Theos-Talk Archives (January 1994 Message tl00057)

This is by Brenda Tucker.

I think I'd like to follow the same format that I did with the last
communication where I present a short outline followed by quotes from
THE SECRET DOCTRINE. In pursuing the theme of intellectual evolution,
I can not help but maintain the importance of the races in presenting a
picture of change and growth. H.P.B. makes me think of new things and
I'm not trying to present her ideas as if I am completely familiar to
them, but more as if this is the first time they've entered my mind.

This quote was in the last communication and is only being repeated as
a starting point for the next further look into THE SECRET DOCTRINE:

     "Whatever reality things possess must be looked for in them
     before or after they have passed like a flash through the
     material world; but we cannot cognise any such existence
     directly, so long as we have sense-instruments which bring
     only material existence into the field of our
     consciousness. Whatever plane our consciousness may be
     acting in, both we and the things belonging to that plane
     are, for the time being, our only realities. As we rise in
     the scale of development we perceive that during the stages
     through which we have passed we mistook shadows for
     realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is a series
     of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it
     the idea that now, at last, we have reached  reality;  but
     only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness,
     and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the
     delusions produced by Maya." p.39 Vol I

In this sense, the past and future are more real than what we encounter
with our sense instruments, and the main lack is in our attention not
centered upon this progressive reality. But in another quote:

     Vol I p.331 Oracles of Zoroaster (according to The Secret
     Doctrine) say "Consult it only when it is without form or
     figure," ... "When it has a form - heed it not," teaches
     Psellus; "but when it is formless, obey it, for it is then
     sacred fire, and all it will reveal thee, shall be true."

I. Manas - The Middle Principle - mediate phase - central sun
II. Evolution of God-Idea - Absolute
III. An Arresting of Physical Evolution
IV. Races

Vol II p.241 Says the Book of Dzyan with regard to primeval man when
first projected by the "Boneless," the incorporeal Creator: First the
Breath, then Buddhi and the Shadow-Son (the Body) were 'CREATED.' But
where was the pivot (the middle principle, Manas)? Man is doomed. When
alone the indiscrete (undifferentiated Element) and the Vahan
(Buddhi) the cause of the causeless break asunder from manifested
life "unless cemented and held together by the middle principle the
vehicle of the personal consciousness of JIVA."

     Vol I p. 328 "There are SEVEN PROTYLES (as they are now called),
while Aryan antiquity called them the Seven Prakritis, or Natures,
serving, severally, as the relatively homogeneous bases....'relatively'
is used designedly, because the existence of such a process ... compels
us to regard the PROTYLE of each plane as only a mediate phase assumed
by Substance in its passage from abstract into full objectivity."

Vol II p. 241 "Thus, though the seventh principle reaches man through
all the phases of being, pure as an indiscrete element and an
impersonal unity, it passes through (the Kabala teaches from) the
Central Spiritual Sun and Group the second (the polar Sun), which two
radiate on man his Atma. Group Three (the equatorial Sun) cements the
Buddhi to Atman and the higher attributes of Manas, while group Four
(the spirit of our visible sun) endows him with his Manas and its
vehicle the Kama rupa, or body of passions and desires, the two
elements of Ahamkara which evolve individualized consciousness, the
personal ego. Finally, it is the spirit of the Earth in its triple
unity that builds the physical body, attracting to it the Spirits of
Life and forming his Linga Sarira."

