Page 73 (part 5)

This is clearly instanced in the paradoxical behaviour of Jehovah, who first curses Adam and Eve (or Humanity) for the supposed committed crime, and then blesses his "chosen people" by saying "Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth" ( Gen. ix. 1). The curse was not brought on mankind by the Fourth Race, for the comparatively sinless Third Race, the still more gigantic Antediluvians, had perished in the same way; hence the Deluge was no punishment, but simply a result of a periodical and geological law. Nor was the curse of K ARMA called down upon them for seeking natural union, as all the mindless animal-world does in its proper seasons; but, for abusing the creative power, for desecrating the divine gift, and wasting the life-essence for no purpose except bestial personal gratification. When understood, the third chapter of Genesis will be found to refer to the Adam and Eve of the closing Third and the commencing Fourth Races. In the beginning, conception was as easy for woman as it was for all animal creation. Nature had never intended that woman should bring forth her young ones "in sorrow." Since that period, however, during the [[Vol. 2, Page]] 411 THE ANCIENT AND THE MODERN MAN. evolution of the Fourth Race, there came enmity between its seed, and the "Serpent's" seed, the seed or product of Karma and divine wisdom. For the seed of woman or lust, bruised the head of the seed of the fruit of wisdom and knowledge, by turning the holy mystery of procreation into animal gratification; hence the law of Karma "bruised the heel " of the Atlantean race, by gradually changing physiologically, morally, physically, and mentally, the whole nature of the Fourth Race of mankind,* until, from the healthy King of animal creation of the Third Race, man became in the Fifth, our race, a helpless, scrofulous being, and has now become the wealthiest heir on the globe to constitutional and hereditary diseases, the most consciously and intelligently bestial of all animals!** This is the real CURSE from the physiological standpoint, almost the only one touched upon in the Kabalistic esotericism. Viewed from this aspect, the curse is undeniable, for it is evident. The intellectual evolution, in its progress hand-in-hand with the physical, has certainly been a curse instead of a blessing -- a gift quickened by the "Lords of Wisdom," who have poured on the human manas the fresh dew of their own spirit and essence. The divine Titan has then suffered in vain; and one feels inclined to regret his benefaction to mankind, and sigh for those days so graphically depicted by AEschylus, in his "Prometheus Bound," when, at the close of the first Titanic age (the age that followed that of ethereal man, of the pious Kandu and Pramlocha), nascent, physical mankind, still mindless and (physiologically) senseless, is described as -- "Seeing, they saw in vain; Hearing, they heard not; but like shapes in dreams, Through the long time all things at random mixed." Our Saviours, the Agnishwatta and other divine "Sons of the Flame of Wisdom" (personified by the Greeks in Prometheus***), may well, in [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * How wise and grand, how far-seeing and morally beneficent are the laws of Manu on connubial life, when compared with the licence tacitly allowed to man in civilized countries. That those laws have been neglected for the last two millenniums does not prevent us from admiring their forethought. The Brahmin was a grihasta, a family man, till a certain period of his life, when, after begetting a son, he broke with married life and became a chaste Yogi. His very connubial life was regulated by his Brahmin astrologer in accordance with his nature. Therefore, in such countries as the Punjab, for instance, where the lethal influence of Mussulman, and later on of European, licentiousness, has hardly touched the orthodox Aryan castes, one still finds the finest men -- so far as stature and physical strength go -- on the whole globe; whereas the mighty men of old have found themselves replaced in the Deccan, and especially in Bengal, by men whose generation becomes with every century (and almost with every year) dwarfed and weakened. ** Diseases and over-population are facts that can never be denied. *** In Mrs. Anna Swanwick's volumes, "The Dramas of AEschylus," it is said of "Prometheus Bound" (Vol. II ., pp. 146, 147), that Prometheus truly appears in it "as [[Footnote continued on next page]] [[Vol. 2, Page]] 412 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. the injustice of the human heart, be left unrecognized and unthanked. They may, in our ignorance of the truth, be indirectly cursed for Pandora's gift: but to find themselves proclaimed and declared by the mouth of the clergy, the EVIL ONES, is too heavy a Karma for "Him" "who dared alone "-- when Zeus "ardently desired" to quench the entire human race -- to save "that mortal race" from perdition, or, as the suffering Titan is made to say: -- "From sinking blasted down to Hades' gloom. For this by the dire tortures I am bent, Grievous to suffer, piteous to behold, I who did mortals pity! . . . . " The chorus remarking very pertinently: -- "Vast boon was this thou gavest unto mortals . . . ." Prometheus answers: -- "Yea, and besides 'twas I that gave them fire. C HORUS: Have now these short-lived creatures flame-eyed fire? P ROM.: Ay, and by it full many arts will learn. . . . . " But, with the arts, the fire received has turned into the greatest curse: the animal element, and consciousness of its possession, has changed periodical instinct into chronic animalism and sensuality.* It is this which hangs over humanity like a heavy funereal pall. Thus arises the responsibility of free-will; the Titanic passions which represent humanity in its darkest aspect; "the restless insatiability of the lower passions and desires, when, with self-asserting insolence, they bid defiance to the restraints of law."** Prometheus having endowed man, according to Plato's "Protagoras," with that "wisdom which ministers to physical well-being," but the lower aspect of manas of the animal ( Kama ) having remained unchanged, [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- [[Footnote continued from previous page]] the champion and benefactor of mankind, whose condition . . . . is depicted as weak and miserable in the extreme. . . .