(V) The Fifth Creation: the Tiryaksrotas or Tairyagyonya Creation,[752] that of the “(sacred) animals,” corresponding on Earth only to the dumb animal creation. That which is meant by “animals,” in the Primary Creation, is the germ of awakening consciousness, or of “apperception,” that which is faintly traceable in some sensitive plants on Earth and more distinctly in the protistic Monera.[753] On our Globe, during the First Round, animal “creation” precedes that of man, while the mammalian animals evolve from man in our Fourth Round, on the physical plane. In the First Round, the animal atoms are drawn into a cohesion of human physical form; while in the Fourth, the reverse occurs according to magnetic conditions developed during life. And this is “metempsychosis.”[754] This fifth Stage of Evolution, called exoterically “Creation,” may be viewed in both the Primary and Secondary Periods, one as the spiritual and cosmic, the other as the material and terrestrial. It is archebiosis, or life-origination; “origination,” so far, of course, as the manifestation of life on all the seven planes is concerned. It is at this period of evolution that the absolutely eternal universal motion, or vibration, that which is called in Esoteric language the “Great Breath,” differentiates into the primordial, first manifested Atom. More and more, as chemical and physical sciences progress, does this Occult axiom find its corroboration in the world of knowledge; the scientific hypothesis, that even the simplest elements of matter are identical in their nature, and differ from each other only in consequence of the various distributions of atoms in the molecule or speck of substance, or of the modes of its atomic vibration, gains more ground every day.
Thus, as the differentiation of the primordial germ of life has to precede the evolution of the Dhyân Chohan of the Third Group or Hierarchy of Being in Primary Creation, before those Gods can become embodied in their first ethereal form (rûpa), so animal creation has for the same reason to precede “divine man” on Earth. And this is why we find in the Purânas, “the fifth, the Tairyagyonya Creation, was that of animals.”
(VI) The Sixth Creation: the Ûrdhvasrotas Creation, or that of [pg 492] Divinities. But these Divinities are simply the Prototypes of the First Race, the Fathers of their “mind-born” progeny with the “soft bones.” It is these who became the Evolvers of the “Sweat-born”—an expression explained in Volume II.
“Created beings,” explains the Vishnu Purâna, “although they are destroyed [in their individual forms] at the periods of dissolution, yet being affected by the good or evil acts of former existences, are never exempted from their consequences. And when Brahmâ produces the world anew, they are the progeny of his will.”
“Collecting his mind into itself [yoga-willing], Brahmâ creates the four Orders of Beings, termed Gods, Demons, Progenitors, and Men”; Progenitors here meaning the Prototypes and Evolvers of the first Root-Race of men. The Progenitors are the Pitris, and are of Seven Classes. They are said, in exoteric mythology, to be born of “Brahmâ's side,” like Eve from the rib of Adam.
Finally, the Sixth Creation is followed, and “Creation” in general closed by:
(VII) The Seventh Creation: the evolution of the Arvâksrotas Beings, “which was ... that of man.”
The “Eighth Creation” mentioned is no Creation at all: it is a “blind,” for it refers to a purely mental process, the cognition of the “Ninth Creation,” which, in its turn, is an effect, manifesting in the Secondary, of that which was a “Creation” in the Primary (Prâkrita) Creation.[755] The Eighth, then, called Anugraha, the Pratyayasarga or Intellectual Creation of the Sânkhyas,[756] is “the creation of which we have a notion [in its esoteric aspect], or to which we give intellectual assent (Anugraha), in contradistinction to organic creation.” It is the correct perception of our relations to the whole range of “Gods,” and especially of those we bear to the Kumâras, the so-called “Ninth Creation,” which is in reality an aspect, or reflection, of the Sixth in our Manvantara (the Vaivasvata). “There is a ninth, the Kaumâra Creation, which is both primary and secondary,” says the Vishnu Purâna, the oldest of such texts.[757] As an Esoteric text explains:
The Kumâras, are the Dhyânis, derived immediately from the Supreme Principle, who reäppear in the Vaivasvata Manu period, for the progress of mankind.[758]
The translator of the Vishnu Purâna corroborates it, by remarking that “these sages ... live as long as Brahmâ; and they are only created by him in the First Kalpa, although their generation is very commonly, but inconsistently, introduced in the [Secondary] Vârâha, or Pâdma Kalpa.” Thus, the Kumâras are, exoterically, “the creation of Rudra or Nîlalohita, a form of Shiva, by Brahmâ ... and of certain other mind-born sons of Brahmâ.” But, in the Esoteric teaching, they are the Progenitors of the true spiritual Self in the physical man, the higher Prajâpatis, while the Pitris, or lower Prajâpatis, are no more than the Fathers of the model, or type of his physical form, made “in their image.” Four (and occasionally five) are mentioned freely in the exoteric texts, three of the Kumâras being secret.