Vol II p.239-241 "Esoteric philosophy maintains that during the
Sandhyas, the "Central Sun" emits creative light passively so to say.
Causality is latent. It is only during the active periods of being that
it gives rise to a stream of ceaseless energy, whose vibrating currents
acquire more activity and potency with every rung of the hebdomadic
ladder of Being which they descend. Hence it becomes comprehensible how
the process of creating, or rather of fashioning, the organic Universe,
with all its units of the seven kingdoms, necessitated intelligent
beings who became collectively a Being or creative God differentiated
already from the one absolute Unity, unrelated as the latter is to
conditioned creation."
     Vol II p. 240-241 "Thus even the now exoteric Kabalistic
teachings speak of a CENTRAL Sun, and of three secondary suns in each
solar system our own included. As shown in that able though too
materialistic work, NEW ASPECTS OF LIFE AND RELIGION (by Pratt) which
is a synopsis of the views of the Kabalists in an aspect deeply thought
out and assimilated:
          "The Central SUN was to them (as much as to the
     Aryans) the centre of Rest; the centre to which all motion
     was to be ultimately referred. Round this central sun   the
     first of three.... systemic suns   revolved on a polar
     plane   the second, on an equatorial plane   (and the third
     only was our visible sun). These four solar bodies were the
     organs on whose action what man calls the creation, the
     evolution of life on the planet earth, depends. The
     channels through which the influence of these bodies was
     conveyed to the earth they (the Kabalists) held to be
     electrical  The radiant energy flowing from the central
     sun* called the Earth into being as a watery globe....
     (whose tendency), as the nucleus of a planetary body, was
     to rush to the (central) sun  within the sphere of whose
     attraction it had been created...But the radiant energy,
     similarly electrifying both, withheld the one from the
     other, and so changed motion towards into motion round the
     centre of attraction, which the revolving planet (earth)
     thus sought to reach.
          In the organic cell the visible sun found its own
     proper matrix, and produced through this the animal (while
     maturing the vegetable) kingdom, finally placing man at its
     head, in whom, through the animating action of that
     kingdom, it originated the psychic cell. But the man so
     placed at the head of the animal kingdom, at the head of
     the creation, was the animal, the soul-less, the perishable
     man. Hence man, although apparently its crown, would by his
     advent have marked the close of creation; since creation,
     culminating in him, would at his death have entered on its
     decline."

     This Kabalistic view is here quoted, to show its perfect identity
in spirit with the Eastern doctrine. Explain, or complete the teaching
of the seven Suns with the seven systems of planes of being, of which
the "Suns" are the central bodies, and you have the seven angelic
planes, whose " Host " are gods thereof, collectively. (See Comm. to
Stanza VII. Book I.) They are the Head-group divided into four classes
from the incorporeal down to the semi-corporeal, which classes are
directly connected though in very different ways as regards voluntary
connection and functions with our mankind. They are three, synthesized
by the fourth (the first and highest), which is called the "Central
Sun" in the Kabalistic doctrine just quoted."

     Vol II 254-5. "The same order, (referring to animals appearing
down through the ages b.tucker) plus the description of animals unknown
to modern science, is found in the commentaries on the Purnas in
general, and in the Book of Dzyan especially. The only difference, a
grave one, no doubt, as implying a spiritual and divine nature of man
independent of his physical body in this illusionary world, in which
the false personality and its cerebral basis alone is known to orthodox
psychology is as follows. Having been in all the so-called "Seven
creations," allegorizing the seven evolutionary changes, or the
sub-races, we may call them, of the First Root-race of Mankind MAN was
on earth in this Round from the beginning. Having passed through all
the kingdoms of nature in the previous three Rounds,* his physical
frame one adapted to the thermal conditions of those early periods was
ready to receive the divine Pilgrim at the first dawn of human life,
i.e, 18,000,000 years ago. It is only at the mid-point of the 3rd Root
Race that man was endowed with Manas. Once united, the two and then the
three made one; for though the lower animals, from the amoeba to man,
received their monads, in which all the higher qualities are potential,
all have to remain dormant till each reaches its human form, before
which stage manas (mind) has no development in them. In the animals
every principle is paralysed, and in a foetus-like state, save the
second (vital) and the third (the astral), and the rudiments of the
fourth (Kama, which is desire, instinct) whose intensity and
development varies and changes with the species. To the materialist
wedded to the Darwinian theory. this will read like a fairy-tale, a
mystification, to the believer in the inner, spiritual man, the
statement will have nothing unnatural in it."
     (Footnote)* "Follow the law of analogy" the Masters teach.
Atma-Buddhi is dual and Manas is triple, inasmuch as the former has two
aspects, and the latter three, i.e., as a principle per se, which
gravitates, in its higher aspect, to Atma-Buddhi and follows, in its
lower nature, Kama, the seat of terrestrial and animal desires and
passions. Now compare evolution of the Races, the First and the Second
of which are of the nature of Atma-Buddhi, their passive Spiritual
progeny, and the Third Root-Race shows three distinct divisions or
aspects physiologically and psychically; the earliest, sinless; the
middle portions awakening to intelligence; and the third and last
decidedly animal: i.e., Manas succumbs to the temptations of Kama.

