T
Teacher
Guest
Letter No. 14
[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting -- ED.]
Letter from K.H. Answering Queries. Received by A.O.H., July 9th, 1882.
(1) We understand that the man-bearing cycle of necessity of our solar system consists of thirteen objective globes, of which ours is the lowest, six above it in the ascending, and six in the descending cycle with a fourteenth world lower still than ours. Is this correct?
(1) The number is not quite correct. There are seven objective and seven subjective globes (I have been just permitted for the first time to give you the right figure), the worlds of causes and of effects. The former have our earth occupying the lower turning point where spirit-matter equilibrates. But do not trouble yourself to go into calculations even on this correct basis for it will only puzzle you, since the infinite ramifications of the number seven (which is one of our greatest mysteries) being so closely allied and interdependent with the seven principles of Nature and man -- this figure is the only one I am permitted (so far) to give you. What I can reveal I do so in a letter I am just finishing.
(2) We understand that below man you reckon not three kingdoms as we do (mineral, vegetable and animal) but seven. Please enumerate and explain these.
(2) Below man there are three in the objective and three in the subjective region, with man a septenary. Two of the three former none but an initiate could conceive of; the third is the Inner kingdom -- below the crust of the earth which we could name but would feel embarrassed to describe. These seven kingdoms are preceded by other and numerous septenary stages and combinations.
(3) We understand that the monad, starting in the highest world of the descending series, appears there in a mineral encasement, and there goes through a series of seven encasements representing the seven classes into which the mineral kingdom is divided, and that this done it passes to the next planet and does likewise (I purposely say nothing of the worlds of results, where it takes on the development the result of what it has gone through in the last world and the necessary preparation for the next) and so on right through the thirteen spheres, making altogether 91 mineral existences. (a) Is this correct? (b) If so, what are the classes we are to reckon in the mineral kingdom? Also (c) How does the monad get out of one encasement into another; in the case of inherbations and incarnations, the plant and animal dies, but so far as we know the mineral does not die, so how does the monad in the first round get out of one into another inmetalliation? (d) And has every separate molecule of the mineral a monad or only those groups of molecules where definite structure is observable such as crystals?
(3) Yes; in our string of worlds it starts at globe "A" of the descending series and passing through all the preliminary evolutions and combinations of the first three kingdoms it finds itself encased in its first mineral form (in what I call race when speaking of man and what we may call class in general) -- of class 1 -- there. Only it passes through seveninstead of "through the thirteen spheres" even omitting the intermediate "worlds of results." Having passed through its seven great classes of inmetalliation (a good word this) with their septenary ramifications -- the monad gives birth to the vegetable kingdom and moves on to the next planet "B."
(a) As you now see, except as to the numbers. (b) Your geologists divide, I believe, stones into three great groups -- of Sandstone, granite and chalk; or the sedimentary, organic, and igneous, following their physical characteristics just as the psychologists and spiritualists divide man into the trinity of body, soul, and spirit. Our method is totally different. We divide minerals (also the other kingdoms) according to their occult properties, i.e., according to the relative proportion of the seven universal principles which they contain. I am sorry to refuse you, but I cannot, am not permitted to answer your question. To facilitate for you a question of simple nomenclature, however, I would advise you to study perfectly the seven principles in man, and thus to divide the seven great classes of the minerals correspondentially. For instance, the group of the sedimentary would answer to the compound (chemically speaking) body of man or his first principle; the organic to the second (some call it third) principle or jiva, etc., etc. You must exercise your own intuitions in that. Thus you might also intuite certain truths even as to their properties. I am more than willing to help you but things have to be divulged gradually.(c) By occult osmosis.The plant and animal leave their carcases behind when life is extinct. So does the mineral only at longer intervals, as its rocky body is more lasting. It dies at the end of every manwantariccycle, or at the close of one "Round" as you would call it. It is explained in the letter I am preparing for you. (d) Every molecule is part of the Universal Life. Man's soul (his fourth and fifth principle) is but a compound of the progressed entities of the lower kingdom. The superabundance or preponderance of one over another compound will often determine the instincts and passions of a man, unless these are checked by the soothing and spiritualizing influence of his sixth principle.
(4) Please note, we call the Grand Cycle that the monad has performed in the mineral kingdom a "round" which we understand to contain thirteen (seven) stations, or objective, more or less material worlds. At each of these stations it performs what we call a "world ring," which includes seven inmetalliations, one in each of the seven classes of that kingdom. Is this accepted for nomenclature and correct?
(4) I believe it will lead to a further confusion. A Round we are agreed to call the passage of a monad from globe "A" to globe "Z" (or "G") through the encasement in all and each of the four kingdoms, viz., as a mineral, a vegetable, an animal and man or the Deva kingdom. The "world ring" is correct. M. advised Mr. Sinnett strongly to agree upon a nomenclature before going any further. A few stray facts were given to you par contrebande and on the smuggling principle hitherto. But now since you seem really and seriously determined to study and utilize our philosophy -- it is time we should begin to work seriously. Because we are constrained to deny to our friends an insight into the higher Mathematics it is no reason why we should refuse to teach them arithmetic. The monad performs not only "world rings" or seven major inmetalliations, inherbations, zoonisations (?) and incarnations -- but an infinitude of sub-rings or subordinate whirls all in series of sevens. As the geologist divides the crust of the earth into great divisions, sub-divisions, minor compartments and zones; and the botanist his plants into orders, classes and species, and the zoologist his subjects into classes, orders and families, so we have our arbitrary classifications and our nomenclature. But besides all this being incomprehensible to you, volumes upon volumes out of the Books of Kiu-te and others would have to be written. Their commentaries are worse still. They are filled with the most abstruse mathematical calculations the key to most of which are in the hands of our highest adepts only, since showing as they do the infinitude of the phenomenal manifestations in the side projections of the one Force they are again secret. Therefore I doubt whether I will be allowed to give you for the present anything beyond the mere unitary or root idea. Anyhow I will do my best.
(5) We understand that in each of your other six kingdoms, a monad similarly performs a complete round, in each round stopping in each of the thirteen stations, and there performing in each a world ring of seven lives, one in each of the seven classes into which each of the 6 said kingdoms are divided. Is this correct, and, if so, will you give us the seven classes of these six kingdoms?
(5) If by kingdoms the seven kingdoms or regions of the earth are meant -- and I do not see how it can mean anything else -- then the query is answered in my reply to your Question (2) and if so then the five out of the seven are already enumerated. The first two are related as well as the third, to the evolution of the elementals and of the Inner kingdom.
(6) If we are right then the total existences prior to the man-period is 637. Is this correct? Or are there seven existences in each class of each kingdom, 4,459? Or what are the total numbers and how divided? One point more. In these lower kingdoms is the number of lives, so to speak, invariable, or does it vary, and, if so, how, why, and within what limits?
(6) Not being permitted to give you the whole truth, or divulge the number of isolated fractions, I am unable to satisfy you by giving you the total number. Rest assured my dear Brother, that to one who does not seek to become a practical occultist these numbers are immaterial. Even our high chelas are refused these particulars to the moment of their initiation into adeptship. These figures as I have already said are so interwoven with the profoundest psychological mysteries that to divulge the key to such figures, would be to put the rod of power within the reach of all the clever men who would read your book. All that I can tell you is that within the Solar Manwantara the number of existences or vital activities of the monad is fixed, but there are local variations in number in minorsystems, individual worlds, rounds, and world rings, according to circumstances. And in this connexion remember also that human personalities are often blotted out, while the entities whether single or compound complete all the minor and major circles of necessities under whatsoever form.
(7) So far we hope we are tolerably correct, but when we come to Man we have got muddled.
(7) And no wonder, since you were not given the correct information.
(7a) Does the monad as Man (ape-man and upwards) make one or seven rounds as above defined? We gathered the latter.
(7a) As a man-ape he performs just as many rounds and rings as every other race or class; i.e., he performs one Round and in every planet from "A" to "Z" has to go through seven chief races of ape-like man, as many sub-races, etc., etc. (See Supplementary Notes) as the above described race.
(7b) At each round does his world circle consist of seven lives in seven races (49) or of only seven lives in one race? We are not certain how you use the word race, whether there is only one race to each station of each round, i.e., one race to each world circle or whether there are seven races (with their seven branchlets and a life in each in either case) in each world circle? Nay, from your use of the words "and through each of these Man has to evolute before he passes on to the next higher race and that seven times," we are not sure that there are not seven lives in each branchlet as you call it, sub-race we will, if you like, say. So now there may be seven rounds each with seven races, each with seven sub-races, each with seven incarnations = 13 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 = 31, = 313 lives, or one round with seven races and seven sub-races and a life in each = 13 x 7 x 7 = 637 lives or again 4,459 lives. Please set us right here stating the normal number of lives (the exact numbers will vary owing to idiots, children, etc., not counting) and how divided.
(7b) As the above described race: i.e., at each planet -- our earth included -- he has to perform seven rings through seven races (one in each) and seven multiplied by seven offshoots. There are seven root-races, and seven sub-races or offshoots. Our doctrine treats anthropology as an absurd empty dream of the religionists and confines itself to ethnology. It is possible that my nomenclature is faulty: you are at liberty in such a case to change it. What I call "race" you would perhaps term "stock" though sub-race expresses better what we mean than the word family or division of the genus homo. However, to set you right so far I will say -- one life in each of the seven root-races; seven lives in each of the 49 sub-races -- or 7 x 7 x 7 = 343 and add 7 more. And then a series of lives in offshoot and branchlet races; making the total incarnations of man in each station or planet 777. The principle of acceleration and retardation applies itself in such a way, as to eliminate all the inferior stocks and leave but a single superior one to make the last ring. Not much to divide over some millions of years that man passes on one planet. Let us take but one million of years -- suspected and now accepted by your science -- to represent man's entire term upon our earth in this Round; and allowing an average of a century for each life, we find that whereas he has passed in all his lives upon our planet (in this Round) but 77,700 years he has been in the subjective spheres 922,300 years. Not much encouragement for the extreme modern re-incarnationists who remember their several previous existences!
