Searchable Theosophical Texts
Theosophy House
Man: Whence,
How and Whither
-a Record of Clairvoyant Investigation
By
Annie Besant
and
C W leadbeater
The Secret Doctrine by H P Blavatsky
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FOREWOBD
The idea that
clairvoyant observation is possible
is no longer
regarded as entirely insane. It is not
generally
accepted, nor indeed is it accepted to any
large extent.
A constantly growing minority, however,
of fairly
intelligent people believe clairvoyance
to be a fact,
and regard it as a perfectly natural
power, which
will become universal in the course of
evolution.
They do not regard it as a miraculous
gift, nor as
an outgrowth from high spirituality,
lofty
intelligence, or purity of character ; any or all
of these may
be manifested in a person who is not
in the least
clairvoyant. They know that it is a
and that it
can be developed
ry anyone who
is able and willing to pay the price
demanded for
its forcing, ahead of the general evolution.
The use of
clairvoyance for research into the past
is not new.
The Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky
is a standing
instance of such use. Whether or not
the work thus
done is reliable is a question which
must be left
for decision to future generations, possessing
the power
which is now used for this purpose.
We shall, we
know, have a large body of readers
who are
students, who, believing the power to^be
a reality,
andjrppjwjng ug to be honest, will find this
booftTBoth
interesting and illuminative. For them
it has been
written; As the number of students increases,
so will
increase the number of our readers.
More than
this we cannot hope for. Centuries
hence, when
people will be able to write much better
books, based
on similar researches, this well be
looked on as
an interesting pioneer, considering the
time at which
it was written.
Proofs of its
general accuracy obviously cannot
be given,
though from time to time discoveries may
be made which
confirm an occasional statement. The
truth of
clairvoyant research can no more be proved
to the
general public, than colour can be demonstrated
to a blind
man. The general public, so far as it
reads the
book, will regard it with blank incredulity ;
some may
think it an interesting fabrication ; others
may find it
dull. Most will regard the authors as
either
self-deceived or fraudulent, according as the
judges are
kind-hearted or malevolent.
To students
we would say : Accept it so far as it
helps you in
your studies, and throws light on what
you already
know. Amplification and correction
may be made
in the future, for we have only given
a few
fragments of a huge history, and the task
has boon a
very heavy one.
The research work
was done at Adyar in the
summer of
1910 ; in the heat of the summer many of
the students
were away, and w^j^t^aarselyes jip,
siL-M-tqjMijQ^
every
week; we
observed, and said exacHy what we saw,
and two
members, Mrs. Van Hook and Don Fabrizio
Ruspoli, were
good enough to write down all we
said, exactly
as we said it ; these two sets of notes
have been
preserved. They are woven into the
present
story, written partly during the summer of
1911, when a
few weeks were stolen for the purpose,
and completed
in April and May V1912, similarly
stolen out of
the rush of busy lives. This kind of
work cannot
be done in the midst of constant interruptions,
and the only
way to accomplish it is to
escape from
the world for the time, to 'go into retreat,'
as the Eoman
Catholics call it.
The broad
Theosophical outline of evolution has
been
followed, and it is given among the *
preliminaries
'in Chapter
I. This governs the whole, and
is the
ground-plan of the book. The fact of an Occult
Hierarchy,
which guides and shapes evolution,
is throughout
taken for granted, and some of its
members
inevitably appear in the course of the
story. In
order to throw ourselves back into the
earliest
stages, we sought for our own consciousnesses,
present
there, and easier to start from than
anything
else, since no others were recognisable
They gave us,
as it were, a footing in the first and
second
Chains. From the latter part of the third
Chain and
onwards, we traced humanity's story by
following a
group of individuals, except where this
group was
otherwise occupied during any important
stage of
evolution as in the beginnings of the third
and fourth
sub-races of the fifth Boot Eace; when
that was the
case we left it, and followed the main
stream of
progress. In this record comparatively
few details
as to persons can be given, the sweep of
the story
being so large. Many detailed lives, however,
have been
published in The Theosophist, under
the general
title '
through which
glimpses of the past of individuals
may be seen.
A volume of these, named Lives of
Alcyone, will
shortly be published, and to that will
be appended
full genealogical tables, showing the
in each life
of all the characters so far
identified.
Work of this kind might be done ad
libitum, if
there were people to do it.
As a history
cannot be written without names, and
as
mncarnatipQjs a fact and therefore the reappearance
of the same
individual throughout succeeding
ages is also
a fact, the individual playing
many parts
under many names we have given
names to many
individuals by which they may be
recognised
throughout the dramas in which they take
part. Irving
is the same Irving to us, as Macbeth,
Richard III,
Shylock, Charles I, Faust, Romeo,
Matthias ;
and in any story of his life as actor he is
spoken of as
his
continuing individuality is recognised throughout.
So a human
being, in the long story in which
lives.jMSjiays,
pla^B hmx^reds of parts but is himself
throughout be
he man or woman, peasant,
prince, or
priest. To this ' himself we have given a
distinguishing
name, so that he may be recognised
under all the
disguises put on to suit the part he is
playing.
These are mostly names of constellations,
or stars. For
instance, we have given to Julius
Caesar the
name of
to Lao-Tze
that of Lyra; in this way we can see
how different
are the lines of evolution, the previous
lives which
produce a Caesar and a Plato. It gives
to the story
a human interest, and teaches the
student of
reincarnation.
The names of
Those who constantly appear in this
story as
ordinary men and women, but who are now
Masters, may
make those great Beings more real
to some ;
They have climbed to where They stand on
the same
ladder of life up which we are climbing
now; They
have known the common household life,
the joys and
sorrows, the successes and the failures,
which make up
human experiences. They are not
Gods perfect
from unending ages, but men and women
who have
unfolded the God within themselves
and have,
along a toilsome road, reached the superhuman.
They are the
fulfilled promise of what we
shall he, the
glorious flowers on the plant on which
we are the
buds.
And so we
launch our ship on the stormy ocean
of publicity,
to face its destiny and find its fate.
SOME OF THE
CHARACTERS IN THE STORY
THE FOUR
KUMARAS. . . Four of the Lords of
the Flame,
still livingin Shamballa.
MAHAGURU The
Bodhisattva of the time, appearing as
Vyasa, Thoth
(Hermes),Zarathushtra,Orpheus, finally as
Gautama, who
becamethe Lord Buddha.SURYA ... ...
The Lord
Maitreya,the present Bodhisattva,
the
SupremeTeacher of theworld.
MANU ... ...
The Head of a Root
Race. If with
a prefix,Root-Manu or
Seed-Manu, a
yet
VIRAJ
SATURN
JUPITER
MARS
MERCURY
OSIRIS
BRHASPATI
VENUS
higher
Official, presiding over a larger
cycle of
evolution a Round or a Chain.
The cognomen
Vaivasvatais given in
Hindu books
both to the Root Manu of
our Chain and
the Manu of the Aryan,
or fifth,
Root Race.
The
Maha-Chohan, a high official, of rank
equal to that
of a Manu or a Bodhisattva.
. Now a
Master, spokenof in some Theosop
h i c a 1 books as 'The Venetian.'
. . . Now a
Master, residing
in the
Nilgiri Hills.
. Now the
Master M. of
the Occult
World.
. Now the
Master K. H.
of the Occult
World.
, . Now the
Master Hilarion.
. Now the
Master Serapis.
. Now the
Master Jesus.
. Now the
Master Ragozci
(or
Rakovzky),
6
URANUS
VULCAN
ATHENA
ALBA
ALBIEEO
ALCYONE
ALETHEIA
ALTAIR
ARCOR
CAPELLA
CRUX
DENEB
EUDOXIA
FIDES
GEMINI
HECTOR
HELIOS
HERAKLES
LEO
LOMIA
LUTETIA
the
'Hungarian Adept,' the Comte
de S. Germain
of the eighteenth century.
