SPIRITUAL PROGENITORS


"The Kumaras," explains an esoteric text, "are the Dhyanis, derived immediately from the supreme Principle, who reappear in the Vaivasvata Manu period, for the progress of mankind.". . . In the esoteric teaching, they are the progenitors of the true spiritual SELF in the physical man – the higher Prajapati, while the Pitris, or lower Prajapati, are no more than the fathers of the model, or type of his physical form, made "in their image.". . . Sanat-Sujata, – the chief of the Kumaras – is called Ambhamsi, "Waters," – according to the commentary on Vishnu Purana. Why? Because the "Waters" is another name of the "Great Deep," the primordial Waters of space or Chaos, and also means "Mother," Amba, meaning Aditi and Akasa, the Celestial Virgin-Mother of the visible universe.

The Secret Doctrine, i 456-460

 Aditi-Vach – the goddess of speech, sound and wisdom – and the Dhyanic Host of the Kumaras, born directly from the night of non-manifestation, are closely connected. Aditi is primordial Chaos, equivalent to Mulaprakriti – pre-cosmic root substance and the mystic mother of all the manifested gods. The Kumaras, variously the eldest mind-born sons of Brahma and the offspring of Shiva, are the Logoic host of the highest spiritual intelligences radiating from the darkness of Parabrahm. Together they are the highest cognizable foundation of the first arupa world, the Brahma Vach from which emanate all the successive hosts and hierarchies, all the successive circles and cycles, of manifested theogony. Beyond this mystery lies the incomprehensible and infinite ocean of abstract divinity. Beneath or within it float the ordered worlds of time, like particles of dust in a sunbeam, for the radiant ocean of space is suffused with the light of the Central Spiritual Sun. The Akashic waters are alive with Daiviprakriti, the Light of the Logos; all its innumerable centres of differentiated intelligence thrill and pulsate to its eternal motion. In it the three aspects of the ever unknowable, unspeakable and unevolved Absolute – spiritual wisdom, creative magic and evolutionary impulse – are one.

 In every pilgrim-soul there is a ray of the bright essence of that divine ocean, partless and pure, unsullied by thick obscuring folds of matter. Each human being is in principle capable of seeking the inward path in consciousness because each human being is in essence a spark of Kumaric wisdom. The self-conscious realization of this sublime inheritance is the aim and object of every authentic philosophy, science and religion. It is the compassionate keynote of every system of allegory, glyph and symbol offered by Avatars and Adepts for the guidance of orphan humanity. All of these have their archetype and origin in the Stanzas of Dzyan, the arcane Book of Knowledge through Meditation, which traces directly the inauguration of humanity on earth over eighteen million years ago. When H.P. Blavatsky presented a mantramic rendition of a few of the Stanzas and their Commentaries in The Secret Doctrine, she gave the crucial clue that the entire work was meant for meditation. Unfortunately, many readers of the book have analysed, debated and speculated on it without really understanding it.

 The Book of Dzyan may be grasped only through meditation, an immersion in the steady stream of universal ideation. Indeed, the wisdom, magic and growth that it reveals and embodies are themselves aspects of meditation in the highest sense. This may be seen through reflection upon one of the oldest symbols for the process of creation, wherein the cosmos is said to be gestated out of the meditative ideation of the Logos. In fact, the deepest possible meditation pursued by the student of Dzyan and the supernal creative activity of the Logos are not merely similar, but identical. Hence, the Stanzas offer innumerable keys to the mystical nature of meditation. But all too often, through a dwarfed and separative sense of self, students exteriorize the grand processes intimated in the Stanzas. Mistaking an intellectual formalism for Buddhic understanding, they unwittingly subvert themselves and fail to develop a line of life's meditation. But one who is willing to set aside aimless analytic speculation, and to begin in earnest generating a line of meditation that transects the cycle of one's life from birth to death, may put to good use the mysterious symbolism of the Stanzas.

The great mother lay with and the and the , the second and the in her bosom, ready to bring them forth, the valiant sons of the (or 4,320,000, the Cycle) whose two elders are the and the (point).