Should you indulge in any calculations do not forget that we have computed above only full average lives of consciousness and responsibility. Nothing has been said as to the failures of Nature in abortions, congenital idiots, death of children in their first septenary cycles, nor of the exceptionsof which I cannot speak. No less have you to remember that average human life varies greatly according to the Rounds. Though I am obliged to withhold information about many points yet if you should work out any of the problems by yourself it will be my duty to tell you so. Try to solve the problem of the 777 incarnations.
(8) "M" said all mankind is in the fourth round, the fifth has not yet commenced but soon will. Was this a slip? If not, then collating this with your present remarks we gather that all mankind is on the fourth round (though in another place you seemed to say we are on the fifth round). That the highest people now on earth belong to the first sub-race of the fifth race, the majority to the seventh sub-race of the fourth race but with remnants of the other sub-races of the fourth race and the seventh sub-race of the third race. Pray set us quite right on this.
(8) "M "knows very little English and hates writing. But even I might have used very well the same expression. A few drops of rain do not make a monsoon though they presage it. The fifth round has not commenced on our earth and the races and sub-races of one round must not be confounded with those of another round. The fifth round mankind may be said to have "commenced" when there shall not be left on the planet which precedes ours a single man of that round and on our earth not one of the fourth round. You should know also that the casual fifth round men (and very few and scarce they are) who come in upon us as avant couriers do not beget on earth fifth round progeny. Plato and Confucius were fifth round men and our Lord a sixth round man (the mystery of his avatar is spoken of in my forthcoming letter) and not even Gautama Buddha's son was anything but a fourth round man.
Our mystic terms in their clumsy re-translation from the Sanskrit into English are as confusing to us as they are to you -- especially to "M" unless in writing to you one of us takes his pen as an adept and uses it from the first word to the last, in this capacity he is quite as liable to "slips" as any other man. No, we are not in the fifth round, but fifth round men have been coming in for the last few thousand years. But what is such a petty stretch of time in comparison with even one million of the several millions of years embraced in man's occupancy of earth in a single round.
K.H.
Please examine carefully the few additional things I give you on the fly-leaves. Damodar has received orders to send you No. 3 of Terry's letters -- a good material for pamphlet No. 3 of Fragments of Occult Truth.
This figure roughly represents the development of humanity on a planet -- say our earth. Man evolves in seven major or root-races; 49 minor races; and the subordinate races or offshoots, the branchlet races coming from the latter are not shown.
The arrow indicates the direction taken by the evolutionary impulse.
I, II, III, IV, etc., are the seven major or root-races.
1, 2, 3, etc., are the minor races.
a, a, a, are the subordinate or offshoot races.
N, the initial and terminal point of evolution on the planet.
S, the axial point where the development equilibrates or adjusts itself in each race evolution.
E, the equatorial points where in the descending arc intellect overcomes spirituality and in the ascending arc spirituality outstrips intellect.
(N.B. -- The above in D.K.'s hand -- the rest in K.H.'s. -- A.P.S.)
P.S. -- In his hurry D.J.K. has made his figure incline somewhat out of the perpendicular but it will serve as a rough memorandum. He drew it to represent development on a single planet; but I have added a word or two to make it apply as well (which it does) to a whole manwantaric chain of worlds.
K.H.
Supplementary Notes.
Whenever any question of evolution or development in any Kingdom presents itself to you bear constantly in mind that everything comes under the Septenary rule of series in their correspondences and mutual relation throughout nature.
In the evolution of man there is a topmost point, a bottom point, a descending arc, and an ascending arc. As it is "Spirit" which transforms itself into "matter" and (not "matter" which ascends -- but) matter which resolves once more into spirit, of course the first race evolution and the last on a planet (as in each round) must be more etherial, more spiritual, the fourth or lowermost one most physical (progressively of course in each round) and at the same time -- as physical intelligence is the masked manifestation of spiritual intelligence -- each evoluted race in the downward arc must be more physically intelligent than its predecessor, and each in the upward arc have a more refined form of mentality commingled with spiritual intuitiveness.
The first race (or stock) of the first round after a solarmanwantara (kindly wait for my forthcoming letter before you allow yourself to be repuzzled or remuddled. It will explain a good deal) would then be a god man race of an almost impalpable shape, and so it is; but then comes the difficulty to the student to reconcile this fact with the evolution of man from the animal-- however high his form among the anthropoids. And yet it is reconcilable, for whomsoever will hold religiously to a strict analogy between the works of the two worlds, the visible and the invisible -- one world, in fact, as one is working within itself so to say. Now there are -- there must be "failures" in the etherial races of the many classes of Dyan Chohans or Devas as well as among men. But still as these failures are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from their Dyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms -- this then happens. When a new solar system is to be evolved these Dyan Chohans are (remember the Hindu allegory of the Fallen Devas hurled by Siva into Andarah who are allowed by Parabrahm to consider it as an intermediate state where they may prepare themselves by a series of rebirths in that sphere for a higher state -- a new regeneration) born in by the influx "ahead" of the elementals and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual force in the aura of the nascent world of a new system until the stage of human evolution is reached. Then Karma has reached them and they will have to accept to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an activeForce, and commingle with the Elementals, or progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom to develope little by little the full type of humanity. In this commingling they lose their high intelligence and spirituality of Devaship to regain them in the end of the seventh ring in the seventh round.
Thus we have:
1st Round. -- An ethereal being -- non-intelligent, but super-spiritual. In each of the subsequent races and sub-races and minor races of evolution he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly etherial. And like the animal and vegetable he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarse surroundings.
2nd Round. -- He is still gigantic and etherial, but growing firmer and more condensed in body -- a more physical man, yet still less intelligent than spiritual; for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than the physical frame and the mind would not develop as rapidly as the body.
3rd Round. -- He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body; at first the form of a giant ape, and more intelligent (or rather cunning) than spiritual. For in the downward arc he has now reached the point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed or over-shadowed by nascent mentality. In the last half of this third round his gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in texture (perhaps the microscope might help to demonstrate this) and he becomes a more rational being -- though still more an ape than a Deva man.
4th round. -- Intellect has an enormous development in this round. The dumb races will acquire our human speech, on our globe, on which from the 4th race language is perfected and knowledge in physical things increases. At this half-way point of the fourth round, Humanity passes the axial point of the minor manwantaric circle. (Moreover, at the middle point of every major or root race evolution of each round, man passes the equator of his course on that planet, the same rule applying to the whole evolution or the seven rounds of the minor Manwantara -- 7 rounds divided by 2 = 3 1/2 rounds). At this point then the world teems with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease. In the first half of the fourth race, sciences, arts, literature and philosophy were born, eclipsed in one nation, reborn in another. Civilization and intellectual development whirling in septenary cycles as the rest; while it is but in the latter half that the spiritual Ego will begin its real struggle with body and mind to manifest its transcendental powers. Who will help in the forthcoming gigantic struggle? Who? Happy the man who helps a helping hand.
5th Round. -- The same relative development, and the same struggle continues.
6th Round.
7th Round.
Of these we need not speak.
Letter No. 15
[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. K.H.'s repies are in bold type. -- ED.]
From K.H. to A.O.H. Received July 10th, 1882.
(1) Does every mineral form, vegetable, plant, animal, always contain within it that entity which involves the potentiality of development into a planetary spirit? At this present day in this present earth is there such an essence or spirit or soul -- the name is immaterial in every mineral, etc.
(1) Invariably; only rather call it the germ of a future entity, which it has been for ages. Take the human foetus. From the moment of its first planting until it completes its seventh month of gestation it repeats in miniature the mineral, vegetable, and animal cycles it passed through in its previous encasements, and only during the last two, develops its future human entity. It is completed but towards the child's seventh year. Yet it existed without any increase or decrease aeons on aeons before it worked its way onward, through and in the womb of mother nature as it works now in its earthly mother's bosom. Truly said a learned philosopher who trusts more to his intuitions than the dicta of modern science. "The stages of man's intra-uterine existence embody a condensed record of some of the missing pages in Earth's history." Thus you must look back at the animal, vegetable and mineral entities. You must take each entity at its starting point in the manvantaric course as the primordial cosmic atom already differentiated by the first flutter of the manvantaric life breath. For the potentiality which develops finally in a perfected planetary spirit lurks in, is in fact that primordial cosmic atom. Drawn by its "chemical affinity" (?) to coalesce with other like atoms the aggregate sum of such united atoms will in time become a man-bearing globe after the stages of the cloud, the spiral and sphere of fire-mist and of the condensation, consolidation, shrinkage and cooling of the planet have been successively passed through. But mind, not every globe becomes a "man bearer." I simply state the fact without dwelling further upon it in this connection. The great difficulty in grasping the idea in the above process lies in the liability to form more or less incomplete mental conceptions of the working of the oneelement, of its inevitable presence in every imponderable atom, and its subsequent ceaseless and almost illimitable multiplication of new centres of activity without affecting in the least its own original quantity. Let us take such an aggregation of atoms destined to form our globe and then follow, throwing a cursory look at the whole, the special work of such atoms. We will call the primordial atom A. This being not a circumscribed centre of activity but the initial point of a manwantaric whirl of evolution, gives birth to new centres which we may term B, C, D, etc., incomputably. Each of these capital points gives birth to minor centres, a, b, c, etc. And the latter in the course of evolution and involution in time develops into A's, B's, C's, etc., and so form the roots or are the developing causes of new genera, species, classes, etc., ad infinitum. Now neither the primordial A and its companion atoms, nor their derived a's, b's, c's, have lost one tittle of their original force or life-essence by the evolution of their derivatives. The force there, is not transformed into something else as I have already shown in my letter, but with each development of a new centre of activity from withinitself multiplies ad infinitum without ever losing a particle of its nature in quantity or quality. Yet acquiring as it progresses something plus in its differentiation. This "force" so-called, shows itself truly indestructible but does not correlate and is not convertible in the sense accepted by the Fellows of the R.S., but rather may be said to grow and expand into "something else" while neither its own potentiality nor being are in the least affected by the transformation. Nor can it well be called force since the latter is but the attribute of Yin Sin (Yin Sin or the one "Form of existence" also Adi-Buddhi or Dharmakaya the mystic, universally diffused essence) when manifesting in the phenomenal world of senses namely only your old acquaintance Fohat. See in this connexion Subba Row's article "Aryan Arhat Esoteric Doctrines" on the seven-fold principles in man; his review of your Fragments, pp. 94 and 95. The initiated Brahmin calls it (Yin Sin and Fohat) Brahman and Sakti when manifesting as that force. We will perhaps be nearer correct to call it infinite life and the source of all life visible and invisible, an essence inexhaustible ever present, in short Swabhavat. (S. in its universal application, Fohat when manifesting throughout our phenomenal world or rather the visible universe hence in its limitations). It is pravritti when active, nirvritti when passive. Call it the Sakti of Parabrahma, if you like, and say with the Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus Maya becomes Iswar the creative principle -- a power commonly called God which disappears and dies with the rest when pralaya comes. Or you may hold with the northern Buddhist philosophers and call it Adi-Buddhi the all-pervading supreme and absolute intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity -- "Avalokiteshvara" (a manwantaric intelligent nature crowned with humanity) -- the mystic name given by us to the hosts of the Dyan Chohans (N.B., the solar Dyan Chohans or the host of only our solar system) taken collectively, which host represents the mother source, the aggregate amount of all the intelligences that were are or ever will be whether on our string of man-bearing planets or on any part or portion of our solar system. And this will bring you by analogy to see that in its turn Adi-Buddhi (as its very name translated literally implies) is the aggregate intelligence of the universal intelligences including that of the Dyan Chohans even of the highest order. That is all I dare now to tell you on this special subject, as I fear I have already transcended the limit. Therefore whenever I speak of humanity without specifying it you must understand that I mean not humanity of our fourth round as we see it on this speck of mud in space but the whole host already evoluted.
