The First Race of men were, then, simply the Images, the Astral Doubles, of their Fathers, who were the pioneers, or the most progressed Entities from a preceding though lower Sphere, the shell of which is now our Moon. But even this shell is all-potential, for, the Moon having generated the Earth, its phantom, attracted by magnetic affinity, sought to form its first inhabitants, the pre-human monsters. [pg 122] To assure himself of this, the student has again to turn to the Chaldæan Fragments, and read what Berosus says. Berosus obtained his information, he tells us, from Ea, the male-female Deity of Wisdom. While the Gods were generated in the androgynous bosom of this Wisdom (Svabhâvat, Mother-Space), its reflections became on Earth the woman Omorôka, who is the Chaldæan Thavatth (or Thalatth), the Greek Thalassa, the Deep or the Sea, which Esoterically and even exoterically is the Moon. It was the Moon (Omorôka) who presided over the monstrous creation of nondescript beings which were slain by the Dhyânîs.[263]
Evolutionary law compelled the Lunar Fathers to pass, in their monadic condition, through all the forms of life and being on this Globe; but at the end of the Third Round, they were already human in their divine nature, and were thus called upon to become the creators of the forms destined to fashion the tabernacles of the less progressed Monads, whose turn it was to incarnate. These “Forms” are called “Sons of Yoga,” because Yoga—union with Brahmâ, exoterically—is the supreme condition of the passive infinite Deity, since it contains all the divine energies and is the essence of Brahmâ, who is said, as Brahmâ, to create everything through Yoga power. Brahmâ, Vishnu and Shiva are the most powerful energies of God, Brahma (Neuter), says a Paurânic text. Yoga here is the same as Dhyâna, which word is again synonymous with Yoga in the Tibetan text, where the “Sons of Yoga” are called “Sons of Dhyâna,” or of that abstract meditation through which the Dhyâni-Buddhas create their celestial sons, the Dhyâni-Bodhisattvas.
All the creatures in the world have each a superior above. This superior, whose inner pleasure it is to emanate into them, cannot impart efflux until they have adored [i.e., meditated as during Yoga].[264]
19. The Second Race (was) the product by budding and expansion, the A-sexual[265] from the Sexless.[266] Thus was, O Lanoo, the Second Race produced.
What will be most contested by scientific authorities is this A-sexual Race, the Second, the Fathers of the “Sweat-born” so-called, and [pg 123] perhaps still more the Third Race, the “Egg-born” Androgynes. These two modes of procreation are the most difficult to comprehend, especially for the Western mind. It is evident that no explanation can be attempted for those who are not students of Occult Metaphysics. European language has no words to express things which Nature repeats no more at this stage of evolution, things which therefore can have no meaning for the Materialist. But there are analogies. It is not denied that in the beginning of physical evolution there must have been processes in Nature, spontaneous generation, for instance, now extinct, which are repeated in other forms. Thus we are told that microscopic research shows no permanence of any particular mode of reproducing life. For it shows that:
The same organism may run through various metamorphoses in the course of its life-cycle, during some of which it may be sexual, and in others a-sexual, i.e., it may reproduce itself alternately by the coöperation of two beings of opposite sex, and also by fissure or budding from one being only, which is of no sex.[267]
“Budding” is the very word used in the Stanza. How could these Chhâyâs reproduce themselves otherwise; viz., procreate the Second Race, since they were ethereal, a-sexual, and even devoid, as yet, of the vehicle of desire, or Kâma Rûpa, which evolved only in the Third Race? They evolved the Second Race unconsciously, as do some plants. Or, perhaps, as the Amœba, only on a more ethereal, impressive, and larger scale. If, indeed, the cell-theory applies equally to Botany and Zoology, and extends to Morphology, as well as to the Physiology of organisms, and if the microscopic cells are looked upon by Physical Science as independent living beings—just as Occultism regards the “Fiery Lives”—there is no difficulty in the conception of the primitive process of procreation.
Consider the first stages of the development of a germ-cell. Its nucleus grows, changes, and forms a double cone or spindle, thus, [Symbol: Large X with horizontal lines across tops and bottoms] within the cell. This spindle approaches the surface of the cell, and one half of it is extruded in the form of what are called the “polar cells.” These polar cells now die, and the embryo develops from the growth and segmentation of the remaining part of the nucleus which is nourished by the substance of the cell. Then why could not beings have lived thus, and been created in this way—at the very beginning of human and mammalian evolution?
This may, perhaps, serve as an analogy to give some idea of the process by which the Second Race was formed from the First.
The Astral Form clothing the Monad was surrounded, as it still is, by its egg-shaped sphere of Aura, which here corresponds to the substance of the germ-cell or Ovum. The Astral Form itself is the nucleus, now, as then, instinct with the Principle of Life.