{H 6m\ didac\ o8k ¡stin 6m/, #ll+ to$ p1mfant3~ me. My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me

In other words, the two higher "principles" can have no individuality on Earth, cannot be man, unless there is (a) the Mind, the Manas-Ego, to cognize itself, and (b) the terrestrial false Personality, or the Body of egotistical desires and personal Will, to cement the whole, as if round a Pivot—which it is, truly—to the physical form of man. It is the fifth and the fourth "principles"⁵⁵⁷—Manas and Kâma Rûpa—that contain the dual Personality; the real immortal Ego, if it assimilates itself to the two higher, and the false and transitory Personality, the Mâyâvi or Astral Body, so-called, or the Animal-human Soul—the two having to be closely blended for purposes of a full terrestrial existence. Incarnate the Spiritual Monad of a Newton, grafted on that of the greatest saint on Earth, in a physical body the most perfect you can think of—i.e., in a two or even a three-principled Body composed of its Sthûla Sharîra, Prâna (Life-principle) and Linga Sharîra—and, if it lacks its middle and fifth "principles," you will have created an idiot—at best a beautiful, soul-less, empty and unconscious appearance. "Cogito—ergo sum" can find no room in the brain of such a creature, not on this plane, at any rate.

There are students, however, who have long ago understood the philosophical meaning underlying the allegory—so tortured and disfigured by the Roman Church—of the "Fallen Angels."

The kingdom of spirits and spiritual action, which flows from and is the product of spirit volition, is outside and contrasted with and in contradiction to the kingdom of [divine] souls and divine action.⁵⁵⁸

As said in the text of Commentary xiv:

Like produces like and no more at the genesis of Being, and evolution with its limited conditioned laws comes later. The Self-Existent⁵⁵⁹ are called "Creations," for they appear in the Spirit-Ray, manifested through the potency inherent in its Unborn Nature, which is beyond Time and [limited or conditioned] Space. Terrene products, animate and inanimate, including mankind, are falsely called creation and creatures; they are the development [evolution] of the Discrete Elements.

253] {MAN, THE PALE SHADOW OF GOD.} Again:

The Heavenly Rûpa [Dhyân Chohan] creates [man] in his own form; it is a spiritual ideation consequent on the first differentiation and awakening of the universal [manifested] Substance; that form is the ideal Shadow of Itself: and this is the Man of the First Race.

To express it in still clearer form, limiting the explanation to this Earth only, it was the duty of the first "differentiated" Egos—the Church calls them Archangels—to imbue Primordial Matter with the evolutionary impulse and guide its formative powers in the fashioning of its productions. This it is which is referred to in the sentences both in the Eastern and Western tradition—"the Angels were commanded to create." After the Earth had been made ready by the lower and more material Powers, and its three Kingdoms fairly started on their way to be "fruitful and multiply," the higher Powers, the Archangels or Dhyânîs, were compelled by the Evolutionary Law to descend on Earth, in order to construct the crown of its evolution—Man. Thus the "Self-created" and the "Self-existent" projected their pale Shadows; but Group the Third, the Fire-Angels, rebelled and refused to-join their fellow Devas.

