race of men

(esoteric) (term "Men" derives from manas, Sanskrit meaning "to think") The term refers to the kingdom of humanity

(See also: Race of men , Body Mind and Soul)

Dream Dictionary Index with links to 10.000 dream interpretations from many different sources.

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Second Root-race Like the first root-race of the present round on globe D of the earth-chain, the second was astral, though somewhat more concreted, physicalized, or materialized. The bodies were unlike what is now regarded as human, bearing but vaguely the human outline of a gelatinous, filamentoid, jelly-like nature, as yet without evolved bones, organs, hair, or true skin. Reproduction was by budding, as occurs in some lower organisms today.

About the middle of the race, these buds became numerous and the process became modified to one analogous to the casting off of spores or seeds, or to the exuding of drops of vital sweat. These beings were mindless and unmoral, innocent, guided unconsciously by their spiritual instincts, nevertheless largely under the sway of lower rather than spiritual impulses, somewhat like the animals of today. For as yet no intellectual fire from the manasaputras (sons of mind) had been communicated to them, so that as yet there was no working bridge of mentality between spirit and matter in them.

(See also: Second Root-race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Boneless Race. See ROOT-RACE, SECOND

(See also: Boneless Race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Lunar Race. See CHANDRA-VANSA

(See also: Lunar Race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Seventh Root-race The seventh and last root-race of any round on any globe of a planetary chain. Reference is nearly always to the seventh root-race of the fourth round on globe D of the earth-chain.

It characteristics are analogous on a smaller scale to those of the seventh round, modified by the fact that it belongs to the fourth round. There is a return to conditions of purity which prevailed at the beginning of the round; but this return does not mean a going backward but an emanative evolutionary unfolding to the point where the cyclic motion brings all things back to the same plane, but on a higher subdivision.

The great adepts and initiates -- referring here specifically to the seventh root-race on globe D of the fourth round -- will once more produce mind-born sons immaculately, and there will be a race of buddhas, sons of god, the purity of the krita-age being reestablished (SD 2:274, 483). The invisible north polar continent will once more become visible, and the bodhisattva Maitreya will appear (SD 1:328, 470). A seventh element will appear as a presentment, not however to be fully manifested until the seventh round. In this race some of the greatest adepts will return.

(See also: Seventh Root-race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Subrace Used to distinguish the major or root-races from the minor races which are offshoots from the mother-race (ML 83). In a planetary chain, there are seven rounds in a manvantara (period of activity) and root-races during each round; further that there are seven subraces in every root-race, and septenary offshoots from the subraces.

Because of the successive divisions into septenary units, it is at times difficult to determine just what subrace may be intended by a writer, and careful study is needed. The length of a subrace is given as approximately 210,000 years (SD 2:435) -- and here no qualifying adjective appears to define which subrace is intended; on the same page the present European race is referred to as a family race of approximately 30,000 years.

As to the position of humanity in regard to the fifth root-race: "we are in the mid-point of our sub-race of the Fifth Root Race -- the acme of materiality in each . . ." (SD 1:610). This is interpreted by de Purucker as meaning "the middle point of the fourth of any cyclical series: for instance, the fourth Primary Subrace; the fourth subrace of the fourth primary subrace of the fifth root-race" (Fund 281). Thus we have at present nearly reached the middle period of the fifth root-race, and are therefore in our fourth primary subrace, but in a smaller sub-subrace which is the fifth of its own cycle.

Ancient mythologies often designated an individual as standing for a race as its eponym, thus the legend of Latona and Niobe, whose sons and daughters were slain by Apollo, may be interpreted as Latona standing for the Lemurian races, while Niobe stands for the Atlantean race, her seven sons and seven daughters personifying the seven subraces or branches of the fourth race (SD 2:771).

See also ROOT-RACE

(See also: Subrace , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Family Race In theosophy, each of the main seven racial cycles is first divided into seven primary subraces, each of which is again divided into seven secondary or sub-subraces, each of which latter is divided into seven so-called family races. The period of such a family race is generally given as that of the precessional cycle (25,920 years).

(See also: Family Race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Solar Race.

