" The Dhyanis ( Pitris ) are those who have evolved their BHUTA ( doubles ) from themselves , which RUPA ( form ) has become the vehicle of monads ( seventh and sixth principles ) that had completed their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas ( Rounds ) .
Then , they ( the astral doubles ) became the men of the first Human Race of the Round.
But they were not complete , and were senseless.
" This will be explained in the Books that follow.
Meanwhile man -- or rather his Monad -- has existed on the earth from the very beginning of this Round.
But, up to our own Fifth Race, the external shapes which covered those divine astral doubles changed and consolidated with every sub-race; the form and physical structure of the fauna changing at the same time, as they had to be adapted to the ever-changing conditions of life on this globe during the geological periods of its formative cycle.
And thus shall they go on changing with every [[Vol.
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Root Race and every chief sub-race down to the last one of the Seventh in this Round.
3.
" The inner , now concealed , man , was then ( in the beginnings ) the external man.
The progeny of the Dhyanis ( Pitris ), he was ' the son like unto his father.
' Like the lotus , whose external shape assumes gradually the form of the model within itself , so did the form of man in the beginning evolve from within without.
After the cycle in which man began to procreate his species after the fashion of the present animal kingdom , it became the reverse.
The human foetus follows now in its transformations all the forms that the physical frame of man had assumed throughout the three Kalpas ( Rounds ) during the tentative efforts at Plastic formation around the monad by senseless , because imperfect , matter , in her blind wanderings.
In the present age , the physical embryo is a plant , a reptile , an animal , before it finally becomes man , evolving within himself his own ethereal counterpart , in his turn.
In the beginning it was that counterpart ( astral man ) which , being senseless , got entangled in the meshes of matter.
" But this "man" belongs to the fourth Round.
As shown, the MONAD had passed through, journeyed and been imprisoned in, every transitional form throughout every kingdom of nature during the three preceding Rounds.
But the monad which becomes human is not the Man.
In this Round -- with the exception of the highest mammals after man, the anthropoids destined to die out in this our race, when their monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of the Sixth* and the Seventh Races, and then into lowest human forms in the fifth Round -- no units of either of the kingdoms are animated any longer by monads destined to become human in their next stage, but only by the lower Elementals of their respective realms.** The last human Monad incarnated before the beginning of the 5th [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Nature never repeats herself, therefore the anthropoids of our day have not existed at any time since the middle of the Miocene period; when, like all cross breeds, they began to show a tendency, more and more marked as time went on, to return to the type of their first parent, the black and yellow gigantic Lemuro-Atlantean.
To search for the "Missing Link" is useless.
To the scientists of the closing sixth Root-race, millions and millions of years hence, our modern races, or rather their fossils, will appear as those of small insignificant apes -- an extinct species of the genus homo.
** These "Elementals" will become human Monads, in their turn, only at the next great planetary Manvantara.
[[Vol.
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Root-Race.* The cycle of metempsychosis for the human monad is closed, for we are in the Fourth Round and the Fifth Root-Race.
The reader will have to bear in mind -- at any rate one who has made himself acquainted with "Esoteric Buddhism" -- that the Stanzas which follow in this Book and Book II speak of the evolution in our Fourth Round only.
The latter is the cycle of the turning-point, after which, matter, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Such anthropoids form an exception because they were not intended by Nature, but are the direct product and creation of "senseless" man.
The Hindus give a divine origin to the apes and monkeys because the men of the Third Race were gods from another plane who had become "senseless" mortals.
This subject had already been touched upon in "Isis Unveiled" twelve years ago as plainly as was then possible.
On pp.
278-279, the reader is referred "to the Brahmins, if he would know the reason of the regard they have for the monkeys.
For then he (the reader) would perhaps learn -- were the Brahman to judge him worthy of an explanation -- that the Hindu sees in the ape but what Manu desired he should: the transformation of species most directly connected with that of the human family, a bastard branch engrafted on their own stock before the final perfection of the latter.
He might learn, further, that in the eyes of the educated 'heathen' the spiritual or inner man is one thing, and his terrestrial physical casket another.
That physical nature, the great combination of physical correlations of forces, ever creeping onward towards perfection, has to avail herself of the material at hand; she models and remodels as she proceeds, and finishing her crowning work in man, presents him alone as a fit tabernacle for the overshadowing of the divine Spirit." Moreover, a German scientific work is mentioned in a footnote on the same page.
It says that a Hanoverian scientist had recently published a Book entitled "Ueber die Auflosung der Arten durch Naturliche Zucht-wahl," in which he shows, with great ingenuity, that Darwin was wholly mistaken in tracing man back to the ape.
On the contrary, he maintains that it is the ape which is evolved from man.
He shows that, in the beginning, mankind were morally and physically the types and prototypes of our present Race, and of our human dignity, by their beauty of form, regularity of feature, cranial development, nobility of sentiments, heroic impulses, and grandeur of ideal conception.
This is a purely Brahmanic, Buddhistic and Kabalistic philosophy.
The Book is copiously illustrated with diagrams, tables, etc.
It asserts that the gradual debasement and degradation of man, morally and physically, can be readily traced throughout the ethnological transformation down to our time.
And, as one portion has already degenerated into apes, so the civilized man of the present day will at last, under the action of the inevitable law of necessity, be also succeeded by like descendants.
If we may judge of the future by the actual Present, it certainly does seem possible that so unspiritual and materialistic a body should end as Simia rather than as Seraphs.
The Hermetic axiom that the structure of the cosmos is reflected at every scale — 'as above, so below; as within, so without' — making each level a legible map of the others.
