Page 67 (part 4)

The "deva-eye" exists no more for the majority of mankind. The third eye is dead, and acts no longer; but it has left behind a witness to its existence. This witness is now the PINEAL GLAND. As for the "four-armed" men, it is they who become the prototypes of the four-armed Hindu gods, as shown in a preceding footnote. Such is the mystery of the human eye that, in their vain endeavours to explain and account for all the difficulties surrounding its action, some scientists have been forced to resort to occult explanations. The development of the Human eye gives more support to the occult anthropology than to that of the materialistic physiologists. "The eyes in the human embryo grow from within without " out of the brain, instead of being part of the skin, as in the insects and cuttlefish. Professor Lankester, thinking the brain a queer place for the eye, and attempting to explain the phenomenon on Darwinian lines, suggests the curious view that "our" earliest vertebrate ancestor was a transparent creature and hence did not mind where the eye was! And so was man "a transparent creature" once upon a time, we are taught, hence our theory holds good. But how does the Lankester hypothesis square with the Haeckelian view that the vertebrate eye originated by changes in the epidermis? If it started inside, the theory goes into the waste-basket. This seems to be proved by embryology. Moreover, Professor Lankester's extraordinary suggestion -- or shall we say admission? -- is rendered perhaps necessary by evolutionist necessities. Occultism with its teaching as to the gradual development of senses "FROM WITHIN WITHOUT," from astral prototypes, is far more satisfactory: The third eye retreated inwards when its course was run -- another point in favour of Occultism. The allegorical expression of the Hindu mystics when speaking of the "eye of Siva," the Tri-bochana ("three-eyed"), thus receives its justification and raison d ' etre -- the transference of the pineal gland (once that "third eye") to the forehead, being an exoteric licence. This throws also a light on the mystery -- incomprehensible to some -- of the connection between abnormal, or Spiritual Seership, and the physiological purity of the Seer. The question is often asked, "Why should celibacy and chastity be a sine qua non rule and condition of regular chelaship, or the development of psychic and occult powers" The answer is contained in the Commentary. When we learn that the "third eye" was once a physiological organ, and that later on, owing to the gradual [[Vol. 2, Page]] 296 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. disappearance of spirituality and increase of materiality (Spiritual nature being extinguished by the physical), it became an atrophied organ, as little understood now by physiologists as the spleen is -- when we learn this, the connection will become clear. During human life the greatest impediment in the way of spiritual development, and especially to the acquirement of Yoga powers, is the activity of our physiological senses. Sexual action being closely connected, by interaction, with the spinal cord and the grey matter of the brain, it is useless to give any longer explanation. Of course, the normal and abnormal state of the brain, and the degree of active work in the medulla oblongata, reacts powerfully on the pineal gland, for, owing to the number of "centres" in that region, which controls by far the greater majority of the physiological actions of the animal economy, and also owing to the close and intimate neighbourhood of the two, there must be exerted a very powerful "inductive" action by the medulla on the pineal gland. All this is quite plain to the Occultist, but is very vague in the sight of the general reader. The latter must then be shown the possibility of a three-eyed man in nature, in those periods when his formation was yet in a comparatively chaotic state. Such a possibility may be inferred from anatomical and zoological knowledge, first of all; then it may rest on the assumptions of materialistic science itself. It is asserted upon the authority of Science, and upon evidence, which is not merely a fiction of theoretical speculation this time, that many of the animals -- especially among the lower orders of the vertebrata -- have a third eye, now atrophied, but necessarily active in its origin.* The Hatteria species, a lizard of the order Lacertilia, recently discovered in New Zealand ( a part of ancient Lemuria so called, mark well ) , presents this peculiarity in a most extraordinary manner; and not only the Hatteria punctata, but the chameleon, certain reptiles, and even fishes. It was thought, at first, that it was no more than the prolongation of the brain ending with a small protuberance, called epiphysis, a little bone separated from the main bone by a cartilage, and found in every animal. But it was soon found to be more than this. It offered -- as its development and anatomical structure showed -- such an analogy with that of the eye, that it was found impossible to see in it any- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * "Deeply placed within the head, covered by thick skin and muscles, true eyes that cannot see are found in certain animals," also, says Haeckel: "Vertebrate . . . blind moles and field mice, blind snakes and lizards. . . . They shun daylight . . . dwelling under the ground. They were not originally blind but have evolved from ancestors that lived in the light and had well-developed eyes. The atrophied eye beneath the opaque skin may be found in these blind beings in every stage of reversion." (" Sense Organs, " Haeckel .) And if two eyes could become so atrophied in lower animals, why not one eye -- the pineal gland -- in man, who is but a higher animal in his physical aspect? [[Vol. 2, Page]] 297 THE CYCLOPS, NO MYTH. thing else. There were and are paleontologists who feel convinced to this day that this "third eye" has functioned in its origin, and they are certainly right. For this is what is said of the pineal gland in Quain's Anatomy ( Vol. II. ninth edit., pp. 830-851. " Thalamencephalon " Interbrain ) : - - "It is from this part, constituting at first the whole and subsequently the hinder part of the anterior primary encephalic vesicle, that the optic vesicles are developed in the earliest period, and the fore part is that in connection with which the cerebral hemispheres and accompanying parts are formed. The thalamus opticus of each side is formed by a lateral thickening of the medullary wall, while the interval between, descending towards the base, constitutes the cavity of the third ventricle with its prolongation in the infundibulum. The grey commissure afterwards stretches across the ventricular cavity. . . . .