Hindu exotericism represents them all as Yogins, whose piety inspired them to refuse to "create," as they desired to remain eternally Kumâras, "Virgin Youths," in order, if possible, to anticipate their fellows in progress towards Nirvana—the final liberation. But, agreeably to Esoteric interpretation, it was a self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind. The "Rebels" would not create will-less irresponsible men, as the "obedient" Angels did; nor could they endow human beings with even the temporary reflections of their own attributes; for the latter, belonging to another and a so much higher plane of consciousness, would leave man still irresponsible, hence interfere with any possibility of higher progress. No spiritual and psychic evolution is possible on Earth—the lowest and most material plane—for one who, on that plane at all events, is inherently perfect and cannot accumulate either merit or demerit. Had Man remained the pale Shadow of the inert, immutable, and motionless Perfection, the one negative and passive attribute of the real I am that I am, he would have been doomed to pass through life on Earth as in a heavy dreamless sleep; hence a failure on this plane. The Beings, or the Being, collectively called Elohim, who first pronounced (if, indeed, they ever were pronounced) the cruel words, "Behold, the man is become as one of us, to 254] know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever . . . "—must have been indeed the Ilda-baoth, the Demiurge of the Nazarenes, filled with rage and envy against his own creature, the reflection of which created Ophiomorphos. In this case it is but natural—even from the dead-letter standpoint—to view Satan, the Serpent of Genesis, as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual Mankind. For it is he who was the "Harbinger of Light," bright radiant Lucifer, who opened the eyes of the automaton "created" by Jehovah, as alleged. And he who was the first to whisper, "in the day ye eat thereof ye shall be as Elohim, knowing good and evil," can only be regarded in the light of a Saviour. An "Adversary" to Jehovah, the "personating spirit," he still remains in Esoteric Truth the ever-loving "Messenger," the Angel, the Seraphim and Cherubim who both "knew" well, and "loved" still more, and who conferred on us Spiritual, instead of Physical Immortality—the latter a kind of static immortality that would have transformed man into an undying "Wandering Jew."

As narrated in King's Gnostics and their Remains concerning Ilda-baoth, whom several sects regarded as the God of Moses:

Ildabaoth was far from being a pure spirit; ambition and pride dominated in his composition. He therefore resolved to break off all connection with his mother, Achamoth, and to create a world entirely for himself. Aided by his own Six Spirits, he created Man, intending him for the image of his power; but he failed utterly in his work, his Man proving a vast, soulless monster, crawling upon the earth. The Six Spirits were obliged to bring their work again before their father, to be animated: he did so by communicating the ray of Divine Light which he himself had inherited from Achamoth, who by this loss punished him for his pride and self-sufficiency.

Man, thus favoured by Achamoth at the expense of her own son, followed the impulse of the Divine Light that she had transferred to him, collected a further supply out of the creation with which it was intermingled, and began to present not the image of his creator Ildabaoth, but rather that of the Supreme Being, the "Primal Man." At this spectacle the Demiurgus was filled with rage and envy at having produced a being so superior to himself. His looks, inspired by his passions, were reflected in the Abyss, as in a mirror, the image became instinct with life, and forth arose "Satan Serpent-formed," Ophiomorphos, the embodiment of envy and cunning.⁵⁶⁰

This is the exoteric rendering of the Gnostics, and the allegory, though a sectarian version, is suggestive, and seems true to life. It is the natural deduction from the dead-letter text of Chapter iii of Genesis.

255] {SATAN, A CENTRIPETAL FORCE.} Hence the allegory of Prometheus, who steals the Divine Fire so as to allow men to proceed consciously on the path of Spiritual Evolution, thus transforming the most perfect of animals on Earth into a potential God, and making him free to "take the kingdom of heaven by violence." Hence, also, the curse pronounced by Zeus against Prometheus, and by Jehovah-Ilda-baoth against his "rebellious son," Satan. The cold, pure snows of the Caucasian mountain and the never-dying, singeing fire and flames of an inextinguishable Hell, two poles, yet the same idea, the dual aspect of a refined torture; a "Fire-producer"—the personified emblem of Fwsf3ro~ (Phosphoros), of the Astral Fire and Light in the Anima Mundi (that Element of which the German materialist philosopher Moleschott said: "ohne Phosphor kein Gedanke," or "without phosphorus no thought")—burning in the fierce Flames of his terrestrial Passions; the conflagration fired by his Thought, discerning as it now does good from evil, and yet a slave to the passions of its earthly Adam; feeling the vulture of doubt and full consciousness gnawing at its heart—a Prometheus indeed, because a conscious, and hence a responsible entity.⁵⁶¹ The curse of life is great, yet, with the exception of some Hindu and Sufi mystics, how few are those who would exchange all the tortures of conscious life, all the evils of a responsible existence, for the unconscious perfection of a passive (objectively) incorporeal Being, or even the universal static Inertia personified in Brahmâ during his "Night's" Rest. For, to quote from an able article by one⁵⁶² who, confusing the planes of existence and consciousness, fell a victim thereto:

