Page 88 (part 3)

Ahura (asura) may be derived from the root ah "to be," but in its primal signification it is what the Secret Teaching shows it to be. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 609 THE ZOROASTRIAN SEPTENARY. When geology shall have found out how many thousands of years ago the disturbed waters of the Indian Ocean reached the highest plateaux of Central Asia, when the Caspian Sea and the Persian Gulf made one with it, then only will they know the age of the Aryan Brahminical nation, and the time of its descent into the plains of Hindostan, which it did millenniums later. Yima, the so-called "first man" in the Vendidad, as much as his twin-brother Yama, the Son of Vaivasvata Manu, belongs to two epochs of the Universal History. He is the "Progenitor" of the Second human Race, hence the personification of the shadows of the Pitris, and the father of the postdiluvian Humanity. The Magi said "Yima," as we say "man" when speaking of mankind. The "fair Yima," the first mortal who converses with Ahura Mazda, is the first " man " who dies or disappears, not the first who is born. The "Son of Vixanghat," was, like the Son of Vaivasvata, the symbolical man, who stood in esotericism as the representative of the first three races and the collective Progenitor thereof. Of these races the first two never died* but only vanished, absorbed in their progeny, and the third knew death only towards its close, after the separation of the sexes and its "Fall" into generation. This is plainly alluded to in the II . Fargard of the Vendidad. Yima refuses to become the bearer of the law of Ahura Mazda, saying "I was not born, I was not taught to be the preacher and the bearer of thy law." And then Ahura Mazda asks him to make his men increase and "watch over his world" (3 and 4). He refuses to become the priest of Ahura Mazda, because he is his own priest and sacrificer, but he accepts the second proposal. He is made to answer: -- "Yes! . . . yes, I will rule and watch over thy world. There shall be, while I am King, neither cold wind nor hot wind, neither disease nor death. " Then Ahura Mazda brings him a golden ring and a poniard, the emblems of sovereignty, and under the sway of Yima -- "Three hundred winters passed away, and the earth was replenished with flocks and herds, with men, and dogs, and birds, and with red blazing fires," etc. (300 winters mean 300 periods or cycles.) "Replenished," mark well, that is to say, all this had been on it before; and thus is proven the knowledge of the doctrine about the successive destructions of the world and its life cycles. Once the "300 winters" were over, Ahura Mazda warns Yima that the earth is becoming too full, and men have nowhere to live. Then Yima steps forward, and with the help of Spenta Armaita (the female genius, or Spirit of the Earth) makes that earth stretch out and become larger by [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Death came only after man had become a physical creature, vide supra. The men of the First Race and also of the Second, dissolved and disappeared in their progeny. [[Vol. 2, Page]] 610 THE SECRET DOCTRINE. one-third, after which "new herds and flocks and men" appear upon it. Ahura Mazda warns him again, and Yima makes the earth by the same magic power to become larger by two-thirds. "Nine hundred winters" pass away, and Yima has to perform the ceremony for the third time. The whole of this is allegorical. The three processes of stretching the earth, refer to the three successive continents and races issuing one after and from the other, as explained more fully elsewhere. After the third time, Ahura Mazda warns Yima in an assembly of "celestial gods and excellent mortals" that upon the material world the fatal winters are going to fall, and all life will perish. This is the old Mazdean symbolism for the "flood," and the coming cataclysm to Atlantis, which sweeps away every race in its turn. Like Vaivasvata Manu and Noah, Yima makes a vara (an enclosure, an ark) under the God's direction, and brings thither the seed of every living creature, animals and "fires." It is of this "earth" or new continent that Zarathustra became the law-giver and ruler. This was the Fourth Race in its beginning, after the men of the Third began to die out. Till then, as said ( vide supra, foot note) there had been no regular death, but only a transformation, for men had no personality as yet. They had monads -- breaths of the O NE Breath, and as impersonal as the source from which they proceeded. They had bodies, or rather shadows of bodies, which were sinless, hence Karmaless. Therefore, as there was no Kamaloka -- least of all Nirvana or even Devachan -- for the "souls" of men who had no personal Egos, there could be no intermediate periods between the incarnations. Like the Phoenix, primordial man resurrected out of his old into a new body. Each time, and with each new generation, he became more solid, more physically perfect, agreeably with the evolutionary law, which is the Law of Nature. Death came with the complete physical organism, and with it -- moral decay. This explanation shows one more old religion agreeing in its symbology with the universal Doctrine. Elsewhere the oldest Persian traditions, the relics of Mazdeism of the still older Magians, are given, and some of them explained. Mankind did not issue from one solitary couple. Nor was there ever a first man -- whether Adam or Yima -- but a first mankind. It may, or may not be, "mitigated polygenism." Once that both creation ex-nihilo -- an absurdity -- and a superhuman Creator or creators -- a fact -- are made away with by science, polygenism presents no more difficulties or inconveniences (rather fewer from a scientific point of view) than monogenism does. Nevertheless, it is as scientific as any other claim. For in his Introduction to Nott's and Gliddon's " Types of Mankind, " Agassiz declares [[Vol. 2, Page]] 611 THE SEPTENATE IN THE PURANAS. his belief in an indefinite number of " primordial races of men created separately " ; and remarks that, "whilst in every zoological province animals are of different species, man, in spite of the diversity of his races, always forms one and the same human being.