Yes as described in my letter -- there is but one element and it is impossible to comprehend our system before a correct conception of it is firmly fixed in one's mind. You must therefore pardon me if I dwell on the subject longer than really seems necessary. But unless this great primary fact is firmly grasped the rest will appear unintelligible. This element then is the -- to speak metaphysically -- one sub-stratum or permanent cause of all manifestations in the phenomenal universe. The ancients speak of the five cognizable elements of ether, air, water, fire, earth, and of the one incognizable element (to the uninitiates) the 6th principle of the universe -- call it Purush Sakti, while to speak of the seventh outside the sanctuary was punishable with death. But these five are but the differentiated aspects of the one. As man is a seven-fold being so is the universe -- the septenary microcosm being to the septenary macrocosm but as the drop of rainwater is to the cloud from whence it dropped and whither in the course of time it will return. In that one are embraced or included so many tendencies for the evolution of air, water, fire, etc. (from the purely abstract down to their concrete condition) and when those latter are called elements it is to indicate their productive potentialities for numberless form changes or evolution of being. Let us represent the unknown quantity as X; that quantity is the one eternal immutable principle -- and A, B, C, D, E, five of the six minor principles or components of the same; viz., the principles of earth, water, air, fire and ether (akasa) following the order of their spirituality and beginning with the lowest. There is a sixth principle answering to the sixth principle Buddhi, in man (to avoid confusion remember that in viewing the question from the side of the descending scale the abstract All or eternal principle would be numerically designated as the first, and the phenomenal universe as the seventh, and whether belonging to man or to the universe -- viewed from the other side the numerical order would be exactly reversed) but we are not permitted to name it except among the initiates. I may however hint that it is connected with the process of the highest intellection. Let us call it N. And besides these, there is under all the activities of the phenomenal universe an energizing impulse from X, call this Y. Algebraically stated, our equation would therefore read A+B+C+D+E+N+Y=X. Each of these six letters represents, so to speak, the spirit or abstraction of what you call elements (your meagre English gives me no other word). This spirit controls the entire line of evolution, around the whole manwantaric cycle in its own department. The informing, vivifying, impelling, evolving cause,behind the countless phenomenal manifestations in that department of Nature. Let us work out the idea with a single example. Take fire. D -- the primal igneous principle resident in X -- is the ultimate cause of every phenomenal manifestation of fire on all the globes of the chain. The proximate causes are the evoluted secondary igneous agencies which severally control the sevendescents of fire on each planet. (Every element having its seven principles and every principle its seven sub-principles and these secondary agencies before doing so, have in turn become primary causes.) D is a septenary compound of which the highest fraction is pure spirit. As we see it on our globe it is in its coarsest, most material condition, as gross in its way as is man in his physical encasement. In the next preceding globe to ours fire was less gross than here: on the one before that less still. And so the body of flame was more and more pure and spiritual less and less gross and material on each antecedent planet. On the first of all in the manwantaric chain, it appeared as an almost pure objective shining -- the Maha Buddhi, sixth principle of the eternal light. Our globe being at the bottom of the arc where matter exhibits itself in its grossest form along with spirit -- when the fire element manifests itself on the globe next succeeding ours in the ascending arc it will be less dense than as we see it. Its spiritual quality will be identical with that which fire had on the globe preceding ours in the descending scale; the second globe of the ascending scale will correspond in quality with that of the second anterior globe to ours in the descending scale, etc. On each globe of the chain there are seven manifestations of fire of which the first in order will compare as to spiritual quality with the last manifestation on the next preceding planet: the process being reversed, as you will infer, with the opposite arc. The myriad specific manifestations of these six universal elements are in their turn but the offshoots, branches or branchlets of the one single primordial "Tree of Life."
Take Darwin's genealogical tree of life of the human race and others and bearing ever in mind the wise old adage, "As below so above" -- that is the universal system of correspondences -- try to understand by analogy. Thus will you see that in this day on this present earth in every mineral, etc., there is such a spirit. I will say more. Every grain of sand, every boulder or crag of granite, is that spirit crystallized or petrified. You hesitate. Take a primer of geology and see what science affirms there about the formation and growth of minerals. What is the origin of all the rocks, whether sedimentary or igneous. Take a piece of granite or sandstone and you find one composed of crystals, the other of grains of various stones (organic rocks or stones formed out of the remains of once living plants and animals, will not serve our present purpose: they are the relics of subsequent evolutions while we are concerned but with the primordial ones). Now sedimentary and igneous rocks are composed, the former of sand gravel and mud, the latter of lava. We have then but to trace the origin of the two. What do we find? We find that one was compounded of three elements or more accurately three several manifestations of the one element, -- earth, water and fire, and that the other was similarly compounded (though under different physical conditions) out of cosmic matter -- the imaginary materia prima itself one of the manifestations (6th principle) of the one element. How then can we doubt that a mineral contains in it a spark of the One as everything else in this objective nature does?
(2) When the pralaya commences what becomes of the Spirit that has not worked its way up to man?
(2) . . . The period necessary for the completion of the seven local or earthly -- or shall we call it -- globe-rings (not to speak of the seven Rounds in the minor manwantaras followed by their seven minor pralayas) -- the completion of the so-called mineral cycle is immeasurably longer than that of any other kingdom. As you may infer by analogy every globe before it reaches its adult period, has to pass through a formation period -- also septenary. Law in Nature is uniform and the conception, formation, birth, progress and development of the child differs from those of the globe only in magnitude. The globe has two periods of teething and of capillature -- its first rocks which it also sheds to make room for new -- and its ferns and mosses before it gets forest. As the atoms in the body change [every] seven years so does the globe renew its strata every seven cycles. A section of a part of Cape Breton coalfields shows seven ancient soils with remains of as many forests, and could one dig as deep once more seven other sections would be found following. . . .
There are three kinds of pralayas and manwantara: --
1. The universal or Maha pralaya and manwantara.
2. The solar pralaya and manwantara.
3. The minor pralaya and manwantara.
When the pralaya No. 1 is finished the universal manwantara begins. Then the whole universe must be re-evoluted de novo. When the pralaya of a solar system comes it affects that solar system only. A solar pralaya = 7 minor pralayas. The minor pralayas of No. 3 concern but our little string of globes, whether man-bearing or not. To such a string our Earth belongs.
Besides this within a minor pralaya there is a condition of planetary rest or as the astronomers say "death," like that of our present moon -- in which the rocky body of the planet survives but the life impulse has passed out. For example. Let us imagine that our earth is one of a group of seven planets or man-bearing worlds more or less eliptically arranged. Our earth being at the exact lower central point of the orbit of evolution, viz., half way round -- we will call the first globe A, the last Z. After each solar pralaya there is a complete destruction of our system and after each solar p. begins the absolute objective reformation of our system and each time everything is more perfect than before.