Now the
Master D. K.
Now a Master;
known in His last earth-life
as Sir Thomas
More. Now a Master; known
on earth as
Thomas Vaughan, 'Eugenius
Philalethes.'Ethel
Whyte.
Maria-Luisa
Kirby.
J.
Krishnamurti.
JoEarfvan"
Marten.
Herbert
Whyte.
A. J. WiUson.
Count
Bubna-Licics.
S. Maud
Sharpe.
Julius
Caesar.
The Hon. 1 w
a y
Cuffe.
Lord Cochrane
(TenthEarl of Dundonald).
Louisa Shaw.
G._S._Arundalfe.
E. Maud
Green.
W. H. Kirby.
Marie Russak.
Annie Bgsant.
Fabrizio
Ruspoli.
J. I.
Wedgwood.
Charles
Bradlaugh.
LYRA ... ...
Lao-Tze.
MIBA ... ...
Carl Holbrook.
MIZAR ... . .
. J. Nityananda.
MONA ... ...
Piet Meuleman.
NOEMA ... ...
Margherita Ruspoli.
OLYMPIA ...
... Damodar K. Mavalan-
PALLAS ......
Plato.
PHOCEA ......
W. Q. Judge.
PHCENTX
...... T. Pascal.
POLAEIS
...... B. P. Wadia.
PROTEUS ...
... The Teshu Lama.
SELENE ... .
. . C. Jinarajadasa.
SHOTS ... ...
CJJV. Leadbeater.
SIWA ... ...
TTSubba Rao.
SPICA ... ...
Francesca Arundale.
TATJRUS ...
... Jerome Anderson.
ULYSSES
...... H. S. Olcott.
VAJRA ......
H. P. Blavatsky*.
VESTA ......
Minnie C. Holbrook.
A certain
number of members of the Theosophical
Society have
bravely allowed their names to appear
in the above
list, despite the ridicule it may bring on
them. A large
number of our friends are just now
in Hindu
bodies, but we cannot expose them to the
mockery and
persecution they would be likely to
suffer if we
named them, so we have not asked their
permission.
8
Preliminaries
The First and
Second Chain
Early Times
on the Moon Chain .
The Sixth
Round on the Moon Chain .
The Seventh
Round on the Moon Chain
Early Times
on the Earth Chain
Early Stages
of the Fourth Round .
The Fourth
Root Race .
Black Magic
in Atlantis
The
Civilisation of Atlantis
Two Atlantean
Civilisations Peru
Chaldaea
Beginnings of
the Fifth Root Race
The Building
of the Great City
Early Aryan
Civilisation and Empire
The Second
sub-race, the Arabian
The Third
sub-race, the Iranian
The Fourth
sub-race, the Keltic
The Fifth
sub-race, the Teutonic
The
Root-Stock and its Descent into
India 305
The Vision of
King Ashoka . 321
The
Beginnings of the Sixth Root Race 329
Religion and
the Temples . 341
Education and
the Family 374
Buildings and
Customs .... 396
Conclusion
427
Epilogue 447
Appendix 453
Index 487
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
INTRODUCTION
The problem
of Man's origin, of his evolution, of
his destiny,
is one of inexhaustible interest. Whence
came he, this
glorious Intelligence, on this globe, at
least, the
crown of visible beings? How has he
evolved to
his present position? Has he suddenly
descended
from above, a radiant angel, to become
the temporary
tenant of a house of clay, or has he
climbed
upwards through long dim ages, tracing his
humble
ancestry from primeval slime, through fish,
reptile,
mammal, up to the human kingdom! And
what is his
future destiny? is he evolving onwards,
climbing
higher and higher, only to descend the long
slope of
degeneration till he falls over the precipice
of death,
leaving behind him a freezing planet, the
sepulchre of
myriad civilisations? or is his present
.climbing but
the schooling of an immortal spiritual
Power,
destined in his maturity to wield the sceptre
of a world, a
system, a congeries of systems, a veyj^
table
Godjn^^th^^making?
To tliese
questions many answers have been
given,
partially or fairly fully, in the Scriptures of
ii
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
ancient
religions, in the shadowy traditions handed
down from
mighty men of old, in the explorations
of modern
archaeologists, in the researches of geologists,
physicists,
biologists, astronomers, of our
own days. The
most modern knowledge has vindicated
the most
ancient records in ascribing to our
earth and its
inhabitants a period of existence of
vast extent
and of marvellous complexity ; hundreds
of millions
of years are tossed together to give time
for the slow
and laborious processes of nature ; further
and further
back ' primeval man' is pushed; Lemuria
is seen where
now the Pacific ripples, and Australia,
but lately
rediscovered, is regarded as one of
the oldest of
lands ; Atlantis is posited, where now
the Atlantic
rolls, and Africa is linked to America by
a solid
bridge of land, so that the laurels of a discoverer
are plucked
from the brow of Columbus, and
he is seen as
following long perished generations who
found their
way from Europe to the continent of the
setting sun.
Poseidonis is no longer the mere fairytale
told by
superstitious Egyptian priests to a
Greek
philosopher; Minos of
ancient
grave, a man and not a myth ;
ancient, is
shown as the modern successor of a series
of highly
civilised cities, buried in stratum after
stratum,
glooming through the night of time. Tradition
is beckoning
the explorer to excavate in
in
ruins that
await but his spade for their unburying.
Amid this
clash of opinions, this conflict of theories,
this
affirmation and repudiation of evernew hypotheses,
it may be
that the record of two observers,
two explorers
treading a very ancient path that
few feet
tread to-day, but that will be trodden more
INTRODUCTION
iii
and more by
thronging students as time shows its
stability may
have a chance of being read. Science
is to-day
exploring the marvels of what it calls the
*
subjective
mind/ and is finding in it strange powers,
strange
upsurgings, strange memories. Healthy
and balanced,
dominating the brain, it shows as
genius; out
of equilibrium with the brain, vagrant
and
incalculable, it shows as insanity. Some day
Science will
realise that what it calls the subjective
mind,
Religion calls the Soul, and that the exhibition
of its powers
depends on the physical and superphysical
instruments
at its command. If these are
well-constructed,
sound and flexible, and thoroughly
under its
control, the powers of vision, of audition,
of memory,
irregularly up-welling from the
subjective
mind, become the normal and disposable
powers of the
Soul; if the Soul strive upwards to
the Spirit
the Divine Self veiled in the matter of
our System,
the true Inner Man, instead of ever
clinging to
the body, then its powers increase, and
knowledge,
otherwise unattainable, comes within its
reach.
Metaphysicians,
ancient and modern, declare that
Past,
Present, and Future are ever simultaneously
existent in
the divine Consciousness, and are only
successive as
they come into manifestation, i.e.,
under Time,
which is verily the succession of states
of
consciousness. Our limited consciousness, existing
in Time, is
inevitably bound by this succession ;
we can only
think successively. But we all know,
from our
experience of dream-states, that timemeasures
vary with
this change of state, though succession
remains; we
know also that time-measures
vary even
more in the thought-world, and that when
iv
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
we construct
mental pictures we can delay, hasten,
repeat, the
succession of thought-images at will,
though still
ever bound by succession. Pursuing this
line of
thought, it is not difficult to conceive of a mind
raised to
transcendent power, the mind of a LOGOS,
or WORD such
a Being, e.g., as is described in the
Johannine
Gospel, i. 1-4 containing within itself
all the
mental images embodied in, say, a Solar System,
arranged in
the order of succession of their
proposed
manifestation, but all there, all capable of
review, as we
can review our own thought-images,
though we
have not yet attained to the divine power,
so strikingly
voiced by the Prophet Muhammad,
as: "He
only saith to it: 'Be,' and it is'/-
1
Yet, as
the infant of
a day contains within himself the potentialities
of his sire,
so do we, the offspring of God,
contain
within ourselves the potentialities of Divinity.
