"The Seven Species and Races of Man"
The ancient doctrines teach that during the present life wave seven races (or, more correctly, species and races) will be developed. The first races were the Will-Born, sometimes called the Sons of Yoga, for they precipitated their Chhayas or shadows through intense meditation. These shadows - the prototypes of bodies-were not as dense as our present physical forms but correspond in state to a dense mist. The shape of these Chhayas was very different from that of our present physical bodies-they were roughly globular and semi-transparent with more opaque or dense areas distributed through them. These areas were later to become vital centers. The most highly evolved of these sensitized fields , which occupied approximately the upper pole of the spherical body, was the third eye which, as the forms crystallized, retired from objective manifestation until it completely closed or ceased to function as an organ of spiritual perception during the Lemurian period.
Though the Sons of Will or Yoga precipitated these shapes, they did not actually enter into them but remained suspended over them connected by etheric threads through which magnetic forces were transmitted. A somewhat similar condition still exists in the case of the animal for the monads of animal life are still partly outside of the physical bodies. When seen clairvoyantly, the animal presents somewhat the same appearance as occasionally occurs optically in the case of double vision-two images not quite together whereas in man the registration of the two is perfect. Having established their shadows, the Sons of Will began to "spin a web," uniting the shadows to them~ selves or, if viewed physically, united themselves to the shadows.
Millenniums of time passed during which the Sweat-Born and the Egg-Born appeared, being various stages in the development of the mechanism of generation. During this whole period the creatures
were androgynous. The first races did not propagate at all the Chhayas remaining until the Pralaya destroyed them all. Nor was the element of growth present. Later the shadows multiplied by fission, that is, in the way that cells multiply at the present time, the main difference being that the parts did not increase in size. The bodies, continually decreasing in magnitude, were finally destroyed because they were incapable of growth and were soon reduced to a state where they could not serve as vehicles for organized life.
In later species growth was added and what is now commonly called the "pudding bag" men appeared. The sack-like form was apparently tied at the neck at which point the pineal gland extended as an organ of both sense perception and the rudiments of motion. It gradually developed into a pseudopode, somewhat resembling the finger-like protuberance of the clam. These bodies, while far more dense than those of the Will-Born, were still entirely too attenuated to leave fossil remains and anthropology will never be able to establish their existence save through analogy or by studying the recapitulations of previous cycles of existence which appear in the developing embryo.
Still later we have the gill-cleft man. The atmosphere of the earth had not yet cleared, and the entire sphere was surrounded by a thick wall of humid semiliquid vapors. I t was not until the clearing of the earth's atmosphere in the Lemurian period that lungs began to appear. By the fifth sub-race of the Lemurian period physical bodies had taken on approximately their present appearance save that they were extremely low in organic quality, the flesh resembling wood pulp in the very early Lemurians and having a coarseness resembling beef in the later subdivisions. Giantism had then appeared for form always runs riot until mind, demanding the greater part of the vital forces for its functioning, pulls down body to the degree that intellectual functioning increases. There were also monstrosities upon the earth due to the interbreeding of human and animal strains. This occurred at the psychological moment when the developing human cycle was recapitulating its animal development. At no other time could they have been generated and live.
In the fifth subrace of Lemuria, approximately nineteen million years ago, the actual division of the sexes took place. This involved a cataclysmic change in the psychological organism of the evolving type, the complications being revealed symbolically in the allegory of the Fall of Man.
It is necessary at this time to pause for a moment and call attention to a special point which might otherwise definitely confuse the issues involved. Up to the time when the gods, i.e. the egos, took upon themselves the daughters of men (the bodies) and entered into them, two complete evolutions were moving side by side. Man was evolving in the spiritual worlds-that is, upon the higher planes of the earth at the same time that he was building bodies upon the lower. In fact. in some of the traditions it is described how races were divided among the continents before the races had developed any temporal bodies whatever. When the Vehans or vehicles had gradually emerged from Chaos into an organized state, two orders of evolution-the one spiritual and the other physical-were actually united. Previous to that time the bodies had no consciousness other than that which man experiences during dreamless sleep now.
The later sub-races of Lemuria spread through the Australasian Archipelago, increasing in number and power and developing the rudiments of several new sense-perceptions. They even built cities and developed languages by imitating the sounds of Nature in her various moods.
The fourth, or Atlantean, race resembled our own in nearly all of its biological attributes. The Atlanteans were the first to engage in warfare with its resultant disturbance in the life cycles. The birth rate therefore rapidly decreased, whereas previously the Lemurians, some of them living for centuries, did not require as many vehicles for incarnation. It was also the Atlanteans who first began to dabble in magic even to the point of breeding monsters by thought power. These creatures were incapable of reproduction, however, and like Frankenstein's turned upon their own creators. All of these practices disturbed the astral light which, finally permeated with noxious physical forces bred by the Atlantean sorcerers, brought about the cataclysms which ultimately destroyed that continent.
The fourth sub-race of the Atlanteans marked the real turning point of human evolution. During this fourth sub-race bodies reached their greatest degree of crystallization. From that time on life, which had been exuding forms, began the process of reabsorbing them into itself again. The process by which this is accomplished is called by the profane "refinement", being simply the breaking up of the form patterns which by their density create the condition of materiality.
The fifth root race, of which we are a part, is well on its way along the ascending path which leads to liberation from the consciousness of form. For as the wise fully realize, form is actually a condition of mind; in fact, it is part of the work of the Will-Born who meditated matter into being that they might organize it into form. By the end of the fifth root race, the physical body of man' will be far more attenuated than it is now, and the sixth root race will bring with it "the blue men from whom nothing can be concealed." The blue Signifies ether which is -still somewhat visible to the physical perceptions of man as the haze which hangs at the base of mountains, this haze being part of -the etheric double of the earth. In India the god Vishnu is shown with a blue face to signify the highly etherealized substances from which his bodies are formed.
During the blue race form will still exist, but will resemble somewhat the matter composing the planet Jupiter, which while a solid, would be incapable of supporting physical man upon its surface. He would fall through it as he falls through water. As the etheric body asserts itself more definitely, both the arterial and venous functions will decrease while the nervous activity will be greatly stimulated.
The sixth root race (not to be confused with the sixth sub-race of our present fifth root race, which subrace however will be the progenitors of the new cycle) will develop two spinal columns representing an equilibrium of the sympathetic and cerebro-spinal nervous systems. The skin will undergo a definite metamorphosis and all the sense-perceptions will be highly sensitized. During this period the androgynous man will reappear, and it is affirmed by several occultists of note that at this time the larynx will be the organ of generation. In other words, creation will be through the spoken word.
At last, with the coming of the seventh race, the two spinal columns will be reunited into one, and the general appearance of the whole body will undergo great change and modification. The attenuating processes will have been carried so far that all the grosser elements will have been reabsorbed through transmutation into the spiritual nature. At such time it is declared that generation will cease, and, like the first race, (which never actually died at all but lives on in all the races which come after it even though its outer semblance was lost) the adepts of the seventh round, as Sons of Will and Yoga, will awaken from the meditation which precipitated them into generation and may find the whole of this thing which we call life to have been but a figment of consciousness. Thus it is written that when the Kumaras, or the virgin souls, awake from the seven dreams, they will discover that they were never actually in evolution at all but that what we term evolution was actually taking place within them-a mystery of Yoga.
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