Not only might this be due to climactic change, but possibly due to continental movement or pole shift. If our axis was perpendicular to our orbital plane, there would be no seasons, and the polar region would have a perpetual spring, 24 hour daylight with the sun traveling around the horizon. A major pole shift to the current position from, say the area of Greece, would have had the equator running through the current polar area, down the Rocky Mountains, and the Andes.
There are many scenarios that would account for wooly mamoths in Siberia and such. It's just hard to tell from the SD how the antediluvian continents appeared and disappeared. Everything HPB says, we figure from the current geography and pole position.

Arctic Hippos

Jon,

The continents have been through many changes in the last several millions of years. Entire civilizations have disappeared, and archaeologissts know nothing about them.

Have you heard about the sunken city near Japan?

http://www.cyberspaceorbit.com/phikent/japan/japan.html

It is a clue to an entirely forgotten continent and civilization.

There is a process described in the relatively new science of plate tectonics, where one continental plate is forced beneath another (subduction). The geologists describe this as an incredibly slow process. The stresses build and are released periodically in events called earthquakes.
Who is to say that this same process could not occur quickly over great areas of a continent every now and then, due to some tidal force perhaps, or just because it hit a "slick" spot. An event like this would grind everything on the surface into dust, and might take only a matter of days or weeks.

Another possibility might be that the entire crust of the planet has slipped over the (not so spherical) mantle, raising seafloors, and sinking continents, all the while the axis (of the core and mantle) remaining in place.

Either scenario would send the oceans racing to stabilize the sealevel, making a mess of things just about everywhere.

Causes for events such as these would come from not just the physical environment, as we learn in Theosophy.

Btw, the pics from Japan are similar to those of the seafloor off Bimini.

Hey Jon_k

Here is a quote from chapter 25 by the author Gottfried de Purucker of the Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy on the subject of Changing of continents.
The quote is sort of near the bottom.
http://www.theosociety.org/pasadena/fund/fund-25.htm

Around the mid point of the 6th Root Race Procreation by sex (No more males or females but a sexless being) will become obsolete we will at first create our offspring by some special yoga or mediatation. The 7th Root Race will have the power to bring into existance their offspring by their mind and at will by using their imagination.

Since Humanity at the present is the 5th root race at the midpoint of the 4th round. A Root Race to the uninitiatied is a Type of Humanity that we currently are and we are moving up the Luminous Arc to become more and more like our Progenitor or One of the Gods who we emanated from of this Hierarchy. Who we will all some day will be such a Progenitor are selfs in becoming a SelfConcious God and in turn emanate lesser beings then are selfs and watch over our offspring. But we have a long way to go before that will happen untill we have succesfully run the race of moving up through the luminious Arc to become more divine and immortal.


I am currently on Chapter 31 and it is getting interesting the further I go. Many times I have to stop and let my imagination go and have an open mind to try to understand from a human point of view using their analogy and things us Humans can relate to of trying to grasp the Big Picture of the True Reality as it should be understood by us seekers of truth which are understanding is somewhat limited. But as we become more and more awakened to the things of Spirit we will begin to understand the True nature of our existance and are place in the Kosmos with more clarity and a deeper understanding then we know now.

You know if I tried to describe what my view on life is and the Kosmos from a theosophical point of view with common folk they probably say Doug what kind of Dope have you been smoking. :D

Doug

Doug,

You said,

"... we are moving up the Luminous Arc to become more and more like our Progenitor or One of the Gods who we emanated from of this [Hierarchy]. Who we ... all some day will be such a Progenitor are selfs in becoming a SelfConcious God and in turn emanate lesser beings then are selfs and watch over [our] offspring."

--> I am reminded of a quote I read just today.

"The Celestial Hierarchy of the present Manvatara will find itself transferred in the next cycle of life into higher, superior worlds, and will make room for a new hierarchy, composed of the elect ones of our mankind. Being is an endless cycle within the one absolute eternity, wherein move numberless inner cycles finite and conditioned." (SD vol 1 pp 221-222)

--> It seems like an endless parade of Life Waves -- one humanity moves on, just in time for another humanity to take its place.

Everything either was or will be MAN.

The kingdoms are like rungs on a ladder, each moving up one rung each manvantara.

But MAN is a special rung, a crucial turning point in the development of the monad. It is in the development of the Human Kingdom that the potency of manas is realized. It is the monad's first opportunity to look back at itself. Its first opportunity to ask "Who am I?" "Where did I come from?" and "What is my place in the universe?"

Its first opportunity to become a conscious co-creator. And its first responsibility for its own growth.

Being human is a tremendous privilege and responsibility.

Jon,

You said,

"But MAN is a special rung, a crucial turning point in the development of the monad."

--> I agree. Humanity is the key to the whole process. Your words immediately reminded me of Annie Besant's words in a previous post of mine.

We sometimes hear the question, "Why does God allow so much evil in the world?" The author quoted below is saying that we must freely choose to be good, and at the next level of existence only good people will be allowed in. We must allow people here at this level to be good or bad, so they can make that choice freely:

"And then the question arises - as I know it arises in many minds, for it has been put to me both in the East and in the West over and over again - why so much difficulty in the evolution, why so much apparent failure in the working, why should men go wrong so much before they go right, why should they run after the evil that degrades them instead of following the good that would ennoble them? Was it not possible for the LOGOS of our universe, for the Devas who are His Agents, for the great Manus who came to guide our infant humanity - was it not possible for Them to plan so that there might be no such apparent failure in the working out? Was it not possible for Them to guide so that the road might have been a straight and direct one instead of so devious, so circuitous?

"Here comes the point that makes the evolution of humanity so difficult, having in view the object which is to be gained. Easy in truth would it have been to have made a humanity that might have been perfect, easy to have so guided its dawning powers that those powers might have travelled towards what we call the good continually, and never have turned aside towards what we call evil. But what would have been the condition of such an easy accomplish­ment? It must have been that man would have been an automaton, moved by a compelling force without him which imperiously laid upon him a law which he was compelled to fulfil, from which he could not escape. The mineral world is under such a law; the affinities that bind atom to atom obey such an imperious com­pulsion. But as we rise higher we find greater and greater freedom gradually making its appearance, until in man we see a spontaneous energy, a freedom of choice, which is really the dawning manifestation of the God, of the Self, which is beginning to show itself through man. And the object, the goal which was to be attained, was not to make automata who should blindly follow a path sketched out for their treading, but to make a reflection of the LOGOS Himself, to make a mighty assemblage of wise and perfected men who should choose the best because they know and understand it, who should reject the worst because by experience they have learnt its inadequacy and the sorrow to which it leads. So that in the universe of the future, as amongst all the great Ones who are guiding the universe of today, there should be unity gained by consensus of wills, which have become one again by knowledge and by choice, which move with a single purpose because they know the whole, which are identical with the Law because they have learned that the Law is good, who choose to be one with the Law not by an outside compulsion, but by an inner acquiescence. Thus in that universe of the future there will be one Law, as there is in the present, carried out by means of Those who are the Law by the unity of Their purpose, the unity of Their knowledge, the unity of Their power - not a blind and unconscious Law, but an assemblage of living beings who are the Law, having become divine. There is no other road by which such goal might be reached, by which the free­will of the many should reunite into the one great Nature and the one great Law, save a process in which experience should be garnered, in which evil should be known as well as good, failure as well as triumph. Thus men become Gods, and because of the experience that lies behind them, they will, they think, they feel, the same."


Besant, Annie, The Path of Discipleship, paragraphs 3-4 (online)
http://www.anandgholap.net/Path_Of_Discipleship-AB.htm

Besant, Annie, The Path of Discipleship, pages 9-11 (hardcopy)
http://www.questbooks.net/title.cfm?bookid=82

Jon,

Here is another quote regarding the unique position of humanity in the Ladder of Life.

[The Dhyani-Chohan] “... are perfected, when not incipient, men; and differ morally from the terrestrial human beings on their higher (less material) spheres, only in that they are devoid of the feeling of personality and of the human emotional nature — two purely earthly characteristics. The former, or the ‘perfected,’ have become free from those feelings, because -a- they have no longer fleshly bodies — an ever-numbing weight on the Soul; and -b- the pure spiritual element being left untrammelled and more free, they are less influenced by maya than man can ever be, unless he is an adept who keeps his two personalities — the spiritual and the physical — entirely separated. The incipient monads, having never had terrestrial bodies¹ yet, can have no sense of personality or EGO-ism². That which is meant by ‘personality,’ being a limitation and a relation, or, as defined by Coleridge, ‘individuality existing in itself but with a nature as a ground,’ the term cannot of course be applied to non-human entities; but, as a fact insisted upon by generations of Seers, none of these Beings, high or low, have either individuality or personality as separate Entities, i.e., they have no individuality in the sense in which a man says, ‘I am myself and no one else;’ in other words, they are conscious of no such distinct separateness as men and things have on earth. Individuality is the characteristic of their respective hierarchies, not of their units; and these characteristics vary only with the degree of the plane to which those hierarchies belong: the nearer to the region of Homogeneity and the One Divine, the purer and the less accentuated that individuality in the Hierarchy. They are finite, in all respects, with the exception of their higher principles — the immortal sparks reflecting the universal divine flame — individualized and separated only on the spheres of Illusion by a differentiation as illusive as the rest. They are ‘Living Ones,’ because they are the streams projected on the Kosmic screen of illusion from the ABSOLUTE LIFE; beings in whom life cannot become extinct, before the fire of ignorance is extinct in those who sense these ‘Lives.’ Having sprung into being under the quickening influence of the uncreated beam, the reflection of the great Central Sun that radiates on the shores of the river of Life, it is the inner principle in them which belongs to the waters of immortality, while its differentiated clothing is as perishable as man's body.” (Secret Doctrine vol 1 pp. 275-276)

¹ “The phrase ‘incipient monads, having never had terrestrial bodies’ refers to the Monads who have not yet come into physicalized manifestation in terrestrial vehicles, thus referring to the three Elemental Kingdoms, who belong to the first stages on the Ladder of Life.” (Geoffry Barborka, The Divine Plan, p. 74)

² “...the sense of Egoism, or the ‘I-making faculty,’ equivalent to Ahamkara, is brought about by means of of the Kama-principle in conjunction with the Manas-principle, excluding Buddhi.” (Geoffry Barborka, The Divine Plan, p. 75)

~~~

Animals, plants, minerals, and Elementals have no Manas-principle, so they cannot have an "I am" experience. Dhyani-Chohans have awakened the Buddhic-principle, so they do not have the sense of separateness that humanity has. Truly, humanity is unique in the Ladder of Life.