As Colonel Vans Kennedy, if we do not mistake, remarked: “the first principle in Hindû religious philosophy is unity in diversity.” If all those Manus and Rishis are called by one generic name, it is due to the fact that they are one and all the manifested Energies of one and the same Logos, the celestial as well as the terrestrial Messengers and Permutations of that Principle which is ever in a state of activity—conscious during the period of Cosmic Evolution, unconscious (from our point of view) during Cosmic Rest—for the Logos sleepeth in the bosom of That which “sleepeth not,” nor is it ever awake, for it is Sat or “Be-ness,” not a Being. It is from It that issues the great Unseen Logos, who evolves all the other Logoi; the Primeval Manu who gives being to the other Manus, who emanate the universe and all in it collectively, and who represent in their aggregate the Manifested Logos.[693] Hence we learn in the Commentaries that while no Dhyân Chohan, not even the highest, can realize completely
The condition of the preceding Cosmic Evolution, ... the Manus retain a knowledge of their experiences in all the Cosmic Evolutions throughout Eternity.
This is very plain: the first Manu is called Svâyambhuva, the “Self-manifested,” the Son of the Unmanifested Father. The Manus are the Creators of the Creators of our First Race—the Spirit of Mankind—which does not prevent the seven Manus from having been the first “Pre-Adamic” Men on Earth.
Manu declares himself created by Virâj,[694] or Vaishvânara, the Spirit [pg 325] of Humanity,[695] which means that his Monad emanates from the never resting Principle in the beginning of every new Cosmic Activity—that Logos or Universal Monad (collective Elohim) which radiates from within himself all those Cosmic Monads that become the centres of activity—Progenitors of the numberless Solar Systems as well as of the yet undifferentiated human Monads of Planetary Chains as well as of every being thereon. Svâyambhuva, or Self-born, is the name of every Cosmic Monad which becomes the Centre of Force, from within which emerges a Planetary Chain (of which Chains there are seven in our System). And the radiations of this Centre become again so many Manus Svâyambhuva (a mysterious generic name, meaning far more than appears), each of them becoming, as a Host, the Creator of his own Humanity.
As to the question of the four distinct Races of mankind that preceded our Fifth Race, there is nothing mystical in the subject, except the ethereal bodies of the first Races; and this is a matter of legendary, nevertheless very correct, history. The legend is universal. And if the Western savant pleases to see in it only a myth, it does not make the slightest difference. The Mexicans had, and still have, the tradition of the fourfold destruction of the world by fire and water, just as the Egyptians had, and the Hindûs have, to this day.
Trying to account for the community of legends held by Chinese, Chaldæans, Egyptians, Indians and Greeks, in remote antiquity, and for the absence of any certain vestige of civilization more ancient than 5,000 years, the author of Mythical Monsters remarks that:
We must ... not be surprised if we do not immediately discover the vestiges of the people of ten, fifteen, or twenty thousand years ago. With an ephemeral architecture ... [as in China], the sites of vast cities may have become entirely lost to recollection in a few thousands of years from natural decay, and how much more ... if ... minor cataclysms have intervened, such as local inundations, earthquakes, deposition of volcanic ashes, ... the spread of sandy deserts, destruction of life by deadly pestilence, by miasma, or by the outpour of sulphurous fumes.[696]
How many of such cataclysms have changed the whole surface of the earth may be inferred from the following Stanza of Commentary Twenty-two:
During the first seven crores [70,000,000 years] of the Kalpa the Earth and its two Kingdoms [mineral and vegetable], one already having achieved its seventh circle, the other, hardly nascent, are luminous and semi-ethereal, cold, lifeless, and translucid. In the eleventh crore[697] the Mother [Earth] grows opaque, and in the fourteenth[698] the throes of adolescence take place. These convulsions of Nature [geological changes] last till her twentieth crore of years, uninterruptedly, after which they become periodical, and at long intervals.
The last change took place nearly twelve crores [120,000,000] of years ago. But the Earth with everything on her face had become cool, hard and settled ages earlier.