Hence, when
we resolutely turn the Soul away
from earth
and concentrate his attention on the
Spirit the
substance whereof he is the shadow in
the world of
matter the Soul may reach the * Memory
of Nature, '
the embodiment in the material world
of the
Thoughts of the LOGOS, the reflection, as it
were, of His
Mind. There dwells the Past in everliving
records;
there also dwells the Future, more
difficult for
the half-developed Soul to reach, because
not yet
manifested, nor yet embodied, though
quite as
'real'. The Soul, reading these records,
may transmit
them to the body, impress them on the
brain, and
then record them in words and writings.
When the Soul
is merged in the Spirit as in the
case of
"men made perfect,
" of
Those who have
1AI Quran,
xi. 37.
INTRODUCTION
v
completed
human evolution, the Spirits who are
1
liberated,
' or 'saved
11 then the touch with the
divine Memory
is immediate, direct, ever available,
and unerring.
Before that point is reached, the
touch is
imperfect, mediate, subject to errors of
observation
and transmission.
The writers
of this book, having been taught the
method of
gaining touch, but being subject to the
difficulties
involved in their uncompleted evolution,
have done
their best to observe and transmit, but are
fully
conscious of the many weaknesses which mar
their work.
Occasional help has been given to them
by the Elder
Brethren, in the way of broad outlines
here and
there, and dates where necessary.
As in the
case of the related books which have
preceded this
in the Theosophical movement, the
"treasure
is in earthen vessels,
"
and, while
gratefully
acknowledging
the help graciously given, they
take the
responsibility of all errors entirely on themselves.
irFhe terms
used by Hindus and Christians respectively
to mark the
end of purely human evolution.
MAN:
WHENCE AND
HOW
------
CHAPTER I
PRELIMINARIES
WHENCE comes
man and whither goes he t In the
fullest
answer we can only say : Man, as a spiritual
Being, comes
forth from God and returns to God;
but the
Whence and Whither with which we deal here
denote a far
more modest sweep. It is but a single
page of his
life-story that is copied out herein, telling
of the birth
into dense matter of some of the Children
of Man What
lies beyond that birthing, still
unpenetrated
Night? and following on their growth
from world to
world to a point in the near future but
some few
centuries hence What lies beyond that
cloud-flush
in the dawning, still unrisen Day?
And yet the
title is not wholly wrong, for he who
comes from
God and goes to God isjijgj; precisely
'Man'. That
Eay of the divine Splendour which
comes forth
from Divinity at the beginning of a manifestation,
that
"fragment of Mine own Self, transformed
in the world
of life into an immortal Spirit,"
1
is far more
than
unfolding,
and mineral, vegetable, animal, are but
stages of his
embryonic life in the womb of nature,
ere he is
born as
*Bhagavad-Gitat
xv. 7.
2
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
Spirit and
Matter struggle for the mastery, and when
the struggle
is over and Spirit has become Lord of
Matter,
Master of life and death, then Spirit enters
on his
superhuman evolution, and is no longer Man,
but rather
Superman.
Here then we
deal with him only as Man: with
Man in his
embryonic stage, in the mineral, vegetable
and animal
kingdoms ; with Man in his development
in the human
kingdom ; with Man and his worlds, the
Thinker and
his field of evolution.
In order to
follow readily the story told in this
book, it is
necessary for the reader to pause for a few
minutes on
the general conception of a Solar System,
as outlined
in Theosophical literature,
1 and on the
broad
principles of the evolution therein carried on.
This is not
more difficult to follow than the technical
terminology
of every science, or than other cosmic
descriptions,
as in astronomy, and a little attention
will easily
enable the student to master it. In all
studies of
deep content, there are ever dry preliminaries
which have to
be mastered. The careless reader
finds them
dull, skips them, and is, throughout his
subsequent
reading, in a more or less bewildered and
confused
condition of mind; he is building his house
without a
foundation, and must continually be shoring
it up. The
careful reader faces these difficulties
bravely,
masters them once for all, and with the
knowledge
thus gained he goes easily forward, and
the details
he meets with later fall readily into their
*The student
may find it in H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret
Doctrine, A.
P. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism, and Growth of
the Soul,
Annie Besant's The Ancient Wisdom, etc. There
are minor
differences such as H. P. Blavatsky's and A. P.
Sinnett's
naming of the globes of the earth-chain but the
^ain facts
are identical.
PRELIMINARIES
3
places. Those
who prefer the first plan, had better
miss the
present Chapter, and go on to Chapter II ;
the wiser
readers will give an hour to mastering
what follows.
That great
Sage, Plato, one of the world's masterintellects,
whose lofty
ideas have dominated European
thought,
makes the pregnant statement: "God
geometrises.
" The
more we know of Nature, the
more we
realise this fact. The leaves of plants are
set in a
definite order of succession, 1/2, 1/3, 2/5, 3/8,
5713, and so
on. The vibrations that make the successive
notes of a
scale may be correspondently
figured in a
regular series. Some diseases follow a
definite
cycle of days, and the 7th, the 14th, the 21st,
mark the
crises that result in continued physical life
or in death.
It is useless to multiply instances.
There is,
then, nothing surprising in the fact that
we find, in
the order of our Solar System, the continual
recurrence of
the number Seven. Because of
tins, it has
been called a 'sacred number'; a 'significant
number' would
be a better epithet. The
moon's life
divides itself naturally into twice seven
days of
waxing and an equal number of waning, and
its quarters
give us our week of seven days. And
we find this
seven as the root-number of our Solar
System,
dividing its departments into seven, and
these again
divided into subsidiary sevens, and these
into other
sevens, and so on. The religious student
will think of
the seven Ameshaspentas of the Zoroastriaii,
of the seven
Spirits before the throne of God
of the
Christian: the Theosophist of the supreme
Triple Logos
of the system, with His Ministers ; the
'These have
been called Planetary Logoi, but the name
often causes
confusion, and is therefore here dropped.
4
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
"Rulers
of seven Chains" round Him, each ruling
His own
department of the system as a Viceroy
for an
Emperor. We are concerned here with but
one
department in detail. The Solar System contains
ten of these,
for while rooted in the seven,
it develops
ten departments, ten being therefore,
by Mystics,
called the *
perfect
number'. Mr. A. P.
Sinnett has
well named these departments ' Schemes
of
Evolution,' and within each of these Schemes
humanities
are evolving or will evolve. We will
now confine
ourselves to our own, though never
forgetting
that the others exist, and that very highly
evolved Intelligences
may pass from one to another.
In fact, such
visitors came to our earth at
one stage of
its evolution, to guide and help our newly-
born
humanity.
A Scheme of
Evolution passes through seven
great
evolutionary stages, each of which is called a
Chain. This
name is derived from the fact that a
Chain
consists of seven Globes, mutually interrelated
; it is a
chain of seven links, each link a globe. The
seven Schemes
are shown in Diagram I, around the
central sun
and at any one period of time only one
of the rings
in each Scheme will be active ; each ring
of each of
these seven Schemes is composed of seven
globes; these
are not figured separately but form
what we here
have drawn as a ring, in order to save
space. The
globes are shown in the next Diagram.