See SURYAVANSA

(See also: Solar Race , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Fourth Round The circling of each life-wave around the globes of a planetary chain for the fourth time is its fourth round. The midpoint of the fourth round is the turning point for this planetary manvantara. Before this point the monadic hosts pursue their gyrations downwards on the descending arc, karmically evolving material vestures from within the womb of spirit. During the fourth round on globe D, during the fourth root-race, the midway point of this manvantara is reached, for the lowest point in the descent of the life-waves then takes place, and thereafter the monads begin evolving upwards on the ascending arc: the involution or matter and evolution of spirit.

What are termed the geologic eras are the product of nature's evolutionary forces at work during our present fourth round; and every one of the globes of the chain, including globe D, was of characteristically somewhat different aspect and consistency during each of the three previous rounds. Each round develops a cosmic principle, and the fourth principle, earth, is in process of developing during the fourth round (the three previous rounds having developed fire, air, and water) -- these elements are not to be understood in their popular meaning, but in the sense in which they are used in archaic philosophy. Thus the fourth round "transformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on" (SD 1:260).

Naturally the geologic changes which the globe underwent up to our own time, took many, many millions of years; for example, sedimentation on globe D in this round began more than 320 million years ago. Sedimentation refers to the appearance of the mineral life-wave on globe D after preliminary work during the fourth round had been accomplished by the three preceding elemental kingdoms. After the mineral kingdom had run through its septenary cycling, then its surplus of life passed to the succeeding globe E, and the life-wave of the vegetable kingdom made its appearance on globe D; after the vegetable life-wave came the animal; and after the animal appeared the human, which in its turn will be followed by the life-waves of the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms.

At the beginning of the human stage of the fourth round on globe D, the lunar pitris or human monads projected their astral doubles from the bodies which these pitris had evolved during the third round, and "it is this subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds physical man" (SD 1:180). The human life-wave has completed its fourth root-race on this globe and has now reached the midpoint of its fifth root-race. The point of man's grossest physical development has already been passed and his body henceforth will evolve along the lines of increasing refinements and ethereality.

During the fourth round the fourth principle kama (desire) will be fully developed, both in man and in the world. Man became truly human with the intellectual enlightenment of early mankind in this round through the descent of the manasaputras. This great event occurred during the third root-race.

In regard to the beast kingdom, at the midway point in the manvantara, the "door" to the human kingdom automatically closed, for then began the ascending arc: i.e., all monads not reaching the evolutionary status where they were able to pursue their evolution by entering the human kingdom must thereafter remain in the lower kingdoms for the three and one-half rounds still to come. The mammalian beasts all appeared in this round, but the first mammal on this globe was man himself, as the mammalian beasts were very early off-throwings or specializations from offthrowings originating in the human stock.

As to the vegetable kingdom, vegetation began in its ethereal form before what is termed the Primordial Epoch, continuing on through the Primary Era, during which it condensed, to our own time. It reached its fullest physical efflorescence in the early part of the Secondary, and probably even during the middle and later Primary, where the great coal deposits are now found.

(See also: Fourth Round , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

A Theosophical definition of Yuga :

Yuga

(Sanskrit) A word meaning an "age," a period of time. A yuga is a period of mundane time, and four of these periods are usually enumerated in "divine years":

1. Krita or Satya Yuga. . . . . . . 4,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .  400

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . ..  . . . 4,800

2. Treta Yuga. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . .  .  . 300

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 3,600

3. Dvapara Yuga. . . . . . . . .  . . 2,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . .200

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . ..  . 200

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2,400

4. Kali Yuga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  1,000

Sandhya. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Sandhyamsa. . . . . . . . . . . . . .. .  100

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . 1,200

TOTAL . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . .  . . 12,000

This rendered in years of mortals equals:

4,800 x 360 = 1,728,000

3,600 x 360 = 1,296,000

2,400 x 360 = 864,000

1,200 x 360 = 432,000

. . . . . .Total 4,320,000

Of these four yugas, our present racial period is the fourth or kali yuga, often called the "iron age" or the "black age." It is stated to have commenced at the moment of Krishna's death, usually given as 3,102 years before the Christian era. There is a very important point of the teaching in connection with the yugas which must not be forgotten. It is the following: The four yugas as above outlined refer to what modern theosophical philosophy calls a root-race, although indeed a root-race from its individual beginning to its individual ending is about double the length of the composite yuga above set forth in columnar form. The racial yugas, however, overlap because each new great race is born at about the middle period of the parent race, although the individual length of any one race is as above stated. Thus it is that by the overlapping of the races, a race and its succeeding race may for a long time be contemporaneous on the face of the globe.