Satan [or Lucifer] represents the Active, or, as [M. Jules] Baissac calls it, the "Centrifugal" Energy of the Universe [in a cosmic sense]. He is Fire, Light, Life, Struggle, Effort, Thought, Consciousness, Progress, Civilization, Liberty, Independence. At the same time he is Pain, which is the Reaction of the Pleasure of Action, and Death—which is the Revolution of Life—Satan, burning in his own Hell, produced by the fury of his own momentum—the expansive disintegration of the Nebula which is to concentrate into New Worlds. And fitly is he again and 256] again baffled by the Eternal Inertia of the Passive Energy of the Kosmos—the inexorable "I am"—the Flint from which the sparks are beaten out. And fitly . . . . are he and his adherents . . . . consigned to the "Sea of Fire"—because it is the Sun [in one sense only in the cosmic allegory], the Fount of Life in our system, where they are purified (meaning thereby disintegrated) and churned up to rearrange them for another life (the Resurrection)—that Sun which, as the Origin of the Active Principle of our Earth, is at once the Home and the Source of the Mundane Satan. . . .

Furthermore, as if to demonstrate the accuracy of Baissac's general theory [in Le Diable et Satan] cold is known to have a "Centripetal" effect. Under the influence of Cold everything contracts. . . . Under it Life hybernates, or dies out, Thought congeals, and Fire is extinguished. Satan is immortal in his own Fire-Sea—it is only in the "Nifl-Heim" [the cold Hell of the Scandinavian Eddas] of the "I am" that he cannot exist. But for all that there is a kind of Immortal Existence in Nifl-Heim, and that Existence must be Painless and Peaceful, because it is Unconscious and Inactive. In the Kingdom of Jehovah [if this God were all that the Jews and Christians claim for him] there is no misery, no war, no marrying and giving in marriage, no change, no Individual Consciousness.⁵⁶³ All is absorbed in the spirit of the Most Powerful. It is emphatically a Kingdom of Peace and loyal Submission, as that of the "Arch-Rebel" is one of War and Revolution. . . . It [the former] is in fact what Theosophy calls Nirvana. But then Theosophy teaches that Separation from the Primal Source having once occurred, Reunion can only be achieved by Will-Effort—which is distinctly Satanic in the sense of this essay.⁵⁶⁴

It is "Satanic" from the standpoint of orthodox Romanism, for it is owing to the prototype of that which became in time the Christian Devil—to the Radiant Archangels, Dhyân Chohans, who refused to create, because they wanted Man to become his own creator and an immortal God—that men can reach Nirvana and the Haven of heavenly Divine Peace.

To close this rather lengthy comment, the Secret Doctrine teaches that the Fire-Devas, the Rudras, and the Kumâras, the "Virgin-Angels," (to whom the Archangels, Michael and Gabriel, both belong,) the Divine "Rebels"—called by the all-materializing and positive Jews, the Nahash or "Deprived"—preferred the curse of incarnation and the long cycles of terrestrial existence and rebirths, to seeing the misery, even if unconscious, of the beings who were evolved as Shadows out of their Brethren, through the semi-passive energy of their too spiritual Creators. If "man's uses of life should be such as neither to animalize 257] {THE SACRIFICE OF THE FIERY ANGELS.} nor to spiritualize, but to humanise Self,"⁵⁶⁵ to do so, he must be born human not angelic. Hence, tradition shows the celestial Yogis offering themselves as voluntary victims in order to redeem Humanity, which was created god-like and perfect at first, and endow him with human affections and aspirations. To do this they had to give up their natural status, descend on our Globe, and take up their abode on it for the whole cycle of the Mahâyuga, thus exchanging their impersonal Individualities for individual Personalities—the bliss of sidereal existence for the curse of terrestrial life. This voluntary sacrifice of the Fiery Angels, whose nature was Knowledge and Love, has been construed by the exoteric theologies into a statement that shows "the Rebel Angels hurled down from Heaven into the darkness of Hell"—our Earth. Hindu Philosophy hints at the truth by teaching that the Asuras, hurled down by Shiva, are only in an intermediate state, in which they prepare for higher degrees of purification and redemption from their wretched condition; but Christian Theology—claiming to be based on the rock of the divine love, charity, and justice of him it appeals to as its Saviour—to paradoxically enforce that claim, has invented the dreary dogma of Hell, that Archimedean lever of Roman Catholic philosophy.

