When people think about our distant past, they first alight on Atlantis but lurking in the background is this more mysterious civilisation/continent called Lemuria. Some people think it coexisted with Atlantis. Others think it predated it. Both scenarios are correct but there is a sequential element to these two Root Races and we will now start to unravel the story.
During the 3rd Root Race, the Lemurian, known in Hindu literature as the Dânavas, the process of repeating the first three rounds was continued. All that had happened in the middle of the 3rd round was repeated in this third Root Race. This involved the materialisation of Humanity onto the physical plane and their separation into sexes. Before we study the process in detail, however, we should first consider the physical conditions of the earth itself.
The earth had been slowly changing. According to The Secret Doctrine, ”The Great Mother travailed under the waves . . . she travailed harder for the third (Race), and her waist and navel appeared above the water. It was the Belt, the sacred Himâvat, which stretches round the world”. I like the idea of a waist and navel but can’t quite picture it.
The sea to the south of Plaksha, also known as Hyperborean, covered, what is now the desert of Gobi, Tibet and Mongolia and from the southern waters of this sea, the Himalayan chain emerged. Slowly land appeared, from the foot of the Himalayas to Sri Lanka, Sumatra, Australia, Tasmania and Easter Island. Looking westwards, we see Madagascar and part of Africa; included also were Norway, Sweden, East and West Siberia and Kamschatka. This vast continent was Lemuria – the cradle of the Race in which human intelligence was to appear. Its ancient name is Shâlmali.
The equatorial continent of Lemuria at the time of its greatest expansion nearly girdled the globe, extending from the site of the present Cape Verde Islands, a few miles from the coast of Sierra Leone, in a south-easterly direction through Africa, Australia, the Society Islands and all the intervening seas, to a point a few miles distant from a great island continent about the size of present South America, which spread over the remainder of the Pacific Ocean, and included Cape Horn and parts of Patagonia. How such a description correlates with our current knowledge of plate tectonics, I don’t know. One thing that is possible is that the movements of continental plates may have been more dramatic in the past, especially in times of dramatic upheavals.
In the course of ages, this vast continent undergoes many disruptions and is broken up into great islands. Norway sinks and disappears. Starting over 20 million years ago, a great outburst of volcanic fire erupted, chasms opening in the ocean floor and Lemuria as a continent disappeared, leaving only fragments such as Australia and Madagascar, with Easter Island, submerged and again re-uplifted.
The destruction of Lemuria was brought about principally by fire, through volcanic action. It was raked by the burning ashes and the red-hot dust from large numbers of volcanoes. The Lemurians thus met their doom chiefly by fire and suffocation, unlike the next Race, the Atlanteans, who perished mostly by drowning. Another contrast between the destruction of Lemuria and that of Atlantis was that while four great catastrophes completed the destruction of Atlantis, Lemuria was eaten away by internal fires, the volcanic action being incessant. For this reason, a single date for the demise of Lemuria is not given. It started to disintegrate from its inception.
About the middle of the life of Lemuria, there took place the great change of climate, which brought the demise of the remnants of the second Root Race, together with their progeny, the early sub-race of the 3rd Root Race. It says in The Secret Doctrine, ”The axle of the wheel tilted. The Sun and Moon shone no longer over the heads of that portion of the sweat-born; people knew snow, ice, frost, and men, plants and animals were dwarfed in their growth”. The gorgeous hues of the tropic faded away before the breath of the ice-king; the polar days and nights of six months began, and for a while, the remnants of Plaksha, Hyperborea, had a greatly reduced population. The Imperishable Sacred Land, however, continued to exist as before. Why? Because it was etheric, not physical.
Turning now to the Root Race itself, with its seven distinct sub-races, we shall discover that the many schemes of reproduction characteristic of the 3rd round, re-appear in this 3rd Root Race and run simultaneously in various parts of the Earth. The bulk of the population passed through the successive stages and eventually became oviparous or egg-bearing. It seems that the various schemes of reproduction were suitable to monads at different stages of evolution, the earlier ones being kept in operation for the backward monads to inhabit after the bulk of the people had passed beyond them.