As the four yugas are a reflection in human history of what takes place in the evolution of the earth itself and of the planetary chain, therefore the same scheme of yugas applies also on a cosmic scale  - there exist the four series of satya yuga, treta yuga, dvapara yuga, and kali yuga, in the evolution of the earth, and on a still larger scale in the evolution of a planetary chain. Of course these cosmic yugas are very much longer than the racial yugas, but the same general scheme of 4, 3, 2 applies throughout. For further details of the teaching concerning the yugas, the student should consult H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, and the work by the present author, Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy.

See also: Yuga , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

God (Gods) and Goddess (Goddesses) A generalizing term signifying all self-conscious entities superior to humankind, most often restricted to the three dhyani-chohanic kingdoms. The gods have differing places in nature's hierarchical scheme, running through innumerable grades of cosmic intelligences. Theosophy teaches that human beings who successfully reach the seventh round on this earth chain will pass, at the conclusion of this last round, into the kingdom superior to the human, that of the lowest dhyani-chohans.

One function of dhyani-chohans (gods or demigods of a lower type) is the watching over of all hierarchies below them, some being guardians of the human host, others guarding and protecting the less evolved kingdoms. The higher hierarchical ranges of gods or divinities in our universe "are Entities of the higher worlds in the hierarchy of Being, so immeasurably high that, to us, they must appear as Gods, and collectively -- God. . . . To the highest, we are taught, belong the seven orders of the purely divine Spirits; to the six lower ones belong hierarchies that can occasionally be seen and heard by men, and who do communicate with their progeny of the Earth; which progeny is indissoluble linked with them, each principle in man having its direct source in the nature of those great Beings, who furnish us with the respective invisible elements in us" (SD 1:133).

These beings belong to two general divisions, the arupa (formless) and the rupa (form) divinities. Those having forms should not be imagined as necessarily having human forms as in the ancient pantheons, yet rupa gods do have highly ethereal forms, some perhaps resembling the present human shape and others of quite different construction. But the arupa divinities are to our power of imagination "beings of pure intelligence and of understanding, pure essences, pure spirits, formless as we conceive form" (Fund 347).

Tradition has it that in the immemorial past, certain lower gods associated intimately with their children, humanity, on this globe; but as time went by and mankind became more immersed in material pursuits, people grew to become increasingly forgetful of their divine origin and of the presence of the shining divinities instructing and guiding their forebears, so that the gods and demigods were remembered only in mythologies and religious metaphors of the various races.

What did the ancients mean by their gods and goddesses? They were intended to represent the guiding intelligences present within or in back of all invisible secrets, as well as astral and physical manifestations of nature. During the third root-race there were beings who were

"endowed with the sacred fire from the spark of higher and then independent Beings, who were the psychic and spiritual parents of Man, as the lower Pitar Devata (the Pitris) were the progenitors of his physical body. That Third and holy Race consisted of men who, at their zenith, were described as, 'towering giants of godly strength and beauty, and the depositaries of all the mysteries of Heaven and Earth.'. . .

". . . the chief gods and heroes of the Fourth and Fifth Races, as of later antiquity, are the deified images of these men of the Third. The days of their physiological purity, and those of their so-called Fall, have equally survived in the hearts and memories of their descendants. Hence, the dual nature shown in those gods, both virtue and sin being exalted to their highest degree, in the biographies composed by posterity" (SD 2:171-2).

The primeval human deity worship degenerated during the fourth root-race (the Atlantean), the ideal at first becoming confused with the form, and the latter finally almost superseding the spirit -- thus in the relatively complete materialization of idea into form, the later Atlanteans in time began to worship themselves, what was to them the powers of nature appearing through themselves as human beings; the degeneration of the ideal proceeding so far that ultimately the worst kind of idol worship became relatively universal, except for the seed of the newer and somewhat higher mankind of the fifth root-race then beginning.

