Of all the accounts given in the mysterious Book of Dzyan, none is stranger than the account in anthropogenesis of the modes of birth of the early humanities. The first humanity or root-race, ethereal and not yet physical, is referred to as the “boneless” and called the “shadows” (chhāyā). In this humanity, reproduction is described as taking place without parents. So with reference to their mode of birth, they are called the “self-born.” In the second humanity, somewhat more condensed but still amorphous, reproduction is pictorially described as “budding.” Using something familiar as a simile, these are called the “sweat-born.” In the first half of the third humanity, humans were becoming actually physical. What were the “drops of sweat” of the second humanity hardened on the outside and became like eggs. Thus this humanity is called the “egg-born.” Up to this point, reproduction was asexual. Now came the separation of the sexes into male and female. From the latter half of the third humanity up to the present fifth humanity, the mode of birth has been the only one known to us, the familiar “womb-born.” Such are the modes of birth taught in the secret Book of Dzyan.

When these stanzas from the Book of Dzyan were published in H. P. Blavatsky’s 1888 book, The Secret Doctrine, no one in the West had heard of anything like this. Not even in our mythologies did we have a story this unusual. It was appreciated by some as a factual account providing access to a fascinating new world, and it was appreciated by others as an imaginary account providing a delightful tale quite as entertaining as any fantasy novel. In both cases, Blavatsky is credited with bringing this out for the first time. But this is true only for most of the world. In India, these modes of birth are mentioned in the sacred writings of all three of its ancient religious traditions: Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.

These modes of birth as found in Buddhism were earlier briefly described in my 1998 article, “The Secret Doctrine: Original Genesis and the Wisdom Tradition” (http://www.easterntradition.org/secret%20doctrine-original%20genesis%20and%20the%20wisdom%20tradition.pdf). As there said (p. 6): “the Abhidharmakosa speaks of the four modes of birth, following the words of the Buddha, as the sweat-born, the egg-born, the womb-born, and the parentless, just as The Secret Doctrine does. But the detailed accounts of the earlier humanities in which these modes of birth took place, found in The Secret Doctrine, are absent in the now existing teachings of Buddhism. Thus Vasubandhu in his auto-commentary, and Yasomitra in his subcommentary, had to scramble to find explanations for these strange ideas. Since the Buddha had spoken of them, they must be true, and now needed to be explained. So the commentators came up with examples from mythology, of stories of individual humans that could be considered to have been egg-born and sweat-born; e.g., Saila and Upasaila were born from the eggs of a crane, and Amrapali was born from the stem of a banana tree. For the parentless, however, they gave the example of the humanity of the first age, or kalpa, in agreement with The Secret Doctrine.Here a fragment of the Wisdom Tradition was apparently preserved.”

These modes of birth as found in Hinduism are recorded in the Aitareya Upanisad, for example, as follows: “those born from an egg, and those born from a womb, and those born from sweat, and those born from a sprout” (3.1.3, translated by S. Radhakrishnan). As may be seen, three of these are the same as in The Secret Doctrine and in Buddhism, while the fourth differs. Rather than the self-born or parentless, we here have those born from a sprout or by sprouting. The Sanskrit term is udbhijja, whose etymological meaning as given by Monier-Williams is “to break or burst through, break out.” This is understood to refer to the sprouting or germinating of plants. Similarly, the egg-born are understood to be birds, etc., and the sweat-born are understood to be lice, etc. This is also true in Buddhism. But in Buddhism, like in The Secret Doctrine, the four modes of birth are also specifically said to apply to humans. I have not yet found such an attribution in Hindu texts. The four modes of birth recorded in the Aitareya Upanisad are merely listed, without saying what they apply to. The inclusion of the sweat-born is a bit of an anomaly among the other modes of birth found in nature, even when we understand it as applying to lice, worms, etc.

These modes of birth as found in Jainism are classified a little differently. The Tattvarthadhigama-sutra gives three modes of birth rather than four (2.31/32). One of these three modes, however, has three types. This is the garbha-ja, usually translated as the womb-born. This is probably better translated as the embryo-born, because its three types are the egg-born, the womb-born proper (jarāyu-ja), and the young of some animals that are born without a placenta. Another of the three modes of birth is the self-born or parentless, like in The Secret Doctrine and in Buddhism. These are here called the upapāta (Svetambara tradition) or upapāda (Digambara tradition). They are the gods and the hell-beings. The category of those born by sprouting, found in Hinduism, is not included among the three modes of birth found in Jainism. The other one of the three is the sammūrchana or sammūrcchima. This is often translated, or rather paraphrased, as spontaneous generation. It is more literally translated as agglutination. This category includes many varieties of lower beings, such as plants, worms, etc., among which are microscopic life-forms, such as amoebas, etc. It also includes a type of human being, not born from a womb or embryo, that is stranger than anything found in the Book of Dzyan. This will be described next.