VI. Fourteen Manvautaros, plus the period of one Satya Vuga

make one Day of Brahmd, or a complete Manvantara, or 4,320,000,000 years.
Therefore a MahA Yuga consists of 4.320.000 years.II
The year 1887 is from the commencement of Kali Vuga 4.989 y«ars.
• The HKotcric Doclriac says that Ihis " CcMmic Kvolution " refers only to our Solar Systctn ; while exoteric HiodOistn makes the fif^ures refer, if we do not mistake, to the whole Uaiversal System.
T Another point of dlsngrrrment. ticculti^rn ftjiys that the asirn] prototypes of the minerBl. rrgetAble and animal kingdoms up to man ha^Y tnken that lime (.too million years) to evolve, re* formiug out of the coct-oflT materials of the precedlnj; Round, which, though very dense and physical in their own cycle, are relatiwly etlicreal as coniparetl with the materiality of our present middle Round. At the expiration of these 300 million years, Nature, on the way to the physical and material, down the arc of descent, bcffins with mankind and works downwards, hardening or mAterialfxUig form« as it proceeds. Thus the fossiU found in strata, to which on antiquity, not of eighteen, but of many hundreds of milliuns of years, must be ascribed, belong in reality to forms of the preceding Rumitl, which, while living, were far tnore ethereal than physical, as u/e knaw the physical. That we perceive and disinter thf ni as tangible forms, is due to the process of raaterialixniioa or crystolliaa- tion referred to, which took place subsequently, nt the beginning of the Fourth Round, and readied its niajtimum after the appearance of man, proceeding paruUel with hia physical evolution. This alone illustrates tlir fact that the degree of materiality of the Earth changes pari panit with that of Its inhabitants. And thus man now finds, as tangible fossils, what were once the (to his present senses] cthrrenl forma of the lower kingdoms. The above DrAhmanicul (tgures refer to e\-olution beginning on Globe A, and in the Hirst Round. In this Volume we speak only of this, the Fourth Rounil.
I This difference and the change of cyphers in the lost thrre triplets of figures, the writer cannot undertake to account for. According to every calculation, once the three hundred millions are •Qbtracled, the figures ought to slflnd, i,655.&a4,o07. But they are given as stated in the Tamil calendar above-named andaatbey were tnuulatcd. The school of the laiePanOiCUayAnandSanisvatj. founder of the Arya SamAj. gives a date of 1,960.959,987, See the Arya Magazine of Uthore. the cover of which beam the words ; "Aryonem 1,960,853,987."
( Voivaavata Manu is the one Human Heine:— eoine versions add to him the seven Riahis— who in the Matsya Avatira allegory is saved from the Deluge In a boat, like Noah in the Ark. Therefore, this Vaivnsvata Manvantara would he the "post-diluvian" period. This, howe\'tT, doe* not refer to the later " AUantcon" or Nooli's Deluge, nor to the Cosmic " Deluge" or Prolaya of obscuratioa. which preceded our Round, but to the appearance of mankind in the latter Round. Their is a great difference made, however, between the Naimitika, Occaaiooal or Itictdeutnl, (Tlkritika, Elentcatat. Atyantika, the Absolute, and Nitya, the Perpetual Pralaya: the latter lieing described as "Itrahm&'s contingent recoalescence of the Univrnw at the end of Bnihmi's Tay." The qncatlon was ndaed by a learned Br&hman Theonophidt : " Whether thrrr is suirli a thing as Cosmic Pralaya; because, other- wise, the Logos (Krishna) would have to be reborn, and he is Aja iunboml." Wc cannot mc why. The Logos is said to be bom only metaphorically, as the Sun is bum daily, or rather a beam of that Bun ia bom in the morning and is mUU Io die when it diMip[>ears, whereas it is kimply rrAbaorbed into the parent essence. Cosmic Pralaya is for things visible, not for the Ariipa, Formless, World. The Cosmic or Universal Pralaya comes only at the end of one hundred Vcara of Brahmd. when the Universal Dissolution is said to toki- place. Tlien the Avyayo. My the exoteric Scriptures, the Htenul Lift s3inboli]ctfd by Vishnu, assuming the character of Rudra. the Destroyer, enters into the Seven Kays of the Sun and drinks up all the waters of the Universe. "Tbu» fed, the seven Solar Rajrs dilate ta^evensMHs and set 6re to the whole Cosmo«."