"The moderns are satisfied with worshipping the male heroes of the Fourth race, who created gods after their own sexual image, whereas the gods of primeval mankind were 'male and female,' " i.e., hermaphrodite (SD 2:135).

See also DEITY

(See also: God, Goddess , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

A Theosophical definition of Races :

Races

During evolution on our earth (and on the other six manifest globes of the planetary chain of earth correspondentially), mankind as a life-wave passes through seven evolutionary stages called root-races. Seven such root-races form the evolutionary cycle on this globe earth in this fourth round through the planetary chain; and this evolutionary cycle through our globe earth is called one globe round. We are at the present time in the fourth subrace of our present fifth root-race, on globe D or our earth.

Each root-race is divided in our teachings into seven minor races, and each one of these seven minor races is again in its turn subdivided into seven branchlet or still smaller racial units, etc.

The student who is interested in the matter of tracing the evolutionary arrangement or history of the seven root-races on our globe earth is referred primarily to H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, and secondarily to Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy.

Each one of the seven root-races reaches its maximum of material efflorescence and power at about its middle point. When half of the cycle of any one of the seven root-races is run, then the racial cataclysm ensues, for such is the way in which nature operates; and at this middle racial point, at the middle point of the fourth subrace of the mother-race or root-race, a new root-race begins or is born out of the preceding root-race, and pursues its evolution from birth towards maturity, side by side with, or rather in connection with, the latter half of the preceding mother-race or root-race. It is in this fashion that the root-races overlap each other, a most interesting fact in ethnological or racial history. This overlapping likewise takes place in the cases of the minor and branchlet races.

It will be between sixteen thousand and twenty thousand years more before the racial cataclysm will ensue which will cut our own fifth root-race in two  - exactly as the same racial cataclysmic occurrence happened to the fourth-race Atlanteans who preceded us, and to the third-race Lemurians who preceded them; and as it will happen to the two root-races which will follow ours, the sixth and seventh  - for we are now approaching the middle point of our own fifth root-race, because we are nearing the middle point of the fourth subrace of this fifth root-race. (See also Globe, Planetary Chain, Round)

See also: Races , Mysticism, Body Mind and Soul

Adam 'adam (Hebrew) (from 'adam to be red, ruddy)

Used in Genesis for man, original mankind; the Qabbalah enumerates four Adams. The Archetypal or Heavenly Man ('Adam Qadmon) is the prototype for the second, androgyne Adam. From these two emanates the third Adam, preterrestrial and innocent, though still further removed from the divine prototype Adam Qadmon. The fourth Adam is "the Third Adam as he was after the Fall," the terrestrial Adam of the Garden of Eden, our earthly sexual humanity (Qabbalah Myer 418).

With regard to the elohim bringing man forth "in their own image" (tselem), Blavatsky says: "The sexless Race was their first production, a modification of and from themselves, the pure spiritual existences; and this as Adam solus. Thence came the second Race: Adam-Eve or Jod-Heva, inactive androgynes; and finally the Third, or the 'Separating Hermaphrodite,' Cain and Abel, who produce the Fourth, Seth-Enos, etc." (SD 2:134). Again, "finally, even the four 'Adams' (symbolizing under other names the four preceding races) were forgotten; and passing from one generation in to another, each loaded with some additional myths, got at last drowned in that ocean of popular symbolism called the Pantheons. Yet they exist to this day in the oldest Jewish traditions, as the Tzelem, 'the Shadow-Adam' (the Chhayas of our doctrine); the 'model' Adam, the copy of the first, and the 'male and female' of the exoteric genesis (chap. i); the third, the 'earthly Adam' before the Fall, an androgyne; and the Fourth -- the Adam after his fall, i.e. separated into sexes, or the pure Atlantean. The Adam of the garden of Eden, or the forefather of our race -- the fifth -- is an ingenious compound of the above four" (SD 2:503).

See also `OLAM; SEPHIRAH

(See also: Adam , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Sex As applied to the organism as a whole, the differentiation of the reproductive function and the character of being male and female.