Whereas Rabbinical wisdom—than which there is none more positive, materialistic, or grossly terrestrial, as it brings everything down to physiological mysteries—calls these Beings, the "Evil One"; and the Kabalists—Nahash, "Deprived," as just said, and the Souls that have, after having been alienated in Heaven from the Holy One, thrown themselves into an Abyss at the dawn of their very existence, and have anticipated the time when they are to descend on Earth.⁵⁶⁶

And let me explain at once that our quarrel is not with the Zohar or any other book of the Kabalah in its right interpretation—for the latter is the same as our own—but only with the gross, pseudo-esoteric explanations of the later, and especially of the Christian Kabalists.

258] Says the Commentary:

Our earth and man [are] the products of the three Fires.

The names of these three answer, in Sanskrit, to the "Electric Fire," the "Solar Fire," and the "Fire produced by Friction." Explained on the cosmic and human planes, these three Fires are Spirit, Soul, and Body, the three great Root Groups, with their four additional divisions. These vary with the Schools, and—according to their applications—become the Upâdhis and the Vehicles, or the Noumena of these. In the exoteric accounts, they are personified by the "three sons of surpassing brilliancy and splendour" of Agni Abhimânin, the eldest son of Brahmâ, the Cosmic Logos, by Svâhâ, one of Daksha's⁵⁶⁷ daughters. In the metaphysical sense, the "Fire by Friction" means the union between Buddhi, the sixth, and Manas, the fifth "principle," which thus are united or cemented together, the fifth merging partially into and becoming part of the Monad; in the physical, it relates to the "creative spark," or germ, which fructifies and generates the human being. The three Fires, whose names are Pâvaka, Pavamâna and Shuchi, were condemned, it is said, by a curse of Vasishtha, the great Sage, "to be born over and over again."⁵⁶⁸ This is clear enough.

Therefore, the Flames, whose functions are confused in the exoteric books, and who are called indifferently Prajâpatis, Pitris, Manus, Asuras, Rishis, Kumâras,⁵⁶⁹ etc., are said to incarnate personally in the Third Root-Race and thus find themselves "reborn over and over again." In the Esoteric Doctrine they are generally named Asuras, or the Asura Devata or Pitar Devata (Gods), for, as said, they were first Gods—and the highest—before they became "No-Gods," and had from Spirits of Heaven fallen into Spirits of Earth⁵⁷⁰—exoterically, note well, in orthodox dogma.

259] {THE "CONSCIOUS ENTITY."} No Theologian or Orientalist can ever understand the genealogies of the Prajâpatis, the Manus, and the Rishis, or the direct connection of these—their correlation rather—with the Gods, unless he has the key to the old primitive Cosmogony and Theogony, which all nations originally had in common. All these Gods and Demi-gods are found reborn on Earth, in various Kalpas and in as various characters; each, moreover, having his Karma distinctly traced, and every effect assigned to its cause.

Before other Stanzas could be explained, it was, as may be seen, absolutely necessary to show that the Sons of "Dark Wisdom," though identical with the Archangels which Theology has chosen to call the "Fallen," are as divine and as pure, if not more pure, than all the Michaels and Gabriels so glorified in the Churches. The "Old Book" also goes into various details of Astral Life, which at this juncture would be quite incomprehensible to the reader. It must, therefore, be left for later explanation, and the First and Second Races will now receive only bare notice. Not so the Third Race—the Root-Race which separated into sexes, and which was the first to be endowed with reason; men evolving pari passu with the Globe, and the latter having "incrustated" more than a hundred millions of years before the first human sub-race had yet begun to materialize or solidify, so to say. But, as the Stanza has it:

This "Conscious Entity" Occultism says, comes from, nay, in many cases is, the very essence and esse of the high Intelligences, condemned, by the undeviating law of Karmic evolution, to reincarnate in this Manvantara.