     Vol I p.327 "From the early ages of the Fourth Race, when Spirit
alone was worshipped and the mystery was made manifest, down to the
last palmy days of Grecian art at the dawn of Christianity - the
Hellenes alone had dared to raise publicly an altar to the UNKNOWN
GOD."
     Vol I p. 326-7 Absolute Existence "was never addressed or even
mentioned by any name in antiquity, except allegorically. In the
oldest Aryan race, the Hindu, the worship of the intellectual classes
never consisted (as with the Greeks) in a fervent adoration of
marvelous form and art, which led later on to anthropomorphism. But
while the Greek philosopher adored form, and the Hindu sage alone
"perceived the true relation of earthly beauty and eternal truth" - the
uneducated of every nation understood neither, at any time.
     They do not understand it even now. The evolution of the GOD-
IDEA proceeds apace with man's own intellectual evolution. Philosophers
had to be initiated before they could grasp the correct idea in
relation to the ABSOLUTE. "Otherwise - outside such initiation - for
every thinker there will be a "thus far shalt thou go and no farther,"
mapped out by his intellectual capacity, as clearly and as unmistakably
as there is for the progress of any nation or race in its cycle by the
law of Karma. Outside of initiation, the ideals of contemporary
religious thought must always have their wings clipped and remain
unable to soar higher; for idealistic as well as realistic thinkers,
and even freethinkers, are but the outcome and the natural product of
their respective environments and periods. The ideals of both are only
the necessary results of their temperaments, and the outcome of that
phase of intellectual progress to which a nation, in its collectivity,
has attained."
     Vol I. p. 327"Divine thought cannot be defined, or its meaning
explained, except by the numberless manifestations of Cosmic Substance
in which the former is sensed spiritually by those who can do so. To
say this after having defined it as the Unknown Deity... is equivalent
to saying nothing at all. It is like attempting a transcendental
equation of conditions for the true values of a set of conditions,
having in hand for deducing them only a number of unknown quantities."

     Vol II, p. 256 "Nor do we find that which ought to be found, if
the now orthodox theory of Evolution were quite correct, namely, a
constant, ever-flowing progress in every species of being. Instead of
that, what does one see? While the intermediate groups of animal being
all tend toward a higher type, and while specializations, now of one
type and now of another, develop through the geological ages, change
forms, assume new shapes, appear and disappear with a kaleidoscopic
rapidity in the description of paleontologists from one period to
another, the two solitary exceptions to the general rule are those at
the two opposite poles of life and type, namely MAN and the lower
genera of being!"

     p. 411 Vol II. "...until, from the healthy King of animal
creation of the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our race, a
helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on
the globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most
consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals!
This is the real CURSE from the physiological standpoint, almost the
only one touched upon in the Kabalistic esotericism. Viewed from this
aspect, the curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual
evolution, in its progress hand-in-hand with the physical, has
certainly been a curse instead of a blessing, a gift quickened by the
"Lords of Wisdom," who have poured on the human manas the fresh dew of
their own spirit and essence. "

     (When the division of the sexes took place in the Third Race, a
new group incarnated and speech was developed) (p. 198 Vol II) "'one
language and of one lip' .... did not prevent the last two Sub-Races of
the Third Race from building cities, and sowing far and wide the first
seeds of civilization under the guidance of their divine instructors,
and their own already awakened minds."
    Each race is divided into Golden, Silver, Bronze and Iron ages and
so are all divisions of such races. Before monosyllabic speech they
communicated through thought transference and with the exception of
those who were called "Sons of Will and Yoga" it was at a low level.
    p.198 Vol II "Their physical bodies belonging to the Earth, their
Monads remained on a higher plane altogether. Language could not be
well developed before the full acquisition and development of their
reasoning faculties."
    The best of the Atlantean races left highly developed language as
an heirloom to the early Fifth Race and the undeveloped languages
decayed and fossilized, scattered to basically only aboriginal tribes.

     p. 200 Vol II. "Here is further reference to a descent of the
races: "the root of the Sanskrit... was the first language." "The
occult doctrine admits of no such divisions as the Aryan and the
Semite, accepting even the Turanian with ample reservations. The
Semites, especially the Arabs, are later Aryans...To these belong all
the Jews and the Arabs. The former are a tribe descended from the
Chandalas of India, the outcasts, many of them ex-Brahmans, who sought
refuge in Chaldea, in Sind, and Aria (Iran), and were truly born from
their A-bram (no-Brahman) some 8000 years B.C. The latter, the Arabs,
are the descendants of those Aryans who would not go into India at the
time of the dispersion of nations, some of whom remained on the
borderlands...while others penetrated into and invaded Arabia."  (Can
we still propose Hindu, Turanian, Chaldean, Semites?  What happened to
Egyptian and Chinese?)