Theos-Talk Archives (March 1996 Message tl00086)

OCEAN15.TXT  (The Ocean of Theosophy - W.Q.Judge)

CHAPTER XV

BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOSOPHY there is a wide gulf, for the
present unbridged, on the question of the origin of man and the
differentiation of species. The teachers of religion in the West
offer on this subject a theory, dogmatically buttressed by an
assumed revelation, as impossible as the one put forward by
scientific men. And yet the religious expounders are nearer than
science to the truth. Under the religious superstition about
Adam and Eve is hidden the truth, and in the tales of Cain,
Seth, and Noah is vaguely shadowed the real story of the other
races of men, Adam being but the representative of one single
race. The people who received Cain and gave him a wife were some
of those human races which had appeared simultaneously with the
one headed by Adam.

The ultimate origin or beginning of man is not to be discovered,
although we may know when and from where the men of this globe
came. Man never was not. If not on this globe, then on some
others, he ever was, and will ever be in existence somewhere in
the Cosmos. Ever perfecting and reaching up to the image of the
Heavenly Man, he is always becoming. But as the human mind
cannot go back to any beginning, we shall start with this globe.
Upon this earth and upon the whole chain of globes of which it
is a part seven races of men appeared simultaneously, coming
over to it from other globes of an older chain. And in respect
to this earth, the fourth of this chain, these seven races
came simultaneously from another globe of this chain. This
appearance of seven races together happens in the first and in
part of the second round of the globes. In the second round the
seven masses of beings are amalgamated, and their destiny after
that is to slowly differentiate during the succeeding rounds
until at the seventh round the seven first great races will be
once more distinct, as perfect types of the human race as this
period of evolution will allow. At the present time the seven
races are mixed together, and representatives of all are in the
many so-called races of men as classified by our present
science. The object of this amalgamation and subsequent
differentiation is to give to every race the benefit of the
progress and power of the whole derived from prior progress in
other planets and systems. For Nature never does her work in a
hasty or undue fashion, but, by the sure method of mixture,
precipitation, and separation, brings about the greatest
perfection. And this method was one known to the Alchemists,
though not fully understood in all its bearings even by them.

Hence man did not spring from a single pair. Neither did he come
from any tribe or family of monkey. It is hopeless to look to
either religion or science for a solution of the question, for
science is confused on her own admission, and religion is
tangled with a revelation that in its books controverts the
theory put forward by the priest. Adam is called the first man,
but the record in which the story is found shows that other
races of men must have existed on the earth before Cain could
have founded a city. The Bible, then, does not support the
single pair theory. If we take up one of the hypotheses of
Science and admit for the moment that man and monkey
differentiated from one ancestor, we have then to decide where
the first ancestor came from. The first postulate of the Lodge
on this subject is that seven races of men appeared
simultaneously on the earth, and the first negative assumption
is that man did not spring from a single pair or from the animal
kingdom.

The varieties of character and capacity which subsequently
appear in man's history are the forthcoming of the variations
which were induced in the Egos in other and long anterior
periods of evolution upon other chains of globes. These
variations were so deeply impacted as to be equivalent to
inherent characteristics. For the races of this globe the prior
period of evolution was passed on the chain of globes of which
our moon is the visible representative.

The burning question of the anthropoid apes as related to man is
settled by the Masters of Wisdom, who say that instead of those
being our progenitors they were produced by man himself. In one
of the early periods of the globe the men of that time begot
from large females of the animal kingdom the anthropoids, and in
anthropoid bodies were caught a certain number of Egos destined
one day to be men. The remainder of the descendants of the true
anthropoid are the descendants of those illegitimate children of
men, and will die away gradually, their Egos entering human
bodies. Those half-ape and half-man bodies could not be ensouled
by strictly animal Egos, and for that reason they are known to
the Secret Doctrine as the "Delayed Race," the only one not
included in the fiat of Nature that no more Egos from the lower
kingdoms will come into the human kingdom until the next
Manvantara. But to all kingdoms below man except the
anthropoids, the door is now closed for entry into the human
stage, and the Egos in the subordinate forms must all wait their
turn in the succeeding great Cycle. And as the delayed Egos of
the Anthropoid family will emerge into the man stage later on,
they will thus be rewarded for the long wait in that degraded
race. All the other monkeys are products in the ordinary manner
of the evolutionary processes.

On this subject I cannot do better than quote the words of one
of those Masters of Wisdom, giving the esoteric anthropology
from the secret volumes, thus:

The anatomical resemblance between Man and the higher Ape, so
frequently cited by the Darwinists as pointing to some former
ancestor common to both, presents an interesting problem the
proper solution of which is to be sought for in the esoteric
explanation of the genesis of the pithecoid stocks. We have
given it so far as was useful by stating that the bestiality of
the primeval mindless races resulted in the production of huge
man-like monsters, the offspring of human and animal parents.
As time rolled on and the still semi-astral forms consolidated
into the physical, the descendants of these creatures were
modified by external conditions until the breed, dwindling in
size, culminated in the lower Apes of the Miocene period. With
these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the "Mindless",
this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their
crime were the species now known as the Anthropoid B Let us
remember the esoteric teaching which tells us of Man having had
in the Third Round a gigantic Ape-like form on the astral plane.
And similarly at the close of the Third Race in this Round. Thus
it accounts for the human features of the Apes, especially of
the later Anthropoids, apart from the fact that these latter
preserved by heredity a resemblance to their Atlanto-Lemurian
sires.  The same teachers furthermore assert that the mammalian
types were produced in the fourth round, subsequent to the
appearance of the human types. For this reason there was no
barrier against fertility, because the root-types of those
mammals were not far enough removed to raise the natural
barrier. The unnatural union in the third race, when man had not
yet had the light of Manas given to him, was not a crime against
Nature, since, no mind being present save in the merest germ, no
responsibility could attach. But in the fourth round, the light
of Manas being present, the renewal of the act by the new race
was a crime, because it was done with a full knowledge of the
consequences and against the warning of conscience. The karmic
effect of this, including as it does all races, has yet to be
fully felt and understood, at a much later day than now.

