human
25-06-2007, 08:55 PM
No, I believe not, here is a better example on the so called "Fall" of mankind.
6. Theosophy: fallen angels, fallen apes
The theosophical teachings on evolution given out since the formation of the Theosophical Society in 1875 are merely a general outline of the information in the possession of the Brotherhood of Adepts.1 This information is said to have been compiled and repeatedly verified by countless generations of sages and seers, whose occult powers grant them access to the inner realms of nature and enable them to read the records of the earth’s history clairvoyantly. The adepts are also said to possess written records, fossils, technological inventions, and other artifacts from bygone ages. They disseminate their knowledge in proportion to people’s ability to respond to it intelligently.
Evolution from within
Darwinism is rooted in the materialistic assumption that the universe consists essentially of physical matter and energy, and that mind and consciousness are merely byproducts of the brain. According to the theosophic tradition, on the other hand, the physical world is the outer shell of inner worlds – astral, mental, and spiritual. Likewise, every physical organism is animated by inner, subtler ‘bodies’ or souls, including an astral model-body (the template for the physical body), an instinctive or selfconscious mind, of widely varying degrees of development, and a spiritual-divine self or monad. Evolution involves the unfolding of latent powers and capacities in response to impulses from within and stimuli from without, and the development of suitable physical forms through which they can be expressed.
Theosophy rejects the darwinian theory of common descent, i.e. the notion that the first unicellular organisms have undergone successive bodily transformations, leading eventually to all the present creatures, including man. The enormous gaps in the fossil record prove that there has been no continuous, gradual transformation of one species into a higher species. Darwinists of the ‘punctuationist’ school recognize this and argue that new species arise relatively suddenly in small, isolated populations, and that such episodes of speciation are separated by long periods of stasis, in which species undergo little change. However, their insistence that these sudden spurts of evolutionary creativity are ultimately based on blind chance places great strains on our credulity.
Guided and directed macromutations could result in evolutionary jumps and allow a member of one species to give birth to a more advanced species, but this certainly does not mean that one great stock of animals evolves into another in the darwinian sense. For instance, a species of reptile did not give birth to the first mammal. As H.P. Blavatsky says, ‘the admitted chasm between the systems of reproduction of the oviparous vertebrates and mammalia, constitutes a hopeless crux to those who, with the Evolutionists, seek to link all existing organic forms in a continuous line of descent.’ She adds:
The ‘Unity of Type’ common, in a sense, to all the animal and human kingdoms, is not ... a proof of the consanguinity of all organic forms, but a witness to the essential unity of the ‘ground plan’ Nature has followed in fashioning her creatures.1
New types of creatures ‘evolve’ first on the ethereal or astral plane, with use being made of past evolutionary forms stored in the memory of nature. Instead of an evolutionary process ‘guided’ by blind chance, as in the darwinist scheme, and instead of new kinds of creatures being created out of nothing by a single supreme being or ‘God’, as in the creationist scheme, theosophy postulates an all-pervasive instinctive intelligence, arising from the workings of a hierarchy of agencies, from higher intelligences to elemental nature-forces, including soul-impulses from within each organism, reflecting its own evolutionary needs.
Theosophy says that the present earth is the reembodiment of a former earth, and the different classes or kingdoms of monads now evolving on it and forming it – from submineral (elemental) to superhuman – are pursuing an evolutionary journey that has no absolute beginning and will have no absolute end. The present earth and its lifeforms originated in a highly ethereal condition and gradually materialized and condensed during the ‘descending arc’ of the earth’s evolution, which lasted until the midpoint of the earth’s lifespan, some 4.5 million years ago, in the middle of the current, fourth round of evolutionary activity. Since then the ascending arc of etherealization and spiritualization has begun.
During each of the 7 rounds, the various kingdoms of monads, or lifewaves, pass successively through the 12 globes of the earth’s planetary chain; our own globe is the lowest and densest, while the others are located on higher, more ethereal planes. The first root-race, or humanity, in the current round began to develop in the mid-Palaeozoic; these early protohuman forms were huge, ovoid, semi-astral, nonselfconscious beings, which slowly materialized, declined in size, and assumed the present human shape during the ensuring millions of years.
