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THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
Divinities.
But these Divinities are simply the Prototypes of the First
Race, the Fathers of their "mind-bom" progeny with the "soft bones."
It is these who became the Evolvers of the "Sweat-born"—an expression
explained in Volume II.
"Created beings," explains the Vishnu Purana, "although they are
destroyed [in. their individual forms] at the periods of dissolution, yet
being affected by the good or evil acts oi former existences, are never
exempted from their consequences. And when Brahma produces the
world anew, they are the progeny of his will."
''Collecting his mind into itself [yoga-willing], Brahma creates the
Orders of Beings, termed Gods, Demons, Progenitors, and Men"
four
Progenitors here meaning the Prototypes and Evolvers of the first
Root-Race of men. The Progenitors are the Pitris, and are of Seven
Classes. They are said, in exoteric mythology, to be born of "Brahma's
side," like Eve from the rib of Adam.
Finally, the Sixth Creation is followed, and "Creation" in general
closed by:
(VII) The Seventh Creation : the evolution of the Arvaksrotas Beings,
"which was . . . that of man."
The "Eighth Creation" mentioned is no Creation at all: it is a
"blind," for it refers to a purely mental process, the cognition of the
"Ninth Creation," which, in its turn, is an effect, manifesting in the
Secondary, of that which was a "Creation" in
the Primary (Prakrita)
Creation.* The Eighth, then, called Anugraha, the Pratyayasarga or
Intellectual Creation of the Sankhyas,t is "the creation of which we
have a jiotion [in its esoteric aspect], or to which we give intellectual
assent (Anugraha), in contradistinction to organic creation^ It is the
correct perception of our relations to the whole range of " Gods," and
especially of those we bear to the Kumaras, the so-called "Ninth
Creation," which is in reality an aspect, or reflection, of the Sixth in
oar Manvantara (the Vaivasvata). "There is a ninth, the Kaumara
Creation, which is both primary and secondary," says the Vishnu
Purana, the oldest of such texts.| As an Esoteric text explains:
• "These notions," remarks Professor Wilson, "the birth of Rudra and the saints, seem to have
been borrowed from the Shaivas, and to have been awkwardly engrafted upon the Vaishnava system."
The esoteric meaning ought to have been consulted before venturing such a hypothesis.
+ See Sankhya KartkA, v. 46. p. 146.
X Parashara, the Vedic Rishi, who received the Vishnu Purana from Pulastya and taught it to
Maitreya, is placed by the Orientalists at various epochs. As correctly observed, in the Hindu
Classical Dictionary: "Speculations as to his era differ widely, from 575 B.C. to 1391 B.C., and cannot
be trusted." Quite so; but they are no more untrustworthy than any other date, as assigned by the
Sanskritists, so famous in the department of arbitrary fancy.