 In this mystical representation of the origin of the cosmos, Aditi is shown as containing the prototypical divine principles, the triad, the line and the square, each of which becomes the next and all of which are one with each other. This refers to the mystery of the Tetraktys, the unity of the four forms of Vach, the underlying unity of the triple Logoi, the inseparability of Mulaprakriti, Purusha and Prakriti, and the divine origin of the sacred formless square equivalent to the Host of the Kumaras. The Commentary then speaks of the second line and the five-pointed star, which are distinct from the three, the one and the four, but are still contained in Aditi-Vach. Then in the phrase "bring them forth", it speaks of the four, the three and the two, the archetypal basis of all cyclic existence, depicting them as the sons of two elders, which are the circle and the point. Instead of engaging in tortuous geometric and numerical speculations, one may deeply ponder upon the circle and the point.

 In meditation one may expand the circle, while reducing one's sense of identity to a point. Thus one may begin to meditate truly upon the point in the circle. Once established in this discipline, one may proceed deeper and deeper, always moving towards the ideal of the circle with centre everywhere and circumference nowhere. As one does this, the depths of one's consciousness will increase, giving a detachment from the detailed events of time and allowing a growing insight into the archetypal forms that are eternally inscribed upon every cycle.

 The sequence of figures — the triangle, the line, the square, the second line and the five-pointed star – is self-evidently connected with p, 3.1415, the ratio of the circumference of the circle to its diameter. Given a point and a circle, the numbers and figures of p follow immediately in a geometrical context; in meta-geometry, p represents the synthesis, or the host unified in the Logos and the point. Here in the relationship between Shabdabrahman and the heavenly hosts of hierarchies active in cyclic manifestation, a vital and valuable key is given to creativity and magic through meditation. Anyone seriously engaged in using this key will hardly speak about it. But everyone is invited to deepen reverence for mystic nature and its magical modes, and to attempt to understand what meditation upon this most primordial and archetypal process would be like. Because it is the most primordial process in nature, it can endlessly repeat and re-enact itself, for it is the very process of creation. There can be no true human creativity outside this process, and it is the living basis of all human magic through meditation. Beginners need not worry about their incapacity or unreadiness, but should instead spend their lives adoring its practitioners and masters. Even such authentic adoration partakes of the process.

 The one archetypal process of creation is re-enacted in every cycle of manifested life. From a metaphysical standpoint events in time are all equally distant from eternity. Meta-psychologically, this distance is a function of one's degree of spiritual consciousness, dwindling to zero in the case of the Mahatma. Instead of looking back to distant events in the dawn of manifestation, Mahatmas continuously meditate and ideate in that very dawn, imparting its energies directly and unmodified to the differentiated worlds of cyclic existence.

 At the beginning of every cycle of 4,320,000, the Seven (or, as some nations had it, eight) great gods, descended to establish the new order of things and give the impetus to the new cycle. That eighth god was the unifying Circle or LOGOS, separated and made distinct from its host, in exoteric dogma, just as the three divine hypostases of the ancient Greeks are now considered in the Churches as three distinct personae. "The MIGHTY ONES perform their great works, and leave behind them everlasting monuments to commemorate their visit, every time they penetrate within our mayavic veil (atmosphere)," says a Commentary.

Ibid., 434-435

 From the highest standpoint, once the keynote of a cycle is struck, once its foundations are correctly laid, the entire work of that cycle is finished. In the present cycle, the Avataric impulse given between 1963 and 1968 contained in itself the entire modulus of the Work. What is done in this highest sense ever recurs, summoning the hierarchies in a specific manner for untold millennia to come. The impregnable foundations for the civilization of the future were laid around the climacteric of this century through Akashic magic. This century itself is significant only because it represents the coda of a dark story started more than two thousand years ago and the beginning of a cycle that will finally and irreversibly overcome the needless dragging out of old Atlantean karma generated over five million years. This is the true meaning of the New Cycle. So powerful is this shift in the Akashic matrix of the world that men and women everywhere who become, in some degree, masters of adoration will, unknown to themselves, become initiated in ways that affect their subtler vestures.