II Since a MohA Vuga is the i.oooth part of a Day of Brahmi.
^^V ^XGAS AKD KALPAS. 73
To make this still clearer in its details, the following computations hy Rao Bahadur P. Sreenivas Row. are given from the Theosophisi of .November, 18S5.
MOBTAL YEAM.
j6o days of mortals make a year i
Krita Yuga contains 1,738,000
TretA Ynga contains 1,296,000
Dvdpara Yuga contains 864,000
Kali Yuga contains 43',ooo
The total of the said four Yngas constitute a MahA
Yuga 4.320,000
Seventy-one of such MahA Vugas form the period of
the reign of one Mann 306,720,000
Tlie reign of fourteen Manus embraces the duration
of 994 Mahd Yugas, which is equal to 4,394,080,000
Add Sandhis, i.€., inter\'als between the reign of each Mann, which amount to six Mahd Yugos, equal to 35,930,000
The total of these reitfiis and interregnums of four- teen Manus, is 1,000 Maha Yugas, which consti- tute a Kalpa, i.e., one Day of BrahmA 4.320,000,000
As Brahma's Night is of equal duration, one Day and
Night of BrahmS would contain 8.640,000,000
360 of such days and nights make one Year of Brahmd,
equal to 3, r 10,400,000,000
Wo such Years constitute the whole period of
BrahmA's Age, <>., Mahd Kalpa 31 1,040,000^000,000
These are the exoteric figures accepted throughout India, and they
dovetail pretty nearly with those of the Secret Works. The latter,
moreover, amplify them by a division into a number of Esoteric Cycles,
icver mentioned in Brahmanical popular writings— one of which, the
(iwsion of the Yugas into Racial Cycles, is given elsewhere as an
ice. The rest, in their details, have of course never been made
iblic. They are, nevertheless, known to every "Twice-boru" (Dvija,
Initiated) Brahman, and the /^wniwiTi contain references to some of
ihcm in veiled terms, which no matter-of-fact Orientalist has yet
endeavoured to make out, nor could he if he would.
These sacred Astronomical Cycles are of immense antiquity, and most of them pertain, as stated, to the calculations of Narada and Asuratnaya. The latter has the reputation of a Giant and a Sorcerer. Bat the Antediluvian Giants — the Gibborim of the Bible — were not all fiador Sorcerers, as Christian Theology, which sees in every Occultist
74
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
a servant of the Evil One, would have it; nor were they worse than many of "the faithful sons of the Church/' A Torquemada and a Catherine de Medicis certainly did more harm in their day, and in the name of their Master, than any Atlantean Giant or Demigod of anti- quity ever did, whether named Cyclops, or Medusa, or yet the Orphic Titan, the anguipedal monster known as Ephialtes. There were good "giants" in days of old just as there are bad **pigmies" now; and the Rakshasas and Yakshas of Lankd are no worse than our modem dynamiters, and certain Christian and civilized generals during modem wars. Nor are they myths.
He who wonld laugh at Briareua and Orion ought to abstain from going to, or even talking of, Karnac 9r Stonehenge,
remarks somewhere a modern writer.
As the Brahmanical figures given above are approximately the basic calculations of our Esoteric System, the reader is requested to carefully keep them in mind.
In the Encychpctdia Britannica we find, as the last word of Science, that the antiquity of man is allowed to stretch only over **tens of thou- sands of years." It becomes e\'ident that as these figures may be made to fluctuate between 10,000 and 100,000, therefore they mean very little if anything, and only render still denser the darkness surrounding the question. Moreover, what matters it that Science places the birth of man in the "pre- or post- glacial drift," if we are told at the same time that the so-called *'Ice Age" is simply a long succession of ages which
Shaded without abrupt change of any kind into what is termed the human or recent period . . . the overiapping of geological periods having been the rule from the beginning of time.*
The latter "rule" only results in the still more puzzling, even if strictly scientific and correct, information, that;
Even to-day man is contemporary with the ice-age in the Alpine valleys and in the Finniark.t
Thus, had it not been for the lessons taught by the Secret Doctrine, and even by exoteric Hinduism and its traditions, we should to this day be left to float in perplexiid uncertainty between the indefinite "Ages" of one school of Science, the "tens of thousands'* of years of the other, and the 6,000 years of the Bible interpreters. This is one
I
• op. at.. Art. "Creolosry."
i y^t/. TUU allows a cbsaoe eveo to the Biblical " Adam Clironoloffy " of 6,000 years.
