Who is Dr. Alesha Sivartha?
Dr Alesha Sivartha a.k.a. Arthur Merton (1834-1915) was an author, scientist and philosopher who wrote and illustrated books, between 1887 and 1903, like ‘The Book of Life or The Spiritual, Social and Physical Constitution of Man’ (1898) and ‘The Growth of Man into Coming Civilization: Harmonism, Christian, Greco-Roman, Semitic, Hindoo, Mongolian, Egyptian’ (1903).
One of his masterpiece of mysticism was ‘The Book of Life: The Spiritual and Physical Constitution of Man’ where Sivartha maps out the human psyche like never seen before. Its truly a work of art created in beginning 1859 and was published by his son Holmes W. Merton in New York City in 1912.
His writings and drawings speak clearly of his conviction in the oneness of Body and Mind and in the oneness of our Physical and Spiritual Constitutions. The Book of Life is at once scientific and biblical: evolutionist, creationist, messianic, and spiritualist. All woven together to create a fascinating mixture of ancient and modern points of view. His father was a Hindu, mother a Unitarian, and Sivartha believed that science could finally answer the deepest mysteries to prove religion. Some might call it Biblical Humanism with a Judaic twist; others call it Theosophy.
‘The Growth of Man into Coming Civilization: Harmonism, Christian, Greco-Roman, Semitic, Hindoo, Mongolian, Egyptian’ (1903) was published by the Theosophical Society, an organization founded in 1875 to promote understanding of the nature of the universe and humanity’s place in it and cross-cultural harmony.
You can read his book, ‘The Growth of Man into Coming Civilization online. In it, Sivartha brings together scientific discoveries about the geologic history and Darwinian evolution to make the case that science shows the way toward creating an ideal social structure and harmony on earth, a task that eluded previous great civilizations because their scientific understanding was incomplete.
The Growth of Man: “Seven great forces were concerned in the vast movements of early creation. Gravity marked elliptic orbits for the path of worlds. Electricity and magnetism polarized and thus rotated these worlds on their axes. Chemic force, heat and light built up the solid rocks and arranged their wide-spread layers. And the vital force crowded the sea and land with the myriad tribes of animal and plant life.”
Resources:
Sivartha’s Chart of the Earth and Heavens