 Slowly, over the coming centuries, the consciousness of children will shift, the classes of human souls in incarnation will alter. Gradually, the regressive karma of Atlantean ingratitude will be displaced, and orphan humanity will rediscover its true spiritual ancestors. Right perception of these Kumaric progenitors cannot come through any form of external worship but only through deep meditation and an increased capacity to perceive formless spiritual essences. The primordial seven are, at root, like the Ah-Hi and Oeaohoo. Their secret names are unpronounceable, although their mystery names go back to the monosyllabic vowel speech of the Third Root Race, which was the language of incantation and invocation among the highest magicians in the great mystery temples. These names are like living abstract essences, like rays of light or pure colours. Many people who have either naturally or unnaturally entered the psychic realm recognize that there is much more to the spectrum than is revealed by physical sight. But the perception of pure colour in meditation far transcends the psychic realm and can only be compared with perceiving, clearly and distinctively, the fourteen colours of the rainbow or registering fourteen different notes on the piano at once. Yet the physical separation between sound and colour is an illusion.

 In order to develop the subtle senses necessary for the perception of formless spiritual essences, one must learn to see all of the seven colours in each of the seven primary colours, and to hear all of the seven notes in each of the primary notes. Sometimes people experience such nuances when they hear the quarter tones in Indian music or the subtle harmonies of Bach's fugues. But unfortunately, they do not comprehend the experience, because their consciousness is too bound up with the lower mind. Worse still, they begin to talk about their experience and so corrupt it completely. It is only appropriate to speak of something which one has put to work ethically in one's life. In the humanity of the future this will be one of the common-sense rules of life.

 In the present and in the centuries leading up to the major transformation in consciousness that is now taking place, there have been many false starts and inverted expectations. Whilst the ideal of universal and lifelong learning has central relevance to the future, the system of mass education that has developed is its antithesis. It has brought about the breakdown of old feudal structures, particularly their concern with lifelong loyalty, craftsmanship, humble apprenticeship to a master. The Renaissance affirmation of the dignity of man had nothing to do with the noisy pseudo-egalitarianism of the present, in which almost everyone proclaims an opinion on everything. The anticipations and stirrings in the Akasha have quickened the lunar tendencies in human beings, trapping the unwary in a process of lunar homogenization and ferment. Those who, under karma, were unwise enough not to preserve their balance when they felt the new inward promptings have been made by Nature to subserve the purely lunar function of producing a new kind of physical man.

 As this preparatory work draws to its conclusion, solar beings will descend. These beings will be quiet as the Grand Canyon. They will speak very little and have nothing to do with external appearances. They will not be disguised from each other, but will remain invisible to those who persist in being chelas to Madison Avenue and Hollywood or pseudo-initiates in junior high school. In the last century, William Q. Judge spoke of a time when America will develop a coffee-coloured civilization. What is taking place in America already is only a small portion of that which is taking place throughout the globe, and even this is a re-enactment of what has happened again and again throughout evolution. In every such cycle, especially in Kali Yuga, the tail tends to wag the dog at first, the lunar seems to obscure the solar. But the lunar is necessary for the homogenization and aggregation of lives on the lower planes. As with the original lighting-up of Manas over eighteen million years ago, the lunar vestures must be prepared before the solar descent can take place.

 Abstract differences of degree and plane apply to the solar hosts and to the Kumaric progenitors of the spiritual Self. Because the Kumaras have to do with formless essences, they are ultimately connected with the Ah-Hi, but as the Ah-Hi, they could not give Manas. It was only when the Ah-Hi descended to the third plane that there could be Mahat and Manas. Only then could they become Manasaputras, capable of informing and entering into the ethereal vestures of human beings. These differentiations are intimated, indeed embodied for Initiates, in sacred mantrams, such as the fourfold Pranava, the AUM with its different pronunciations, and the Vyahritis or Om, Bhur, Bhuva, Swar. The most potent mantrams were always given in secret, never to be revealed, for they conveyed profound mysteries such as the true relation between Saturn and the sun. All great mantrams are means of tapping the subtle energies of the primordial seven, the magical potencies of formless essences. To approach magical wisdom, human beings must go beyond conventional conceptions of good and evil, rooting themselves in pure selflessness as men and women of meditation and effortless compassion. They must become invulnerable to insecurity and remain steadfast in their vows.