Organisms reproduce their kind in various ways: fission, gemmation, parthenogenesis, hermaphrodite reproduction, and sexual reproduction. In the course of evolution, organisms pass from one method to another; the passage from the hermaphrodite method to the one in which the sexes are in separate individuals took place in the animals in the third root-race of this round on this globe, and shortly afterwards in humanity (SD 2:184), the latter then being in the fifth subrace of the third root-race.

The process of separation did not occur suddenly, but slowly. This is often called the Fall, and is so in one sense, since it is a descent from spirit toward matter, and was an initiation of the beasts. "THEY (the animals) BEGAN TO BREED. The TWOFOLD MAN (then) SEPARATED ALSO. HE (man) SAID: "LET US AS THEY: LET US UNITE AND MAKE CREATURES.' THEY DID" (ibid.). But from another viewpoint, it was simply a following of the natural course of unfolding progress in evolution. The separation is symbolized by a circle with a vertical diameter.

The hermaphroditic state is repeated in the developing embryo where the organs of both sexes arise from the same germinal layer of cells, and the differentiation does not occur until near the middle of the viable period of fetal life. Today, the orderly unfolding of embryonic cells into a human form is due to following the invisible model which, in keeping with the imbodying ego's karma, is directed by creative spiritual entities and forces.

"Before man could become male and female physically, his prototype, the creating Elohim, had to arrange his Form on this sexual plane astrally. That is to say, the atoms and the organic forces, descending into the plane of the given differentiation, had to be marshaled in the order intended by Nature, so as to be ever carrying out, in an immaculate way, that law which the Kabala calls the balance, through which everything that exists does so as male and female in its final perfection, in this present stage of materiality. Chochmah, Wisdom, the Male Sephiroth, had to diffuse itself in, and through, Binah, intelligent Nature, or Understanding" (SD 2:84). After the separation, the third eye began to disappear, and death as we now understand it was not known until then.

Thus the primeval polarity of all things differentiated on the material plane -- including sexual humanity -- was of immaculate origin and purpose. This sublime ancient teaching has been degraded generally in theological interpretations of cosmic sex symbols in crude physiological terms, such as the substitution of a Jehovistic god of generation for an ineffable, unknown deity.

The originating causes of sex are not rooted in the higher principles or elements of the human composite constitution. It is the effect of former thought-deposits, of emotional and mental tendencies and biases given way to in preceding lives on earth. "The predominating and it may perhaps truly be said that the main cause of sex-change in incarnation is strong attraction to the opposite sex during the few -- or in rare cases it may be a fairly large number -- preceding lives on earth. This attraction, which is the instrumental cause of the tendencies and biases spoken of, arising out of thought and emotional energy, feminizes the life-atoms, or masculinizes them, as the individual case may be, and the natural consequence is incarnation in a body of the sex to which attraction leads" (ET 666). Thus a reincarnating ego may have several incarnations in bodies of one sex, and then incarnate in bodies of the opposite sex for a number of times in succeeding incarnations. How many times, therefore, a reincarnating ego may imbody in a male or a female body is not subject to any arbitrary rule but depends solely upon the karmic impulse laid aside in the treasury of psychomental experiences.

Though the distinction of sex is biologically regarded as a profound and nearly universal attribute of organized beings, yet knowledge of composite human nature shows that it does not reach into the roots of the human constitution. Its causes go no deeper than the lower part of the human ego or soul, the psychophysiological nature. It is an evolutionary condition or cycle of the reincarnating ego's development in this present stage of materiality. Therefore, it is a transitory event in its bipolar earthly experience. As sex has been nature's plan for the race for some 18 million years, it will continue to be the natural plan for some ages to come. Some ages hence, sex differentiation will have given way to the activities of impersonal, spiritual creative energies.

(See also: Sex , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Atlantis In Theosophical literature the fourth great land-massif or continental system which composed the land area of this globe several million years ago, and which was the home of the fourth root-race. Atlantis was not the name of this land area when inhabited by its own populations, but is borrowed by theosophists from Plato.