In Diagram II
we have a single Scheme, figured
in the seven
stages of its evolution, i.e., in its seven
successive
Chains; it is now shown in relation to
five of the
seven spheres, or types, of matter existing
in the Solar
System ; matter of each type is composed
of atoms of a
definite kind, all the solids, liquids,
5 *
o
tf o
PRELIMINARIES
5
gases, and
ethers of one type of matter being aggregations
of atoms of a
single kind;
1 this matter
is named
according to the mood of consciousness to
which it
responds: physical, emotional, mental, intuitional,
spiritual.
2 In the
first Chain, its seven
Worlds, A, B,
C, D, E, F, G, are seen arranged:
8
A and G, the
root-world and the seed-world, are on
the spiritual
plane, for all descends from the
higher to the
lower, from the subtle to the dense, and
climbs again
to the higher, enriched with the gains
of the
journey, the gains serving as seed for the
next Chain; B
and F are on the intuitional plane,
one gathering
and the other assimilating; C and F
are on the
higher mental, in similar relationship;
D, the
turning point, the polntfof balance between
the ascending
and descending arcs, is in the lower
part of the
mental plane. These pairs of globes
in every
Chain are ever closely allied, but the one
is the rough
sketch, the other the finished picture.
In the second
Chain, the globes have all sunk one
stage lower
into matter, and D is on the emotional
plane. In the
third Chain, they have sunk yet one
stage
further, and D reaches the physical plane.
'See Occult
Chemistry, Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater,
pp. 5 11.
2
Physical
matter is the matter with which we are daily
dealing in
our waking life. Emotional matter is that which
is set
vibrating by desires and emotions, and is called astral
in our older
books, a name we retain to some extent. Mental
matter is
that which similarly answers to thoughts. Intuitional
matter
(buddhic, in Samskrt) is that which serves as
medium for
the highest intuition and all-embracing love.
Spiritual
matter (atmic) is that in which the creative Will
is potent.
3The top
left-hand globe is A ; the next lower is B ; and
so on up to
G, the top right-hand globe.
6 MAN:
WHENCE. HOW AND WHITHER
In the fourth
Chain, and on the fourth only, the midmost
Chain of the
seven, the most deeply involved
in densest
matter, the turning point of the Chains
as is D of
the globes, there are three of the globes
C, D, and E
on the physical plane. On the return
journey, as
it were, the ascent resembles the descent:
in the fifth
Chain, as in the third, there is one physical
globe; in the
sixth, as in the second, globe D
is emotional
; in the seventh, as in the first, globe D
\s mental.
With the ending of the seventh Chain the
Scheme has
worked itself out, and its fruitage is
harvested.
The seven
Schemes of our Solar System may, for
convenience
sake, be named after the globe D of
each, this
being the globe best known to us; these
are : Vulcan,
Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
our Earth
belongs, the Chain which preceded our
terrene Chain
was the third of its series, and its
one physical
globe, globe D, was the globe which is
now our Moon;
lifence the third Chain is called the
lunar, while
the second and first Chains are designated
only by
numbers; our Earth Chain, or terrene
Chain, is the
fourth in succession, and has therefore
three of its
seven globes in physical manifestation,
its third
globe, C, being what is called the
planet Mars,
and its fifth globe, E, what is called
the planet
Mercury. The Neptunian Scheme also,
tfith Neptune
as its globe D, has three globes of
\ts Chain in
physical manifestation C and E being
the two
physical planets connected with it, the existence
of which was
mentioned in Theosophical literature
before they
were recognised by Science and
hence has
reached the fourth Chain of its series.
THE
SUCCESSIVE LIFE-WAVES
DIAGRAM III.
PRELIMINARIES
7
The Venusian
Scheme is reaching the end of its
fifth Chain,
and Venus has consequently lately lost
her Moon, the
globe D of the preceding Chain.1 It
is possible
that Vulcan, which Herschel saw, but
which, it is
said, has now disappeared, is in its sixth
Chain, but on
that we have no information, either
direct or
mediate. Jupiter is not yet inhabited, but
its moons
are, by beings with dense physical bodies.
Diagrams III
and IV2
represent the
relationships
between the
seven Chains within a Scheme, showing
the
evolutionary progress from Chain to Chain.
Diagram III
should be first studied; it is merely a
simplification
of Diagram IV2
, which is a
copy of
one drawn by
a Master; this though at first sight
somewhat
bewildering will be found very illuminative
when
understood.
Diagram III
places the seven Chains in a Scheme
as columns
standing side by side, in order that the
divine
Life-Streams, figured by the arrows, may be
traced from
kingdom to kingdom in their ascent.
Each section
in a column represents one of the seven
kingdoms of
nature three elemental, mineral, vegetable,
animal,
human.3 Follow Life-Stream 7, the
only one
which goes through the seven kingdoms
within the
Scheme; it enters the first Chain at the
*It may be
remembered that the Moon of Venus was seen
by Herschel.
2See
frontispiece, Diagram IV.
SThe
"elemental" kingdoms are the three stages of life on
its descent
into matter involution and the seven kingdoms
might be
figured on a descending and ascending arc,
like Chains
and globes :
1st Elemental
Human
2nd Elemental
Animal
3rd Elemental
Vegetable
Mineral
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
first
the
life-period of the Chain; it passes into the second
develops
therein during its life-period; it appears
in the third
third Chain,
and enters the Mineral on the fourth;
it then
successively develops through the Vegetable
and Animal
Kingdoms on the fifth and sixth Chains,
nnd attains
the Human in the seventh. The whole
Scheme thus
provides a field of evolution for a
stream of the
divine Life from its ensouling of matter
up to man.1
The remaining streams have either
commenced in
another Scheme and enter this at the
point of
evolution therein reached, or enter this too
late to reach
the human kingdom herein.
The study of
Diagram IV must be begun by realising
that the
coloured circles are not seven Chains
of globes, as
might be expected, but the seven Kingdoms
of Nature in
each successive Chain, and therefore
correspond
with the sections of columns in Diagram
TIL We have
here a whole Scheme of Evolution,
with the
place of each Kingdom shown in each
Chain. The
student should select a line of any
colour in the
first circle and trace it carefully onwards.
Let us take
the blue circle at the top lefthand,
pointed out by
the arrow; it represents the first
irrhese seven
Life-Stroaras and the six additional ingresses
for the
lowest
six Chains,
thirteen in all, are the successive impulses which
make up, for
this Scheme, what Theosophists call the * second
Life-wave,'
i.e., the form-evolving current of Life from the
Second LOGOS,
the Vishnu of the Hindu, the Son of the
Christian,
Trinities.
PRELIMINARIES
9
first Chain
for the second the next ring of coloured
circles this
blue stream divides on arriving there;
its least
advanced part, which is not ready to go on
into the
second
the main
stream and goes again into the first Elemental
Kingdom of
this second Chain, joining the
new
Life-stream coloured yellow and marked with
an arrow
which enters on its evolution in that Chain,
and being
merged in i
x
; the main
blue stream goes on
into the
second
Chain,
receiving into itself some laggards from the
second
them, and
carrying them on with itself;
it will be
noticed that only a blue stream leaves this
Kingdom, the
foreign elen ents having been completely
assimilated.
The blue stream flows on into the third
Chain,
divides, leaves its laggards to continue in the
second
the bulk goes
on to form th? third
of this third
Chain ; again it receives some laggards
from the
third
second Chain,
assimilates tlem, and carries them
on with
itself, an undiluted blue stream, into the
Mineral
Kingdom of the fourth Chain; as before, it
leaves some
laggards to evolve themselves in the
third
receives some
from the Mineral Kingdom of the
third Chain,
assimilating them as before. It has
now reached
its densest point in evolution, the
Mineral
Kingdom. Leaving this we still follow
the blue line
it climbs into the Vegetable Kingdom
of the fifth
Chain, sending off its laggards to the
Mineral
Kingdom of this Chain, and taking up
the laggards
of the Vegetable Kingdom of the
10
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
fourth Chain.