In the late second and early third root-races, reproduction took place by budding or gemmation; vital cells were thrown off from the ethereal bodies of the time and developed either into other humans or into the beginnings of the mammals, according to their inherent evolutionary tendencies. This accounts for the general resemblance between their embryonic stages and those of man. Sexual reproduction in the human kingdom is said to have originated in the second half of the third, Lemurian root-race, some 18½ million years ago. On the theosophical timescale, this was in the Late Jurassic of the Mesozoic era, or age of reptiles. By this time the outer human body was becoming distinctly physical, and also sufficiently developed for the emergence of selfconsciousness to begin.2
Descent of the apes
H.P. Blavatsky and G. de Purucker cited various pieces of evidence contradicting the ape-ancestry theory, including finds of human remains, footprints, and stone tools, such as those presented in section 3, showing that humans of one type or another existed in much earlier geologic periods than orthodox evolutionary theory allows,1 and evidence such as that mentioned in the previous section, showing that the modern human anatomy is simpler and less specialized than that of our supposed ancestors.2 They also mentioned several contemporary scientists who believed that apes had evolved from man, while man had evolved from other types of animals.3 Blavatsky called the ape-ancestry hypothesis ‘self-degrading’ and ‘the most extravagant theory of the ages’.4
Theosophy teaches that the lower simians, the monkeys, arose from interbreeding between a ‘mindless’ or unselfconscious stock of the third root-race (who were apelike in appearance*) and a high animal stock, while the anthropoid apes resulted from interbreeding between a less progressed stock among the fourth, Atlantean, root-race and the descendants of the earlier interbreeding. ‘Thus,’ says G. de Purucker, ‘the apes and the monkeys have traces of human blood in their veins; the monkeys a single dose, so to say, of the nobler strain, and the apes a double dose of the same. But no man has one drop of either simian or anthropoid blood in his veins.’5
*Human embryos develop by the 4th week a well-defined tail. It reaches its maximum length in the 6th week when it may have as many as 12 vertebrae, after which it begins to regress, becoming the coccyx (tailbone). The coccyx in humans and apes therefore represents a vestigial tail. However, this does not require a belief in a simian ancestry, for theosophy says that the ethereal human forms in the third round were apelike and had a short tail (the 6th week of embryonic development also corresponds to the mid-second and early third root-races of the present round). The loss of a tail has actually reached a more advanced stage in the gorilla than in man, because the gorilla’s coccyx consists of only 3 caudal vertebrae whereas in humans it generally consists of 4 or 5.6
The ‘humans’ involved in producing the ancestors of the monkeys were devoid of selfconsciousness and acted instinctually, and hence the interbreeding was not a crime. The animals involved, like all mammals, had originally sprung from ‘man’, and the interbreeding led to fertile offspring because the distance between the humans and animals concerned was not yet very great. The Atlanteans who later repeated the act were aware of what they were doing and therefore committed deliberate bestiality. Even then, these humans and animals were not far enough apart to prevent fertile mating.
In far past geological times both these simian stocks resembled their respective human half-parents in much fuller measure than do their present-day descendants, the living monkeys and apes. The earlier stocks were far nearer in time to the dominant human influence in their heredity, while the living simians show the effects of specialization away from that influence over the intervening millions of years.
Referring to the Lemurian episode of interbreeding, the Stanzas of Dzyan7 state that ‘those who had no spark’ (i.e. nonselfconscious humans) ‘took huge she-animals unto them’,* which belonged to several species and were quite different from any known today, and ‘begat upon them dumb races’. The offspring are described as a ‘race of crooked, red-hair-covered monsters, going on all fours’, ‘a truly pithecoid species, now extinct’, and a Commentary mentions: ‘Red-haired, swarthy men going on all-fours, who bend and unbend (stand erect and fall on their hands again) who speak as their forefathers, and run on their hands as their giant fore-mothers.’8
*Although reference is usually made to male Lemurians or Atlanteans mating with female animals,9 it’s hard to believe that no human females ever succumbed to the same vice!