A surprising number of very ancient traditions besides those of Greece support the Atlantean hypothesis. Some of the widespread deluge stories, certainly those surviving during the Classic period in the nations surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, relate only to Plato's relatively small island, Poseidonis, more or less the size of modern Ireland, if we follow Plato's statements of size; but in addition to these there have been many deluges noticed in the traditions of other peoples scattered over the face of the globe.

The chief great flood referred to the principal collapse of Atlantis, the main sinking occurring during the Miocene period several million years ago. Other island-continents sank later, e.g., Daitya and Ruta (Sanskrit name for one of the last great islands of the Atlantean system in the Pacific Ocean) which went down during the Pliocene times -- in Geikie's Nomenclature, about 850,000 years ago. (SD 2:314).

"The Atlantic portion of Lemuria was the geological basis of what is generally known as Atlantis. The latter, indeed, must be regarded rather as a development of the Atlantic prolongation of Lemuria, than as an entirely new mass of land upheaved to meet the special requirements of the fourth root-race. Just as in the case of Race-evolution, so in that of the shifting and re-shifting of continental masses, no hard and fast line can be drawn where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken" (SD 2:333).

Referring to the vast expanse of lands, including both continents and islands, occupied by the populations of the fourth root-race, Blavatsky wrote: "at a remote epoch a traveller could traverse what is now the Atlantic Ocean, almost the entire distance by land, crossing in boats from one island to another, where narrow straits then existed" (IU 1:558).

 While the term Atlantis derived from Greek sources undoubtedly gave its name to what we now call the Atlantic Ocean, yet the Atlantic continental system reached even into what is now called the pacific; and the islanders of this body of water almost universally amongst themselves have legends all pointing to the fact that their ancestors lived on and came from "great islands" which preceded the present distribution of land and sea.

See also ALTANTEANS; ROOT-RACE, FOURTH

(See also: Atlantis , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Speech The vocal expression of thought in language, which implies the existence of mind which has reached self-consciousness on this plane, was not fully developed in mankind until the fourth root-race.

The first root-race was devoid of mind on our plane; the second had a sound language of vowels, and its speech was largely onomatopoetic in character; the third developed in its beginning a speech which was little better than what are now known as animal sounds, but towards its end the first approximately fully developed human beings had monosyllabic speech, after the awakening of their minds by the manasaputras. Before that there was communication by what may be called thought-transference. After this monosyllabic speech, came the agglutinative, spoken by some Atlantean races, and then the inflectional language of the fifth root-race, represented by Sanskrit and its derivatives, and closely related languages such as Greek and Latin.

The great number and variety of languages is evidence of the great antiquity of the human race and its extensive division and subdivision. The elaborateness of languages spoken by so-called primitive peoples, especially their frequently highly complicated and extensive vocabulary, for which their modern representatives have but little use, shows that they are remnants of once highly civilized peoples.

That the priests of Atlantis addressed their gods in the language of those gods, is a mystical statement: they addressed the regents of the elements in the sound-language appropriate to the particular element. Vach is the mystic speech by which occult knowledge is communicated to man.

See also LOGOS; MANTRAS; SOUND

(See also: Speech , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Paradise [from Greek paradeisos from Old Persian pairidaeza from Sanskrit paradesa region beyond]

Applied in Persian and Greek to a pleasure park or royal domain. A Hebrew version (pardes) is found in the Bible, translated "orchard" (Eccl 2:5, Cant 4:3) and "forest" (Neh 2:8). An equivalent is the Hebrew eden (delight). Stories of a Paradise or Eden are universal; and while the general idea is simple, its applications are complex. It is the state of innocence and bliss from which there is departure, and to which there is eventual return. This may apply to the human race as a whole, to particular races, to the lands they inhabit, or to the pilgrimage of the individual human soul.

Persian tradition places a Garden of Delight far to the north of Caucasus in the Arctic regions, where was the Imperishable Sacred Land whence issued a stream from the earth's fount of life. Adi-varsha was the Eden of the first races and specifically of the primeval third root-race; the Eden of the fifth root-race is but its faint reminiscence. The Garden of Eden or of God (Ezek 31:3-9) was a home of initiates of Atlantis, now submerged.

