The monuments of the past—temples, caves, pillars—are a country's glory. Archaeological excavations from time to time bring to light remnants of old structures and well-laid-out cities. Everywhere we observe the unearthing of monuments belonging to the pre-historic ages. Where and how did the men of old learn the art of building? What is the story of the evolution of Architecture? Who taught the Egyptians to build the Pyramids thousands of years ago? Whence the knowledge of those engineers and architects?

We read in The Encyclopaedia Britannica the following, which ought to provoke questions:

To understand the evolution of the art of architecture intelligently one must first understand the mental processes by which man creates arthitectural works. Such procedure has not materially changed since ancient Egypt which, as far as is known, was the first western nation to establish a civilization with a fixed cultural background to leave enduring records of its achievements. The architect called on to enclose space, whether it be a tomb, shrine or simple dwelling, first looks about to see how it has been done before. If facilities are available, he travels to other lands to study foreign methods. If documents concerning ancient works exist, he turns to them also for enlightenment. From all such information as a background, from the practical requirements of his problem and from the materials and methods of construction at hand, he creates his work.

If for millennia man has built only by copying, it is legitimate to presume that with evolution must have followed improvement. Why then have we not learnt to build more gloriously than did our ancestors of 5,000 years ago? In durability and in beauty, our modern structures compare most unfavourably with those of our sires. Once again, the "progress" we have made since Mohenjo-Daro being what it is, how many millennia must have elapsed when the builders of Mohenjo-Daro created their structures and their cities with drainage systems? They must have taken time to learn. If we go back and back in time, the earliest civilizations we touch reveal to us a knowledge of architecture which is amazing.

We need to abandon the speculation that civilization began in savagery, and to adopt instead the idea that at the dawn of human evolution Gods descended on earth, lived among men and taught infant humanity its arts and crafts—from agriculture to astronomy and from architecture to high philosophy. Does not the Hindu tradition maintain that Vishwakarman was the Great Architect who taught mankind how to build? What is the meaning of that tradition?

In the Puranas and in the Itihasas we come across, again and over again, narratives of the Golden Age when pain was not, when selfishness did not exist, and when ignorance was not born; when Divine Rulers, assisted by Sages, Seers and Poets, governed the people with fatherly love and care; when Divine Instructors taught them. Were ever such an age and such a race in existence?

H.P.B. asserts in a hundred different ways that such a Golden Age did actually exist. She wrote in The Secret Doctrine:

The Kabiri are said to have appeared as the benefactors of men, and as such they lived for ages in the memory of nations. To them—the Kabiri or Titans—is ascribed the invention of letters (the Devanagari, or the alphabet and language of the gods), of laws and legislature; of architecture, as of the various modes of magic, so-called; and of the medicinal use of plants. Hermes, Orpheus, Cadmus, Asclepius, all those demi-gods and heroes, to whom is ascribed the revelation of sciences to men, and whom Bryant, Faber, Bishop Cumberland, and so many other Christian writers—too zealous for plain truth—would force posterity to see only pagan copies of one and sole prototype, named Noah—are all generic names. (II, 364)

Let those who doubt this statement explain the mystery of the extraordinary knowledge possessed by the ancients—alleged to have developed from lower and animal-like savages, the cavemen of the Palaeolithic age—on any other equally reasonable grounds. Let them turn to such works as those of Vitruvius Pollio of the Augustan age, on architecture, for instance, in which all the rules of proportion are those taught anciently at initiations, if he would acquaint himself with the truly divine art, and understand the deep esoteric significance hidden in every rule and law of proportion. No man descended from a Palaeolithic cave-dweller could ever evolve such a science unaided, even in millenniums of thought and intellectual evolution. It is the pupils of those incarnated Rishis and Devas of the third Root Race, who handed their knowledge from one generation to another, to Egypt and Greece with its now lost canon of proportion; as it is the Disciples of the Initiates of the 4th, the Atlanteans, who handed it over to their Cyclopes, the "Sons of Cycles" or of the "Infinite," from whom the name passed to the still later generations of Gnostic priests. "It is owing to the divine perfection of those architectural proportions that the Ancients could build those wonders of all the subsequent ages, their Fanes, Pyramids, Cave-Temples, Cromlechs, Cairns, Altars, proving they had the powers of machinery and a knowledge of mechanics to which modern skill is like a child's play, and which that skill refers to itself as the 'works of hundred-handed giants.' " (See "Book of God," Kenealy.) Modern architects may not altogether have neglected those rules, but they have superadded enough empirical innovations to destroy those just proportions. It is Vitruvius who gave to posterity the rules of construction of the Grecian temples erected to the immortal gods; and the ten books of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio on Architecture, of one, in short, who was an initiate, can only be studied esoterically. The Druidical circles, the Dolmen, the Temples of India, Egypt and Greece, the Towers and the 127 towns in Europe which were found "Cyclopean in origin" by the French Institute, are all the work of initiated Priest-Architects, the descendants of those primarily taught by the "Sons of God," justly called "The Builders." This is what appreciative posterity says of those descendants. "They used neither mortar nor cement, nor steel nor iron to cut the stones with; and yet they were so artfully wrought that in many places the joints are not seen, though many of the stones, as in Peru, are 18 ft. thick, and in the walls of the fortress of Cuzco there are stones of a still greater size." (Acosta, vi, 14.) "Again, the walls of Syene, built 5,400 years ago, when that spot was exazctly under the tropic, which it has now ceased to be, were so constructed that at noon, at the precise moment of the solar solstice, the entire disc of the Sun was seen reflected on their surface—a work which the united skill of all the astronomers of Europe would not now be able to effect." (Kenealy, "Book of God.") (S.D., I, 208-9 fn.)

From the architecture of today to Vishwakarman of the olden yugas is a very far cry. But it is always interesting and useful to learn the spiritual verities behind mundane things and events. The Gods are immortals; They never die; if living our lives and doing our duties we remember Them, we bring into our hearts the light of Their immortal peace and wisdom. Our houses shelter us—to whom should we be grateful for that shelter? To the race of Architects whose Indian father was Vishwakarman.

The three sorts of Karma are: That which we are experiencing; that which we are making for the next life; and that which we have made, but which is held over unfelt until some other life or lives.

This division applies throughout nature.

By what means does Karma have its operation? By means of the apparatus fit to carry it out into view and exhaust it; when this is furnished, the appropriate Karma is felt or seen.

Having all this in view we see that the Karma of the material world (so called), as it now exists, is its Karma left over from a previous manvantara or period of manifestation, working out in the fit apparatus which we call the world. And it may be that there is some "World-Karma" left over to be felt or seen in the next cycle or manvantara.

—W. Q. Judge