X: 6

Chapter 10, Verse 6

"The seven great sages
And the four ancient ancestors
Were born from my mind
And received my power.
From them came
All the creatures of this world.

Paramahansa Yogananda:

The Bible refers to Adam and Eve and their descendants as the origin of the human race.  The Hindu scriptures describe the becomings of all creatures from the Prajapatis, the divine "lords of the Universe" born from the mind of God.

The primordial four, mind-born children of the Creator were the initial differentiation of Spirit from which creation evolved.  They are the pure, creative nature of God, Maha-Prakriti, or the Holy Spirit.  These children of the Creator remained ever-pure, innocent youths.

Inherent in Maha-Prakriti, along with God's eternal joy, are the three Gunas, or qualities of creation.  These attributes are equalized in a quiescent state in Maha-Prakriti, but when Rajas, the activating quality, is roused, the other two qualities are quickened and the wheel of creation is set in motion.

Swami Satchidananda:

The seven Rishis represent seven planes of consciousness.  At the highest level are the Devas, the gods; even the Devas are part of creation.  Number two is the human level.  Three is the animals.  Four is the birds.  Five is the reptiles.  Six is the aquatic creatures.  The seventh level is made up of immobile things which are inanimate and stationary.

The creation is divided into the mobile and the immobile.  Certain life forms have mobility.  Others, such as plants, rocks, and metals are immobile.  They don't move by themselves, at least to the naked eye, but even thousands of years ago, consciousness was recognized to be present in the immobile as well as the mobile.  That's why immobile things make up one of the seven categories.

I have described from the upper level down.  Darwin approached it from the lower level moving up.  According to the Hindu scriptures, they are not intrinsically different.  All are created equally; there is no superiority nor inferiority.  That's the difference between Darwin's theory and this understanding.  The Rishis, or great sages, who were in charge of creating various levels of creatures at various levels of consciousness, created them all simultaneously and not one after the other.  It's a misunderstanding for the human being to look down on the so-called beasts, birds, plants, and rocks.  To say that all are created the same way means that the same consciousness pervades everything.

Carl Rogers:

Sometimes people say that if a person were to be what she truly is, she would be releasing the beast in herself.  I feel somewhat amused by this when I take a closer look.  The lion is often a symbol of the "ravenous beast," but what about him?  Unless he has been very much warped by contact with humans, he has a number of endearing qualities.

To be sure, he kills when he is hungry, but he does not go on a wild rampage of killing, nor does he overfeed himself.  He keeps his handsome figure better than some of us.  He is helpless and dependent in his puppyhood, but he moves from that to independence.  He does not cling to dependence.  He is selfish and self-centered in infancy, but in adulthood he shows a reasonable degree of cooperativeness, and feeds, cares for, and protects his young.  He satisfies his sexual desires, but this does not mean he engages in wild and lustful orgies.  His various tendencies and urges have a harmony within him.  He is, in some basic sense, a constructive and trustworthy member of the species Felis Leo.

What I am trying to suggest is that when one is truly and deeply a unique member of the human species, this is not something which should excite horror.  It means instead that one lives fully and openly the complex process of being one of the most widely sensitive, responsive, and creative creatures on the Planet.  Fully to be one's own uniqueness as a human being is not, in my experience, a process to be labeled "bad."  More appropriate words might be that it is a positive, constructive, and trustworthy process.