Page 53 (part 9)

This, however, does not refer to the later "Atlantean" or Noah's deluge, nor to the Cosmic Deluge or Pralaya of obscuration, which preceded our Round, but to the appearance of mankind in the latter Round. There is a great difference made, however, between the " Naimitika, " occasional or incidental, " Prakritika ," elemental, " Atyantika, " the absolute, and " Nitya, " the perpetual Pralaya; the latter being described as "Brahma's contingent recoalescence of the Universe at the end of Brahma's D AY." The question was raised by a learned Brahmin Theosophist: "Whether there is such a thing as Cosmic Pralaya; because, otherwise, the Logos (Krishna) would have to be reborn, and he is Aja (unborn)." We cannot see why. The Logos is said to be born only metaphorically, as the Sun is born daily, or rather a beam of that Sun is born in the morning and is said to die when it disappears, whereas it is simply reabsorbed into the parent essence. Cosmic Pralaya is for things visible, not for the Arupa , formless, world. The Cosmic or Universal Pralaya comes only at the end of one hundred years of Brahma; when the Universal dissolution is said to take place. Then the Avyaya, say the exoteric scriptures, the eternal life symbolized by Vishnu, assuming the character of Rudra, the Destroyer, enters into the Seven Rays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of the Universe. "Thus fed, the seven solar Rays dilate to seven Suns and set fire to the whole Cosmos. . . . ." ** Since a Maha-Yuga is the 1,000th part of a day of Brahma. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 70 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. Add Sandhis, i.e., intervals between the reign of each Manu, which amount to six Maha-Yugas, equal to ................................................................................................... 25,920,000 The total of these reigns and interregnums of 14 Manus, is 1,000 Maha-Yugas, which constitute a Kalpa, i.e. , one day of Brahma ............................................................ 4,320,000,000 As Brahma's Night is of equal duration, one Day and Night of Brahma would contain .... 8,640,000,000 360 of such days and nights make one year of Brahma make ....................................... 3,110,400,000,000 100 such years constitute the whole period of Brahma's age, i.e. , Maha-Kalpa ...... 311,040,000,000,000 These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret works. The latter, moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of esoteric cycles, never mentioned in Brahmanical popular writings -- one of which, the division of the Yugas into racial cycles, is given elsewhere as an instance. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made public. They are, nevertheless, known to every " Twice-born " (Dwija, or Initiated) Brahmin, and the Puranas contain references to some of them in veiled terms, which no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would. These sacred astronomical cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Narada and Asuramaya. The latter has the reputation of a giant and a sorcerer. But the antediluvian giants (the Gibborim of the Bible) were not all bad or Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist a servant of the Evil one, would have it; nor were they worse than many of "the faithful sons of the Church." A Torquemada and a Catherine de Medicis certainly did more harm in their day and in the name of their Master than any Atlantean giant or demigod of antiquity ever did; whether his name was Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There were good "giants" in days of old just as there are bad "pigmies" now; and the Rakshasas and Yakshas of Lanka are no worse than our modern dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilised generals during modern wars. Nor are they myths. "He who would laugh at Briareus and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or even talking of, Karnac or Stonehenge," remarks somewhere a modern writer. As the Brahmanical figures given above are approximately the basic calculations of our esoteric system, the reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind. In the " Encyclopaedia Britannica " one finds, as the last word of science, that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretch only over "tens of thou- [[Vol. 2, Page]] 71 SCIENTIFIC SELF-COMPLACENCE. sands of years."* It becomes evident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that science places the birth of man in the "pre- or post-glacial drift," if we are told at the same time that the so-called "ice age" is simply a long succession of ages which "shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the human or Recent period . . . the overlapping of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time." The latter "rule" only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that "even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finmark."** Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hinduism and its traditions, we should be left to this day to float in perplexed uncertainty between the indefinite ages of one school of science, the "tens of thousands" of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one of the several reasons why, with all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre-historic antiquity. Modern Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two sciences as it has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr.