Lemurians

THE name Lemuria is an invention of P. L. Sclater, who asserted, between 1850 and 1860, on zoological grounds the actual existence, in prehistoric times, of a Continent which he showed to have extended from Madagascar to Ceylon and Sumatra. According to The Secret Doctrine, Lemuria, which served as the cradle of the Third Root Race, not only embraced a vast area in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, but extended in the shape of a horseshoe past Madagascar, round "South Africa" (then a mere fragment in the process of formation), through the Atlantic up to Norway. Africa, as a continent, was never part and parcel of either Lemuria or Atlantis. But Sweden and Norway formed part and parcel of ancient Lemuria, also of Atlantis on the European side, it is said. Lemuria was not submerged as Atlantis was, but was sunk under the waves, owing to earthquakes and subterranean fires, as Great Britain and Europe will be one day.
Just as in the case of Race-evolution, so in that of the shifting and re-shifting of continental masses, no hard and fast lines can be drawn where a new order ends and another begins. Continuity in natural processes is never broken. The first continent which came into existence capped over the whole North Pole like one unbroken crust, and remains so to this day. During the Second Race more land emerged from under the waters as a continuation of the "head" from the neck, down to a latitude of what is now roughly Greenland, and Eastern and Western Siberia. This broke asunder and disappeared. In the early part of the Third Race, Lemuria was formed. When it was destroyed in its turn, Atlantis appeared.
As the early root races must remain beyond the comprehension of minds trained in Western thought, it is found useless to speak in detail of the First and Second, and even of the Third in its earliest stage. It would be impossible to attempt, within the compass of even several volumes, a consecutive and detailed account of the evolution and progress of the first three races, except so far as to give a general view of it. Race the First had no history of its own. Of race the Second the same may be said. One has to begin with the Third, when it reached its full human period, lest the uninitiated reader should find himself hopelessly bewildered. But Third Race mankind is the most mysterious of all the hitherto developed five Races. It was by the end of the 5th sub-race only that mankind was born under the same conditions and by the same identical process as our historical generations. From its early stage, to that time, required "millions of years" for the transformation.
The Third Root Race shows three distinct divisions or aspects physiologically and psychically: the earliest, sinless; the middle portions awakening to intelligence; and the third and last decidedly animal, i.e., Manas succumbs to the temptations of Kama. The Third Race were Hermaphrodites until the fall, or separation of the sexes into male and female. It is only at the mid-point of the Third Root Race that man was endowed with Manas.
Each class of Creators endows man with what it has to give: the one builds his external form; the other gives him its essence, which later on becomes the Human Higher Self owing to the personal exertions of the individual. The first Dhyanis, commissioned to "create" man in their image, could only throw off their shadows, like a delicate model for the Nature Spirits of matter to work upon. Man is, beyond any doubt, formed physically out of the dust of the Earth, but his creators and fashioners were many. During its childhood, mankind was composed wholly of the Angelic Host, who were the indwelling Spirits.
Tradition speaks of an Island inhabited by the last of the Sons of Will and Yoga of the Third Race, who with a few tribes escaped the cataclysm. In Isis it is stated that "This race could live with equal ease in water, air, or fire, for it had an unlimited control over the elements. These were the 'Sons of God' -- they who became the divine Instructors of men and imparted Nature's most weird secrets, and revealed the ineffable and now lost 'word'." That "Island," according to belief, exists to the present hour, somewhere in the Gobi Desert. There are traditions and chronicles of such dynasties of divine Kings -- of gods reigning over men followed by dynasties of Heroes or Giants -- existing in the annals of every nation. This accounts for the fact that peoples separated by oceans, possess the same "fairy-tales" in the same order of events. It is these Beings who appear first as "gods" and Creators; then they merge in nascent man, to finally emerge as "divine-Kings and Rulers." But this fact has been gradually forgotten. The Lemuro-Atlanteans were the first who had a dynasty of Spirit-Kings, actual living Devas (or demi-gods or Angels) who had assumed bodies to rule over them, and who in their turn, instructed them in the arts and sciences.
In the first or earlier portion of the existence of this Third Race, while it was yet in its state of purity, the "Sons of Wisdom," who incarnated in this Race, produced by Kriyasakti a progeny called the "Sons of Will and Yoga," and by other names. The account speaks of "the Initiator and a group of semi-divine and semi-human beings, set apart for certain purposes. They are those in whom are said to have incarnated the highest Dhyanis from previous Manvantaras, to form the nursery for future human adepts, on this earth, and during the present cycle." The Third Race had thus created the so-called Sons of Will and Yoga, or the "ancestors" (the spiritual forefathers) of all the subsequent and present Arhats, or Mahatmas, in a truly immaculate way. They were indeed created, not begotten, as were their brethren of the Fourth Race, who were generated sexually after the separation of the sexes, the Fall of Man.