VARIATIONS OP EXACT SCIENCE.
75
pre
of the several reasons why, wnth all the respect due to the conclusions of the men of learning of our modern day, we are forced to ignore them in all such questions of pre-historic antiquity.
Modem Geology and Anthropology must, of course, disagree with our views. But Occultism will find as many weapons against these two Sciences as it has against astronomical and physical theories, in spite of Mr. Laing*s assurances that:
In [chronological] calculations of this sort, concerning older and later fonna- Ums, there is no iheoty, they are based on positive facts, limited only by a certain possible [?] amount of error either way.*
Occultism will prove, scientific confessions in hand, that Geology is \"eTy much in error, and very often even more so than Astronomy. In tliisvery passage by Mr. Laing, which gives to Geology preeminence for correctness over Astronomy, we find a passage in flagrant contra- diction to the admissions of the best Geologists themselves. Says the author:
In short, the conclusions of Geology, at any rate up to the Silurian periodt when the present order of things was fairly inaugurated, are approximate [truly so] facts uiil not thrones, while the astronomical conclusions are theories based op data so uncertain, that while in some cases they give results incredibly short, ... in cthen they give results almost incredibly long.J
After which, the reader is advised that the "safest course"
Stems to be to assume that Geology really proves the duration of the present order of things to have been somewhere over loo millions of years, and that Astronomy gives an enormous though unknown time beyond in the past, and to toiat in the future, for the birth, growth, maturity, decline, aud death of the solar tyslem, of which out earth is a small planet now passing through the habitable phase. $
Judging from past experience, we do not entertain the slightest doubt that, once called upon to answer "the absurd unscientific and preposterous claims of exoteric (and Esoteric) Ar>-an chronology,'* the enlist of the '•results incredibly short," i.e., only 15,000,000 years, and the Scientist, who "would require 600,000,000 years," together with those who accept Mr. Huxley's figures of 1,000.000,000 1| *'siuce sedi- mentation began in Europe," would all be as dog^matic the one as the
[* Mttd^rn Scimct and Modern Thought, 4?.
Uic Silurian pericxl u regards moUuecs and animal Ufe— ifranled ; but n-bat do ibey know of Auf.. lor. eit.
nid„ 4.).
i WuKh£U, Wofti'Li/t, 160.
76
THB SECRET DOCTRINE.
Other. Nor would they fail to remind the Occultist and the Brahman, that it is the modem men of Science alone who represent exact Science, whose duty it is to fight ** inaccuracy** and ''superstition/' ^h
The Earth is passing through the "habitable phase" only for thc^l presaii order oi things, and as far as our present mankind is concerned wth its actual "coats of skin" and phosphorus for bones and brain.
We are ready to concede the loo millions of years offered by Geology^^ since we are taught that our present physical mankind — or the Vaivas^^| vata Humanity — began only eighteen millions of years ago. But Geologj' has no facts to give us for the duration of geological periods, as we have shown, no more indeed than has Astronomy. The authentic letter from Mr. W. Peugelly, F.R.S., quoted elsewhere, says:
i
ner doM
It is at present, and perhaps always will be, inipossibU to reduce, even approxi mately, geological time into years or even into millenniums.
And ha-^nng never, hitherto, excavated a fossil man of any other than y^^ present form — what does Geology know of him? It has traced zones or strata and, with these, primordial zoological life, down to the Silurian. When it has, in the same way, traced man down to his primordial protoplasmic form, tlien we will admit that it may know something of primordial man. If it is not ver>' material to "the bearings of modem scientific discovery on modem thought," whether
Man has existed in a state of constant though slow progression for the 50.000 years of a period of 15 niillions, or for the last 500.000 years of a period 150 millions,*
as Mr. S. Laing tells his readers, it is very much so for the claims of the Occultists. Unless the latter show that it is ^possibility^ if not a perfect certainty, that man lived eighteen millions of years ago, the Steref Doctrine might as well have remained unwritten. An attempt must, therefore, be made in this direction, nnd it is our modem Geologists and men of Science generally who \\-ill be brought to testify to this fact in the Third Part of this Volume. Meanwhile, and notwithstanding the fact that Hindu Chronology is constantly represented by the Orientalists as a fiction based on no "actual" computation,! but simply^ a "childish boasting," it is nevertheless often twisted out of recognitioili^ to make it yield to, and fit in with, Western theories. No figures hai'e ever been more meddled with and tortured than the famous 4, 3, 2,, followed by cyphers, of the Yugas and Maha Yugas.
op. ciL, 49.
t WUsoo'S ViiMHU Pkrana, i. 51.
