Phenomena of this character are explained by the occultist as follows:—
The elemental essence which surrounds us is singularly susceptible to the influence of human thought. The action of the mere casual wandering thought upon it causes it to burst into a cloud of rapidly-moving, evanescent forms. Thought, seizing upon the plastic essence, moulds it instantly into a living being of appropriate form—"a being which when once thus created is in no way under the control of its creator, but lives out a life of its own, the length of which is proportionate to the intensity of the thought or wish which called it into existence. It lasts, in fact, just as long as the thought-force holds it together. Most people's thoughts are so fleeting and indecisive that the elementals created by them last only a few minutes or a few hours, but an often repeated thought or an earnest wish will form an elemental whose existence may extend to many days.... A man who frequently dwells upon one wish often forms for himself an astral attendant, which, constantly fed by fresh thought, may haunt him for years, ever gaining more and more strength and influence over him...."
It is said that a magician who understands the subject and knows what effect he is producing may acquire great power along these lines and can call into existence artificial elementals which, if he be not careful, escape from his control and become wandering demons.
The magicians of Atlantis brought into being wonderful speaking animals who had to be appeased by an offering of blood lest they should awaken their masters and warn them of impending destruction.[176]
An even more terrible, psychic animal-being is described by occultists as the Dweller on the Threshold. In answer to the question, What kind of an animal is a human creature born soulless? Madame Blavatsky[177] explains that "the future of the lower Manas is terrible, and still more terrible to humanity than to the now animal man. It sometimes happens that, after the separation, the exhausted soul, now become supremely animal, fades out in Kama Loka, as do all other animal souls. But seeing that the more material is the human mind, the longer it lasts, even in the intermediate stage, it frequently happens that after the present life of the soulless man is ended, he is again and again reincarnated into new personalities, each one more abject than the other. The impulse of animal life is too strong: it cannot wear itself out in one or two lives only. In rarer cases, however, when the lower Manas is doomed to exhaust itself by starvation: when there is no longer hope that even a remnant of a lower light will, owing to favourable conditions—say, even a short period of spiritual aspiration and repentance—attract back to itself its Parent Ego, and Karma leads the Higher-Ego back to new incarnations, then something far more dreadful may happen. The Kama-Manasic spook may become that which is called in Occultism, the 'Dweller on the Threshold.'...
"Bereft of the guiding Principles, but strengthened by the material elements, Kama-Manas, from being a 'derived light,' now becomes an independent entity, and thus, suffering itself to sink lower and lower on the animal plane, when the hour strikes for its earthly body to die, one of two things happens; either Kama-Manas is immediately reborn in Myalba, the state of Avitchi on earth, or, if it becomes too strong in evil—'immortal in Satan' is the occult expression—it is sometimes allowed, for Karmic purposes, to remain in an active state of Avitchi in the terrestrial Aura. Then through despair and loss of all hope, it becomes like the mythical 'devil' in its endless wickedness; it continues in its elements, which are imbued through and through with the essence of Matter; for evil is coevil with Matter rent asunder from Spirit. And when its Higher-Ego has once more reincarnated, evolving a new reflection, or Kama-Manas, the doomed lower Ego, like a Frankenstein's monster, will ever feel attracted to its Father who repudiates his son, and will become a regular 'Dweller on the Threshold' of terrestrial life."
Concerning the evolution of man-animal and animal-man, Madame Blavatsky[178] declares, "it is most important to remember that the Egos of the Apes are entities compelled by their Karma to incarnate in the animal forms, which resulted from the bestiality of the latest Third and the earliest Fourth Race men. They are entities who had already reached the 'human stage' before this Round. Consequently they form an exception to the general rule. The numberless traditions about Satyrs are no fables, but represent an extinct race of animal men. The animal 'Eves' were their foremothers, and the human 'Adams' their forefathers; hence the Kabalistic allegory of Lilith or Lilatu, Adam's first wife, whom the Talmud describes as a charming woman with long wavy hair, i.e. a female hairy animal of a character now unknown, still a female animal, who in the Kabalistic and Talmudic allegories is called the female reflection of Samael, Samael-Lilith, or man-animal united, a being called Hayo Bischat, the Beast or Evil Beast (Zohar). It is from this unnatural union that the present apes descended. The latter are truly 'speechless men' and will become speaking animals (or men of a lower order) in the Fifth Round, while the adepts of a certain school hope that some of the Egos of the apes of a higher intelligence will reappear at the close of the Sixth-Root race. What their form will be is of secondary consideration. The form means nothing. Species and genera of the flora, fauna, and the highest animal, its crown—man—change and vary according to the environments and climatic variations, not only with every Round, but every Root-Race likewise, as well as after every geological cataclysm that puts an end to, or produces a turning-point in the latter. In the Sixth Root-Race the fossils of the Orang, the Gorilla and the Chimpanzee will be those of extinct quadrumanous mammals and new forms—though fewer and ever wider apart as ages pass on and the close of the Manvantara approaches—will develop from the 'cast-off' types of the human races as they revert once again to astral, out of the mire of physical life. There were none before man and they will be extinct before the Seventh Race develops. Karma will lead on the monads of the unprogressed men of our race and lodge them in the newly evolved human frames of this physiologically regenerated baboon.
"This will take place, of course, millions of years hence. But the picture of this cyclic procession of all that lives and breathes now on earth, of each species in its turn, is a true one, and needs no 'special creation' or miraculous formation of man, beast or plant ex nihilo.
"This is how Occult Science explains the absence of any link between ape and man and shows the former evolving from the latter."