As man came to this globe from another planet, though of course
then a being of very great power before being completely
enmeshed in matter, so the lower kingdoms came likewise in germ
and type from other planets, and carry on their evolution step
by step upward by the aid of man, who is, in all periods of
manifestation, at the front of the wave of life. The Egos in
these lower kingdoms could not finish their evolution in the
preceding globe chain before its dissolution, and coming to this
they go forward age after age, gradually approaching nearer the
man stage. One day they too will become men and act as the
advance guard and guide for other lower kingdoms of this or
other globes. And in the coming from the former planet there are
always brought with the first and highest class of beings some
forms of animal life, some fruits and other products, as models
or types for use here. It will not be profitable to go into this
here with particularity, for being too far ahead of the time it
would evoke only ridicule from some and stupidity from others.
But the general forms of the various kingdoms being so brought
over, we have next to consider how the differentiation of animal
and other lower species began and was carried on.

This is the point where intelligent aid and interference from a
mind or mass of minds is absolutely necessary. Such aid and
interference was and is the fact, for Nature unaided cannot do
the work right. But I do not mean that God or angel interferes
and aids. It is Man who does this. Not the man of the day, weak
and ignorant as he is, but great souls, high and holy men of
immense power, knowledge, and wisdom. Just such as every man
would now know he could become, if it were not that religion on
one hand and science on the other have painted such a picture of
our weakness, inherent evil and purely material origin that
nearly all men think they are puppets of God or cruel fate
without hope, or remain with a degrading and selfish aim in view
both here and after. Various names have been given to these
beings now removed from our plane. They are the Dhyanis, the
Creators, the Guides, the Great Spirits, and so on by many
titles. In theosophical literature they are called the Dhyanis.

By methods known to themselves and to the Great Lodge they work
on the forms so brought over, and by adding here, taking away
there, and often altering, they gradually transform by such
alteration and addition the kingdoms of nature as well as the
gradually forming gross body of man. This process is carried on
chiefly in the purely astral period preceding the gross physical
stage, as the impulses thus given will surely carry themselves
forward through the succeeding times. When the midway point of
evolution is reached the species emerge on to the present stage
and not showing the connection to the eye of man nor to our
instruments. The investigations of the day have traced certain
species down to a point where, as is confessed, it is not known
to what root they go back. Taking oxen on one side and horses on
the other, we see that both are hoofed, but one has a split hoof
and the other but one toe. These bring us back, when we reach
the oldest ancestor of each, to the midway point, and there
science has to stop. At this spot the wisdom of the Masters
comes in to show that back of this is the astral region of
ancient evolution, where were the root-types in which the
Dhyanis began the evolution by alteration and addition which
resulted in the differentiation afterwards on this gross plane
into the various families, species, and genera.

A vast period of time, about 300,000,000 years, was passed by
earth and man and all the kingdoms of nature in an astral stage.
Then there was no gross matter such as we now know. This was in
the early rounds when Nature was proceeding slowly with the work
of perfecting the types on the astral plane, which is matter,
though very fine in its texture. At the end of that stretch of
years the process of hardening began, the form of man being the
first to become solid, and then some of the astral prototypes of
the preceding rounds were involved in the solidification, though
really belonging to a former period when everything was astral.
When those fossils are discovered it is argued that they must be
those of creatures which coexisted with the gross physical body
of man.

While that argument is proper enough under the other theories of
Science, it becomes only an assumption if the existence of the
astral period be admitted. It would be beyond the scope of this
work to go further into particulars. But it may incidentally be
said that neither the bee nor the wheat could have had their
original differentiation in this chain of globes, but must have
been produced and finished in some other from which they were
brought over into this. Why this should be so I am willing to
leave for the present to conjecture.

To the whole theory it may be objected that Science has not been
able to find the missing links between the root-types of the
astral period and the present fossils or living species. In the
year 1893 at Moscow Professor Virchow said in a lecture that the
missing link was as far off as ever, as much of a dream as ever,
and that no real evidence was at hand to show man as coming from
the animals. This is quite true, and neither class of missing
link will be discovered by Science under her present methods.
For all of them exist in the astral plane and therefore are
invisible to the physical eye. They can only be seen by the
inner astral senses, which must first be trained to do their
work properly, and until Science admits the existence of the
astral and inner senses she will never try to develop them.
Always, then, Science will be without the instruments for
discovering the astral links left on the astral plane in the
long course of differentiation. The fossils spoken of above,
which were, so to say, solidified out of date, form an exception
to the impossibility of finding any missing links, but they are
blind alleys to Science because she admits none of the necessary
facts.

The object of all this differentiation, amalgamation, and
separation is well stated by another of the Masters, thus:

Nature consciously prefers that matter should be indestructible
in organic rather than inorganic forms, and works slowly but
incessantly towards the realization of this object, the
evolution of conscious life out of inert material.

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Ancient Wisdom for a New Age