The Secret Doctrine 2.7.27

The Third Race became the Vâhan of the Lords of Wisdom. It created Sons of Will and Yoga, by Kriyâshakti it created them, the Holy Fathers, Ancestors of the Arhats....

How did they “create,” since the “Lords of Wisdom” are identical with the Hindû Devas, who refuse to “create”? Clearly they are the Kumâras of the Hindû Pantheon and Purânas, those Elder Sons of Brahmâ:

Sanandana and the other sous of Vedhas [who], previously created by him ... without desire or passion, [remained chaste] inspired with holy wisdom ... and undesirous of progeny.

The power, by which they first created, is that which has since caused them to be degraded from their high status to the position of Evil Spirits, of Satan and his Host—created in their turn by the unclean fancy of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyâshakti, that mysterious and divine power, latent in the will of every man, which, if not called to life, quickened and developed by Yoga‐training, remains dormant in 999,999 men out of a million, and so gets atrophied. This power is explained in the “Twelve Signs of the Zodiac,” as follows:

Kriyâshakti:—The mysterious power of thought which enables it to produce external, perceptible, phenomenal results by its own inherent energy. The ancients held that any idea will manifest itself externally, if one’s attention [and will] is deeply concentrated upon it. Similarly, an intense volition will be followed by the desired result.

A Yogî generally performs his wonders by means of Ichchhâshakti (Will‐power) and Kriyâshakti.

The Third Race had thus created the so‐called “Sons of Will and Yoga,” or the “Ancestors”—the Spiritual Forefathers—of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or Mahâtmâs, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of sexes, the “Fall of Man.” For Creation is but the result of Will acting on phenomenal Matter, the calling forth out of it the Primordial Divine Light and Eternal Life. They were the “Holy Seed Grain” of the future Saviours of Humanity.

Here we have to again make a break, in order to explain certain difficult points, of which there are so many. It is almost impossible to avoid such interruptions.

The order of the evolution of the Human Races stands as follows in the Fifth Book of the Commentaries, and has already been given:

The first men were Chhâyâs (1); the Second, the “Sweat‐born” (2); the Third, “Egg‐born,” and the holy Fathers born by the power of Kriyâshakti (3); the Fourth were the children of the Padmapâni [Chenresi] (4).

Of course such primeval modes of procreation—by the evolution of one’s image; through drops of perspiration; after that by Yoga; and then by what people will regard as magic (Kriyâshakti)—are doomed beforehand to be regarded as fairy‐tales. Nevertheless, beginning with the first and ending with the last, there is really nothing miraculous in them, nor anything which may not be shown to be natural. This must be proven.

1. Chhâyâ‐birth, or that primeval mode of sexless procreation—the First Race having oozed out, so to say, from the bodies of the Pitris—is hinted at in a cosmic allegory in the Purânas. It is the beautiful allegory and story of Sanjñâ, the daughter of Vishvakarman—married to the Sun, who, “unable to endure the fervours of her Lord,” gave him her Chhâyâ (shadow, image, or astral body), while she herself repaired to the jungle to perform religious devotions, or Tapas. The Sun, supposing the Chhâyâ to be his wife, begat by her children, like Adam with Lilith—an ethereal shadow also, as in the legend, though an actual living female monster millions of years ago.

But, perhaps, this instance proves little except the exuberant fancy of the Paurânic authors. We have another proof ready. If the materialized forms, which are sometimes seen oozing out of the bodies of certain mediums could, instead of vanishing, be fixed and made solid—the “creation” of the First Race would become quite comprehensible. This kind of procreation cannot fail to be suggestive to the student. Neither the mystery nor the impossibility of such a mode is certainly any greater—while it is far more comprehensible to the mind of the true metaphysical thinker—than the mystery of the conception of the fœtus, its gestation and birth as a child, as we now know it.

Now to the curious and little understood corroboration in the Purânas about the “Sweat‐born.”