Now the life impulse reaches "A" or rather that which is destined to become "A" and which so far is but cosmic dust. A centre is formed in the nebulous matter of the condensation of the solar dust disseminated through space and a series of three evolutions invisible to the eye of flesh occur in succession, viz., three kingdoms of elementals or nature forces are evoluted: in other words the animal soul of the future globe is formed; or as a Kabalist will express it, the gnomes, the salamanders, and the undines are created. The correspondence between a mother-globe and her child-man may be thus worked out. Both have their seven principles. In the Globe, the elementals (of which there are in all seven species) form (a) a gross body, (b) her fluidic double (linga sariram), (c) her life principle (jiva); (d) her fourth principle kama rupa is formed by her creative impulse working from centre to circumference; (e) her fifth principle (animal soul or Manas, physical intelligence) is embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal kingdoms; (f) her sixth principle (or spiritual soul, Buddhi) is man (g) and her seventh principle (atma) is in a film of spiritualized akasa that surrounds her. The three evolutions completed: palpable globe begins to form. The mineral kingdom fourth in the whole series, but first in this stage leads the way. Its deposits are at first vaporous soft and plastic, only becoming hard and concrete in the seventh ring. When this ring is completed it projects its essence to globe B -- which is already passing through the preliminary stages of formation and mineral evolution begins on that globe. At this juncture the evolution of the vegetable kingdom commences on globe A. When the latter has made its seventh ring its essence passes on to globe B. At that time the mineral essence moves to globe C and the germs of the animal kingdom enter A. When the animal has seven rings there, its life principle goes to globe B, and the essences of vegetable and mineral move on. Then comes man on A, an ethereal foreshadowing of the compact being he is destined to become on our earth. Evolving seven parent races with many offshoots of sub-races, he, like the preceding kingdoms completes his seven rings and is then transferred successively to each of the globes onward to Z. From the first man has all the seven principles included in him in germ but none are developed. If we compare him to a baby we will be right; no one has ever, in the thousands of ghost stories current, seen the ghost of an infant, though the imagination of a loving mother may have suggested to her the picture of her lost babe in dreams. And this is very suggestive. In each of the rounds he makes one of the principles develop fully. In the first round his consciousness on our earth is dull and but feeble and shadowy, something like that of an infant. When he reaches our earth in the second round he has become responsible in a degree, in the third he becomes so entirely. At every stage and every round his development keeps pace, with the globe on which he is. The descending arc from A to our earth is called the shadowy, the ascending to Z the "luminous" . . . We men of the fourth round are already reaching the latter half of the fifth race of our fourth round humanity, while the men (the few earlier comers) of the fifth round, though only in their first race (or rather class), are yet immeasurably higher than we are -- spiritually if not intellectually; since with the completion or full development of this fifth principle (intellectual soul) they have come nearer than we have, are closer in contact with their sixth principle Buddhi. Of course many are the differentiated individuals even in the fourth r. as germs of principles are not equally developed in all, but such is the rule.
. . . Man comes on globe "A" after the other kingdoms have gone on. (Dividing our kingdoms into seven, the last four are what exoteric science divides into three. To this we add the kingdom of man or the Deva kingdom. The respective entities of these we divide into germinal, instinctive, semi-conscious, and fully conscious). . . . When all kingdoms have reached globe Z they will not move forward to re-enter A in precedence of man, but under a law of retardation operative from the central point -- or earth -- to Z and which equilibrates a principle of acceleration in the descending arc -- they will have just finished their respective evolution of genera and species, when man reaches his highest development on globe Z -- in this or any round. The reason for it is found in the enormously greater time required by them to develop their infinite varieties as compared with man; the relative speed of development in the rings therefore naturally increases as we go up the scale from the mineral. But these different rates are so adjusted by man stopping longer in the inter-planetary spheres of rest, for weal or woe -- that all kingdoms finish their work simultaneously on the planet Z. For example, on our globe we see the equilibrating law manifesting. From the first appearance of man whether speechless or not to his present one as a fourth and the coming fifth round being the structural intention of his organization has not radically changed. Ethnological characteristics however varied, affecting in no way man as a human being. The fossil of man or his skeleton whether of the period of that mammalian branch of which he forms the crown, whether cyclop or dwarf can be still recognised at a glance as a relic of man. Plants and animals meanwhile have become more and more unlike what they were. . . . The scheme with its septenary details would be incomprehensible to man had he not the power as the higher Adepts have proved of prematurely developing his 6th and 7th senses -- those which will be the natural endowment of all in the corresponding rounds. Our Lord Buddha -- a 6th r. man -- would not have appeared in our epoch, great as were his accumulated merits in previous rebirths but for a mystery. . . . Individuals cannot outstrip the humanity of their round any further than by one remove, for it is mathematically impossible -- you say (in effect): if the fountain of life flows ceaselessly there should be men of all rounds on the earth at all times, etc. The hint about planetary rest may dispel the misconception on this head.
When man is perfected qua a given round on Globe A he disappears thence (as had certain vegetables and animals). By degrees this Globe loses its vitality and finally reaches the moon stage, i.e., death, and so remains while man is making his seven rings on Z and passing his inter-cyclic period before starting on his next round. So with each Globe in turn.
And now as man when completing his seventh ring upon A has but begun his first on Z and as A dies when he leaves it for B, etc., and as he must also remain in the inter-cyclic sphere after Z, as he has between every two planets, until the impulse again thrills the chain, clearly no one can be more than one round ahead of his kind. And Buddha only forms an exception by virtue of the mystery. We have fifth round men among us because we are in the latter half of our septenary earth ring. In the first half this could not have happened. The countless myriads of our fourth round humanity who have outrun us and completed their seven rings on Z, have had time to pass their inter-cyclic period begin their new round and work on to globe D (ours). But how can there be men of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th rounds? We represent the first three and the sixth can only come at rare intervals and prematurely like Buddhas (only under prepared conditions) and that the last-named the seventh are not yet evolved! We have traced man out of a round into the Nirvanic state between Z and A. A was left in the last round dead. As the new round begins it catches the new influx of life, reawakens to vitality and begets all its kingdoms of a superior order to the last. After this has been repeated seven times comes a minor pralaya; the chain of globes are not destroyed by disintegration and dispersion of their particles but pass in abscondito. From this they will re-emerge in their turn during the next septenary period. Within one solar period (of a p. and m.) occur seven such minor periods, in an ascending scale of progressive development. To recapitulate there are in the round seven planetary or earth rings for each kingdom and one obscuration of each planet. The minor manwantara is composed of seven rounds, 49 rings and 7 obscurations, the solar period of 49 rounds, etc.
The periods with pralaya and manwantara are called by Dikshita "Surya manwantaras and pralayas." Thought is baffled in speculating how many of our solar pralayas must come before the great Cosmic night -- but that will come.
. . . In the minor pralayas there is no starting de novo -- only resumption of arrested activity. The vegetable and animal kingdoms which at the end of the minor manwantara had reached only a partial development are not destroyed. Their life or vital entities, call some of them nati if you will -- find also their corresponding night and rest -- they also have a Nirvana of their own. And why should they not, these foetal and infant entities. They are all like ourselves begotten of the one element. . . . As we have our Dyan Chohans so have they in their several kingdoms elemental guardians and are as well taken care of in the mass as is humanity in the mass. The one element not only fills space and isspace, but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic matter.
When strikes the hour of the solar pralaya -- though the process of man's advance on his last seventh round is precisely the same, each planet instead of merely passing out of the visible into the invisible as he quits it in turn is annihilated. With the beginning of the seventh Round of the seventh minor manwantara, every kingdom having now reached its last cycle, there remains on each planet after the exit of man but the maya of once living and existing forms. With every step he takes on the descending and ascending arcs as he moves on from Globe to Globe the planet left behind becomes an empty chrysaloidal case. At his departure there is an outflow from every kingdom of its entities. Waiting to pass into higher forms in due time they are nevertheless liberated: for to the day of that evolution they will rest in their lethargic sleep in space until again energized into life in the new solar manwantara. The old elementals -- will rest until they are called to become in their turn the bodies of mineral, vegetable and animal entities (on another and a higher string of globes) on their way to become human entities (see Isis) while the germinal entities of the lowest forms, and in that time of general perfection there will remain but few of such -- will hang in space like drops of water suddenly turned to icicles. They will thaw at the first hot breath of a solar manwantara and form the soul of the future globes. . . . The slow development of the vegetable kingdom provided for by the longer inter-planetary rest of man. . . . When the solar pralaya comes the whole purified humanity merges into Nirvana and from that inter-solar Nirvana will be reborn in higher systems. The string of worlds is destroyed and vanishes like a shadow from the wall in the extinguishment of light. We have every indication that at this very moment such a solar pralaya is taking place while there are two minor ones ending somewhere.
At the beginning of the solar manwantara the hitherto subjective elements of the material world now scattered in cosmic dust -- receiving their impulse from the new Dyan Chohans of the new solar system (the highest of the old ones having gone higher) -- will form into primordial ripples of life and separating into differentiating centres of activity combine in a graduated scale of seven stages of evolution. Like every other orb of space our Earth has before obtaining its ultimate materiality -- and nothing now in this world can give you an idea of what this state of matter is -- to pass through a gamut of seven stages of density. I say gamut advisedly since the diatonic scale best affords an illustration of the perpetual rythmic motion of the descending and ascending cycle of Swabhavat -- graduated as it is by tones and semi-tones.
You have among the learned members of your society one Theosophist who without familiarity with our occult doctrine, has yet intuitively grasped from scientific data the idea of a solar pralaya and its manwantara in their beginnings. I mean the celebrated French astronomer Flammarion -- "La Resurrection et la Fin des Mondes" (Chapter 4 res.). He speaks like a true seer. The facts are as he surmises with slight modifications. In consequence of the secular refrigeration (old age rather and loss of vital power), solidification and desiccation of the globes, the earth arrives at a point when it begins to be a relaxed conglomerate. The period of child-bearing is gone by. The progeny are all nurtured, its term of life is finished. Hence "its constituent masses cease to obey those laws of cohesion and aggregation which held them together." And becoming like a cadaver which abandoned to the work of destruction would leave each molecule composing it free to separate itself from the body for ever to obey in future the sway of new influences. The attraction of the moon (would that he could know the full extent of its pernicious influence) would itself undertake the task of demolition by producing a tidal wave of earth particles instead of an aqueous tide.
His mistake is that he believes a long time must be devoted to the ruin of the solar system: we are told that it occurs in the twinkling of an eye but not without many preliminary warnings. Another error is the supposition that the earth will fall into the sun. The sun itself is first to disintegrate at the solar pralaya.
. . . Fathom the nature and essence of the sixth principle of the universe and man and you will have fathomed the greatest mystery in this our world -- and why not -- are you not surrounded by it? What are its familiar manifestations, mesmerism, Od force, etc. -- all different aspects of one force capable of good and evil applications.
The degrees of an Adept's initiation mark the seven stages at which he discovers the secret of the sevenfold principles in nature and man and awakens his dormant powers.
[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting -- ED.]
