So we have finally made it. We are now on Earth, Globe D, in the 4th Chain and the 4th Round. It has taken a long time to get here but we are still at the start of a long journey. We have talked about races in the previous presentations because we have not concentrated on the sub-races, so there was no need to delineate races as root races. Now we are going into granular detail, so we present here an examination of the evolution of the 1st Root-Race.
As was mentioned in the preceding presentations, the special and peculiar characteristic of the earlier races on the Earth in this, the fourth round, is that the earlier races recapitulate the first, second and third rounds. This is arranged specially for the benefit of those entities who, though considerably behind the rest of the life wave, could by a special effort of this kind be helped to catch up with the other monads further along the evolutionary path. Remember, the objective of those in charge, is to get as many monads to the goal set by the planetary logos for globe, round and chain.
The first Race was etheric, repeating the first round: the second Race was of the ”pudding-bag” type, repeating the second round: the third Race repeated the third round. The fourth Race may be considered as the most typical of the fourth round as a whole. We call this race “Atlantian”. These general principles will be elaborated further as we come to consider each Race individually.
The Earth, at the beginning of the 4th round, is in a condition of terrible turmoil; there are gigantic convulsions of nature, the crash of falling mountains, the roar of volcanoes, the dash of giant waves loaded with rocks, with avalanches of lava, almost the size of mountains, which get toss-up as though in play. Fire is breaking out everywhere, storms, whirlwinds and tornadoes. It recalls the first round of the 4th Chain in miniature, the difference being that the greater density of matter makes the crash and tumult far greater than when the globes were more subtle in composition. For 200 million years these convulsions go on, as quoted in the Secret Doctrine ”uninterruptedly, after which they become periodical and at long intervals”.
For 300 million years the nature spirits have been busily at work, forming minerals, vegetables and animals of the lower kinds. Out of the remnants of the three preceding rounds they have taken the empty shells of forms and have tried to shape them into new living organisms. The results are strange hybrid monsters of all mixed kinds of generations, half human and half animal. Reptilian forms of all sorts and kinds appear. It is fair to speculate that these misshapen forms have been produced by the ”prentice hand of nature,” being the work of the lower Devas, the nature spirits, unassisted by the guiding power of the Lords of the Moon. This highlights the significance of the interactions of the devas, the builders, functioning on the 3rd Ray and the Human lifestream, functioning on the 2nd Ray. The devas may know how to build things but it is our stream that guides them on what to build and when. This is the significant role of the Barhishads, who are the perfected humanity of the Moon Chain, now superhuman and at levels 46 and above.
When the incessant turmoil is nearing its ending, some of the Lords of the Moon, or Barhishads, come to see if the earth is ready for the making of Humanity. All these lower forms are then swept away, presumably in order to clear the way for humanity and higher forms of life generally.
At one point, gradually, the first land appears, above the vast ocean of heaving, tepid water. It is the peak of Mount Meru, often spoken of in mythology. In some of the earlier literature, this was described as the cap of the North Pole. It, however, should be understood that this cap is not of the geographical, but of the spiritual Pole of the earth.
This is the imperishable Sacred Land, now in the Gobi desert. It has also been called the Land of the Devas, Shvetadvîpa, the White Island, the Central Land, and sometimes Jambudvipa, the name given to the Earth as a whole. The Parsis call it Airyana Vaejo and rightly claim that their great prophet Zarathrustra was born there.
From Mount Meru, the centre of that land, appears seven great promontories, to the edges of which the name Pushkara is sometimes given, though that name belongs more accurately to the seventh continent, which of course has still to appear when the time comes for the seventh Root-Race to make an appearance. Every human Race is born in this land, no matter where it goes after its birth. The climate is described as that of an exquisite spring. That may be the case on the ethnic plane, but it certainly was not on the physical globe.
The next stage of the process is described in the Book of the Wisdom thus: The Order has gone forth: ”The great Chohans called the Lords of the Moon, of the airy bodies: ‘Bring forth men, men of your nature. Give them their forms within. She will build coverings without. Males-Females will they be. Lords of the Flame also.’ . . . They went each on his allotted land; seven of them, each on his lot. . . . The Seven Hosts, the Will-born Lords, propelled by the Spirit of Life-giving, separate men from themselves, each in his zone. Seven times seven shadows of future men were born, each of his colour and kind, each inferior to his Father. The Fathers, the boneless, could give no life to beings with bones. Their progeny were Bhûta, with neither form nor mind. Therefore they are called the chhâya.”