2. Kandu is a sage and a Yogî, eminent in holy wisdom and pious austerities, which, finally, awaken the jealousy of the Gods, who are represented in the Hindû Scriptures as being in never‐ending strife with the Ascetics. Indra, the “King of the Gods,” finally sends one of his female Apsarases to tempt the sage. This is no worse than Jehovah sending Sarah, Abraham’s wife, to tempt Pharaoh; but in truth it is these Gods (and God), who are ever trying to disturb Ascetics and thus make them lose the fruit of their austerities, who ought to be regarded as “tempting demons,” instead of applying the term to the Rudras, Kumâras, and Asuras, whose great sanctity and chastity seem a standing reproach to the Don Juanic Gods of the Pantheon. But it is the reverse that we find in all the Paurânic allegories, and not without good esoteric reason.

The King of the Gods, or Indra, sends a beautiful Apsaras (nymph) named Pramlochâ to seduce Kandu and disturb his penance. She succeeds in her unholy purpose and “nine hundred and seven years six months and three days” spent in her company seem to the Sage as one day. When this psychological or hypnotic state ends, the Muni bitterly curses the creature who has seduced him, thus disturbing his devotions. “Depart, begone!” he cries, “vile bundle of delusions!” And Pramlochâ, terrified, flies away, wiping the perspiration from her body with the leaves of the trees as she passes through the air.

The nymph went from tree to tree, and, as, with the dusky shoots that crowned their summits, she dried her limbs, the child she had conceived by the Rishi came forth from the pores of her skin in drops of perspiration. The trees received the living dews; and the winds collected them into one mass. “This,” said Soma [the Moon], “I matured by my rays; and gradually it increased in size, till the exhalation that had rested on the tree tops became the lovely girl named Mârishâ.”

Now Kandu stands for the First Race. He is a son of the Pitris, hence one “devoid of mind,” a fact hinted at by his being unable to discern a period of nearly one thousand years from one day; therefore he is shown to be so easily deluded and blinded. Here is a variant of the allegory in Genesis, of Adam, born an image of clay, into which the “Lord God” breathes the “breath of life” but not of intellect and discrimination, which are developed only after he had tasted of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge; in other words when he has acquired the first development of Mind, and had implanted in him Manas, whose terrestrial aspect is of the earth earthy, though its highest faculties connect it with Spirit and the Divine Soul. Pramlochâ is the Hindû Lilith of the Âryan Adam; and Mârishâ, the daughter born of the perspiration from her pores, is the “Sweat‐born,” and stands as a symbol for the Second Race of mankind.

It is not Indra, who in this case figures in the Purânas, but Kâmadeva, the God of love and desire, who sends Pramlochâ on Earth. Logic, as well as the Esoteric Doctrine, shows that it must be so. For Kâma is the king and lord of the Apsarases, of whom Pramlochâ is one; and, therefore, when Kandu, cursing her, exclaims: “Thou hast performed the office assigned by the monarch of the gods, go!”—he must mean by that monarch Kâma, and not Indra, to whom the Apsarases are not subservient. For Kâma, again, is in the Rig Veda the personification of that feeling which leads and propels to creation. He was the First Movement that stirred the ONE, after its manifestation from the purely Abstract Principle, to create.

Desire first arose in IT, which was the Primal Germ of Mind; and which Sages, searching with their intellect, have discovered to be the bond which connects Entity with Non‐Entity.

A Hymn in the Atharva Veda exalts Kâma into a supreme God and Creator, and says:

Kâma was born the first. Him, neither Gods nor Fathers [Pitris] nor Men have equalled.

