What is the meaning of this strange and weird statement in Shloka 42, concerning the Third Eye of the Third Race which had died and acted no longer?
A few more Occult Teachings must now be given with reference to this point as well as some others. The history of the Third and Fourth Races must be amplified, in order that it may throw some more light on the development of our present humanity; and show how the faculties, called into activity by Occult training, restore man to the position he previously occupied in reference to spiritual perception and consciousness. But the phenomenon of the Third Eye has to be first explained.
The Races With The “Third Eye.”
The subject is so unusual, the paths pursued so intricate, so full of dangerous pitfalls prepared by adverse theories and criticism, that good reasons have to be given for every step taken. While turning the light of the bull's-eye, called Esotericism, on almost every inch of the Occult ground travelled over, we have also to use its lens to throw into stronger objectivity the regions explored by exact Science; this, not only in order to contrast the two, but to defend our position.[653]
It may be complained by some that too little is said of the physical, human side of the extinct races, in the history of their growth and evolution. Much more might be said, assuredly, if simple prudence did [pg 303] not make us hesitate at the threshold of every new revelation. All that finds possibility and landmarks in the discoveries of Modern Science, is given; all that of which exact knowledge knows nothing and upon which it is unable to speculate—and therefore denies as fact in nature—is withheld.
But even such statements as, for instance, that, of all the mammalians, man was the earliest, that it is man who is the indirect ancestor of the ape, and that he was a kind of Cyclops in days of old—all will be contested; yet Scientists will never be able to prove, except to their own satisfaction, that it was not so. Nor can they admit that the first two Races of men were too ethereal and phantom-like in their constitution, organism, and shape even, to be called physical men. For, if they do, it will be found that this is one of the reasons why their relics can never be expected to be exhumed among other fossils. Nevertheless all this is maintained. Man was the Store-house, so to speak, of all the seeds of life for this Round, vegetable and animal alike.[654] As Ain Suph is “One, notwithstanding the innumerable forms which are in him,”[655] so is man, on Earth the microcosm of the macrocosm.
As soon as man appeared, everything was complete ... for everything is comprised in man. He unites in himself all forms.[656]
The mystery of the earthly man is after the mystery of the Heavenly Man.[657]
The human form—so called because it is the vehicle (under whatever shape) of the Divine Man—is, as so intuitionally remarked by the author of “Esoteric Studies,” the new type, at the beginning of every Round.