Another stanza says that early Lemuro-Atlanteans also mated with a lower race of still mindless humans, who were very dissimilar physically and mentally from the more perfect races. The semi-humans, or ‘so-called animals’, are described by a Commentary as a biped of human shape, but covered with hair below the waist.10 We are also told that the egg-like shells in which humans gestated during the early third root-race were often tampered with by huge animals resulting in semi-human monsters, and that certain Lemurians later interbred with some of these giant creatures.11
As regards the period in which the events in question took place, Blavatsky says that occultism ‘traces some of the most anthropoid species to the third race man of the early Atlantean period’. The later third race overlaps with the early Atlantean race, and the events could have taken place in the Cretaceous,* after most humans had already acquired selfconscious minds, though De Purucker says they might have happened in the preceding Jurassic period.12
*The Cretaceous began about 16 million years ago according to theosophy, and 144 million years ago according to science.
We are told that the descendants of the huge humanlike monsters produced by certain Lemurians ‘were modified by external conditions, until the breed, dwindling in size, culminated in the lower apes of the Miocene period. With these the later Atlanteans renewed the sin of the “Mindless” – this time with full responsibility. The resultants of their crime were the species of apes now known as Anthropoid.’13 Mating has presumably taken place with various animal or semi-animal stocks over the course of time, as the end result was not only the present monkeys and apes but also semi-human tribes which have now largely died out.14
The original apes were reportedly looked upon askance by the more evolved humans of that time but were tolerated because they had glimmerings of our active minds. They were virtually thinking entities of a lower type, and had distinct languages of their own.
The most human of these apes died out, partly because the Atlanteans, realizing the sin of their own less evolved men, made vigorous war upon them, wars of extermination; and also because the milieu, the surroundings, were not conducive to the continuance of this partly-human partly-animal race. Only the least progressed of the apes were allowed to live by the Atlanteans; and the apes today are the descendants of those who were allowed to continue to live.15
In the epic Hindu poem the Ramayana, the apes are depicted as far more humanlike than they are today; they even talk and have their own governments and laws. Led by Hanuman, the monkey god, they fight on the side of Rama against the Rakshasas of Lanka in the great epic war of India. Viewed theosophically, the depiction of the apes in the Hindu legend is not entirely fictional.
The souls that incarnated in the original monkeys and apes had not quite reached the human stage. We are told that the apes are destined to become humans of a low grade in the last two root-races of the present round and in the next or fifth round. This does not mean that ape bodies will metamorphose into human bodies, but that the souls currently inhabiting ape bodies will take on bodies among the lowest human stocks.
The fossil record
The earliest humans, or rather protohumans, in the present round were semi-astral beings of titanic size, and have gradually diminished in stature ever since. The Lemurians were around 7.5 m (25 ft) tall at the time of Lemuria’s destruction, as were the Atlanteans in their heyday. By about half a million years ago, man’s height had declined to about 3.5 m, and has continued to decline to about half that size today.1
The late second and early third races could conceivably have left fossils, and this is even more true of the more solidified bodies of the later third race and the fourth race.2 However, the fossil record is extremely fragmentary; for instance, it is estimated that it provides us with evidence for only about 3% of all the primate species that have ever existed.3 There are various reasons for this. First, fossilization can occur only under exceptional conditions. Second, erosion and geological cataclysms have destroyed 90 to 99% of the fossil record. Third, many fossils are buried in inaccessible places, including deep below the present ocean floors (the Lemurian continental system was centred in the Pacific Ocean, and the Atlantean continental system in the Atlantic Ocean4). Finally, cremation is said to have been widespread among humans until about 100,000 years ago.
As already shown, many remains of giant humans have in fact been found. None are displayed in any museums, and we can only speculate on what might be stored in museum basements. Given that the prevailing orthodoxy affects how scientists perceive the world, there is no guarantee that fossil fragments of giant humans would be recognized as such; after all, ‘everyone knows’ that races of human giants exist only in fairytales! In the past, bones of large extinct animals were sometimes mistaken for remains of giant humans – but the opposite could just as easily occur.
