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.... 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 coëxisted 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.