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__18. THE FIRST (Race) WERE THE SONS OF YOGA. THEIR SONS, THE CHILDREN OF THE YELLOW FATHER AND THE WHITE MOTHER.

__In the later Commentary, the sentence is translated:

__"The Sons of the Sun and of the Moon, the nursling of ether (or the wind) (a) . . . . . . .

__"They were the shadows of the shadows of the Lords (b). They (the shadows) expanded. The Spirits of the Earth clothed them; the solar Lhas warmed them (i.e. preserved the vital fire in the nascent physical forms). The Breaths had life, but had no understanding. They had no fire nor water of their own (c).

__(a) Remember in this connection the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes, the esoteric meaning of which has seven keys to it. The Astro-Chemical is well known to students, the anthropological may be given now. The "One thing" mentioned in it is MAN. It is said: "The Father of THAT ONE ONLY THING is the Sun; its Mother the Moon; the Wind carries it in his bosom, and its nurse is the Spirituous Earth." In the occult rendering of the same it is added: "and Spiritual Fire is its instructor (Guru)."
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__(b) This fire is the higher Self, the Spiritual Ego, or that which is eternally reincarnating under the influence of its lower personal Selves, changing with every re-birth, full of Tanha or desire to live. It is a strange law of Nature that, on this plane, the higher (Spiritual) Nature should be, so to say, in bondage to the lower. Unless the Ego takes refuge in the Atman, the ALL-SPIRIT, and merges entirely into the essence thereof, the personal Ego may goad it to the bitter end. This cannot be thoroughly understood unless the student makes himself familiar with the mystery of evolution, which proceeds on triple lines - spiritual, psychic and physical.

__That which propels towards, and forces evolution, i.e., compels the growth and development of Man towards perfection, is (a) the MONAD, or that which acts in it unconsciously through a force inherent in itself; and (b) the lower astral body or the personal SELF. The former, whether imprisoned in a vegetable or an animal body, is endowed with, is indeed itself, that force. Owing to its identity with the ALL-FORCE, which, as said, is inherent in the Monad, it is all-potent on the Arupa, or formless plane. On our plane, its essence being too pure, it remains all-potential, but individually becomes inactive: e.g., the rays of the Sun, which contribute to the growth of vegetation, do not select this or that plant to shine upon. Uproot the plant and transfer it to a piece of soil where the sunbeam cannot reach it, and the latter will not follow it. So with the Atman: unless the higher Self or EGO gravitates towards its Sun - the Monad - the lower Ego, or personal Self, will have the upper hand in every case. For it is this Ego, with its fierce Selfishness and animal desire to live a Senseless life (Tanha), which is "the maker of the tabernacle," as Buddha calls it in Dhammapada (153 and 154). Hence the expression, "the Spirits of the Earth clothed the shadows and expanded them." To these "Spirits" belong temporarily the human astral selves; and it is they who give, or build, the physical tabernacle of man, for the Monad and its conscious principle, Manas, to dwell in. But the "Solar" Lhas, Spirits, warm them, the shadows. This is physically and literally true; metaphysically, or on the psychic and spiritual plane, it is equally true that the Atman alone warms the inner man; i.e., it enlightens it with the ray of divine life and alone is able to impart to the inner man, or the reincarnating Ego, its immortality. Thus, as we shall find, for the first three and a half Root-Races, up to the middle or turning point, it is the astral shadows of the "progenitors," the lunar Pitris, which are the formative powers in the Races, and which build and gradually force the evolution of the physical form towards perfection - this, at the cost of a proportionate loss of spirituality. Then, from the turning point, it is the Higher Ego, or incarnating principle, the nous or Mind, which reigns over the animal Ego, and rules it whenever it is not carried down by the latter. In short, Spirituality is on its ascending arc, and the animal or physical impedes it from steadily progressing on the path of its evolution only when the selfishness of the personality has so strongly infected the real inner man with its lethal virus, that the upward attraction has lost all its power on the thinking reasonable man. In sober truth, vice and wickedness are an abnormal, unnatural manifestation, at this period of our human evolution - at least they ought to be so. The fact that mankind was never more selfish and vicious than it is now, civilized nations having succeeded in making of the first an ethical characteristic, of the second an art, is an additional proof of the exceptional nature of the phenomenon.

__The entire scheme is in the "Chaldean Book of Numbers," and even in the Zohar, if one only understood the meaning of the apocalyptic hints. First comes En-Soph, the "Concealed of the Concealed," then the Point, Sephira and the later Sephiroth; then the Atzilatic World, a World of Emanations that gives birth to three other worlds - called the Throne, the abode of pure Spirits; the second, the World of Formation, or Jetzira, the habitat of the Angels who sent forth the Third, or World of Action, the Asiatic World, which is the Earth or our World; and yet it is said of it that this world, also called Kliphoth, containing the (six other) Spheres, and matter, is the residence of the "Prince of Darkness." This is as clearly stated as can be; for Metatron, the Angel of the second or Briatic World, means Messenger (Gk. aggelos), Angel, called the great Teacher; and under him are the Angels of the third World, Jetzira, whose ten and seven classes are the Sephiroth,* of whom it is said that "they inhabit and vivify this world as Essential Entities and Intelligences, whose correlatives and contraries inhabit the third or Asiatic World." These "Contraries" are called "the Shells," or demons,† who inhabit the seven habitations called Sheba Hachaloth, which are simply the seven zones of our globe. Their prince is called in the Kabala Samael, the Angel of Death, who is also the seducing serpent Satan; but that Satan is also Lucifer, the bright angel of Light, the Light and Life-bringer, the "Soul" alienated from the Holy Ones, the other angels, and for a period, anticipating the time when they would have descended on Earth to incarnate in their turn.

