higher inspiration, for our very minds can mislead us, lead us off the Path.

So just as in the past there took place the incarnation of the Manasaputras, the Sons of Mind, who gave us mind — so in the future, beginning now — it began already a million years back or more, and progressing with ever enlarging measure into the future — there will imbody itself within us, in our minds and fill us with its own glory, the heavenly light from the god within each one of us. Thereafter our evolution will be safe and assured, with that celestial guidance enlightening our hearts and firing our brains. No more will our feet stumble on the path, for we shall enlighten our pathway as we march upwards and onwards, ever upwards, ever onwards, to heights at present inconceivable even to our minds. That is what lies before us. When we raise our inner eye, our inner face towards the god within us, there comes an eternal radiance, not from anything outside, but from the god within-above each one of us. Call it a Christ, the immanent Christ, call it the inner Buddha, call it by what name you will. The thing is to come to realize its holy presence. Then a man is indeed blessed.



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