The Atharva Veda identifies him with Agni, but makes him superior to that God. The Taittirîya Brâhmana makes him allegorically the son of Dharma (moral religious duty, piety and justice) and of Shraddhâ (faith). Elsewhere Kâma is born from the heart of Brahmâ; therefore he is Âtmabhû “Self‐Existent,” and Aja, the “Unborn.” His sending Pramlochâ has a deep philosophical meaning; sent by Indra—the narrative has none. As Erôs was connected in early Greek mythology with the world’s creation, and only afterwards became the sexual Cupid, so was Kâma in his original Vedic character; the Harivamsha making him a son of Lakshmî, who is Venus. The allegory, as said, shows the psychic element developing the physiological, before the birth of Daksha—the progenitor of real physical men—who is made to be born from Mârishâ and before whose time living beings and men were procreated “by the will, by sight, by touch, and by yoga,” as will be shown.

This, then, is the allegory on the mode of procreation of the Second or the “Sweat‐born.” The same for the Third Race in its final development.

Mârishâ, through the exertions of Soma, the Moon, is taken to wife by the Prachetases, the production of the “Mind‐born” sons of Brahmâ also, from whom they beget the Patriarch Daksha—a son of Brahmâ also in a former Kalpa or life, explain and add the Purânas, in order to mislead, yet speaking the truth.

3. The early Third Race, then, is formed from drops of “Sweat,” which, after many a transformation, grow into human bodies. This is not more difficult to imagine or realize than the growth of the fœtus from an imperceptible germ, and its subsequent development into a child, and then into a strong, heavy man. But the Third Race changes yet again its mode of procreation according to the Commentaries. It is said to have emanated a vis formativa, which changed the drops of perspiration into greater drops, which grew, expanded, and became ovoid bodies—huge eggs. In these the human fœtus gestated for several years. In the Purânas, Mârishâ, the daughter of Kandu, the sage, becomes the wife of the Prachetases, and the mother of Daksha. Now Daksha is the father of the first human‐like Progenitors, having been born in this way. He is mentioned later on. The evolution of man, the microcosm, is analogous to that of the universe, the macrocosm. His evolution stands between that of the latter and that of the animal, for which man, in his turn, is a macrocosm.

Then the Third Race becomes:

4. The Androgyne, or Hermaphrodite. This process of men‐bearing explains, perhaps, why Aristophanes, in Plato’s Banquet, describes the nature of the old race as “androgynous,” the form of every individual being rounded, “having the back and sides as in a circle,” whose “manner of running was circular ... terrible in force and strength and with prodigious ambition.” Therefore, to make them weaker, “Zeus divided them [in the Third Root‐ Race] into two, and Apollo [the Sun], under his direction, closed up the skin.”

The Madagascans—the island belonged to Lemuria—have a tradition about the first man. He lived at first without eating, and, having indulged in food, a swelling appeared in his leg; this bursting, there emerged from it a female, who became the mother of their race. Truly, “we have our sciences of Heterogenesis and Parthenogenesis, showing that the field is yet open.... The polyps ... produce their offspring from themselves, like the buds and ramifications of a tree....” Why not the primitive human polyp? The very interesting polyp Stauridium passes alternately from gemmation into the sex method of reproduction. Curiously enough, though it grows merely as a polyp on a stalk, it produces gemmules, which ultimately develop into a sea‐nettle or Medusa. The Medusa is utterly dissimilar to its parent‐organism, the Stauridium. It also reproduces itself differently, by sexual method, and from the resulting eggs Stauridia once more put in an appearance. This striking fact may assist many to understand that a form may be evolved—as in the sexual Lemurians from hermaphrodite parentage—quite unlike its immediate progenitors. It is, moreover, unquestionable that in the case of human incarnations the law of Karma, racial or individual, overrides the subordinate tendencies of Heredity, its servant.

The meaning of the last sentence in the above‐quoted Commentary on Shloka 27, namely, that the Fourth Race were the children of Padmapâni, may find its explanation in a certain letter from the Inspirer of Esoteric Buddhism:

The majority of mankind belongs to the seventh sub‐race of the Fourth Root‐Race—the above‐mentioned Chinamen and their off‐shoots and branchlets (Malayans, Mongolians, Tibetans, Hungarians, Finns, and even the Esquimaux are all remnants of this last offshoot).