Letter from K.H. Answering Queries. Received by A.O.H., July 9th, 1882.
(1) We understand that the man-bearing cycle of necessity of our solar system consists of thirteen objective globes, of which ours is the lowest, six above it in the ascending, and six in the descending cycle with a fourteenth world lower still than ours. Is this correct?
(1) The number is not quite correct. There are seven objective and seven subjective globes (I have been just permitted for the first time to give you the right figure), the worlds of causes and of effects. The former have our earth occupying the lower turning point where spirit-matter equilibrates. But do not trouble yourself to go into calculations even on this correct basis for it will only puzzle you, since the infinite ramifications of the number seven (which is one of our greatest mysteries) being so closely allied and interdependent with the seven principles of Nature and man -- this figure is the only one I am permitted (so far) to give you. What I can reveal I do so in a letter I am just finishing.
(2) We understand that below man you reckon not three kingdoms as we do (mineral, vegetable and animal) but seven. Please enumerate and explain these.
(2) Below man there are three in the objective and three in the subjective region, with man a septenary. Two of the three former none but an initiate could conceive of; the third is the Inner kingdom -- below the crust of the earth which we could name but would feel embarrassed to describe. These seven kingdoms are preceded by other and numerous septenary stages and combinations.
(3) We understand that the monad, starting in the highest world of the descending series, appears there in a mineral encasement, and there goes through a series of seven encasements representing the seven classes into which the mineral kingdom is divided, and that this done it passes to the next planet and does likewise (I purposely say nothing of the worlds of results, where it takes on the development the result of what it has gone through in the last world and the necessary preparation for the next) and so on right through the thirteen spheres, making altogether 91 mineral existences. (a) Is this correct? (b) If so, what are the classes we are to reckon in the mineral kingdom? Also (c) How does the monad get out of one encasement into another; in the case of inherbations and incarnations, the plant and animal dies, but so far as we know the mineral does not die, so how does the monad in the first round get out of one into another inmetalliation? (d) And has every separate molecule of the mineral a monad or only those groups of molecules where definite structure is observable such as crystals?
(3) Yes; in our string of worlds it starts at globe "A" of the descending series and passing through all the preliminary evolutions and combinations of the first three kingdoms it finds itself encased in its first mineral form (in what I call race when speaking of man and what we may call class in general) -- of class 1 -- there. Only it passes through seveninstead of "through the thirteen spheres" even omitting the intermediate "worlds of results." Having passed through its seven great classes of inmetalliation (a good word this) with their septenary ramifications -- the monad gives birth to the vegetable kingdom and moves on to the next planet "B."
(a) As you now see, except as to the numbers. (b) Your geologists divide, I believe, stones into three great groups -- of Sandstone, granite and chalk; or the sedimentary, organic, and igneous, following their physical characteristics just as the psychologists and spiritualists divide man into the trinity of body, soul, and spirit. Our method is totally different. We divide minerals (also the other kingdoms) according to their occult properties, i.e., according to the relative proportion of the seven universal principles which they contain. I am sorry to refuse you, but I cannot, am not permitted to answer your question. To facilitate for you a question of simple nomenclature, however, I would advise you to study perfectly the seven principles in man, and thus to divide the seven great classes of the minerals correspondentially. For instance, the group of the sedimentary would answer to the compound (chemically speaking) body of man or his first principle; the organic to the second (some call it third) principle or jiva, etc., etc. You must exercise your own intuitions in that. Thus you might also intuite certain truths even as to their properties. I am more than willing to help you but things have to be divulged gradually.(c) By occult osmosis.The plant and animal leave their carcases behind when life is extinct. So does the mineral only at longer intervals, as its rocky body is more lasting. It dies at the end of every manwantariccycle, or at the close of one "Round" as you would call it. It is explained in the letter I am preparing for you. (d) Every molecule is part of the Universal Life. Man's soul (his fourth and fifth principle) is but a compound of the progressed entities of the lower kingdom. The superabundance or preponderance of one over another compound will often determine the instincts and passions of a man, unless these are checked by the soothing and spiritualizing influence of his sixth principle.
(4) Please note, we call the Grand Cycle that the monad has performed in the mineral kingdom a "round" which we understand to contain thirteen (seven) stations, or objective, more or less material worlds. At each of these stations it performs what we call a "world ring," which includes seven inmetalliations, one in each of the seven classes of that kingdom. Is this accepted for nomenclature and correct?
(4) I believe it will lead to a further confusion. A Round we are agreed to call the passage of a monad from globe "A" to globe "Z" (or "G") through the encasement in all and each of the four kingdoms, viz., as a mineral, a vegetable, an animal and man or the Deva kingdom. The "world ring" is correct. M. advised Mr. Sinnett strongly to agree upon a nomenclature before going any further. A few stray facts were given to you par contrebande and on the smuggling principle hitherto. But now since you seem really and seriously determined to study and utilize our philosophy -- it is time we should begin to work seriously. Because we are constrained to deny to our friends an insight into the higher Mathematics it is no reason why we should refuse to teach them arithmetic. The monad performs not only "world rings" or seven major inmetalliations, inherbations, zoonisations (?) and incarnations -- but an infinitude of sub-rings or subordinate whirls all in series of sevens. As the geologist divides the crust of the earth into great divisions, sub-divisions, minor compartments and zones; and the botanist his plants into orders, classes and species, and the zoologist his subjects into classes, orders and families, so we have our arbitrary classifications and our nomenclature. But besides all this being incomprehensible to you, volumes upon volumes out of the Books of Kiu-te and others would have to be written. Their commentaries are worse still. They are filled with the most abstruse mathematical calculations the key to most of which are in the hands of our highest adepts only, since showing as they do the infinitude of the phenomenal manifestations in the side projections of the one Force they are again secret. Therefore I doubt whether I will be allowed to give you for the present anything beyond the mere unitary or root idea. Anyhow I will do my best.
(5) We understand that in each of your other six kingdoms, a monad similarly performs a complete round, in each round stopping in each of the thirteen stations, and there performing in each a world ring of seven lives, one in each of the seven classes into which each of the 6 said kingdoms are divided. Is this correct, and, if so, will you give us the seven classes of these six kingdoms?
(5) If by kingdoms the seven kingdoms or regions of the earth are meant -- and I do not see how it can mean anything else -- then the query is answered in my reply to your Question (2) and if so then the five out of the seven are already enumerated. The first two are related as well as the third, to the evolution of the elementals and of the Inner kingdom.
(6) If we are right then the total existences prior to the man-period is 637. Is this correct? Or are there seven existences in each class of each kingdom, 4,459? Or what are the total numbers and how divided? One point more. In these lower kingdoms is the number of lives, so to speak, invariable, or does it vary, and, if so, how, why, and within what limits?
(6) Not being permitted to give you the whole truth, or divulge the number of isolated fractions, I am unable to satisfy you by giving you the total number. Rest assured my dear Brother, that to one who does not seek to become a practical occultist these numbers are immaterial. Even our high chelas are refused these particulars to the moment of their initiation into adeptship. These figures as I have already said are so interwoven with the profoundest psychological mysteries that to divulge the key to such figures, would be to put the rod of power within the reach of all the clever men who would read your book. All that I can tell you is that within the Solar Manwantara the number of existences or vital activities of the monad is fixed, but there are local variations in number in minorsystems, individual worlds, rounds, and world rings, according to circumstances. And in this connexion remember also that human personalities are often blotted out, while the entities whether single or compound complete all the minor and major circles of necessities under whatsoever form.
(7) So far we hope we are tolerably correct, but when we come to Man we have got muddled.
(7) And no wonder, since you were not given the correct information.
(7a) Does the monad as Man (ape-man and upwards) make one or seven rounds as above defined? We gathered the latter.
(7a) As a man-ape he performs just as many rounds and rings as every other race or class; i.e., he performs one Round and in every planet from "A" to "Z" has to go through seven chief races of ape-like man, as many sub-races, etc., etc. (See Supplementary Notes) as the above described race.
(7b) At each round does his world circle consist of seven lives in seven races (49) or of only seven lives in one race? We are not certain how you use the word race, whether there is only one race to each station of each round, i.e., one race to each world circle or whether there are seven races (with their seven branchlets and a life in each in either case) in each world circle? Nay, from your use of the words "and through each of these Man has to evolute before he passes on to the next higher race and that seven times," we are not sure that there are not seven lives in each branchlet as you call it, sub-race we will, if you like, say. So now there may be seven rounds each with seven races, each with seven sub-races, each with seven incarnations = 13 x 7 x 7 x 7 x 7 = 31, = 313 lives, or one round with seven races and seven sub-races and a life in each = 13 x 7 x 7 = 637 lives or again 4,459 lives. Please set us right here stating the normal number of lives (the exact numbers will vary owing to idiots, children, etc., not counting) and how divided.
(7b) As the above described race: i.e., at each planet -- our earth included -- he has to perform seven rings through seven races (one in each) and seven multiplied by seven offshoots. There are seven root-races, and seven sub-races or offshoots. Our doctrine treats anthropology as an absurd empty dream of the religionists and confines itself to ethnology. It is possible that my nomenclature is faulty: you are at liberty in such a case to change it. What I call "race" you would perhaps term "stock" though sub-race expresses better what we mean than the word family or division of the genus homo. However, to set you right so far I will say -- one life in each of the seven root-races; seven lives in each of the 49 sub-races -- or 7 x 7 x 7 = 343 and add 7 more. And then a series of lives in offshoot and branchlet races; making the total incarnations of man in each station or planet 777. The principle of acceleration and retardation applies itself in such a way, as to eliminate all the inferior stocks and leave but a single superior one to make the last ring. Not much to divide over some millions of years that man passes on one planet. Let us take but one million of years -- suspected and now accepted by your science -- to represent man's entire term upon our earth in this Round; and allowing an average of a century for each life, we find that whereas he has passed in all his lives upon our planet (in this Round) but 77,700 years he has been in the subjective spheres 922,300 years. Not much encouragement for the extreme modern re-incarnationists who remember their several previous existences!
