Page 69 (part 2)

The Australians and their like are the descendants of those, who, instead of vivifying the spark dropped into them by the "Flames," extinguished it by long generations of bestiality.* The Aryan nations could trace their descent through the Atlanteans from the more spiritual races of the Lemurians, in whom the "Sons of Wisdom" had personally incarnated.** It is with the advent of the divine Dynasties that the first civilizations were started. And while, in some regions of the Earth, a portion of mankind preferred leading a nomadic and patriarchal life, and in others savage man was hardly learning to build a fire and to protect himself against the Elements, his brothers -- more favoured than he by their Karma, and helped by the divine intelligence which informed them -- built cities, and cultivated arts and sciences. Nevertheless, and civilization notwithstand- [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * See Stanza II, ante. This would account for the great difference and variation between the intellectual capacities of races, nations, and individual men. While incarnating, and in other cases only informing the human vehicles evolved by the first brainless ( manasless ) race, the incarnating Powers and Principles had to make their choice between, and take into account, the past Karmas of the Monads, between which and their bodies they had to become the connecting link. Besides which, as correctly stated in " Esoteric Buddhism " ( p. 30), "the fifth principle, or human (intellectual) soul, in the majority of mankind is not even yet fully developed." ** It is said by Krishna, the Logos incarnate, in the Bhagavat-gita, "The seven great Rishis, the four preceding Manus, partaking of my nature, were born from my mind: from them sprang (emanated or was born) the human race and the world," ( Chap. X. Verse 6. ) Here, by the seven great Rishis, the seven great rupa hierarchies or classes of Dhyan Chohans, are meant. Let us bear in mind that the Saptarshi (the seven Rishis) are the regents of the seven stars of the Great Bear, therefore, of the same nature as the angels of the planets, or the seven great Planetary Spirits. They were all reborn, all men on earth in various Kalpas and races. Moreover, "the four preceding Manus" are the four classes of the originally arupa gods -- the Kumaras, the Rudras, the Asuras, etc.: who are also said to have incarnated. They are not the Prajapatis, as the first are, but their informing principles -- some of which have incarnated in men, while others have made other men simply the vehicles of their reflections. As Krishna truly says --the same words being repeated later by another vehicle of the L OGOS -- "I am the same to all beings. . . . those who worship me (the 6th principle or the intellectual divine Soul, Buddhi, made conscious by its union with the higher faculties of Manas ) are in me, and I am in them. " ( Ibid, 29.) The Logos, being no personality but the universal principle, is represented by all the divine Powers born of its mind - - the pure Flames, or, as they are called in Occultism, the "Intellectual Breaths" -- those angels who are said to have made themselves independent, i.e., passed from the passive and quiescent, into the active state of Self-Consciousness. When this is recognised, the true meaning of Krishna becomes comprehensible. But see Mr. Subba Row's excellent lecture on the Bhagavatgita, (" Theosophist, " April 1887, p . 444.) [[Vol. 2, Page]] 319 DEGENERATION OF MANKIND. ing, while their pastoral brethren enjoyed wondrous powers as their birthright, they, the builders, could now obtain theirs only gradually; even these being generally used for power over physical nature and selfish and unholy purposes. Civilization has ever developed the physical and the intellectual at the cost of the psychic and spiritual. The command and the guidance over his own psychic nature, which foolish men now associate with the supernatural, were with early Humanity innate and congenital, and came to man as naturally as walking and thinking. "There is no such thing as magic" philosophises " S HE," the author forgetting that "magic" in her early day still meant the great SCIENCE of WIDOM, and that Ayesha could not possibly know anything of the modern perversion of thought -- "though there is such a thing as knowledge of the Secrets of Nature." (p. 152). But they have become "Secrets" only in our race, and were public property with the Third. Gradually, mankind went down in stature, for, even before the real advent of the Fourth or Atlantean race, the majority of mankind had fallen into iniquity and sin, save the hierarchy of the "Elect," the followers and disciples of the "Sons of Will and Yoga" -- called later the "Sons of the Fire Mist." Then came the Atlanteans; the giants whose physical beauty and strength reached their climax, in accordance with evolutionary law, toward the middle period of their fourth sub-race. But, as said in the Commentary: -- The last survivors of the fair child of the White Island (the primitive Sveta-dwipa) had perished ages before. Their (Lemuria's) elect, had taken shelter on the sacred Island (now the "fabled" Shamballah, in the Gobi Desert), while some of their accursed races, separating from the main stock, now lived in the jungles and underground ("cave-men"), when the golden yellow race (the Fourth) became in its turn " black with sin. " From pole to pole the Earth had changed her face for the third time, and was no longer inhabited by the Sons of Sveta-dwipa, the blessed, and Adbhitanya, east and west, the first, the one and the pure, had become corrupted . . . . The demi-gods of the Third had made room for the semi-demons of the Fourth Race. Sveta-dwipa, whose northern parts of the Toyambudhi the seven Kumaras ( Sanaka, Sananda, Sanatana, Sanatkumara, Jata, Vodhu, and Panchasikha ) had visited, agreeably with exoteric tradition (See the Uttara Khanda of the Padma Purana; Asiat. Researches also, Vol. XI ., pp. 99, 100); the White Island had veiled her face. Her children now lived on the Black land, wherein, later on, Daityas from the seventh Dwipa ( Pushkara ) and Rakshasas from the seventh [[Vol. 2, Page]] 320 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. climate replaced the Saddhus and the ascetics of the Third age, who " had descended to them from other and higher regions. " . . . .