de Quatrefages, there is proof that since the post-tertiary period and even before that time -- since many Races were already scattered during that age on the face of the Earth -- man has not altered one iota in his physical structure.
And if, surrounded for ages by a fauna that altered from one period or cycle to another, which died out, which was reborn in other forms -- so that now there does not exist one single animal on Earth, large or small, contemporary with the man of that period -- if, then, every animal has been transformed save man himself, this fact goes to prove not only his antiquity, but that he is a distinct Kingdom.
Why should he alone have escaped transformation?
Because, says de Quatrefages, the weapon used by him, in his struggle with nature and the ever-changing geological conditions and elements, was "his psychic force, not his physical strength or body ," as in the case of animals.
Give man only that dose of intelligence and reason with which other mammalia are endowed, and with his present bodily organization he will show himself the most helpless of creatures of Earth.
And as everything goes to prove that the human organism with all its characteristics, peculiarities and idiosyncrasies existed already on our Globe in those far distant geological periods when there was not yet one single specimen of the now-existing forms of mammalia , what is the unavoidable conclusion?
Why this: Since all the human races are of one and the same species, it follows that this species is the most ancient of all the now-living mammalia.
Therefore it is the most stable and persevering of all, and was already as fully developed as it is now when all the other mammalia now known had not made even their first approach to appearance on this Earth.
Such is the opinion of the great French Naturalist, who gives thereby a terrible blow to Darwinism.
[[Vol.
2, Page]] 57 THE "DOUBLE DRAGON." 7.
D ISPLEASED THEY WERE.
O UR FLESH IS NOT THERE ( they said ) .
T HIS IS NO FIT RUPA FOR OUR BROTHERS OF THE FIFTH.
N O DWELLINGS FOR THE LIVES.* P URE WATERS, NOT TURBID, THEY MUST DRINK ( a ).
L ET US DRY THEM ( the waters ) .
( a ) Says the Catechism (Commentaries): -- " It is from the material Worlds that descend they, who fashion physical man at the new Manvantaras.
They are inferior Lha ( Spirits ) , possessed of a dual body (an astral within an ethereal form).
They are the fashioners and creators of our body of illusion ." .
.
.
.
" Into the forms projected by the Lha (Pitris) the two letters** (the Monad, called also 'the Double Dragon') descend from the spheres of expectation.*** But they are like a roof with no walls, nor pillars to rest upon ." .
.
.
.
" Man needs four flames and three fires to become one on Earth, and he requires the essence of the forty-nine fires**** to be perfect.
It is those who have deserted the Superior Spheres, the Gods of Will,***** who complete the Manu of illusion.
For the ' Double Dragon ' has no hold upon the mere form.
It is like the breeze where there is no tree or branch to receive and harbour it.
It cannot affect the form where there is no agent of transmission (Manas, "Mind") and the form knows it not.
" " In the highest worlds, the three are one,****** on Earth ( at first ) the one becomes two.
They are like the two ( side ) lines of a triangle that has lost its bottom line -- which is the third fire.
" (Catechism Book III ., sec.
9.) Now this requires some explanation before proceeding any further.
To do so especially for the benefit of our Aryan Hindu brethren -- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * The Monads of the presentments of men of the Third Round, the huge Ape-like forms.
** In the esoteric system the seven principles in man are represented by seven letters.
The first two are more sacred than the four letters of the Tetragrammaton.
*** The intermediate spheres, wherein the Monads, which have not reached Nirvana, are said to slumber in unconscious inactivity between the Manvantaras.
**** Explained elsewhere.
The "Three Fires," Pavaka, Pavamana, and Suchi, who had forty-five sons, who, with their three fathers and their Father Agni, constitute the 49 fires.
Pavamana (fire produced by friction) is the parent of the fire of the Asuras; Suchi (Solar fire) is the parent of the fire of the gods; and Pavaka (electric fire) is the father of the fire of the Pitris (See Vayu Purana ).
But this is an explanation on the material and the terrestrial plane.
The flames are evanescent and only periodical; the fires -- eternal in their triple unity.
They correspond to the four lower, and the three higher human principles.
***** The Suras, who become later the A-Suras.
****** Atma, Buddhi and Manas.
In Devachan the higher element of the Manas is needed to make it a state of perception and consciousness for the disembodied Monad .
[[Vol.
2, Page]] 58 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
whose esoteric interpretations may differ from our own -- we shall have to explain to them the foregoing by certain passages in their own exoteric books, namely, the Puranas.
In the allegories of the latter, Brahma, who is collectively the creative Force of the Universe, is said to be "at the beginning of the Yugas (cycles) .
.
.
.
Possessed of the desire and of the power to create, and, impelled by the potencies of what is to be created, again and again does he, at the outset of a Kalpa, put forth a similar creation," (see Vishnu Purana, Book I.
ch.
V., closing Sloka.
Also " Manava Dharma Shastra " I.
30.) It is now proposed to examine the exoteric account in the Vishnu Purana, and see how much it may agree or disagree with our occult version.
------- C REATION OF D IVINE B EINGS IN THE E XOTERIC A CCOUNTS.
In the Vishnu Purana -- which is certainly the earliest of all the scriptures of that name -- we find, as in all the others, Brahma assuming as the male God, for purposes of creation, " four bodies invested by three qualities.
" * It is said: "In this manner, Maitreya, Jyotsna (dawn), Ratri (night) , Ahan (day), and Sandhya (evening twilight) are the four bodies of Brahma" .
.
(p.
81, Vol.
I., Wilson's translation).
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 physical man at new Manvantaras: the Lha project forms, the Monad descends into them, and the 'Gods of Will' complete the Manu of illusion.
A secondary creator deity—often ignorant or malevolent—responsible for fashioning the material world, distinct from the supreme transcendent God.
The Lha (Pitris) are described as 'fashioners and creators of our body of illusion' — secondary creators of the material form, distinct from the Monad which descends into their projections, functioning as a demiurgic layer between the divine principle and matter.
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 clear hierarchical descent: the Monad descends from 'spheres of expectation' into forms projected by the inferior Lha (Pitris), who fashion the physical body of illusion.
Esoteric teachings reserved for those ready to receive them; outer meaning conceals an inner liberating truth.
The passage explicitly distinguishes 'exoteric' from 'esoteric' interpretations, presents the Catechism as an inner teaching requiring explanation, and notes that 'esoteric interpretations may differ' from exoteric readings.
The twenty-two Hebrew letters as the building blocks through which God creates and sustains all existence.
The passage states that 'the seven principles in man are represented by seven letters' and that 'the first two are more sacred than the four letters of the Tetragrammaton,' using letters as symbolic building blocks of the human/cosmic structure.
The absolutely simple, undivided first principle from which all multiplicity and existence flows.
The 'Double Dragon' is explicitly identified as the Monad, and the passage extensively discusses Monads descending into forms, slumbering between Manvantaras, and their relationship to the human principles.