To add to Nick's commentary on Theosophical teaching ... consider that physical mankind is said to have an origin on this planet of ~18 million years ago. At that point, there was only one gender, and the Bible specifies this:
`male-and-female He created them.' One can find this illustrated or depicted quite plainly in Sumerian or Babylonian reliefs.
The proportions of the first physical beings were enormous in comparison with today's dimensions. I have never figured out if 20 feet was a more reasonable figure, or if it's actually something like 200 feet. However, the occult records suggest that before the Taliban exploded the statues at Bamiyan, we could gain an indication from them ... of Humanity's original proportions. The statues were
apparently of Buddhas, but this is explained as being only the repair work of later caretakers, as the Atlanteans would have been those who originally built such statues ... hundreds of thousands of years ago, presumably. Those who rebuilt these statues understandably impressed them with their own styles, such as the drooping ears of the Buddha, etc.
At any rate, prior to 18 million years ago, Humanity did exist on planet Earth, but our evolution was taking place in the
astral plane, as Nick mentions ... and in the etheric portions of the physical plane, invisible to normal sight. It was a momentous occasion when physical incarnation was finally made possible, and I seem to recall that this took something like 3 million years (from 21-18 million years ago) to accomplish!
Anyone who wishes to learn further about the
`creating of astral and physical man in the image of the Divine' may wish to also investigate the Greek term
Augoeides. There is scant information
on Wikipedia, with a couple of links elsewhere ... but I have never been able to find much written on this subject, and instead have always sought to
intuit its proper meaning. The word itself seems to mean "luminous body" ...
I am adding something from the
Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary of G. de Purucker to help clarify where I get my figures for the statues that were destroyed in Afghanistan:
Bamian, Statues of
Five colossal statues representing the height of the early human races, cut in rock by initiates of the late fourth and the fifth root-races to preserve for posterity a physical record of the height of the early races, located near Bamian (Bamiyan or Bamian), a small town in Afghanistan. The largest statue, 173 feet high, represents the first ethereal root-race of mankind. The next statue, 120 feet tall, represents the sweat-born or second root-race. The third statue, 60 feet high, immortalizes the third rootrace. The fourth, representing the fourth root-race or Atlanteans, is 27 feet high. The fifth statue is only a little larger than the average tall man of today, and represents our present fifth root-race (cf SD 2:337-40).
So you see, when the Biblical account references giants, they really weren't kidding. They would have been cyclopean. Later, much more recent testimony includes that of the bed of such-and-such a king ... which is suggestive, but far short of the figures above, from an even earlier epoch. Specifically, Og was the last of the Rephaim [giants] ... and his bed was 9 cubits by 4 cubits ... which is 13.5' x 6'. etc. etc.