The "Fall of the angels," was due to their rebellion against Karmic Law. The "fall of man" was no fall at all, for he was irresponsible.
The reader must remember that of the Hosts of Dhyanis, whose turn it was to incarnate as the Egos of the immortal, but on this plane senseless monads -- some "obeyed" (the law of evolution) immediately when the men of the Third Race became physiologically and physically ready, i.e., when they had separated into the sexes. These were those early conscious Beings who, now adding conscious knowledge and will to their inherent Divine purity, created by Kriyasakti the semi-Divine man, who became the seed on earth for future adepts.
Those, on the other hand, who, jealous of their intellectual freedom (unfettered as it then was by the bonds of matter), said -- "We can choose ... we have wisdom," and incarnated far later -- these had their first Karmic punishment prepared for them. They got bodies physiologically inferior to their astral models, because their chhayas had belonged to progenitors of an inferior degree in the seven classes. As to those "Sons of Wisdom" who had "deferred" their incarnation till the Fourth Race, which was already tainted (physiologically) with sin and impurity, they produced a terrible cause, the Karmic result of which weighs on them to this day.
The Third Race FELL -- and created no longer; it begat its progeny. Being still mindless at the period of the separation it begot, moreover, anomalous offspring, until its physiological nature had adjusted its instincts in the right direction. It "begot from large females of the animal kingdom the anthropoids...." But this "unnatural union in the Third Race, when man had not yet the light of Manas given to him, was not a crime against nature, since, no mind being present save in the merest germ, no responsibility could attach." Like the "lords the gods" of the Bible, the "Sons of Wisdom," the Dhyan-Chohans, had warned them to leave alone the fruit forbidden by Nature: but the warning proved of no value. Men realized the unfitness -- we must not say sin -- of what they had done, only when too late: after the angelic monads from higher spheres had incarnated in, and endowed them with understanding. To that day they had remained simply physical, like the animals generated from them.
There is a period of a few millions of years between the first "mindless" race and the highly intelligent and intellectual later "Lemurians." 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." That power, by which they first created, is just that which has since caused them to be degraded from their high status to the position of evil spirits, of Satan and his Host, created in their turn by the unclean fancy of exoteric creeds. It was by Kriyasakti, that mysterious and divine power latent in the will of every man, and which, if not called to life, quickened and developed by Yogi-training, remains dormant in 999,999 men out of a million, and gets atrophied.
There were men during the early geological periods, men and civilized nations, who under the guidance of their divine Rulers, built large cities, cultivated arts and sciences, and knew astronomy, architecture and mathematics to perfection. This primeval civilization did not, as one may think, immediately follow their physiological transformation. Between the final evolution and the first city built, many hundreds of thousands of years had passed. Yet, we find the Lemurians in their sixth sub-race building their first rock-cities out of stone and lava. One of such cities of primitive structure was built entirely of lava, some thirty miles west from where Easter Island now stretches its narrow piece of sterile ground, and was entirely destroyed by a series of volcanic eruptions.
The "one-eyed" cyclopes, the giants fabled as the sons of Coelus and Terra -- three in number, according to Hesiod -- were the last three sub-races of the Lemurians, the "one-eye" referring to the Wisdom eye; for the two front eyes were fully developed as physical organs only in the beginning of the Fourth Race. The adventures of Ulysses with the Cyclopes, in the Odyssey, is an allegorical record of the gradual passage from the Cyclopean civilization of stone and colossal buildings to the more sensual and physical culture of the Atlanteans, which finally caused the last of the Third Race to lose their all-penetrating spiritual eye -- Ulysses being said to belong to the cycle of heroes of the Fourth Race.
Nearly all of the gods of Egypt, Greece and Phoenicia, as well as those of other Pantheons, are of a northern origin and originated in Lemuria, towards the close of the Third Race, after its full physical and physiological evolution had been completed. All the "fables" of Greece were built on historical facts, if that history had only passed unadulterated by myths to posterity. The Third Race was pre-eminently the bright shadow, at first, of the gods, whom tradition exiles on Earth after the allegorical war in Heaven; which became still more allegorical on Earth, for it was the war between spirit and matter. This war will last till the inner and divine man adjusts his outer terrestrial self to his own spiritual nature. Till then the dark and fierce passions of the former will be at eternal feud with his master, the Divine man. But the animal will be tamed one day, because its nature will be changed, and harmony will reign once more between the two as before the "Fall," when even mortal man was created by the Elements and was not born.
In the present all-material Fifth Race, the earthly Spirit of the Fourth is still strong in us. But we are approaching the time when the pendulum of evolution will direct its swing decidedly upwards, bringing Humanity back on a parallel line with the primitive Third Root Race in Spirituality.