COSMOGONA' AN INTELUGHNT FtAN.
77
As the whole Cycle of pre-historic events* such as the evolution and transformation of Races and the extreme antiquity of man, hangs upon the said Chronoloff\', it becomes extremely important to check it by other existing calculations. If the Eastern Chronology is rejected, we shall at least have the consolation of proving that no other — whether in the figures of Science or of the Churches — is one whit more reliable. 'As Professor Max Miiller expresses it, it is often as useful to prove *lrhat a tiling is not as to sliow what it may be. And once we succeed ib pointing out the fallacies of both Christian and Scientific computa- tions— by allowing them a fair chance of comparison with our Chrono- logy—neither of these will have a reasonable ground to stand upon, in pronouncing the Esoteric figures less reliable than its own.
Wc may here refer the reader to our earlier work, Isis Unveiled,* for some remarks concerning the figures which were cited a few pages back.
To-day a few more facts may be added to the information there Riven, which is already known to every Orientalist. The sacredness of the cycle of 4*320, with additional cyphers, lies in the fact that the figures which compose it, taken separately or joined in various com- binations, are each and all symbolical of the greatest mysteries in Kalure. Indeed, whether one takes the 4 separately, or the 3 by itself, the two together making 7, or again the three, 4, 3, 2. added together and yielding 9, all these numbers have their application in the most ed and Occult matters, and record the workings of Nature in her cmally periodical phenomena. They are never erring, perpetually recurring numbers, unveiling, to him who studies the secrets of Nature, a truly divine System, an intelligent plan in Cosmogony, which results in natural cosmic divisions of times, seasons, invisible influences, astronomical phenomena, with their action and reaction on terrestrial and even moral nature; on birth, death, and growth, on health and disease. All these natural events are based and depend upon cyclical processes in the Kosmos itself, producing periodic agencies which, acting from without, affect the Earth and all that lives and breathes on it, from the one end to the other of any Manvantara. Causes and effects are esoteric, exoteric and "eudexoteric," so to say. In his Unvciied vr^ wrote that which we now repeat: We are at the torn of a cyde and evidently in a transitory state. Plato divides the tellectual progress of the Universe during every Cycle into fertile
78
THE SECRET DOCTRINE.
and barren periods. In the sublunary regions, the spheres o various elements remain eternally in perfect harmony mth the Divine Nature, he says; "but their parts," owing to a too close proximity to earth, and their commingling with the earthly (which is Matter, and therefore the realm of evil), "are sometimes according, and sometimes contrary to (Divine) Nature." When those circulations — which Kliphas Levi calls "currents of the Astral Light" — in the universal Ether which contains in itself every element, take place in harmony with the Divine Spirit, our Earth and ever>'thing pertaining to it enjoys a fertile period. The Occult powers of plants, animals, and minerals magically sympa- thize with the "superior natures,*' and %he Divine Soul of man is in perfect intelligence with tliese "inferior" ones. But during the barren periods, the latter lose their magic sympathy, and the spiritual sight ol the majority of mankind is so blinded as to lose every notion of the ^ superior powers of its own Divine Spirit. We are in a barren period^^ the eighteenth century, during which the malignant fever of scepticisd^f broke out so irrepressibly, has entailed unbelief as a hereditary disease upon the nineteenth. The divine intellect is veiled in man; his animal brain aloue "philosophizes." And philosophizing alone, how can it understand the "Soul Doctrine"? ^H
In order not to break the thread of the narrative we shall give som^" striking proofs of these cyclic laws in Part II, proceeding meanwhile with our explanations of Geological and Racial Cycles.
STANZA III. ATTEMPTS TO CREATE MAN.