Again it climbs upwards, now
into the
Animal Kingdom of the sixth Chain,
leaving its
insufficiently developed vegetables
to complete
that stage of their evolution in
the Vegetable
Kingdom of the sixth Chain, and
receiving undeveloped
animals from the fifth Chain
into its own
Kingdom. Lastly, it completes its long
evolution by
entering the
seventh
Chain, dropping its too undeveloped animals
into the
Animal Kingdom of the seventh Chain, receiving
some human
beings from the
of the sixth
Chain, carrying them on with itself
to its
triumphant conclusion, where human evolution
is perfected
and the superhuman begins, along
one or
another of the seven paths, indicated in the
blue plume at
the end. In another Scheme, those we
left as
laggards in the Animal Kingdom of the
seventh Chain
will appear in the
of the first
Chain of that new Scheme, and therein
reach
perfection as men. They will be in the circle
corresponding
to the grey-brown circle with its
plume in the
first Chain of the present Diagram.
Each line can
be followed in this way from Kingdom
to Kingdom in
successive Chains. The life in
the! second,
the orange, circle, representing the
second
having
therefore, one stage of life in a Chain behind
it, or, in
other words, having entered the stream of
evolution as
the first
seventh Chain
of a previous Scheme (see the top
left-hand
circle with arrow in the seventh Chain in
our Diagram)
reaches the
sixth Chain
and passes on. That in the third circle,
purple, with
two Kingdoms behind it in a prevous
PRELIMINARIES
11
Scheme,
reaches the
Chain and
passes on. That in the fourth, the
Mineral
Kingdom, passes out in the fourth Chain.
That in the
Vegetable Kingdom passes out in the
third Chain ;
that in the Animal in the second ; that
in the Human
in the first.
The student
who will thoroughly master this diagram
will find
himself in possession of a plan into
the
compartments of whch he can pack any numbfer
of dfttnils
without, in the midst of their complexity,
losing sight
of the general principles of aeonian
evolution.
Two points
remain: the sub-elemental and the
superhuman.
The Life-Stream from the LOGOS ensouls
matter first
in the first, or lowest, Elemental
Kingdom;
hence when that same stream from the
first Chain
enters the second
the second
Chain, the matter which is to be that of
the first
has to be
ensouled by a new Life-Stream from the
LOGOS, and so
on with each of the remaining Chains.1
When the
stands on the
threshold of His superhuman life, a
liberated
Spirit, seven paths open before Him for
His choosing:
He may enter into the blissful omniscience
and
omnipotence of Nirvana, with activities
far beyond
our knowing, to become, perchance, in
some future
world an Avatara, or divine Incarnation:
this is
sometimes called, 'taking the Dharmakaya
vesture'. He
may enter on 'the Spiritual
Period' a
phrase covering unknown meanings,
14 'My Father
worketh hitherto and I work." 8. John v.
17. See in
Chapter v. the description of this on our Earth,
when the
Spirit of the Moon incarnates therein.
12
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
among them
probably that of i
taking the
Sainbhogakaya
vesture'. He
may become part of that treasure-
house of
spiritual forces on which the Agents
of the LOGOS
draw for Their work, *
taking the
Nirmanakaya
vesture'. He
may remain a member of
the Occult
Hierarchy which rules and guards the
world in
v^hich He has reached perfection. He may
pass on to
the next Chain, to aid in building up its
forms. He may
enter the splendid Angel Deva
Evolution. He
may give Himself to the immediate
service of
the LOGOS, to be used by Him in any part
of the Solar
System, His Servant and Messenger,
who lives but
to carry out His will and do His work
over the
whole of the system which He rules. As a
General has
his Staff, the members of which carry
his messages
to any part of the field, so are These
the Staff of
Him who commands all, "Ministers of
His that do
His pleasure".
1 This seems
to be considered
a very hard
Path, perhaps the greatest sacrifice
open to the
Adept, and is therefore regarded
as carrying
with it great distinction. A member of
the General
Staff has ao physical body, but makes
one for
Himself by Kriyashakti the 'power to
make' of the matter
of the globe to which He is
sent. The
Staff contains Beings at very different
levels, from
that of Arhatship
2
upwards.
There are
some who
dedicated themselves to it on reaching
Arhatship in
the Moon-Chain; others who are
Adepts;3
others who have passed far beyond this
stage in
human evolution.
The need for
the provision of such a Staff arises
*Psalm$,
ciii. 21.
2Those who
have passed the fourth Great Initiation.
8Those who
have passed the fifth Great Initiation.
PRELIMINARIES
13
probably,
among many other reasons unknown to
us, from the
fact that in the very early stages of the
evolution of
a Chain especially of one on the downward
arc or even
of a globe, more help from outside
is needed
than is required later. On the first
Chain of our
Scheme, for instance, the attainment
of the first
of the Great Initiations was the appointed
level of
achievement, and none of its humanity
attained
Adeptship, which is itself nowhere near,
Buddhahood ;
it would therefore be necessary to supply
the higher
offices from outside. So again later
Chains were
helped, and our Earth will have to
provide high
Officials for the earlier Chains of other
Schemes, as
well as yielding the normal supply for
the later
globes and Rounds of our own Chain. Already
from our own
Occult Hierarchy two Members,
within our
own knowledge, have left our Earth,
either to
join the General Staff, or lent by the Head
of our
Hierarchy to the Head of the Hierarchy of
some other
globe outside our Scheme.
The human
beings who, in any Chain, do not reach
by a certain
time the level appointed for the Humanity
of the Chain,
are its *
failures';
the 'failure' may
be due to
youth and consequent lack of time, or to
lack of due
exertion, and so on; but, whatever the
cause, those
who fail to reach a point from which
they can
progress sufficiently, during the remaining
life of a
Chain, to attain the required level by its
end, drop out
of its evolution before that evolution
is completed,
and are obliged to enter the succeeding
Chain at a
point determined by the stage already
reached, that
they may complete their human course.
There are
others who succeed in passing this crucial
point, the
'Day of Judgment' for the Chain, but who
14
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
yet do not
progress with sufficient rapidity to reach
the level
from which the seven Paths open out.
These, though
not *
failures,'
have not wholly succeeded,
and they
therefore also pass on into the
next Chain and
lead its humanity, when that humanity
has reached a
stage at which the bodies are sufficiently
evolved to
serve as vehicles for their further
progress. We
shall find these various classes in our
study, and
this is but a bird's-eye view of them; the
details will
make them come out more clearly. Only
in the first
Chain we noticed no failures dropping
out of its
evolution. There were some there who
did not
succeed, but if that Chain had its Day of
Judgment, we
failed to observe it.
In a single
Chain the evolutionary wave sweeps
from A to G,
using each globe in turn as the field
of growth;
this circling round the Chain is appropriately
named a
Round, and seven times the wave
sweeps round,
ere the life of the Chain is over, its
work
complete. Then the results are gathered up
and garnered,
and all form the seed for the succeeding
Chain, save
Those who, having finished Their
course as
men, and become Super-men, elect to
serve in
other ways than in guiding that coming
Chain upon
its way, and who enter on another of
the seven
Paths.
To conclude
these preliminaries. In the Monadic
Sphere, on
the super-spiritual level, dwell the Divine
Emanations,
the Sons of God, who are to take flesh
and become
Sons of Man in the coming universe.
They ever
behold the Face of the Father, and are
the
Angel-Counterparts of men. This divine Son
in his own
world is technically called a /Monad,' a
Oneness. He
it is that, as said on p. 1, is " transPRELIMINARIES
15
formed in the
world of life into an immortal Spirit ".
