• . . . . read for "into which Man degenerated," "the prototypes which man shed in the course of his astral developments," and an aspect of the true esoteric solution is before us.
• So far as our present Fourth Round terrestrial period is concerned, the mammalian fauna are alone to be regarded as traceable to prototypes shed by Man.
• The amphibia, birds, reptiles, fishes, etc., are the resultants of the Third Round, astral fossil forms stored up in the auric envelope of the Earth and projected into physical objectivity subsequent to the deposition of the first Laurentian rocks. (2500mya)
• "Evolution" has to deal with the progressive modifications, which palæontology shows to have affected the lower animal and vegetable kingdoms in the course of geological time. It does not, and from the nature of things cannot, touch on the subject of the pre-physical types which served as the basis for future differentiation.
• The mammalia, whose first traces are discovered in the marsupials of the Triassic rocks of the Secondary Period, were evolved from purely astral progenitors contemporary with the Second Race.
• They are thus post-Human, and, consequently, it is easy to account for the general resemblance between their embryonic stages and those of Man, who necessarily embraces in himself and epitomizes in his development the features of the group he originated. (all above quotes, SD p.684
• . . . . . in this connection the esoteric teaching which tells us of Man having had in the Third Round a GIGANTIC APE-LIKE FORM on the astral plane. And similarly at the close of the Third Race in this Round. Thus it accounts for the human features of the apes, especially of the later anthropoids-apart from the fact that these latter preserve by Heredity a resemblance to their Atlanto-Lemurian sires. (SD p.688)

Return to - The Key Theosophical Statement

Or forward to the next page - The Differences between Men and Apes