__"The Souls (Monads) are pre-existent in the world of Emanations," (Book of Wisdom viii., 20); and the Zohar teaches that in the "Soul" "is the real man, i.e., the Ego and the conscious I AM: 'Manas.' "

__"They descend from the pure air to be chained to bodies," says Josephus repeating the belief of the Essenes (De Bello Jud?o, 11, 12). "The air is full of Souls," states Philo, "they descend to be tied to mortal bodies, being desirous to live in them." (De Gignat, 222 c.; De Somniis, p. 455) ‡ ; because through, and in, the human form they will become progressive beings, whereas the nature of the angel is purely intransitive, therefore man has in him the potency of transcending the faculties of the Angels. Hence the Initiates in India say that it is the Brahmin, the twice-born, who rules the gods or devas; and Paul repeated it in I Corinthians vi., 3: "Know ye not that we (the Initiates) shall judge angels"?
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* See Vol. 1. Part III., "Gods, Monads and Atoms." It is symbolised in the Pythagorean Triangle, the 10 dots within, and the seven points of the Triangle and the Cube.
† Whence the Kabalistic name of Shells given to the astral form, the body called Kama Rupa, left behind by the higher angels in the shape of the higher Manas, when the latter leaves for Devachan, forsaking its residue.
‡ Which shows that the Essenes believed in re-birth and many reincarnations on Earth, as Jesus himself did, a fact we can prove from the New Testament itself.
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__Finally, it is shown in every ancient scripture and Cosmogony that man evolved primarily as a luminous incorporeal form, over which, like the molten brass round the clay model of the sculptor, the physical frame of his body was built by, through, and from, the lower forms and types of animal terrestrial life. "The Soul and the Form when descending on Earth put on an earthly garment," says the Zohar. His protoplastic body was not formed of that matter of which our mortal frames are fashioned. "When Adam dwelt in the garden of Eden, he was clothed in the celestial garment, which is the garment of heavenly light. . . . light of that light which was used in the garden of Eden," (Zohar II 229 B). "Man (the heavenly Adam) was created by the ten Sephiroth of the Jetziric world, and by the common power they (the seven angels of a still lower world) engendered the earthly Adam . . . . First Samael fell, and then deceiving (?) man, caused his fall also."

__(b) The sentence: "They were the shadows of the shadows of the Lords," i.e., the progenitors created man out of their own astral bodies, explains an universal belief. The Devas are credited in the East with having no shadows of their own. "The devas cast no shadows," and this is the sure sign of a good holy Spirit.

__Why had they "no fire or water of their own"? § Because:

__(c) That which Hydrogen is to the elements and gases on the objective plane, its noumenon is in the world of mental or subjective phenomena; since its trinitarian latent nature is mirrored in its three active emanations from the three higher principles in man, namely, "Spirit, Soul, and Mind," or Atma, Buddhi, and Manas. It is the spiritual and also the material human basis. Rudimentary man, having been nursed by the "air" or the "wind," becomes the perfect man later on; when, with the development of "Spiritual fire," the noumenon of the "Three in One" within his Self, he acquires from his inner Self, or Instructor, the Wisdom of Self-Consciousness, which he does not possess in the beginning. Thus here again divine Spirit is symbolised by the Sun or Fire; divine Soul by Water and the Moon, both standing for the Father and Mother of Pneuma, human Soul, or Mind, symbolised by the Wind or air, for Pneuma, means "breath."
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§ It is corroborated, however, as we have shown, by the esotericism of Genesis. Not only are the animals created therein after the "Adam of Dust," but vegetation is shown in the Earth before "the heavens and the Earth were created." "Every plant of the field before it (the day that the heavens and the Earth were made, v. 4) was in the Earth" (v. 5). Now, unless the Occult interpretation is accepted, which shows that in this 4th Round the Globe was covered with vegetation, and the first (astral) humanity was produced before almost anything could grow and develop thereon, what can the dead letter mean? Simply that the grass was in the earth of the Globe before that Globe was created? And yet the meaning of verse 6, which says that "there went up a mist from the Earth" and watered the whole face of the Earth before it rained, and caused the trees, etc., to grow, is plain enough. It shows also in what geological period it occurred, and further what is meant by "Heaven and Earth." It meant the firmament and dry incrustated land, separated and ridden of its vapours and exhalations. Moreover, the student must bear in mind that, as Adam Kadmon, "the male and female being" of Genesis, ch. I., is no physical human being but the host of the Elohim, among which was Jehovah himself - so the animals mentioned in that chapter as "created" before man in the dead letter text, were no animals, but the Zodiacal signs and other sidereal bodies.
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__Hence in the Smaragdine Tablet, disfigured by Christian hands:

__"The Superior agrees with the Inferior; and the Inferior with the Superior; to effect that one truly wonderful Work" - which is MAN. For the secret work of Chiram, or King Hiram in the Kabala, "one in Essence, but three in Aspect," is the Universal Agent or Lapis Philosophorum. The culmination of the Secret Work is Spiritual Perfect Man, at one end of the line; the union of the three elements is the Occult Solvent in the "Soul of the World," the Cosmic Soul or Astral Light, at the other; and, on the material plane, it is Hydrogen in its relation to the other gases. The TO ON, truly; the ONE "whom no person has seen except the Son"; this sentence applying both to the metaphysical and physical Kosmos, and to the spiritual and material Man. For how could the latter understand the TO ON the "One Father," if his Manas, the "Son," does not become (as) "One with the Father," and through this absorption receive enlightenment from the "divine instructor," Guru - Atma-Buddhi?

__"If thou would'st understand the SECONDARY ("Creation," so-called), oh Lanoo, thou should'st first study its relation to the PRIMARY." (Commentary, Book of Dzyan, III. 19.)