To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

3
The Quickening of Mind
TRADITIONS ALL OVER THE GLOBE describe an event of
titanic import which occurred millions of years ago: the
quickening of mind in childlike humanity. Where before
we as a race had been dreamlike and without goal, now
we were afire with the vigor of self-conscious thought, of
choice, and the will to evolve. Legend and myth, scripture
and temple preserve the record of this wondrous transition
from mindlessness to self-awareness, from Eden-innocence
to knowledge and responsibility — all due to the intervention
of advanced beings from higher spheres who wrought
within us ‘‘a living mind . . . and new mastery of thought.’’*
In the Purāṇas of India, for example, and also in the
Bhagavad-Gītā and other sections of the Mahābhārata, are
a number of references to our divine ancestors being descended
from seven or ten ‘‘mind-born sons of Brahmā.’’
They go under di¤erent names, but all are mind-born,
mānasa, ‘‘thinking’’ (from manas, ‘‘mind,’’ derived from the
Sanskrit verb man, ‘‘to think, to reflect’’). Occasionally
they are called mānasaputras, ‘‘sons of mind’’; more often
agnishvāttas, those who have tasted of agni, ‘‘fire’’; also
*Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus, trans. Gilbert Murray, lines 445‒6.