Page 55 (part 4)

This is very plainly shown in various texts of the Rig Veda -- the highest authority for a Hindu of any sect whatever. Therein Asura means "spiritual divine," and the word is used as a synonym for Supreme Spirit, while in the sense of a "God," the term "Asura" is applied to Varuna and Indra and pre-eminently to Agni -- the three having been in days of old the three highest gods, before Brahmanical Theo-Mythology distorted the true meaning of almost everything in the Archaic Scriptures. But, as the key is now lost, the Asuras are hardly mentioned. In the Zendavesta the same is found. In the Mazdean, or Magian, religion, "Asura" is the lord Asura Visvavedas, the "all-knowing" or "omniscient Lord"; and Asura-Mazdha, become later Ahura-Mazdha, is, as Benfey shows, "the Lord who bestows Intelligence " -- Asura-Medha and Ahura-Mazdao. Elsewhere in this work it is shown, on equally good authority, that the Indo-Iranian Asura was always regarded as sevenfold. This fact, combined with the name Mazdha, as above, which makes of the sevenfold Asura the "Lord," or "Lords" collectively "who bestow Intelligence, " connects the Amshaspends with the Asuras and with our incarnating Dhyan Chohans, as well as with the Elohim, and the seven informing gods of Egypt, Chaldea, and every other country. Why these "gods" refused to create men is not, as stated in exoteric [[Vol. 2, Page]] 93 A GRAND APOCALYPTIC METAPHOR. accounts, because their pride was too great to share the celestial power of their essence with the children of Earth, but for reasons already suggested. However, allegory has indulged in endless fancies and theology taken advantage thereof in every country to make out its case against these first-born, or the logoi, and to impress it as a truth on the minds of the ignorant and credulous. (Compare also what is said about Makara and the Kumaras in connection with the Zodiac.) The Christian system is not the only one which has degraded them into demons. Zoroastrianism and even Brahmanism have profited thereby to obtain hold over the people's mind. Even in Chaldean exotericism, Beings who refuse to create, i.e., who are said to oppose thereby the Demiurgos, are also denounced as the Spirits of Darkness. The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras who are devoid thereof, who are shown as passing their lives in profitless ceremonial worship based on blind faith -- a hint now ignored by the orthodox Brahmins -- and forthwith the former become A-Suras. The first and mind-born Sons of the Deity refuse to create progeny, and are cursed by Brahma to be born as men. They are hurled down to Earth, which, later on, is transformed, in theological dogma, into the infernal regions. Ahriman destroys the Bull created by Ormazd -- which is the emblem of terrestrial illusive life, the "germ of sorrow" -- and, forgetting that the perishing finite seed must die, in order that the plant of immortality, the plant of spiritual, eternal life, should sprout and live, Ahriman is proclaimed the enemy, the opposing power, the devil. Typhon cuts Osiris into fourteen pieces, in order to prevent his peopling the world and thus creating misery; and Typhon becomes, in the exoteric, theological teaching, the Power of Darkness. But all this is the exoteric shell. It is the worshippers of the latter who attribute to disobedience and rebellion the effort and self-sacrifice of those who would help men to their original status of divinity through self-conscious efforts; and it is these worshippers of Form who have made demons of the Angels of Light. Esoteric philosophy, however, teaches that one third* of the Dhyanis -- i.e. , the three classes of the Arupa Pitris, endowed with intelligence, "which is a formless breath, composed of intellectual not elementary substances" (see Harivamsa, 932) -- was simply doomed by the law of Karma and evolution to be reborn (or incarnated) on Earth.** Some [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Whence the subsequent assertions of St. John's vision, referred to in his Apocalypse, about "the great red Dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads," whose "tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven and did cast them to the earth" (ch. xii.). ** The verse "did cast them to the Earth," plainly shows its origin in the grandest and oldest allegory of the Aryan mystics, who, after the destruction of the Atlantean [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 2, Page]] 94 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. of these were Nirmanakayas from other Manvantaras. Hence we see them, in all the Puranas, reappearing on this globe, in the third Manvantara, as Kings, Rishis and heroes (read Third Root-Race). This tenet, being too philosophical and metaphysical to be grasped by the multitudes, was, as already stated, disfigured by the priesthood for the purpose of preserving a hold over them through superstitious fear. The supposed "rebels," then, were simply those who, compelled by Karmic law to drink the cup of gall to its last bitter drop, had to incarnate anew, and thus make responsible thinking entities of the astral statues projected by their inferior brethren. Some are said to have refused, because they had not in them the requisite materials -- i.e. , an astral body -- since they were arupa. The refusal of others had reference to their having been Adepts and Yogis of long past preceding Manvantaras; another mystery. But, later on, as Nirmanakayas, they sacrificed themselves for the good and salvation of the Monads which were waiting for their turn, and which otherwise would have had to linger for countless ages in irresponsible, animal-like, though in appearance human, forms. It may be a parable and an allegory within an allegory. Its solution is left to the intuition of the student, if he only reads that which follows with his spiritual eye. As to their fashioners or "Ancestors" -- those Angels who, in the exoteric legends, obeyed the law -- they must be identical with the Barhishad Pitris, or the Pitar-Devata, i.e. , those possessed of the physical creative fire. They could only create, or rather clothe, the human Monads with their own astral Selves, but they could not make man in their image and likeness.