The first mammals appear in the fossil record in the early Mesozoic, but most of the known mammals of that era were not much larger than mice. None of the fossil mammals from the later Mesozoic seem to be suitable candidates for the huge creatures with which certain Lemurians interbred or for their offspring, the ancestors of the present monkeys. Fossils of primitive monkeys and anthropoid apes first appear in the Oligocene epoch. Oligocene deposits at Fayum, Egypt, for example, contain a variety of small fossil apes, such as Aeolopithecus, Aegyptopithecus, and Propliopithecus (which some scientists speculate was one of our distant ancestors). Aegyptopithecus evolved to become about the size of a large house cat.
The Miocene saw the abrupt appearance of an incredible variety of tailless apes; some 24 species roamed Europe, Africa, and Asia during that epoch, the three main groups being Dryopithecus, Proconsul, and Sivapithecus. Nearly all the species went extinct, leaving only 6 to thrive: 2 types of gorilla, 2 types of chimp, and 1 type of gibbon and orangutan. Today’s great apes are therefore ‘members of a group that’s been steadily declining since the later Miocene’.5
The size of the known Miocene apes ranged from 0.6 m (2 ft) tall to around 3.1 m (10 ft) or more in the case of Gigantopithecus. Not much is known about the bodies of Miocene apes; most of the categories have been classified solely by skulls, skull parts, and teeth. Quadrupeds have arms that are distinctly longer than their legs while humans have arms that are distinctly shorter than their legs. Although some Miocene apes have arms equal in length to their legs, most scientists automatically assume that every Miocene ape was a quadruped. However, it is quite possible that at least some of them, such as Gigantopithecus and Oreopithecus, were bipedal or semi-bipedal, and that some of the wildmen from around the world are their descendants.6
As in the case of the Lemurian interbreeding, no details are given in theosophical literature about the sizes of the humans and animal species involved in the later Atlantean interbreeding and of their semi-human, semi-animal offspring. Some of the known fossil apes from the Miocene could certainly have been involved, but some simian species are said to be the product of the ordinary evolutionary process.7
The seeds of our fifth (Aryan or Indo-European) root-race began to emerge in earliest Tertiary times, 7 or 8 million years ago by theosophical reckoning. The fifth race’s satya-yuga, or golden age of innocence, began about 4.5 million years ago, in the Oligocene, when the fourth race was finishing its kali-yuga, or dark age. We are not told how tall the earliest members of our humanity were, but if some of the fossil evidence documented by Cremo and Thompson is valid, humans of approximately our own size could have existed in the Pliocene, Miocene, and even earlier; they would therefore have been pygmies compared to most of the Atlanteans of the day. The fifth race became a distinct racial stock in Central Asia in the Late Pliocene, about 1 million years ago.8
Since the early Miocene many apelike and semi-human species have appeared and disappeared, and many civilizations have come and gone. Mainstream anthropology ignores much of the ‘anomalous’ evidence already presented regarding the antiquity of humanity, the existence of giants, and the survival of bipedal hominoids in remote areas of the world until the present day. The fossils of primitive humans and bipedal apes that have been discovered were not our own direct ancestors but dehumanized offshoots from the main stream of human evolution, some of them being products of various episodes of human-animal crossbreeding. They could have existed alongside advanced civilizations, just as hunter-gatherer societies coexist with more advanced cultures today.
Awakening of mind
Of all the creatures on earth, only humans are known to have selfconscious minds – the ability to remember the past and plan for the future, and to express their thoughts in a variety of creative ways. The human brain, with its 12 billion brain cells and 120 trillion connections, is the most complex arrangement of matter known. According to mainstream science, brain activity somehow gives rise to self-awareness and the power of thought. But materialists are forced to admit that they ‘have as yet no idea whatever about how a mass of electrical and chemical discharges within the brain is converted into what we individually and subjectively experience as consciousness’.1 In addition to random mutations, another ‘driving force’ behind the evolution of apes into humans is claimed to be the development of drier and cooler climatic conditions – in other words, selfconscious intelligence emerged due to a change in the weather!