Should you indulge in any calculations do not forget that we have computed above only full average lives of consciousness and responsibility. Nothing has been said as to the failures of Nature in abortions, congenital idiots, death of children in their first septenary cycles, nor of the exceptionsof which I cannot speak. No less have you to remember that average human life varies greatly according to the Rounds. Though I am obliged to withhold information about many points yet if you should work out any of the problems by yourself it will be my duty to tell you so. Try to solve the problem of the 777 incarnations.
(8) "M" said all mankind is in the fourth round, the fifth has not yet commenced but soon will. Was this a slip? If not, then collating this with your present remarks we gather that all mankind is on the fourth round (though in another place you seemed to say we are on the fifth round). That the highest people now on earth belong to the first sub-race of the fifth race, the majority to the seventh sub-race of the fourth race but with remnants of the other sub-races of the fourth race and the seventh sub-race of the third race. Pray set us quite right on this.
(8) "M "knows very little English and hates writing. But even I might have used very well the same expression. A few drops of rain do not make a monsoon though they presage it. The fifth round has not commenced on our earth and the races and sub-races of one round must not be confounded with those of another round. The fifth round mankind may be said to have "commenced" when there shall not be left on the planet which precedes ours a single man of that round and on our earth not one of the fourth round. You should know also that the casual fifth round men (and very few and scarce they are) who come in upon us as avant couriers do not beget on earth fifth round progeny. Plato and Confucius were fifth round men and our Lord a sixth round man (the mystery of his avatar is spoken of in my forthcoming letter) and not even Gautama Buddha's son was anything but a fourth round man.
Our mystic terms in their clumsy re-translation from the Sanskrit into English are as confusing to us as they are to you -- especially to "M" unless in writing to you one of us takes his pen as an adept and uses it from the first word to the last, in this capacity he is quite as liable to "slips" as any other man. No, we are not in the fifth round, but fifth round men have been coming in for the last few thousand years. But what is such a petty stretch of time in comparison with even one million of the several millions of years embraced in man's occupancy of earth in a single round.
K.H.
Please examine carefully the few additional things I give you on the fly-leaves. Damodar has received orders to send you No. 3 of Terry's letters -- a good material for pamphlet No. 3 of Fragments of Occult Truth.
This figure roughly represents the development of humanity on a planet -- say our earth. Man evolves in seven major or root-races; 49 minor races; and the subordinate races or offshoots, the branchlet races coming from the latter are not shown.
The arrow indicates the direction taken by the evolutionary impulse.
I, II, III, IV, etc., are the seven major or root-races.
1, 2, 3, etc., are the minor races.
a, a, a, are the subordinate or offshoot races.
N, the initial and terminal point of evolution on the planet.
S, the axial point where the development equilibrates or adjusts itself in each race evolution.
E, the equatorial points where in the descending arc intellect overcomes spirituality and in the ascending arc spirituality outstrips intellect.
(N.B. -- The above in D.K.'s hand -- the rest in K.H.'s. -- A.P.S.)
P.S. -- In his hurry D.J.K. has made his figure incline somewhat out of the perpendicular but it will serve as a rough memorandum. He drew it to represent development on a single planet; but I have added a word or two to make it apply as well (which it does) to a whole manwantaric chain of worlds.
K.H.
Supplementary Notes.
Whenever any question of evolution or development in any Kingdom presents itself to you bear constantly in mind that everything comes under the Septenary rule of series in their correspondences and mutual relation throughout nature.
In the evolution of man there is a topmost point, a bottom point, a descending arc, and an ascending arc. As it is "Spirit" which transforms itself into "matter" and (not "matter" which ascends -- but) matter which resolves once more into spirit, of course the first race evolution and the last on a planet (as in each round) must be more etherial, more spiritual, the fourth or lowermost one most physical (progressively of course in each round) and at the same time -- as physical intelligence is the masked manifestation of spiritual intelligence -- each evoluted race in the downward arc must be more physically intelligent than its predecessor, and each in the upward arc have a more refined form of mentality commingled with spiritual intuitiveness.
The first race (or stock) of the first round after a solarmanwantara (kindly wait for my forthcoming letter before you allow yourself to be repuzzled or remuddled. It will explain a good deal) would then be a god man race of an almost impalpable shape, and so it is; but then comes the difficulty to the student to reconcile this fact with the evolution of man from the animal-- however high his form among the anthropoids. And yet it is reconcilable, for whomsoever will hold religiously to a strict analogy between the works of the two worlds, the visible and the invisible -- one world, in fact, as one is working within itself so to say. Now there are -- there must be "failures" in the etherial races of the many classes of Dyan Chohans or Devas as well as among men. But still as these failures are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from their Dyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms -- this then happens. When a new solar system is to be evolved these Dyan Chohans are (remember the Hindu allegory of the Fallen Devas hurled by Siva into Andarah who are allowed by Parabrahm to consider it as an intermediate state where they may prepare themselves by a series of rebirths in that sphere for a higher state -- a new regeneration) born in by the influx "ahead" of the elementals and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual force in the aura of the nascent world of a new system until the stage of human evolution is reached. Then Karma has reached them and they will have to accept to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an activeForce, and commingle with the Elementals, or progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom to develope little by little the full type of humanity. In this commingling they lose their high intelligence and spirituality of Devaship to regain them in the end of the seventh ring in the seventh round.
Thus we have:
1st Round. -- An ethereal being -- non-intelligent, but super-spiritual. In each of the subsequent races and sub-races and minor races of evolution he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly etherial. And like the animal and vegetable he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarse surroundings.
2nd Round. -- He is still gigantic and etherial, but growing firmer and more condensed in body -- a more physical man, yet still less intelligent than spiritual; for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than the physical frame and the mind would not develop as rapidly as the body.
3rd Round. -- He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body; at first the form of a giant ape, and more intelligent (or rather cunning) than spiritual. For in the downward arc he has now reached the point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed or over-shadowed by nascent mentality. In the last half of this third round his gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in texture (perhaps the microscope might help to demonstrate this) and he becomes a more rational being -- though still more an ape than a Deva man.
4th round. -- Intellect has an enormous development in this round. The dumb races will acquire our human speech, on our globe, on which from the 4th race language is perfected and knowledge in physical things increases. At this half-way point of the fourth round, Humanity passes the axial point of the minor manwantaric circle. (Moreover, at the middle point of every major or root race evolution of each round, man passes the equator of his course on that planet, the same rule applying to the whole evolution or the seven rounds of the minor Manwantara -- 7 rounds divided by 2 = 3 1/2 rounds). At this point then the world teems with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease. In the first half of the fourth race, sciences, arts, literature and philosophy were born, eclipsed in one nation, reborn in another. Civilization and intellectual development whirling in septenary cycles as the rest; while it is but in the latter half that the spiritual Ego will begin its real struggle with body and mind to manifest its transcendental powers. Who will help in the forthcoming gigantic struggle? Who? Happy the man who helps a helping hand.
5th Round. -- The same relative development, and the same struggle continues.
6th Round.
7th Round.
Of these we need not speak.
Letter No. 15
[Transcribed from a copy in Mr. Sinnett's handwriting. K.H.'s repies are in bold type. -- ED.]
From K.H. to A.O.H. Received July 10th, 1882.
(1) Does every mineral form, vegetable, plant, animal, always contain within it that entity which involves the potentiality of development into a planetary spirit? At this present day in this present earth is there such an essence or spirit or soul -- the name is immaterial in every mineral, etc.
(1) Invariably; only rather call it the germ of a future entity, which it has been for ages. Take the human foetus. From the moment of its first planting until it completes its seventh month of gestation it repeats in miniature the mineral, vegetable, and animal cycles it passed through in its previous encasements, and only during the last two, develops its future human entity. It is completed but towards the child's seventh year. Yet it existed without any increase or decrease aeons on aeons before it worked its way onward, through and in the womb of mother nature as it works now in its earthly mother's bosom. Truly said a learned philosopher who trusts more to his intuitions than the dicta of modern science. "The stages of man's intra-uterine existence embody a condensed record of some of the missing pages in Earth's history." Thus you must look back at the animal, vegetable and mineral entities. You must take each entity at its starting point in the manvantaric course as the primordial cosmic atom already differentiated by the first flutter of the manvantaric life breath. For the potentiality which develops finally in a perfected planetary spirit lurks in, is in fact that primordial cosmic atom. Drawn by its "chemical affinity" (?) to coalesce with other like atoms the aggregate sum of such united atoms will in time become a man-bearing globe after the stages of the cloud, the spiral and sphere of fire-mist and of the condensation, consolidation, shrinkage and cooling of the planet have been successively passed through. But mind, not every globe becomes a "man bearer." I simply state the fact without dwelling further upon it in this connection. The great difficulty in grasping the idea in the above process lies in the liability to form more or less incomplete mental conceptions of the working of the oneelement, of its inevitable presence in every imponderable atom, and its subsequent ceaseless and almost illimitable multiplication of new centres of activity without affecting in the least its own original quantity. Let us take such an aggregation of atoms destined to form our globe and then follow, throwing a cursory look at the whole, the special work of such atoms. We will call the primordial atom A. This being not a circumscribed centre of activity but the initial point of a manwantaric whirl of evolution, gives birth to new centres which we may term B, C, D, etc., incomputably. Each of these capital points gives birth to minor centres, a, b, c, etc. And the latter in the course of evolution and involution in time develops into A's, B's, C's, etc., and so form the roots or are the developing causes of new genera, species, classes, etc., ad infinitum. Now neither the primordial A and its companion atoms, nor their derived a's, b's, c's, have lost one tittle of their original force or life-essence by the evolution of their derivatives. The force there, is not transformed into something else as I have already shown in my letter, but with each development of a new centre of activity from withinitself multiplies ad infinitum without ever losing a particle of its nature in quantity or quality. Yet acquiring as it progresses something plus in its differentiation. This "force" so-called, shows itself truly indestructible but does not correlate and is not convertible in the sense accepted by the Fellows of the R.S., but rather may be said to grow and expand into "something else" while neither its own potentiality nor being are in the least affected by the transformation. Nor can it well be called force since the latter is but the attribute of Yin Sin (Yin Sin or the one "Form of existence" also Adi-Buddhi or Dharmakaya the mystic, universally diffused essence) when manifesting in the phenomenal world of senses namely only your old acquaintance Fohat. See in this connexion Subba Row's article "Aryan Arhat Esoteric Doctrines" on the seven-fold principles in man; his review of your Fragments, pp. 94 and 95. The initiated Brahmin calls it (Yin Sin and Fohat) Brahman and Sakti when manifesting as that force. We will perhaps be nearer correct to call it infinite life and the source of all life visible and invisible, an essence inexhaustible ever present, in short Swabhavat. (S. in its universal application, Fohat when manifesting throughout our phenomenal world or rather the visible universe hence in its limitations). It is pravritti when active, nirvritti when passive. Call it the Sakti of Parabrahma, if you like, and say with the Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus Maya becomes Iswar the creative principle -- a power commonly called God which disappears and dies with the rest when pralaya comes. Or you may hold with the northern Buddhist philosophers and call it Adi-Buddhi the all-pervading supreme and absolute intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity -- "Avalokiteshvara" (a manwantaric intelligent nature crowned with humanity) -- the mystic name given by us to the hosts of the Dyan Chohans (N.B., the solar Dyan Chohans or the host of only our solar system) taken collectively, which host represents the mother source, the aggregate amount of all the intelligences that were are or ever will be whether on our string of man-bearing planets or on any part or portion of our solar system. And this will bring you by analogy to see that in its turn Adi-Buddhi (as its very name translated literally implies) is the aggregate intelligence of the universal intelligences including that of the Dyan Chohans even of the highest order. That is all I dare now to tell you on this special subject, as I fear I have already transcended the limit. Therefore whenever I speak of humanity without specifying it you must understand that I mean not humanity of our fourth round as we see it on this speck of mud in space but the whole host already evoluted.