The Spirit is
the Monad veiled in matter, triple
therefore in
his aspects of Will, Wisdom, and Activity,
being the
very Monad himself, after he has
appropriated
the atoms of matter of the spiritual,
intuitional
and mental sphere, round which his
future bodies
will be formed. In the Monad wells
up the
intarissable fount of life ; the Spirit, or himself
veiled, is
his manifestation in a universe. As
he gains
mastery over matter in the lower sphere,
he takes more
and more control of the evolutionary
work, and all
the great choices which decide a man's
destiny are
made by his Will, guided by his Wisdom,
and achieved
by his Activity.
------
CHAPTER 11.
THE FIRST AND
SECOND CHAINS
WE have to
face what is practically the only great
difficulty of
our study at the very outset the evolutionary
cycles on the
first and second Chains of
our Scheme. A
Master said smilingly as to this:
"Well,
you will be able to see it, but it is doubtful
how far you
will be able to describe it in intelligible
language, so
that others may understand/' The
conditions
are so different from all that here we
know: the
forms are so tenuous, so subtle, so changing;
the matter so
utterly "the stuff which dreams
are made
of," that clear voicing of the things seen
is well-nigh
impossible. Yet however imperfect the
description,
some description must be essayed, in
order to
render intelligible the later growth and unfolding;
poor as it
must be, it may be better than
none.
A real 'beginning'
may not be found; in the endloss
chain of
living tilings a link may be studied,
fairly
complete in itself; but the metal thereof has
somewhere
slept in the bosom of the earth, has been
dug out from
some mine, smelted in some furnace,
wrought in
some workshop, shaped by some hands,
ere it
appears as a link in a chain. And so with
our Scheme.
Without previous Schemes it could not
be, for its
higher inhabitants began not here their
16
THE FIRST AND
SECOND CHAINS 17
evolution.
Suffice it, that some of the fragments of
Deity,
eternal Spirits, who otherwhere had passed
through the
downward arc involving themselves
in
ever-densifying matter through the Elemental
Kingdoms, and
reaching their lowest point began
in the
Mineral Kingdom of this first Chain their
upward
climbing, their long unfolding in evolving
matter; and
in that Chain, learning our first evolutionary
lessons in
that Mineral Kingdom, were we
the humanity
of our present earth. It is these consciousnesses
that we
propose to trace from their
life in
minerals in the first Chain to their life in
men in the
fourth. Ourselves part of the humanity
of the earth,
it is easier to trace this than to trace
something
entirely alien from ourselves. For in
this we are
but evoking from the Eternal Memory
scenes in
which we ourselves played our part, with
which we are
indissolubly linked, and which we
therefore can
more easily reach.
Seven centres
are seen, forming the first Chain,
the first and
seventh, as already said, on t^Q spiritual
level,
1 the second
and sixth on the intuitional,
2
the third and
fifth on the higher mental, the fourth
on the lower
mental. We name them in the fashion
of later
globes, A and G, B and F, C and E, and in
the centre D,
the turning point of the cycle. In the
first Round
of the fourth Chain, which is to some
extent a
coarse copy of the first Chain, the Occult
Commentary
quoted in The Secret Doctrine says of
the Earth
that it was "a foetus in the matrix of
Space,"
and the simile recurs to the mind. This
Chain is the
future worlds in the matrix of thought,
'Nirvanic.
2Bnddhic.
18
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
the worlds
that later are to be born into denser
matter. We
can scarcely call these centres "globes" ;
they are like
centres of light in a sea of light, foci
of light
through which light is rushing, wrought
of the very
substance of light and only light, yet
modified by
the flood of light which courses through
them; they
are as vortex-rings, yet the rings are
but light,
only distinguishable by their whirling, by
the
difference of their motion, like whirlpools made
only of water
in the midst of water; but these are
whirlpools of
light in the midst of light. The first
and seventh
centres are both modifications of spiritual
matter, the
seventh the perfected outworking of
the broad
outlines visible in the first, the finished
picture
outwrought from the rough sketch of the
divine
Artist. There is a humanity there, a very
glorified
humanity, product of some previous evolution,
which is here
to complete its human course on
this Chain
(see the top right hand circle in the
first Chain
in Diagram IV) ; hereon each entity will
acquire his
lowest body in the fourth globe of each
Round the
body of mental matter which is the
densest the
Chain can give. The level fixed for
achievement
on this Chain the nonattainment of
which would
imply the necessity for rebirth on the
following
Chain is the first of the great Initiations,
or what
corresponds to it there. On this first Chain
there are so
tar as we could see none who drop
out as
failures, and some, as always seems to be the
case in later
Chains also, pass far beyond the appointed
level ; in
the seventh Round the members of
that humanity
who became Initiates entered on one
or other of
the seven Paths before-mentioned.
All stages of
ego-hood appear to be present on
THE FIRST AND
SECOND CHAINS 19
this Chain,
but the absence of the lower levels of
matter to
which we are accustomed makes one notable
difference in
the evolutionary methods that
strikes the
observer : everything not only starts but
also
progresses
*
above,' there
being no below and
no ' forms'
in the ordinary sense of the word, but
only centers
of life, living beings without stable
forms; there
are no physical and emotional worlds
in the first
three globes not even a lower mental
from which
impulses can surge upwards, calling
down the
higher in response to ensoul and use the
forms already
existing on the lower levels. The
nearest
approach to such action is on globe D, where
the
animal-like thought-forms reach upwards, attracting
the attention
of the subtle centres floating
above them;
then more of the life of the Spirit
pulses out
into the centres, and they anchor themiselves
to the
thought-forms and ensoul them, and
the
thought-forms become human,
It is
difficult to mark off the successive Bounds;
they seepi to
fade one into the other like dissolving
views,
1 and are
marked only by slight increases and
diminutions
of light. Progress is very slow; one
recalls the
Satya Yuga of the Hindu Scriptures,
where a life
lasts for many thousands of years without
much change,
2 The
entities unfold very slowly,
as rays of
magnetised light play upon them; it is
l lt may be
remembered that the first and second Races
on our
present world also showed something of this peculiarity,
though on a
level so much lower.
2The Hindus
divide time into cycles composed of four
Yugas, or
Ages, that succeed each' other, the Satya, the first
of the
series, being the most spiritual and the longest. When
the fourth is
ended, a new cycle opens, again with a Satya.
20
MAN.-WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
like a
gestation, like growth within an egg, or of a
flower-bud
within its sheath. The chief interest of
the Chain is
in the evolution of the Shining Ones
the Devas, or
Angels those who live habitually on
these high
levels; while the lower evolutions seem
to play a
subsidiary part. Humanity is much influenced
by these,
mostly by their mere presence
and by the
atmosphere created by them, and occasionally
a Shining One
may be seen to take a human
being almost
as a toy or as a pet. The vast angelic
evolution
helps humanity by its very existence ; the
vibrations
set up by these glorious Spirits play on
the lower
human types, strengthening and vivifying
them. Looking
at the Chain as a whole, we saw it
as a field
for this
only
secondarily for humanity; but perchance that
may ever be
so, and that it is because we are human
that we
regard the world as so specially our own.
On the fourth
globe, now and again a Shining One
may be seen
deliberately to aid a human being,
transferring
matter from his own body into the
human, and
thus increasing the responsiveness and
susceptibility
of the latter. Such helpers belong to
the class of
Form-Angels "Riipa-Devas who live
normally in
the lower mental world.
When we turn
to the mineral kingdom, we are
among those
some of whom will become men on the
Moon Chain,
and some on the Earth Chain. The
consciousness
asleep in these minerals is to awaken
gradually and
to unfold through long stages into
the human.
