To this the Vishnu Purâna contains a reply, which has forced certain Orientalists to open their eyes very wide.
The sun is stationed, for all time, in the middle of the day, and over against mid-night, in all the Dvîpas [Continents], Maitreya. But the rising and the setting of the sun being perpetually opposite to each other,—and, in the same way, all the cardinal points, and so the cross-points, Maitreya, people speak of the rising of the sun where they see it; and where the sun disappears, there, to them, is his setting. Of the sun, which is always in one and the same place, there is neither setting nor rising; for what is called rising and setting are only the seeing and the not seeing the sun.[359]
To this Fitzedward Hall remarks:
The heliocentricism taught in this passage is remarkable. It is contradicted, however, a little further on.[360]
Contradicted purposely, because it was a secret temple-teaching. Martin Haug remarked the same teaching in another passage. It is useless to calumniate the Âryans any longer.
To return to the chronology of the Geologists and Anthropologists. We are afraid Science has no reasonable grounds on which she could oppose the views of the Occultists in this direction. Except that “of man, the highest organic being of creation, not a trace was found in the primary strata; only in the uppermost, the so-called alluvial layer,” is all that can be urged, so far. That man was not the last member in the mammalian family, but the first in this Round, is something that Science will be forced to acknowledge one day. A similar view also has already been mooted in France on very high authority.
That man can be shown to have lived in the Mid-Tertiary Period, and in a geological age when there did not yet exist one single specimen of the now known species of mammals, is a statement that Science cannot deny and which has now been proven by de Quatrefages.[361] But even supposing his existence in the Eocene Period is not yet demonstrated, what period of time has elapsed since the Cretaceous Period? We [pg 165] are aware of the fact that only the boldest Geologists dare place man further back than the Miocene Age. But how long, we ask, is the duration of those ages and periods since the Mesozoic time? On this, after a good deal of speculation and wrangling, Science is silent, the greatest authorities upon the subject being compelled to answer to the question: “We do not know.” This ought to show that the men of Science are no greater authorities in this matter than are the profane. If, according to Professor Huxley, “the time represented by the Coal formation alone would be six millions of years,”[362] how many more millions would be required to cover the time from the Jurassic Period, or the middle of the so-called Reptilian Age—when the Third Race appeared—up to the Miocene, when the bulk of the Fourth Race was submerged?[363]
The writer is aware that those specialists, whose computations of the ages of the Globe and Man are the most liberal, have always had the shyer majority against them. But this proves very little, since the majority rarely, if ever, turns out to be right in the long run. Harvey stood alone for many years. The advocates for crossing the Atlantic with steamers were in danger of ending their days in a lunatic asylum. Mesmer is classed to this day—in the Encyclopædias—along with Cagliostro and St. Germain, as a charlatan and impostor. And now that Messrs. Charcot and Richet have vindicated Mesmer's claims, and that Mesmerism under its new name of “Hypnotism”—a false nose on a very old face—is accepted by Science, it does not strengthen our respect for that majority, when we see the ease and unconcern with which its members treat of “Hypnotism,” of “telepathic impacts,” and its other phenomena. They speak of it, in short, as if they had believed therein since the days of Solomon, and had not, only a few years ago, called its votaries lunatics and impostors![364]
The same revulsion of thought is in store for the long period of years which Esoteric Philosophy claims as the age of sexual and physiological mankind. Therefore even the Stanza which says: [pg 166] “The Mind-born, the boneless, gave being to the Will-born with bones;”—adding that this took place in the middle of the Third Race 18,000,000 years ago—has yet a chance of being accepted by future Scientists.
As far as nineteenth century thought is concerned, we shall be told, even by some personal friends who are imbued with an abnormal respect for the shifting conclusions of Science, that such a statement is absurd. How much more improbable will appear our further assertion, viz., that the antiquity of the First Race dates back millions of years beyond this again. For, although the exact figures are withheld—and it is out of the question to refer the incipient evolution of the primeval Divine Races with certainty to either the early Secondary, or the Primary Ages of Geology—one thing is clear, that the figures 18,000,000 of years, which embrace the duration of sexual, physical, man, have to be enormously increased if the whole process of spiritual, astral and physical development is taken into account. Many Geologists, indeed, consider that the duration of the Quaternary and Tertiary Ages demands the concession of such an estimate; and it is quite certain that no terrestrial conditions whatever negative the hypothesis of an Eocene man, if evidence for his reality is forthcoming. Occultists, who maintain that the above date carries us far back into the Secondary or “Reptilian” Age, may refer to M. de Quatrefages in support of the possible existence of man in that remote antiquity. But with regard to the earliest Root-Races the case is very different. If the thick agglomeration of vapours, charged with carbonic acid, that escaped from the soil, or was held in suspension in the atmosphere since the commencement of sedimentation, offered a fatal obstacle to the life of human organisms as now known, how, it will be asked, could the primeval men have existed? This consideration is, in reality, out of court. Such terrestrial conditions as were then operative had no touch with the plane on which the evolution of the ethereal astral Races proceeded. Only in relatively recent geological periods, has the spiral course of cyclic law swept mankind into the lowest grade of physical evolution—the plane of gross material causation. In those early ages, astral evolution was alone in progress, and the two planes, the astral and the physical,[365] though developing on parallel lines, had [pg 167] no direct point of contact with one another. It is obvious that a shadow-like ethereal man is related by virtue of his organization—if such it can be called—only to that plane from which the substance of his Upâdhi is derived.