Yes as described in my letter -- there is but one element and it is impossible to comprehend our system before a correct conception of it is firmly fixed in one's mind. You must therefore pardon me if I dwell on the subject longer than really seems necessary. But unless this great primary fact is firmly grasped the rest will appear unintelligible. This element then is the -- to speak metaphysically -- one sub-stratum or permanent cause of all manifestations in the phenomenal universe. The ancients speak of the five cognizable elements of ether, air, water, fire, earth, and of the one incognizable element (to the uninitiates) the 6th principle of the universe -- call it Purush Sakti, while to speak of the seventh outside the sanctuary was punishable with death. But these five are but the differentiated aspects of the one. As man is a seven-fold being so is the universe -- the septenary microcosm being to the septenary macrocosm but as the drop of rainwater is to the cloud from whence it dropped and whither in the course of time it will return. In that one are embraced or included so many tendencies for the evolution of air, water, fire, etc. (from the purely abstract down to their concrete condition) and when those latter are called elements it is to indicate their productive potentialities for numberless form changes or evolution of being. Let us represent the unknown quantity as X; that quantity is the one eternal immutable principle -- and A, B, C, D, E, five of the six minor principles or components of the same; viz., the principles of earth, water, air, fire and ether (akasa) following the order of their spirituality and beginning with the lowest. There is a sixth principle answering to the sixth principle Buddhi, in man (to avoid confusion remember that in viewing the question from the side of the descending scale the abstract All or eternal principle would be numerically designated as the first, and the phenomenal universe as the seventh, and whether belonging to man or to the universe -- viewed from the other side the numerical order would be exactly reversed) but we are not permitted to name it except among the initiates. I may however hint that it is connected with the process of the highest intellection. Let us call it N. And besides these, there is under all the activities of the phenomenal universe an energizing impulse from X, call this Y. Algebraically stated, our equation would therefore read A+B+C+D+E+N+Y=X. Each of these six letters represents, so to speak, the spirit or abstraction of what you call elements (your meagre English gives me no other word). This spirit controls the entire line of evolution, around the whole manwantaric cycle in its own department. The informing, vivifying, impelling, evolving cause,behind the countless phenomenal manifestations in that department of Nature. Let us work out the idea with a single example. Take fire. D -- the primal igneous principle resident in X -- is the ultimate cause of every phenomenal manifestation of fire on all the globes of the chain. The proximate causes are the evoluted secondary igneous agencies which severally control the sevendescents of fire on each planet. (Every element having its seven principles and every principle its seven sub-principles and these secondary agencies before doing so, have in turn become primary causes.) D is a septenary compound of which the highest fraction is pure spirit. As we see it on our globe it is in its coarsest, most material condition, as gross in its way as is man in his physical encasement. In the next preceding globe to ours fire was less gross than here: on the one before that less still. And so the body of flame was more and more pure and spiritual less and less gross and material on each antecedent planet. On the first of all in the manwantaric chain, it appeared as an almost pure objective shining -- the Maha Buddhi, sixth principle of the eternal light. Our globe being at the bottom of the arc where matter exhibits itself in its grossest form along with spirit -- when the fire element manifests itself on the globe next succeeding ours in the ascending arc it will be less dense than as we see it. Its spiritual quality will be identical with that which fire had on the globe preceding ours in the descending scale; the second globe of the ascending scale will correspond in quality with that of the second anterior globe to ours in the descending scale, etc. On each globe of the chain there are seven manifestations of fire of which the first in order will compare as to spiritual quality with the last manifestation on the next preceding planet: the process being reversed, as you will infer, with the opposite arc. The myriad specific manifestations of these six universal elements are in their turn but the offshoots, branches or branchlets of the one single primordial "Tree of Life."
Take Darwin's genealogical tree of life of the human race and others and bearing ever in mind the wise old adage, "As below so above" -- that is the universal system of correspondences -- try to understand by analogy. Thus will you see that in this day on this present earth in every mineral, etc., there is such a spirit. I will say more. Every grain of sand, every boulder or crag of granite, is that spirit crystallized or petrified. You hesitate. Take a primer of geology and see what science affirms there about the formation and growth of minerals. What is the origin of all the rocks, whether sedimentary or igneous. Take a piece of granite or sandstone and you find one composed of crystals, the other of grains of various stones (organic rocks or stones formed out of the remains of once living plants and animals, will not serve our present purpose: they are the relics of subsequent evolutions while we are concerned but with the primordial ones). Now sedimentary and igneous rocks are composed, the former of sand gravel and mud, the latter of lava. We have then but to trace the origin of the two. What do we find? We find that one was compounded of three elements or more accurately three several manifestations of the one element, -- earth, water and fire, and that the other was similarly compounded (though under different physical conditions) out of cosmic matter -- the imaginary materia prima itself one of the manifestations (6th principle) of the one element. How then can we doubt that a mineral contains in it a spark of the One as everything else in this objective nature does?
(2) When the pralaya commences what becomes of the Spirit that has not worked its way up to man?
(2) . . . The period necessary for the completion of the seven local or earthly -- or shall we call it -- globe-rings (not to speak of the seven Rounds in the minor manwantaras followed by their seven minor pralayas) -- the completion of the so-called mineral cycle is immeasurably longer than that of any other kingdom. As you may infer by analogy every globe before it reaches its adult period, has to pass through a formation period -- also septenary. Law in Nature is uniform and the conception, formation, birth, progress and development of the child differs from those of the globe only in magnitude. The globe has two periods of teething and of capillature -- its first rocks which it also sheds to make room for new -- and its ferns and mosses before it gets forest. As the atoms in the body change [every] seven years so does the globe renew its strata every seven cycles. A section of a part of Cape Breton coalfields shows seven ancient soils with remains of as many forests, and could one dig as deep once more seven other sections would be found following. . . .
There are three kinds of pralayas and manwantara: --
1. The universal or Maha pralaya and manwantara.
2. The solar pralaya and manwantara.
3. The minor pralaya and manwantara.
When the pralaya No. 1 is finished the universal manwantara begins. Then the whole universe must be re-evoluted de novo. When the pralaya of a solar system comes it affects that solar system only. A solar pralaya = 7 minor pralayas. The minor pralayas of No. 3 concern but our little string of globes, whether man-bearing or not. To such a string our Earth belongs.
Besides this within a minor pralaya there is a condition of planetary rest or as the astronomers say "death," like that of our present moon -- in which the rocky body of the planet survives but the life impulse has passed out. For example. Let us imagine that our earth is one of a group of seven planets or man-bearing worlds more or less eliptically arranged. Our earth being at the exact lower central point of the orbit of evolution, viz., half way round -- we will call the first globe A, the last Z. After each solar pralaya there is a complete destruction of our system and after each solar p. begins the absolute objective reformation of our system and each time everything is more perfect than before.