Now you know why practically no one understands what the hell Blavatsky was talking about in the Secret Doctrine. The meaning of this is that the Lords of the Moon, the Barhishad Pitris, descending onto the Imperishable Land, separate from their own etheric bodies a chhâya, or shadow, a seed of life, which contains within it the potentialities of development into human form. By an effort of will, they duplicated their own etheric bodies, materialising, in fact, an additional etheric double, making it permanent, and then stepping out of it. Thank you very much. We appreciate it greatly.
The forms created are huge, filamentous, sexless, empty bhûtas, floating about in the dense atmosphere and the seething seas. To us, they would appear as gigantic phantoms. They sway and drift about; huge, indefinite, protozoic-like forms in etheric matter, with changing outlines; containing the seeds of all forms, gathered up by the Barhishads during preceding evolutions. They are moon-like in colour and yellow-white in varying shades.
Within the class of Barhishads, who undertook this work, there were seven distinct sub-classes, and each sub-class populates one of the seven promontories, previously mentioned. Further, each of the seven sub-classes, representing seven grades of evolution, contained members of each of the seven types, or ”rays,” hence the phrase ”seven times seven” in the passage already quoted. The 49 varieties thus provided by the Barhishads, afforded the incoming monads with appropriate vehicles suited to their varying stages of growth and type.
These protozoic-like forms oozed out from the etheric bodies of the Barhishads, similarly as the etheric double may be seen oozing out from the side of a medium during a seance. These formed the bodies for the first human Race. The forms themselves were not human, but into them came monads who evolved as human beings.
These huge forms, as already described, drifted about, senseless and passive. The consciousness of the incoming entities, being on the âtmic plane (45), could only slightly affect the clumsy bodies. These “creatures”, which is the best way to describe them, only showed a vague sense of hearing and a dim consciousness of fire.
The Monads brood over the forms, their Rays warming them into activity and shaping them into organs of communication with the outer world. Hence, because of the lofty consciousness which touches them, they are sometimes spoken of as the Race of the Gods; also as sons of Yoga, because the Barhishads sent out their chhâyas when immersed in yogic meditation. They have been called also the self-born because they were not born from human parents. They are the second Adam of the Jewish scriptures. Gods they most certainly are not. Just because you happen to have a Barhishad hovering over you, does not make your monad any special kind of being. These monads were just coming into human existence and had the consciousness development of an amoeba. But our myths like to harken back to some golden age when we were supposed to have descended from the gods and had god-like qualities. Now you know how these myths developed.
It is stated in the Secret Doctrine that the “Barhishads, having given out their chhâyas, animated them with their own energy, galvanised them, as it were, into activity. The Sun itself helped by sending upon them his vivifying fire in answer to the cry of the Ruler of the nature spirits for his help. We can interpret this as meaning that they absorbed prâna, or vitality, from the sun. These three factors, the Barhishads, the Sun and the nature-spirits, produced by their joint efforts a good rûpa or form. It could stand, walk, run, recline or fly. Yet it was still but a chhâya, a shadow with no sense”
The presiding planet of the first Race was the Sun, or rather the mystic planet Uranus, which he represents.
Multiplication of these beings was by fission or by budding, the only methods of reproduction possible for them, as is the case even today for plankton, their nearest physical likeness. They expanded in size, and then divided, at first into two equal halves, and at later stages into unequal portions, thus budding off progeny smaller than themselves, progeny which grew in its turn and again budded off its young.
Think about this for a minute; when an egg is fertilised in a womb, what does it first do? It divides by fission. We repeat, in the construction of our own bodies, exactly the same process by which life in the first root race replicated itself. It is also worth repeating here that in the development of the foetus of a human today, this whole process is carried out by a special class of devas, on instruction received from the Lords of Karma and the Agents of Destiny. Our guardian angel may try and negotiate the best deal possible for us, but our debts will always catch up with us. It is only at the attachment of the Life Thread, the Sutratma, that our monad connects with the virtual reality suit we call our bodies.
In this first root race, no definite sub-races can be defined, though there were seven stages of growth or evolutionary stages.
The Secret Doctrine tells us that “Neither do they die; Neither fire nor water could destroy them”. Fire was their element, and of water they were unconscious. In a previous presentation, we have already mentioned that they were developing the sense of hearing.
So there we have it; the 1st Root Race. For many of us, this was not the start we had in the 4th round, as we entered in from the Moon Chain at a later date, as will be discussed in future presentations. But in order to have a body to incarnate into, this body had to make a start somewhere and it was thanks to the sterling efforts of the Barhishads, the ceaseless toil of the Nature Spirits and a little energetic help from the Sun, that Humanity made a start on our current globe.
See you in the next presentation.