The Eden in Genesis is a marvelous fusion of many meanings into one narrative, where the Adams of the various root-races are made into one. Eden was an ancient name for Mesopotamia and adjacent regions; and under that one name are comprised the meanings of an abode of initiates, a sacred land from which races emerged, and a goal of bliss in the future. The Eden of the Hebrew books, which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alike have located in Mesopotamia and in the now sandy lands of Persia and Afghanistan, refers also to what was in prehistoric times a great and highly developed center of culture and the civilization which there had its seat, including a number of Mystery schools. When the changing cycles brought about a degeneration and final breakup of this seat of archaic wisdom, it was represented as the loss by the then human Adam -- the then race -- of the Paradise in which he had dwelt. Edens and Paradises always contain trees; and these, by one interpretation, signify the initiates in the sacred land, and by another they are the Tree of Life and the Tree of Wisdom for man himself. In the Qabbalah, Eden is a place of initiation.

In later times, the symbol of Paradise has come to mean a bliss of sensual pleasure, like the Moslem Paradise of the Houris, the Olympus of the Greeks, or Indra's Heaven (svarga).

(See also: Paradise , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Surya-Siddhanta (Sanskrit) A celebrated astronomical and cosmogonical work of ancient India of enormous antiquity. This work shows marvelous mathematical skill and comes very close to the modern time periods of astronomy that the most skilled mathematicians and astronomers have determined. It also deals with yugas in their various lengths, divisions of time itself into infinitesimal quantities, and general astronomical subjects, including not only the time periods of the sun, moon, and planets, but also eclipses, seasons of the year, etc.

The Surya-Siddhanta states that it was dictated more than two million years ago, towards the end of the krita yuga (golden age) by the sun himself, through a projected solar representative, to the great sage Asuramaya who wrote down the revelation. From the commencement of our kali yuga to the end of the satya yuga is 2,164,965 years ago.

The Surya-Siddanta was therefore a very late Atlantean work or an early work of the fifth root-race, for though the so-called Aryan or fifth root-race was already nearly 1,728,000 years old at the time of the writing of this work, the race was still in its early periods, and was still practically a part of the Atlantean civilization; hence Asuramaya has been called an Atlantean astronomer. The fifth root-race has been a race sui generis for only about a million years from our present time.

(See also: Surya-Siddhanta , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Sight Among the elements, correlated with fire or light. Like the other senses it has its spiritual originant which expresses itself through its several forms, corresponding to the different planes.

The organ of spiritual vision in the human body is the third eye. Some of the Atlantean magicians and initiates had this inner sight, which was even in their material race highly developed, so that their vision could pass any distance and penetrate opaque bodies.

In the order of evolution of the physical senses and their organs, sight comes third, and was evolved as a physical sense towards the end of the third root-race, though existing in rudimentary form in the preceding root-race. The third eye was once external and an organ of physical vision, but retreated inwards when it was replaced by the two eyes as at present functioning; the third eye has now become the pineal gland.

(See also: Sight , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

Flood. A story found in various forms in every cosmology. The Chaldean and Sumerian versions antedate the Hebrew; India, China, and other Asiatic countries furnish their own versions. It occurs in the Popol Vuh, the sacred book of the QuichŽs of Central American, as well as among many ancient American tribes; the story is found among the ancient Scandinavians, the Polynesian peoples, and among African tribes, such as the Masai of East Africa.

These stories refer in part to an actual great deluge in the world's history, mainly to the sinking of the great and smaller islands of the Atlantean continental stretches. In many if not all the versions, we find that a race had become so corrupt that nature or the gods would no longer tolerate it, and destroyed it and brought forth a new race. There is usually a type-figure, like the Hebrew Noah, who builds an ark or other vessel of salvation, thus saving from the waters the righteous few to be the seeds of the new race. In many versions are traditions of the destruction of the preceding root-race, Atlantis, by water, and of the saving of various groups of human remnants to found new civilizations on lands, then or shortly later geologically speaking, emerging from the ocean.

But besides the particular application to this latest cataclysm in the earth's history, the story refers to cataclysms in general, to the death of old races and the birth of new ones. The evolution of the earth goes on pari passu with that of the beings upon it. These stories are evidently allegorical as well, with reference to cosmological facts.

See also ARK

(See also: Flood , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)