 When human beings become true individuals and enjoyers of meditation, they become capable in contemplation of entering the sanctuary of the heart. First stabilizing consciousness at the hidden point between the eyes, they may then greet the lustrous point within the heart, connecting the two as a preparation for the ascent inwards and upwards towards that which is beyond all the centres. To do this in fact and in consciousness is to restore one's relationship to the Kumaras and to the realm of subtle spiritual energies which can only be experienced by becoming a person of silence. Impervious to sympathy games, never speaking to a single person about one's resolves, only talking out of necessity, one must generate the courage to go into the darkness, and to confront the demons within. To do so is to help more human beings than any mode of exoteric action can. If one is sincere in one's resolve, the Kumaras will help.

 The Kumaras, who are the mind-born sons of Brahma-Rudra or Shiva, are the higher Prajapati, the progenitors of the true spiritual Self of man. Theirs is the abstract power of intelligent self-conscious creation; the lower powers of creativity, represented by the hosts of the lunar Pitris, are only pale shadowy reflections. One's true heredity as a human being has nothing to do with one's father or mother on the physical plane. The physical form, which we owe to our parents, is only the chariot or garment of the real man. A human being's authentic heredity has to do with the karana sharira, the invisible permanent vesture transcending the cycles of birth and death. All the vestures of a human being come from progenitors, even though they are called human principles. Every form employed in living Nature must have its origin in classes of lives which can be assigned to hierarchies underlying the vestures and connected with different classes of progenitors. The Kumaras are the source of the true invisible spiritual vesture of every human being, a vesture which proceeds from a germ, just as the physical body is gestated in the embryo out of what initially resembles a germ. So too on the higher plane, the karana sharira emanates out of a germ, which is referred to mystically as the ancestral germ.

 All human beings may be divided into seven broad sets which go back over eighteen million years to ancestors present at the lighting-up of Manas. Though the subject of spiritual heredity is very deep and difficult, one who fulfils the qualifications and needs that knowledge will be instructed by the Guru in what he is meant to know about numbers, days or planets. But in this age only a handful develop to the point where they need that kind of knowledge. Although and because a vast amount of Teaching has been delivered, helping to loosen and challenge old structures, the unwary imagine they know a good deal more than they really know. Although many talk about spiritual rays and invisible beings, true knowledge of these mysteries is preserved in silence and secrecy. Any human being who has abused such knowledge has condemned himself or herself to the extremely difficult task of working back to that primordial posture of initiation. Over eighteen million years many human beings are in this position, finding nothing else to do but painstakingly and thoroughly undo their misdeeds of the past. As Jesus taught, not one iota of the law shall pass away.

 Whatever one's sins and mistakes, the rectification of one's life is akin to a rediscovery of innocence, a re-entry into the child state. Purity can be recovered, first of all, by freedom from tortuous analysis and narcissism. All schemes of self-reform that rely upon self-assertion and confession only aggravate the problem. One's real task is to see that there is no problem, that one must forget oneself. One must, in short, become like a child, learning to listen to other people, smiling at others, doing one's own work, and refusing to create problems for oneself. Those who are encouraged to talk about themselves when ill only become more ill. Lunar usurpers begin to drive the solar forces farther and farther from their consciousness. In the spiritual life, where every soul is placed on probation the moment he or she approaches the Teachings, self-concern is even more fatal. The moment one anticipates the end of one's probation, the period of one's probation is enormously extended. Such is the law, and one must never forget that behind the Avatar are mathematical magicians called Mahatmas. Acting with infallible precision, they invite the approach of every aspiring soul in direct proportion to his or her degree of self-forgetfulness.

 At the head of the host of virgin ascetics called the Kumaras stands Maha Shiva, the Mahayogin, the supreme exemplar of effortless asceticism and the highest creative meditation.

 Siva-Rudra is the Destroyer, as Vishnu is the preserver; and both are the regenerators of spiritual as well as of physical nature. To live as a plant, the seed must die. To live as a conscious entity in the Eternity, the passions and senses of man must first DIE before his body does. "To live is to die and to die is to live," has been too little understood in the West. Siva, the destroyer, is the creator and the Saviour of Spiritual man, as he is the good gardener of nature. lie weeds out the plants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of the physical, to call to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man.

