Prehistory

“There have been in the long past great and beautiful civilisations, perhaps as advanced materially as ours. Looked at from a certain standpoint the most modern might seem to be only a repetition of the most ancient cultures, and yet one cannot say that there has been no progress anywhere. An inner progress at least has been achieved and a greater readiness to respond to the higher consciousness has been born into the material parts. It has been necessary to do over and over again the same things, because what was attempted was never sufficiently done; but each time it has come nearer to being adequately done. When we practise an exercise over and over again we seem to be only repeating the same thing always, but still the accumulative result is some effective change.
         The mistake is to look at these things through the dimensions of the human consciousness, for so seen these deep and vast movements seem inexplicable. It is dangerous to try to explain or understand them with the limited mental intelligence. That is the reason why philosophy has always failed to unveil the secret of things; it is because it has tried to fit the universe into the size of the human mind.”

(Medhananda:) “The era we call the Paleolithic was also Heliolithic – a time of splendour when our ancestors, whom we imagine more primitive than ourselves, had attained the summit of self-knowledge. It was the ‘Satya Yuga’ – the Age of Truth. That is something that belongs to the universe, and returns from time to time. It is the golden age, when humanity has no need of books or schools or temples. That was one of the loveliest discoveries I ever made, and in a way experienced, that the Satya Yuga has no need of temples because everywhere is a temple.
         That is plenitude. A man can walk completely naked in Nature, trembling with joy at everything he sees and everything he touches. That is the true human condition. Then there is no technology because there is no need for it. One feels no need to make anything at all in that plenitude of being. ...
         Of course there are intermediary periods, and many yugas between the Satya Yuga and the Kali Yuga. But this is the result of a sort of shadow in man, that makes him find the Satya Yuga a bit boring. He enjoys disorder, drama, tragedy. Even the most beautiful book about butterflies, after you have looked at it for some time, you have seen enough.
         Yet it is never a total and absolute repetition, continuing from Satya Yuga to Satya Yuga. There is repetition, but the great teachers of humanity always come to bring in something new, absolutely marvellous new steps. Sri Aurobindo says so.”

(Notes on images seen in March 1914, Record of Yoga)

“A series of images and a number of intimations have been given yesterday in the chitra-drishti to illustrate the history of the first two Manwantaras & the vicissitudes through which the human idea has gone in the course of these unnumbered ages. It is not at all surprising that there should be no relics of those vicissitudes in the strata of the present earth; for the present earth is not the soil of the planet as it was in the earliest Manwantaras. The detritions, the upheavals, the convulsions, the changes that it has undergone cannot be estimated by the imaginative & summary methods of the modern geologists, men who think themselves advanced & masters of knowledge, but are only infants & babblers in their own sciences. It is unnecessary to go at present into the scene or habitat of the incidents & peoples shown in the drishti. The facts are sufficient.
         The first image was that of a young & beautiful woman fleeing, holding two children by either hand, preceded by a third though this was not clearly seen and followed by a little child, a girl with her cloth in her hand. All are of the female sex. In their flight they have upset a handsome & well-dressed young man, who was also fleeing across the line of their flight and now lies sprawling on his back. Behind the woman & her girls an elderly & bearded savage, naked & armed with some kind of weapon, runs at a distance of not many yards and but for the accident of the upset would soon overtake the fugitives. The second image showed the young man still supine with the savage upon him threatening him fiercely with his weapon, but the bhava shows that not slaughter, but prisoners & slaves are the object of the raid. The young man is evidently taken prisoner by the pursuer who has turned aside from the women to this, possibly, more valuable booty. In the third image the little girl of the first is seen captured by a young & handsome barbarian who has managed to comfort and soothe her & is persuading her to lead him to the secret refuge of the fugitives. By this device, it is now indicated, he is able to discover this refuge & capture the whole colony of the civilised people. The success raises him to the rank of a great chief among his people, for it is his section of the raiders who make the victory really profitable. The chitra-lipi Indigenous just given shows that these barbarians are the original inhabitants of the country, the others colonists & conquerors. It is intimated by the vijnana that both assailants & assailed are in the Pashu stage & people of the first or second Manu, but the civilised have reached a kind of Devahood of the Gandharva type, the savages are a reappearance of the Asura Rakshasa type of Pashu brought back into a more advanced age in order to re-invigorate the over-refined type that has been evolved. The young chief of the image is a sort of Caesar-Augustus or Alaric of the barbarians. He takes the lead of their revolt which is at first a disordered movement of indignation (lipi Indignation alternating with indigenous), systematises it, conquers & enslaves the Gandharvas, learns from them their civilisation and modifies it by the barbarian manners. The new race evolved finally dominates the then world & fixes the next type of the Pashu evolution.
         But who are these Pashus? For this is not the first pratikalpa of the Pashus, but the sixth of the Asuras, and it is indicated that none of these visions belong to any other pratikalpa than the present. It follows that even these savages cannot be pure Pashus, but Asuras or Asura Rakshasas starting from the Pashu stage, so far as the Asura can go back to that stage, and fulfilling the possibilities of a sort of Pashu-Asura before evolving his Asurahood in the higher types & arriving & shooting beyond the pure Asura. This is an important modification. It follows that each type of the Dashagavas goes, within the mould of his own type, through all the ten gávas from the Pashu to the Siddhadeva. The Pashu-Asura will be different from the pure Pashu or the Pashu Deva, because he will always be first & characteristically an Asura, but he will weigh from the buddhi on the bodily experiences as Pashu, on the vijnana experiences as Deva & so in each type according to its particular field of activity. The Deva will do it, instead, from the vijnana, & the difference of leverage & point of action will make an immense difference both to the character of the activity and its results in the field. Moreover it is clear that the Pashu Asura goes also through the various types within his mixed Pashuhood & Asurahood before he passes to the Pisacha-Asura, who has to undergo a similar development. The great variety of types that will result from this evolutionary system, is evident.”

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See also

• Ages
• The Earth's memory
• Evolution