The vegetable
kingdom is a little more awake, but
very dull and
sleepy still; the normal progress
herein will
carry the ensouling consciousness into
THE FIRST AND
SECOND CHAINS 21
the animal kingdom
on the second Chain, and into
the human on
the third.
At present,
while we must needs speak of these
kingdoms as
mineral and vegetable, they are really
composed of
mere thoughts thoughts of minerals,
thoughts of
vegetables, with the Monads who dream
in them, as
it were, floating over them, sending
down faint
thrills of life into these airy forms;
these Monads
are, it would seem, forced now and
again to turn
attention to them, to feel through
them, to
sense through them, when some external
touch compels
a drowsy notice. These thoughtforms
are as models
in the Mind of the Ruler of
the Seven
Chains, living within Him, products of
His
meditation, a world of thoughts, of ideas; we
see that the
Monads who have acquired permanent
atoms in some
previous Scheme, and who are floating
over these
thought-forms, attach themselves to
them, and
become vaguely conscious in and through
them. Vague
as this consciousness is there are
differences
in it; the lowest grade can scarcely be
called
consciousness, the life in the thought-forms
of types
resembling what we should now call earth,
rocks,
stones. Monads touching these can scarcely
be said to be
aware of anything through them, save
of pressure,
drawing from them a dull stirring of
life, showing
itself as resistance to the pressure,
and thus
different from the yet duller life in the
chemical
molecules unattached to Monads, and sensing
no pressure.
In the next grade, in the thoughtforms
resembling
what we should now call metals,
the sense of
pressure is stronger and the resistance
to it a
little more definite ; there is almost an effort
to push
outwards against it, a reaction causing ex22
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
pansion. When
this sub-conscious reaction is in
several
directions, the thought-model of a crystal
is formed. We
noticed that when our own consciousness
was in the
mineral, we felt only the sub-conscious
re-action ;
but passing out and trying to feel
the re-action
from outside, it figured itself in our
consciousness
as a vague discontent at the pressure,
and a dull
resentful effort to resist and push against
it. "I
feel a discontented sort of mineral,
" one of
us remarked.
Probably the Monadic life, seeking
expression,
did vaguely feel displeasure at its frustration,
and this we
felt when we came out of the
mineral,
feeling it in ourselves as we felt it in that
part of our
consciousness which was at that time
outside the
rigid form. If we glance hastily forward,
we may see
that Monads attached to crystals
do not enter
the next Chain in the lowest forms
of vegetable
life, but only in the higher, and, passing
through
those, enter the Moon Chain at its
middle point
as mammals, becoming individualised
there, and taking
human birth in its fifth Round.
One most
disconcerting fact for observers is that
these '
thoughts of
minerals' are not immobile, but
mobile; a
hill, which one expects to be steady, will
turn over or
float away, or change its form; there
IB no solid earth,
but a shifting panorama. It requires
no faith to
move these mountains, for they
move of
themselves.
At the end of
this first Chain, all who attained
the appointed
level set for it that which, as said
before,
corresponded to our first Initiation entered
on one or
other of the seven Paths, one of
these leading
to work on the second Chain as
the builders
of the forms of its humanity,
TBE FIRST AND
SECOND CHAINS 23
playing to it
a part similar to that played
later on our
earth by the * Lords of the Moon 1
.
1
These are
called by H. P. Blavatsky 'Asuras,' i.e.,
4
living beings
'; later the term was confined by usage
to living
beings in whom intellect, but not emotion
was
developed.* Those who did not succeed in
reaching this
level entered the second Chain for
their own
further evolution at its midmost point
and led its
humanity, at the close of that Chain
reaching
liberation and being among its i
Lords';
some of these
Lords, in turn, worked on the third
Chain in
building the forms of its humanity.
8 The
early
humanity on the second Chain was drawn
from the
animal kingdom of the first; the animal
kingdom of
the second Chain from the vegetable of
the first;
while the vegetable kingdom of the second
came from the
mineral of the first. The three
'The
Barhishad Pitrs of The Secret Doctrine.
2These Asuras
acted on the second Chain as Barhishad
Pitrs, and on
the third as Agnishvatta Pitrs, and formed
one of the
highest classes of the superhuman Manasaputras
who came to
our earth, according to The Secret Doctrine.
It must be
remembered that these stages are all superhuman
; they
apparently indicate the superhuman stages of
the fifth of
the seven Paths named on p. 12. In The Secret
Doctrine a
difficulty is created by the use of this same name
of Asuras for
those who left the lunar Chain from the first
globe of its
seventh Round, and who caused trouble on Earth
by 'refusing
to create'. Readers of The Pedigree of Man
must correct
it by this, and by details given later, for I was
led into a
mistake by the double use of the word in The
Secret
Doctrine. The human beings can never exist, as such,
on more than
two successive Chains. They must have become
Supermen, for
such appearance. A. B.
8In the
nomenclature of the S. D. becoming its Barhishad
Pitrs.
24
------
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
elemental
kingdoms on the downward arc of the first
Chain passed
similarly into the second Chain, filling
the mineral
kingdom and two of the elemental, while
the first
elemental kingdom was formed from a new
impulse of
life from the LOGOS.
In the second
Chain, the further descent into
matter gives
us a globe on the emotional plane, an
astral globe,
and the denser material makes things
a little more
coherent and comprehensible. We
have then A
and G on the intuitional level, B and
F on the
higher mental, C and E on the lower
mental, and D
on the emotional. On this lowest
globe, things
were a little more like those to which
we are
accustomed though still very strange and
weird. Thus
things with the general appearance of
vegetables
moved about with the freedom of animals,
though
apparently with little, if any, sentiency.
They were not
anchored to physical matter,
and hence
were very mobile. The young humanity
here lived in
close contact with the Shining Ones,
who still
dominated the evolutionary field, and
the
Form-Angels and the Desire-Angels Rupa
Devas and
Kama Devas strongly, but for the most
part
unintentionally, influenced human evolution.
Passion showed
itself in many who now had emotional
bodies on
globe D, and its germs were visible
in animals.
Differences were noticeable in the capacity
to respond to
vibrations sent out, consciously
and
unconsciously, by the Shining Ones, but changes
were very gradual
and progress was slow. Later,
when the
intuitional consciousness unfolded, there
was
communication between this Scheme and the
Scheme of
which Venus is now the physical globe;
that Scheme
is a Chain ahead of ours, and some
THE FIRST AND
SECOND CHAINS 25
came to our
second Chain from there ; but whether
they belonged
to the Venus humanity, or were members
of the '
Staff,' we
could not tell.
Great surging
clouds of matter, splendid in
colour, were
a noticeable feature on globe D in the
first Round;
they became in the following Bound
denser, more
brilliantly coloured, more responsive
to vibrations
which shaped them into forms, whether
vegetable or
animal it is hard to say. Much of
the work was
on the higher levels, a vitalising of
subtle matter
for future use, showing but little
effect on the
lower forms. Just as now elemental
essence is
used to build emotional and mental bodies,
so then the
Form and Desire-Angels were seeking
to
differentiate themselves more fully by using these
clouds of
matter and living in them. They came
down,
sub-plane by sub-plane, into denser matter,
but were not
in this using the human kingdom.
Even at the
present time a Deva, or Angel, may ensoul
a whole
country-side, and such action was very
general then;
the emotional and lower-mental matter
formed the
bodies of these Angels, changing,
intermingling;
and incidentally permanent atoms of
vegetables,
minerals, and even animals, rooting
themselves in
such Angel-bodies, grew and evolved.
The Angels
seemed to take no particular interest
in them, any
more than we interest ourselves in the
evolution of
microbes within ourselves; now and
then,
however, some interest was shown in an animal,
and its
capacity to respond increased rapidly
under such
conditions.