Padmapâni or Avalokiteshvara, in Sanskrit, is, in Tibetan, Chenresi. Now, Avalokiteshvara is the great Logos in its higher aspect and in the divine regions. But in the manifested planes, he is, like Daksha, the Progenitor (in a spiritual sense) of men. Padmapâni‐Avalokiteshvara is called esoterically Bodhisattva (or Dhyân Chohan) Chenresi Vanchug, “the powerful and all‐seeing.” He is considered now as the greatest protector of Asia in general, and of Tibet in particular. In order to guide the Tibetans and Lamas in holiness, and preserve the great Arhats in the world, this heavenly Being is credited with manifesting himself from age to age in human form. A popular legend has it that whenever faith begins to die out in the world, Padmapâni Chenresi, the “Lotus‐bearer,” emits a brilliant ray of light, and forthwith incarnates himself in one of the two great Lamas—the Dalai and Teschu Lamas; finally, it is believed that he will incarnate as the “most perfect Buddha” in Tibet, instead of in India, where his predecessors, the great Rishis and Manus had appeared in the beginning of our Race, but now appear no longer. Even the exoteric appearance of Dhyâni Chenresi is suggestive of the Esoteric Teaching. He is evidently, like Daksha, the synthesis of all the preceding Races and the progenitor of all the human Races after the Third—the first complete one—and thus is represented as the culmination of the four Primeval Races in his eleven‐faced form. This is a column built in four rows, each series having three faces or heads of different complexions; the three faces for each Race being typical of its three fundamental physiological transformations. The first is white (moon‐coloured); the second is yellow; the third, red‐brown; the fourth, in which are only two faces—the third face being left a blank; a reference to the untimely end of the Atlanteans—is brown‐black. Padmapâni (Daksha) is seated on the column, and forms the apex. In this reference compare Shloka 39. The Dhyân Chohan is represented with four arms, another allusion to the four Races. For while two are folded, the third hand holds a lotus—Padmapâni, the “Lotus‐bearer”; the flower symbolizing generation—and the fourth holds a serpent, emblem of the Wisdom in his power. On his neck is a rosary, and on his head the sign of water [Symbol: two horizontal rows of wave‐like symbols]—matter, deluge—while on his brow rests the third eye, Shiva’s eye, that of spiritual insight. His name is “Protector” (of Tibet), “Saviour of Humanity.” On other occasions when he has only two arms, he is Chenresi the Dhyânî, and Bodhisattva, Chakna Padma Karpo, “he who holds a white lotus.” His other name is Chantong, “he of the thousand eyes,” when he is endowed with a thousand arms and hands, on the palm of each of which is represented an eye of Wisdom, these arms radiating from his body like a forest of rays. Another of his names in Sanskrit is Lokapati or Lokanâtha, “Lord of the World”; and in Tibetan Jigten Gonpo, “Protector and Saviour” against evil of any kind.

Padmapâni, however, is the “Lotus‐bearer” symbolically only for the profane; esoterically, it means the supporter of the Kalpas, the last of which is called Pâdma, and represents one half of the life of Brahmâ. Though really a minor Kalpa, it is called Mahâ, “great,” because it comprises the age in which Brahmâ sprang from a lotus. Theoretically, the Kalpas are infinite, but practically they are divided and subdivided in Space and Time, each division—down to the smallest—having its own Dhyânî as patron or regent. Padmapâni (Avalokiteshvara) becomes, in China, in his female aspect, Kwan‐yin, “who assumes any form, at pleasure, in order to save mankind.” The knowledge of the astrological aspect of the constellations on the respective “birthdays” of these Dhyânîs—Amitabha (the A‐mi‐to Fo, of China), included: e.g., on the 19th day of the second month, on the 17th day of the eleventh month, and on the 7th day of the third month, etc.—gives the Occultist the greatest facilities for performing what are called “magic” feats. The future of an individual is seen, with all its coming events marshalled in order, in a magic mirror placed under the ray of certain constellations. But—beware of the reverse of the medal, SORCERY.