Ibid., 459

Shiva is the destroyer of passions and of the physical senses, which are constant impediments to the development of higher spiritual perceptions and to the growth of the inner spiritual man. The more desperately a human being tries to stave off ageing, the more rapidly Shiva will destroy that being. Shiva wants every human being to grow older and to die, so that by suffering he may learn that there is no other true dharma for a human being than to overcome illusion. Nature shows this all the time. If a plant is to grow, the seed must die, and if there is to be fruit for the harvest and for succeeding years, the plant must die. To live as a conscious entity in eternity, one must kill out tanha, the powerful force impelling beings into involuntary reincarnation. If no self-conscious effort is made during life to overcome this force, then even the small element of choice that one might have had at the moment of death is weakened. Nothing is sadder than to see the old encouraged to cling to life and to fear death. This corrupting tendency is derived from the decadent period of fallen Egyptian civilization. Whether disguised as pseudo-science or pseudo-medicine or pseudo-religion, it is nothing more than a piteous selfishness bound up with the delusion of carnal immortality.

 To live as a conscious human being is to make more room for others, and this is what the present cycle is intended to teach. Every human being must come to live in the recognition that other and finer human beings will follow him. This lesson is particularly acute in the so-called modern civilization of the West, with its false and illusive conceptions of history and progress. Every time the lesson of gratitude to ancestors and benefactors has been taught over the last centuries, it has been forgotten. It is not enough to give ritual thanks one day each year. One must learn ceaseless gratitude to ancestors and a continuous sense of obligation to descendants. This does not involve transferring one's anxieties onto children. They should rather be greeted as souls and shown by example how joyous true discipline can be. Otherwise, by the age of thirteen, children will become mother superiors, witches, pontificators, constantly engaged in passing judgements. This is awful enough amongst those who have never had the advantage of association with Gupta Vidya; those who know something of its pristine philosophy and persist in gossip and image-crippling are on the way to becoming grey magicians and worse. Jesus said it all two thousand years ago, but millions of people since then, twisting and abusing his name, failed to take in the central lesson.

 To live is to die, to make more room for others. One must age gracefully, must start letting go by the age of twenty-eight, if one wants to learn how to do so at the moment of death. One must learn to cooperate with Shiva, the destroyer, who is also the creator and saviour of spiritual man, the good gardener of nature. Through this cooperation will come a sifting of the unnecessary, a cleansing of thought, a rhythm of breathing. It will become easier to focus the mind. The more one develops a strong sense of external duty, the more one can cultivate a living awareness of the internal necessities of the soul. Long before one is prepared to engage in direct occult training, with its magical wisdom and spiritual creativity, one must learn to act economically, lightly and precisely, in a manner that refines one's spiritual nature and diffuses benevolence.

 By becoming a devotee of Shiva the soul has a better chance to connect with the mind, to use the mind as a creative instrument, and to govern the body as a faithful vehicle. One will know that the soul is at work through the heart when one's capacity for loving others grows to such an extent that one has no thought of oneself. There will be a gradual diminution of the passions and an increase in the perceptions of the spiritual man. Contemporary fascination with Tantra is merely a way of fighting celibacy. Those caught up in it will not develop the Third Eye; they will instead be incinerated, for there is no fooling around in the realm of spiritual fire. Go slow, but do not compensate. Shiva teaches the anchorite to be totally honest, he is the friend of that in oneself which is cheerfully modest but morally courageous.

 Everyone is invited, through meditation, contemplation and adoration to enjoy the universe, to savour the Akashic waters of space, to gaze upon the depths of the midnight sky. But while appreciating all of these, one must seek to reach beyond them to the Nameless and Ineffable. The more one does so, the more one will gain an inward awareness of the reality of the divine ocean of radiant wisdom. One will become a person whose tastes change, who is free of externals, who has become inwardly wide awake. In this spiritual wakefulness one will grow in reverence for the wisdom, the magic and the potential of growth sacrificially offered by the Kumaras to every living atom in resonant space. This is the restoration of the pristine splendour of the Kumaras, the progressive realization of the Logos in the cosmos and the God in man.

Hermes, November 1983
by Raghavan Iyer