Now the life impulse reaches "A" or rather that which is destined to become "A" and which so far is but cosmic dust. A centre is formed in the nebulous matter of the condensation of the solar dust disseminated through space and a series of three evolutions invisible to the eye of flesh occur in succession, viz., three kingdoms of elementals or nature forces are evoluted: in other words the animal soul of the future globe is formed; or as a Kabalist will express it, the gnomes, the salamanders, and the undines are created. The correspondence between a mother-globe and her child-man may be thus worked out. Both have their seven principles. In the Globe, the elementals (of which there are in all seven species) form (a) a gross body, (b) her fluidic double (linga sariram), (c) her life principle (jiva); (d) her fourth principle kama rupa is formed by her creative impulse working from centre to circumference; (e) her fifth principle (animal soul or Manas, physical intelligence) is embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal kingdoms; (f) her sixth principle (or spiritual soul, Buddhi) is man (g) and her seventh principle (atma) is in a film of spiritualized akasa that surrounds her. The three evolutions completed: palpable globe begins to form. The mineral kingdom fourth in the whole series, but first in this stage leads the way. Its deposits are at first vaporous soft and plastic, only becoming hard and concrete in the seventh ring. When this ring is completed it projects its essence to globe B -- which is already passing through the preliminary stages of formation and mineral evolution begins on that globe. At this juncture the evolution of the vegetable kingdom commences on globe A. When the latter has made its seventh ring its essence passes on to globe B. At that time the mineral essence moves to globe C and the germs of the animal kingdom enter A. When the animal has seven rings there, its life principle goes to globe B, and the essences of vegetable and mineral move on. Then comes man on A, an ethereal foreshadowing of the compact being he is destined to become on our earth. Evolving seven parent races with many offshoots of sub-races, he, like the preceding kingdoms completes his seven rings and is then transferred successively to each of the globes onward to Z. From the first man has all the seven principles included in him in germ but none are developed. If we compare him to a baby we will be right; no one has ever, in the thousands of ghost stories current, seen the ghost of an infant, though the imagination of a loving mother may have suggested to her the picture of her lost babe in dreams. And this is very suggestive. In each of the rounds he makes one of the principles develop fully. In the first round his consciousness on our earth is dull and but feeble and shadowy, something like that of an infant. When he reaches our earth in the second round he has become responsible in a degree, in the third he becomes so entirely. At every stage and every round his development keeps pace, with the globe on which he is. The descending arc from A to our earth is called the shadowy, the ascending to Z the "luminous" . . . We men of the fourth round are already reaching the latter half of the fifth race of our fourth round humanity, while the men (the few earlier comers) of the fifth round, though only in their first race (or rather class), are yet immeasurably higher than we are -- spiritually if not intellectually; since with the completion or full development of this fifth principle (intellectual soul) they have come nearer than we have, are closer in contact with their sixth principle Buddhi. Of course many are the differentiated individuals even in the fourth r. as germs of principles are not equally developed in all, but such is the rule.
. . . Man comes on globe "A" after the other kingdoms have gone on. (Dividing our kingdoms into seven, the last four are what exoteric science divides into three. To this we add the kingdom of man or the Deva kingdom. The respective entities of these we divide into germinal, instinctive, semi-conscious, and fully conscious). . . . When all kingdoms have reached globe Z they will not move forward to re-enter A in precedence of man, but under a law of retardation operative from the central point -- or earth -- to Z and which equilibrates a principle of acceleration in the descending arc -- they will have just finished their respective evolution of genera and species, when man reaches his highest development on globe Z -- in this or any round. The reason for it is found in the enormously greater time required by them to develop their infinite varieties as compared with man; the relative speed of development in the rings therefore naturally increases as we go up the scale from the mineral. But these different rates are so adjusted by man stopping longer in the inter-planetary spheres of rest, for weal or woe -- that all kingdoms finish their work simultaneously on the planet Z. For example, on our globe we see the equilibrating law manifesting. From the first appearance of man whether speechless or not to his present one as a fourth and the coming fifth round being the structural intention of his organization has not radically changed. Ethnological characteristics however varied, affecting in no way man as a human being. The fossil of man or his skeleton whether of the period of that mammalian branch of which he forms the crown, whether cyclop or dwarf can be still recognised at a glance as a relic of man. Plants and animals meanwhile have become more and more unlike what they were. . . . The scheme with its septenary details would be incomprehensible to man had he not the power as the higher Adepts have proved of prematurely developing his 6th and 7th senses -- those which will be the natural endowment of all in the corresponding rounds. Our Lord Buddha -- a 6th r. man -- would not have appeared in our epoch, great as were his accumulated merits in previous rebirths but for a mystery. . . . Individuals cannot outstrip the humanity of their round any further than by one remove, for it is mathematically impossible -- you say (in effect): if the fountain of life flows ceaselessly there should be men of all rounds on the earth at all times, etc. The hint about planetary rest may dispel the misconception on this head.
When man is perfected qua a given round on Globe A he disappears thence (as had certain vegetables and animals). By degrees this Globe loses its vitality and finally reaches the moon stage, i.e., death, and so remains while man is making his seven rings on Z and passing his inter-cyclic period before starting on his next round. So with each Globe in turn.
And now as man when completing his seventh ring upon A has but begun his first on Z and as A dies when he leaves it for B, etc., and as he must also remain in the inter-cyclic sphere after Z, as he has between every two planets, until the impulse again thrills the chain, clearly no one can be more than one round ahead of his kind. And Buddha only forms an exception by virtue of the mystery. We have fifth round men among us because we are in the latter half of our septenary earth ring. In the first half this could not have happened. The countless myriads of our fourth round humanity who have outrun us and completed their seven rings on Z, have had time to pass their inter-cyclic period begin their new round and work on to globe D (ours). But how can there be men of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th rounds? We represent the first three and the sixth can only come at rare intervals and prematurely like Buddhas (only under prepared conditions) and that the last-named the seventh are not yet evolved! We have traced man out of a round into the Nirvanic state between Z and A. A was left in the last round dead. As the new round begins it catches the new influx of life, reawakens to vitality and begets all its kingdoms of a superior order to the last. After this has been repeated seven times comes a minor pralaya; the chain of globes are not destroyed by disintegration and dispersion of their particles but pass in abscondito. From this they will re-emerge in their turn during the next septenary period. Within one solar period (of a p. and m.) occur seven such minor periods, in an ascending scale of progressive development. To recapitulate there are in the round seven planetary or earth rings for each kingdom and one obscuration of each planet. The minor manwantara is composed of seven rounds, 49 rings and 7 obscurations, the solar period of 49 rounds, etc.
The periods with pralaya and manwantara are called by Dikshita "Surya manwantaras and pralayas." Thought is baffled in speculating how many of our solar pralayas must come before the great Cosmic night -- but that will come.
. . . In the minor pralayas there is no starting de novo -- only resumption of arrested activity. The vegetable and animal kingdoms which at the end of the minor manwantara had reached only a partial development are not destroyed. Their life or vital entities, call some of them nati if you will -- find also their corresponding night and rest -- they also have a Nirvana of their own. And why should they not, these foetal and infant entities. They are all like ourselves begotten of the one element. . . . As we have our Dyan Chohans so have they in their several kingdoms elemental guardians and are as well taken care of in the mass as is humanity in the mass. The one element not only fills space and isspace, but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic matter.
When strikes the hour of the solar pralaya -- though the process of man's advance on his last seventh round is precisely the same, each planet instead of merely passing out of the visible into the invisible as he quits it in turn is annihilated. With the beginning of the seventh Round of the seventh minor manwantara, every kingdom having now reached its last cycle, there remains on each planet after the exit of man but the maya of once living and existing forms. With every step he takes on the descending and ascending arcs as he moves on from Globe to Globe the planet left behind becomes an empty chrysaloidal case. At his departure there is an outflow from every kingdom of its entities. Waiting to pass into higher forms in due time they are nevertheless liberated: for to the day of that evolution they will rest in their lethargic sleep in space until again energized into life in the new solar manwantara. The old elementals -- will rest until they are called to become in their turn the bodies of mineral, vegetable and animal entities (on another and a higher string of globes) on their way to become human entities (see Isis) while the germinal entities of the lowest forms, and in that time of general perfection there will remain but few of such -- will hang in space like drops of water suddenly turned to icicles. They will thaw at the first hot breath of a solar manwantara and form the soul of the future globes. . . . The slow development of the vegetable kingdom provided for by the longer inter-planetary rest of man. . . . When the solar pralaya comes the whole purified humanity merges into Nirvana and from that inter-solar Nirvana will be reborn in higher systems. The string of worlds is destroyed and vanishes like a shadow from the wall in the extinguishment of light. We have every indication that at this very moment such a solar pralaya is taking place while there are two minor ones ending somewhere.
At the beginning of the solar manwantara the hitherto subjective elements of the material world now scattered in cosmic dust -- receiving their impulse from the new Dyan Chohans of the new solar system (the highest of the old ones having gone higher) -- will form into primordial ripples of life and separating into differentiating centres of activity combine in a graduated scale of seven stages of evolution. Like every other orb of space our Earth has before obtaining its ultimate materiality -- and nothing now in this world can give you an idea of what this state of matter is -- to pass through a gamut of seven stages of density. I say gamut advisedly since the diatonic scale best affords an illustration of the perpetual rythmic motion of the descending and ascending cycle of Swabhavat -- graduated as it is by tones and semi-tones.
You have among the learned members of your society one Theosophist who without familiarity with our occult doctrine, has yet intuitively grasped from scientific data the idea of a solar pralaya and its manwantara in their beginnings. I mean the celebrated French astronomer Flammarion -- "La Resurrection et la Fin des Mondes" (Chapter 4 res.). He speaks like a true seer. The facts are as he surmises with slight modifications. In consequence of the secular refrigeration (old age rather and loss of vital power), solidification and desiccation of the globes, the earth arrives at a point when it begins to be a relaxed conglomerate. The period of child-bearing is gone by. The progeny are all nurtured, its term of life is finished. Hence "its constituent masses cease to obey those laws of cohesion and aggregation which held them together." And becoming like a cadaver which abandoned to the work of destruction would leave each molecule composing it free to separate itself from the body for ever to obey in future the sway of new influences. The attraction of the moon (would that he could know the full extent of its pernicious influence) would itself undertake the task of demolition by producing a tidal wave of earth particles instead of an aqueous tide.
His mistake is that he believes a long time must be devoted to the ruin of the solar system: we are told that it occurs in the twinkling of an eye but not without many preliminary warnings. Another error is the supposition that the earth will fall into the sun. The sun itself is first to disintegrate at the solar pralaya.
. . . Fathom the nature and essence of the sixth principle of the universe and man and you will have fathomed the greatest mystery in this our world -- and why not -- are you not surrounded by it? What are its familiar manifestations, mesmerism, Od force, etc. -- all different aspects of one force capable of good and evil applications.
The degrees of an Adept's initiation mark the seven stages at which he discovers the secret of the sevenfold principles in nature and man and awakens his dormant powers.