Some scientists have recognized that mind ‘defies explanation in terms of evolutionary theory’ and is ‘impossible to explain in purely material terms’.2 Astrophysicist Freeman Dyson has said:
The prevailing view among biologists seems to be that the mind arose accidentally out of molecules of DNA or something. I find that very unlikely. It seems more reasonable to think that mind was a primary part of nature from the beginning and we are simply manifestations of it at the present stage of history. It’s not so much that mind has a life of its own, as that the mind is inherent in the way the universe is built, and life is nature’s way to give mind opportunities it wouldn’t otherwise have.3
Neuroscientist and Nobel Prize winner Sir John Eccles has said that the materialistic theory of mind is ‘impoverished and empty’ and fails to account for ‘the wonder and mystery of the human self with its spiritual values, with its creativity, and with its uniqueness for each of us’.4 Eccles believes that there is a mental world separate from the physical world, that the mind and brain interact, and that ‘each Soul is a new Divine creation which is implanted into the growing foetus at some time between conception and birth’.5
Theosophy, too, recognizes that ‘it requires more than a mere interplay between certain material aggregates and their environment, to call to life a fully conscious man’.6 It assigns humans a spiritual ancestry, but rejects the belief that they were created by a supernatural, extracosmic, anthropomorphic God. If nature is infinite, divinity cannot be outside nature but must be all-nature itself; and nature is synonymous with boundless consciousness-life-substance, manifesting in infinitely diverse forms. The spiritual monad at the heart of every entity embodies in an endless variety of forms in an endless variety of worlds in the course of its cyclic evolutionary development. The earth is merely the latest station on its unending evolutionary journey.
The earliest ethereal human races in the present round did not have selfconscious minds. After their outer forms had become more physical and attained the necessary degree of complexity and refinement, the gradual awakening and unfoldment of our latent intellectual and spiritual powers could begin, under the influence of a higher part of our constitution; this process is referred to allegorically as the incarnation of the manasaputras (a Sanskrit word meaning ‘sons of mind’).7
This teaching is echoed in many myths and religious allegories. In the story of Prometheus, for instance, Prometheus steals the spiritual fire of the gods (intelligence) and brings it to mankind. In punishment he is chained to a rock (our human bodies) on a mountainside, where he will remain throughout the ages until mankind rises to his level and liberates him.
In the Book of Genesis, the Garden of Eden represents the innocent, mindless, childlike state of infant humanity. The eating of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil signifies the awakening of selfconsciousness, when man becomes ‘as the gods’, endowed with free will. The serpent which tempts Eve is a symbol of wisdom – hence the injunction to be ‘wise as serpents’ (Matthew 10:16). Adam and Eve, representing early humanity, are then expelled from Paradise, and ‘fall’ from their peaceful state of blissful unselfconsciousness into one of struggle, temptation, and ethical responsibility in the material world. They put on ‘coats of skin’, meaning that it was in the same period as the arousing of our minds that the semi-astral bodies of early humanity became densely physical.
The awakening of mind in the present round began during the fifth subrace of the third root-race, around 18½ million years ago. However, not all humans began to gain selfconsciousness at the same time or at the same pace, as they were not all at exactly the same stage of development. Even now our mental powers are still developing and will reach their full efflorescence in the following round, millions of years hence.
In a sense, theosophy agrees with science that humans and apes had a common ancestor – but that common ancestor was man himself, in his earlier, more primitive form. In the remote past – at the end of the third round and at the end of the third root-race of the present round – the human body was apelike in appearance. However, it did not evolve from animal bodies but from astral prototypes. Humans could be called ‘fallen angels’ rather than risen apes. Our spiritual monad, the ‘angel’ in us, does not literally descend into matter; it remains on its own plane and works through a series of lower vehicles. When the densest of them, the physical body, was ready, man’s latent selfconscious intelligence could begin to be unfolded and expressed. The physical and spiritual lines of evolution meet in the third stream of evolution – the mental. Humanity therefore forms a separate kingdom, poised midway between the animals and the superhuman kingdoms or ‘gods’.