(b) Shloka 39 relates exclusively to the racial divisions. Strictly speaking, Esoteric Philosophy teaches a modified polygenesis. For, while it assigns to humanity a oneness of origin, in so far that its Forefathers or "Creators" were all Divine Beings—though of different classes or degrees of perfection in their Hierarchy—it teaches that men were nevertheless born at seven different centres of the Continent of that period. Though all were of one common origin, yet, for reasons given, their potentialities and mental capabilities, outward or physical forms, and future characteristics, were very different.⁵⁷¹ As to their 260] complexions, there is a suggestive allegory told in Linga Purâna. The Kumâras—the Rudra Gods, so called—are described as incarnations of Shiva, the Destroyer (of outward forms), called also Vamadeva. The latter, as a Kumâra, the "Eternal Celibate," the chaste Virgin Youth, springs from Brahmâ in each great Manvantara, and "again becomes four"; a reference to the four great divisions of the human Races, as regards complexion and type—and the three chief variations of these. Thus in the twenty-ninth Kalpa—in this case a reference to the transformation and evolution of the human form, which Shiva ever destroys and remodels periodically down to the great Manvantaric turning point, about the middle of the Fourth (Atlantean) Race—in the twenty-ninth Kalpa, Shiva, as Shvetalohita, the Root-Kumâra, from moon-coloured becomes white; in his next transformation, he is red (and in this the exoteric version differs from the Esoteric Teaching); in the third, yellow; in the fourth, black.

Esotericism now classes these seven variations, with their four great divisions, into only three distinct primeval Races—as it does not take into consideration the First Race, which had neither type nor colour, and a hardly objective, though colossal, form. The evolution of these Races, their formation and development, proceeded on parallel lines with the evolution, formation, and development of three geological strata, from which the human complexion was as much derived as it was determined by the climates of these zones. The Esoteric Teaching names three great divisions, namely, the red-yellow, the black, and the brown-white.⁵⁷² The Aryan races, for instance, now varying from dark brown, almost black, red-brown-yellow, down to the whitest creamy colour, are nevertheless all of one and the same stock, the Fifth Root-Race, and spring from one single Progenitor, called in Hindu exotericism by the generic name of Vaivasvata Manu; the latter, remember, being that Generic Personage, the Sage, who is said to have lived over 18,000,000 years ago, and also 850,000 years ago—at the time of the sinking of the last remnants of the Great Continent of Atlantis,⁵⁷³ and 261] {ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS.} who is said to live even now in his mankind.⁵⁷⁴ The light yellow is the colour of the first solid human race, which appeared after the middle of the Third Root-Race—after its fall into generation, as just explained—bringing on the final changes. For, it is only at that period that the last transformation took place, which brought forth man as he is now, only on a magnified scale. This Race gave birth to the Fourth Race; "Shiva" gradually transforming that portion of Humanity which became "black with sin" into red-yellow, of which the red Indians and the Mongolians are the descendants, and finally into brown-white races—which now, together with the yellow races, form the great bulk of Humanity. The allegory in Lingo, Purâna is curious, as showing the great ethnological knowledge of the ancients.

We must now say a few more words on the physical evolution of man.

_____

ARCHAIC TEACHINGS IN THE "PURÂNAS" AND "GENESIS." PHYSICAL EVOLUTION.