These changes began some 164 million years ago according to Leadbeater, and occupied 5½ to 6 million years, physical bodies changing very slowly, and reversion frequently taking place. Moreover, the original number was small and needed time for multiplication. Alternative timelines have been presented by researchers that seem more feasible, placing the start of the 3rd Root Race some 20 million years ago. What is more important to take into account when studying the evolution of the Root Races, is precisely that, their evolution. What was going on, how did it start and where did it come from? In our study of chains, rounds and globes, I hope a consistent pattern can be seen by the viewer.
The separation of the sexes took place by the 3rd sub-race of the third Root Race.
When the oviparous type of reproduction became stable, the egg was preserved within the feminine body and reproduction assumed the form which still persists.
Whilst the Lemurian bodies were composed of gases, liquids and solids, just like ours today, at first the gases and liquids pre-dominated, because their vertebrate structure had not solidified into bones like ours. They could not, therefore, stand erect. Their bones, in fact, were pliable as the bones of infants now are. It was not until the middle of the Lemurian period that Humanity developed a solid bony structure. This could partially explain why there is no material evidence of their existence today.
Let us now look at the sub-races of the 3rd Root Race. In the first sub-race, the method of reproduction was by extrusion of soft, viscid bodies, known as the ”sweat”. It was from here that the term ”sweat-born” was derived. There was very little differentiation of the sexes that was visible externally.
The consciousness of the first sub-race displayed a manifestation of unity, being in touch with Âtmâ (45) plane only. As was mentioned in the preceding presentation, the Barhishads from Globe D of the Moon Chain had brought into the first and second Root Races, certain backward entities who served as special coaches for the even more backward entities in those two Races. Some of these benefited from the coaching and were brought into the first sub-race of the third Root-Race, as its lowest types. They were egg-headed, with an eye at the top of their heads, a roll like a sausage representing a forehead and projecting lower jaws. The egg-headed type persisted for a very long time but evolved, over time, in the later sub-races. Traces of these early Lemurians were found even in the seventh sub-race. If you look at cranial development of some African tribes today, you can see the vestigial reminders of this early Lemurian sub-race.
After them, either in this sub-race or a little later (the exact point is obscure) a very considerable number of monads, who had developed their basket-work causal bodies into complete causal bodies on Globe C, began to incarnate. These monads took the lead in the Earth’s humanity, preparing the way for the more advanced monads, who were soon to arrive from the Moon Chain. This was the group that had fought the ” water men, terrible and bad” on Globe C.
In the second sub-race, the exuded bodies hardened: The Secret Doctrine tells us that ”the drops become hard and round. The Sun warmed it; the Moon cooled and shaped it; the wind fed it until its ripeness”. The soft bodies thus gradually became encrusted, the outer covering of the envelope hardening and taking the form of eggs, the ovum, which from that time to the present day, is the natal home of the germ cell that develop into a foetus. Within the egg, the forms gradually evolved into androgynous creatures, distinctly human in type. These are called sons of passive Yoga because they seem so distracted from the world around them.
The consciousness of the second sub-race exhibited a duality, being in touch with Âtmâ-Buddhi, 45 and 46. You can see here how this sub-race is repeating what happened in the 2nd round.
In The Pedigree of Man by Anne Besant, the first two sub-races are spoken of collectively as the ”early third”; they were born under Shûkra or Venus, and under this influence, they evolved into hermaphrodites. The races are separated under Lohitanga, or Mars, who is the embodiment of Kâma, the passion-nature.
There is not a lot more that is known about these first two sub-races of the 3rd Root Race. We will now start to look at the 3rd sub-race, where something crucial happens and is accompanied by an even more significant event.
See you in the next presentation.