Page 67 (part 9)

The inner, or real man, who personates those characters, knows the whole time that he is Hamlet for the brief space of a few acts, which represent, however, on the plane of human illusion the whole life of Hamlet. And he knows that he was, the night before, King Lear, the transformation in his turn of the Othello of a still earlier preceding night; but the outer, visible character is supposed to be ignorant of the fact. In actual life that ignorance is, unfortunately, but too real. Nevertheless, the permanent individuality is fully aware of the fact, though, through the atrophy of the "spiritual" eye in the physical body, that knowledge is unable to impress itself on the consciousness of the false personality. The possession of a physical third eye, we are told, was enjoyed by the men of the Third Root-Race down to nearly the middle period of Third S UB-race of the Fourth Root-Race, when the consolidation and perfection of the human frame made it disappear from the outward anatomy of man. Psychically and spiritually, however, its mental and visual perceptions lasted till nearly the end of the Fourth Race, when its functions, owing to the materiality and depraved condition of mankind, died out altogether before the submersion of the bulk of the Atlantean continent. And now we may return to the Deluges and their many "Noahs." The student has to bear in mind that there were many such deluges as that mentioned in Genesis, and three far more important ones, which will be mentioned and described in the Section devoted to the subject of pre-historic continents. To avoid erroneous conjectures, however, with regard to the claim that the esoteric doctrine has much in it of the legends contained in the Hindu Scriptures; that, again, the chronology of the latter is almost that of the former -- only explained and made clear; and that finally the belief that "Vaivasvata Manu" -- a generic name indeed! -- was the Noah of the Aryans and his prototype, all this, which is also the belief of the Occultists, necessitates at this juncture a new explanation. ( Vide Part III. " Submerged Continents. ") ------- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] ennobles our conceptions of what divine immutable justice ought to be, instead of degrading the unknown and unknowable Deity by making it the whimsical, cruel tyrant, which we call Providence.