The Purânas on the one hand, and the Jewish Scriptures on the other, are based on the same scheme of evolution, which, if read Esoterically and expressed in modern language, would be found to be quite as scientific as much of what now passes current as the final word of recent discovery. The only difference between the two schemes is, that the Purânas, giving as much, and perhaps more, attention to causes than to effects, allude to the pre-cosmic and pre-genetic periods 263] {MR. GLADSTONE KILLS "GENESIS."} rather than to those of so-called "creation," whereas the Bible, after saying only a few words on the former period, plunges forthwith into material genesis, and, while almost skipping the Pre-Adamic races, proceeds with its allegories concerning the Fifth Race.

Now, whatever the onslaught made on the "order of creation" in Genesis—and its dead-letter account certainly lends itself admirably to criticism⁵⁷⁵—the Hindu Purânas, notwithstanding their allegorical exaggerations will be found quite in accordance with Physical Science.

Even what, on the face of it, appears to be the perfectly nonsensical allegory of Brahmâ assuming the form of a Boar to rescue the Earth from under the waters, finds a perfectly scientific explanation in the Secret Commentaries, relating as it does to the many risings and sinkings, the constant alternation of water and land from the earliest to the latest geological periods of our Globe; for Science teaches us now that nine-tenths of the stratified formations of the Earth's crust have been gradually constructed beneath the water at the bottom of the seas. The ancient Aryans are credited with having known nothing whatever of Natural History, Geology, and so on. The Jewish race is, on the other hand, proclaimed even by its severest critic, an uncompromising opponent of the Bible, to have the merit of having conceived the idea of monotheism "earlier, and retained it more firmly, than any of the less philosophical and more immoral religions (! !) of the ancient world."⁵⁷⁶ Only, while in biblical Esotericism, we find physiological sexual mysteries symbolized, and very little more, something for which very little real Philosophy is requisite—in the Purânas one can find the most scientific and philosophical "dawn of creation," which, if impartially analyzed and rendered into plain language from its fairy-tale-like allegories, would show that modern Zoology, Geology, Astronomy, and 264] nearly all the branches of modern knowledge, have been anticipated in ancient Science, and were known to ancient Philosophers in their general features, if not in such detail as at present.

Paurânic Astronomy, with all its deliberate concealment and confusion for the purpose of leading the profane off the real track, has been shown even by Bentley to be a real science; and those who are versed in the mysteries of Hindu astronomical treatises, will prove that the modern theories of the progressive condensation of nebulas, nebulous stars and suns, with the most minute details about the cyclic progress of asterisms for chronological and other purposes—far more correct than Europeans have even now—were known in India to perfection.

If we turn to Geology and Zoology we find the same. What are all the myths and endless genealogies of the seven Prajâpatis, of their sons, the seven Rishis or Manus, and of their wives, sons and progeny, but a vast detailed account of the progressive development and evolution of animal creation, one species after the other? Were the highly philosophical and metaphysical Aryans—the authors of the most perfect philosophical system of transcendental Psychology, of codes of Ethics, of such a grammar as Panini's, of the Sânkhya and Vedânta systems, of a moral code (Buddhism), proclaimed by Max Müller the most perfect on earth—were the Aryans such fools, or children, as to lose their time in writing "fairy tales," such as the Purânas now seem to be in the eyes of those who have not the remotest idea of their secret meaning? What is the "fable," the genealogy and origin of Kashyapa, with his twelve wives by whom he had a numerous and diversified progeny of serpents (Nâgas), reptiles, birds, and all kinds of living things, who was thus the "father" of all kinds of animals, but a veiled record of the order of evolution in this Round? So far, we do not see that any Orientalist has ever had the remotest conception of the truths concealed under the allegories and personifications. The Shatapatha Brâhmana, says one, gives "a not very intelligible account" of Kashyapa's origin.

According to the Mahâbhârata, the Râmâyana, and the Purânas, he was the son of Marîchi, the son of Brahmâ, the father of Vivasvat, the father of Manu, the progenitor of mankind.

According to the Shatapatha Brahmana: Having assumed the form of a tortoise, Prajâpati created offspring. That which he created he made (akarot); hence the word kûrma. (tortoise). Kashyapa means tortoise; hence men say, "All creatures are descendants of Kashyapa."⁵⁷⁷