The lotus analogy — 'whose external shape assumes gradually the form of the model within itself' — and the foetus recapitulating all prior cosmic forms express the inner-outer, micro-macro correspondence principle.
Narratives or doctrines of cosmic origin — how heaven, earth, and the primordial deities first came into being. The Kojiki's deities born alone on the Plain of High Heaven, Voluspo's Ginnungagap, Genesis's tohu wa-bohu, the Timaeus's Demiurge fashioning the Receptacle, the Hesiodic Theogony, the Kalevala's egg-cosmogony, Egyptian Nun-and-Atum. Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (structural-ontological cascade), letters_of_creation (mechanism of creation), and apocatastasis/frashokereti (end-state restoration); cosmogony is temporally-narrative beginning.
The passage narrates the origin of human form through the Rounds, describing how the Dhyanis produced the first Human Race and how physical forms evolved and consolidated across geological periods.
Fragments of divine light or spirit trapped inside material bodies, awaiting liberation and return to their source.
The monads are described as divine principles 'imprisoned in' transitional forms and 'entangled in the meshes of matter,' awaiting their eventual liberation and progression into higher human forms.
Naturally-existing, non-human intelligences native to a single element — earth, air, fire, or water — rather than the fourfold-composite human nature: Paracelsus's gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines; the Deva Kingdom or fairy kingdom of Western occultism, forming their own parallel kingdom capable of incarnating in or forming relationships with humans. Distinct from artificial_elemental (a manufactured thought-entity deliberately created by a single operator, not a naturally-occurring species) and animism (the general doctrine that nature-places host indwelling spirits, of which this is one specific taxonomic system organised around the four elements rather than locality).
The passage mentions 'the lower Elementals of their respective realms' and 'the highest elementals of the Sixth and the Seventh Races' as distinct non-human intelligences.
A chain of divine beings or principles flowing downward from a single transcendent source (the One or the Father), each level less perfect than the one above.
The passage describes a cascading hierarchy from the Dhyanis (Pitris) through their bhuta (doubles) to the monads and finally to physical form, each level less perfect than the one above.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The text explicitly defers explanation to 'the Books that follow' and references 'Esoteric Buddhism' as a prerequisite, marking this as concealed knowledge requiring progressive revelation.
The doctrine that the divine or a spiritual principle takes on a specific, bounded material or bodily form — descending from an unconditioned state into individual, corporeal existence — as a discrete act rather than a diffuse pervading presence. The Christian Word made flesh, the Hindu avatara, the Egyptian pharaoh as living Horus, the Vajrayana tulku. Distinct from divine_immanence (the general claim that the divine pervades all of creation diffusely, not a specific embodiment-event) and separation_from_source (the felt exile FROM origin, the opposite motion) in describing a specific, individuated descent INTO a particular body or form.
The monad's descent into specific physical forms across Rounds is described as a discrete act of embodiment — 'monads destined to become human in their next stage' and 'the monad which becomes human.'
A non-physical dimension of reality, interpenetrating the physical world, populated by forces, beings, and forms ordinarily imperceptible to physical senses and instruments, that can affect embodied life without being seen — Dion Fortune's 'mind-side of nature,' the astral plane of Western esotericism broadly construed. Distinct from astral_light (a specific transmitting medium or fluid operating within this realm, not the realm itself), pleroma (the divine fullness at the summit of a cosmic hierarchy, not a parallel plane coextensive with ordinary life), and animism (particular indwelling spirits bound to specific natural objects, not the general unseen dimension itself).
The 'inner, now concealed, man,' the 'divine astral doubles,' and the astral plane on which the Dhyanis operate constitute a non-physical dimension interpenetrating the physical world.
The doctrine that the cosmos unfolds as a structured descent of spirit into matter — a directional process traced stage by stage from an unconditioned principle down through successive planes to full materialization — complemented by its own eventual return ('evolution'). Distinct from emanation_hierarchy (the static structure of the resulting levels of the cascade) and cosmogony (a single originating event rather than an ongoing staged process) in naming the directional cosmic PROCESS of descent itself, paired with its own complementary ascent.
The passage describes the staged descent of the monad through successive forms from the astral double down to physical matter, with the lotus analogy showing evolution 'from within without' as a directional process.
The persistent form or image of a human being that exists from birth to death, distinct from the impermanent physical matter.
The bhuta (astral double) that serves as the persistent form-vehicle for the monad across its incarnations is functionally identical to the linga sharira concept.
The human being as a small-scale image of the entire cosmos; the body, soul, and intellect mirroring the structure of the heavens and the divine — distinct from correspondence in that it makes the human the privileged mirror.
The human foetus 'follows now in its transformations all the forms that the physical frame of man had assumed throughout the three Kalpas,' making the individual body a compressed mirror of cosmic evolutionary history.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The monad is the central subject of the passage, discussed as the inner spiritual principle that has journeyed through all forms, is distinct from 'Man,' and whose cycle of metempsychosis is now closed.
Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.
The forms of man changing and consolidating with every Root Race and sub-race, and the foetus passing through plant, reptile, and animal stages, express form-mutability as a constitutional property.
The passage explicitly states 'the cycle of metempsychosis for the human monad is closed' and describes monads completing 'their cycle of transmigration in the three preceding Kalpas (Rounds).'
Division of the human being into three principles: spirit (pneuma), soul (psyche), and body/matter (hyle or soma).
The passage distinguishes the monad (seventh and sixth principles), the bhuta/astral double, and the rupa/physical form as separate layers of the human being.