Studying
vegetable consciousness in the second
Chain in
which we, who now are human, were living
in the
vegetable world we find a dim awareness
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
of forces
playing on it, and a certain sense of compulsion
towards
growth. In some, there was a feeling
of the want
to grow, the wish to grow; as one
of the
investigators remarked: "I am trying to flower.
" In
others there was a slight resistance to the
line of growth
impressed, and a vague groping after
another
self-chosen direction. Some seemed to try
to use any
forces that contacted them, and in their
germinal
consciousness held that all around existed
for them.
Some tried to push out in a direction
which attracted
them, and were frustrated and became
vaguely
resentful; one, forming part of a
Deva, was
observed to be thus hindered, since the
Deva was
naturally arranging things to suit himself,
and not any
constituents of his body. On the
other hand,
from the obscure view-point of the
vegetable,
the Deva's proceedings were as incomprehensible
as the
weather is to us in these days,
and often as
troublesome. Towards the end of the
Chain, the
more highly developed vegetables were
showing a
little mind, in fact a fair baby intelligence,
recognising
the existence of external animals, liking
the
neighbourhood of some and shrinking from
others. And
there was a craving for more cohesion,
evidently the
result of the downward push of life
into matter
of greater density, the Will working in
Nature for
descent into denser levels. Without the
physical
anchorage the emotional forms were very
unstable, and
tended to float about vaguely and
without
purpose.
In the
seventh Bound of this Chain a considerable
number
dropped out from its humanity as failures,
having fallen
too far behind to find suitable forms ;
and they went
on later into the third, theMoon Chain,
THE FIRST AND
SECOND CHAINS 27
as men.
Others reached the level now marked by
the third
Initiation, the level appointed for success
on the second
Chain, and entered on one of the
seven Paths,
one, as before, leading to the next
Chain for
work thereon. Those who were not failures,
but had not
reached perfect success, went on
to the third
Chain, entering it at the Bound suitable
for the stage
previously reached. The foremost
from the
animal kingdom individualised on the
second Chain,
and began their human evolution on
the Moon
Chain, passing through its lower kingdoms
very rapidly
and becoming men ; they then led evolution
on that Chain
until the classes already mentioned
first the
failures, and then those who had
not achieved
perfect success dropped in from the
second Chain
and became successively the leaders.
The foremost
from the second Chain vegetable
kingdom
entered the Moon Chain Animal Kingdom
as mammals,
in its fourth Eound, not passing
through the
infusoria and lower animal types
fishes and
reptiles; the rest came in, in its first
Round, as
animals of the lower types. The consciousnesses
in the second
Chain Mineral Kingdom
passed on
into the Vegetable Kingdom in the Moon
Chain, and
the Mineral Kingdom was filled from the
highest
Elemental Kingdom of the second Chain.
As before,
the lowest Elemental Kingdom was filled
by a new wave
of life from the LOGOS.
An important
principle may here be mentioned;
each of the
seven sub-planes which make up a plane
is again
divided into seven ; hence a body, while containing
matter of all
the sub-planes in its constitution,
will show
activity only in the subdivisions corresponding
to the number
of the Chains or Bounds
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
already
experienced, or in the course of being experienced.
A man working
in the second Round of
the second
Chain will be able to use in his emotional
and mental
bodies only the first and second subdivisions
of each
sub-plane of astral and mental matter ;
in the third
Bound he will be able to use the first,
second and
third, though not so fully as regards
the third as
he will do when he shall be in the third
Round of the
third Chain, and so on. Thus later
on, in our
Earth Chain, man in the second Round
was working
at and through the first and second subdivisions
of each of
the sub-planes, and feebly in the
third and
fourth, as he was in the fourth Chain; so
that, while
he had matter of all the sub-planes in
him, it was
only the two lower subdivisions of the
two lower
sub-planes that were fully active, and
through these
only could his consciousness fully
work. Not
until the seventh Race of our seventh
Round will
man possess the splendid body in which
every
particle will thrill responsive to himself, and
even then not
as perfectly as in later Chains.
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CHAPTER III
EARLY TIMES
ON THE MOON CHAIN
ON the Moon
Chain the third in succession
there is a
deeper plunge into matter, and the middle
globe is on
the physical plane ; A and Q are on the
higher
mental, B and F on the lower mental, C
and E on the
emotional, and D on the physical.
This middle
globe, the scene of the greatest activity
in the Chain,
is still surviving as the Moon, but
the Moon is
only what is left of it after much loss
of material,
its inner core, as it were, after the disintegration
of the crust,
a globe much diminished
in size, on
its way to total wreck a corpse, in fact.
Following the
evolving consciousnesses which we
have seen as
minerals on the first Chain, as vegetables
on the
second, we find the crest of the advancing
wave which
bears us within it entering the
third Chain
as mammals at its middle point, appearing
On globe D,
the Moon, in the fourth Bound.
These mammals
are curious creatures, small but
extraordinarily
active; the most advanced of them
are
monkey-like in form, making enormous leaps.
The fourth
Bound creatures are as a rule at first
scaly in
skin, and later the skin is froglike; then
the more
advanced types develop bristles, which
form a very
coarse harsh fur. The air is altogether
29
30
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
different
from our present atmosphere, heavy and
stifling,
reminding one of choke-damp, but it obviously
suits the
Moon inhabitants. The consciousnesses
we are
following take the bodies of small
mammals, long
in body and short in legs, a mixture
of weasel,
mongoose and prairie-dog, with a short
scrubby tail,
altogether clumsy and ill-finished ; they
are red-eyed,
and able to see in the darkness of
their holes;
-coming out of the holes, they raise
themselves on
their hind legs, which form a tripod
with the
short strong tail, and turn their heads from
side to side,
sniffing. These animals are fairly intelligent,
and the
relations between the lunar animals
and men, in
this district at least, seem more
friendly than
between wild animals and men on our
earth ; these
creatures are not domesticated, but do
not scuttle
away when men appear on the scene. In
other parts,
where men are mere savages, eating
their enemies
when they can get them, and animals
when
man-flesh is unobtainable, the wild creatures
are timid,
and fly from human neighbourhood.
After this
first stage of animal life, comes a spell
as creatures
that live much in the trees, the limbs
double-jointed,
the feet padded; the feet are curiously
modified,
with a thumb-like projection at
right-angles
to the limb, like the spur of a cock,
armed with a
curving claw; running rapidly along
the underside
of branches, the animal uses this to
hold on by,
the remaining part of the feet being
useless; but
when moving on the ground it walks
on the pads,
and the spur sticks out behind, above
the ground
level, and does not impede movement.
Other
animals, more highly developed than these
and far more
intelligent, monkey-like in form, live
EARLY TIMES
ON THE MOON CHAIN 31
habitually in
human settlements, and attach themselves
strongly to
the men of their time, serving
them in
various ways. These become individualized
on globe D of
this fourth Bound, and on globes E, F
and G develop
human, emotional and mental bodies,
the causal,
though fully formed, showing but little
growth. These
will leave the Moon Chain in the
middle of the
seventh Round, as we shall see, and
thus go
through, on the Moon Chain, three Rounds
of
development as men. Among these, individualised
in a small
community living in the country, are
observed the
present Masters, Mars and Mercury,
who are now
at the head of the Theosophical Society,
and who are
to be the Manu and Bodhisattva1 of
the sixth
Root Race on our earth, in the present
fourth Round
of the terrene Chain.
The
consciousnesses of the animals we are following,
after the
death of their last bodies on globe D,
practically
slept through the remainder of the
fourth Round
and through the first three globes of
the fifth;
losing their emotional and inchoate mental
bodies very
shortly after the death of the physical
ones, and
having no causal, they remained
sleeping in a
sort of heaven with pleasant dreams,
without touch
with the manifested worlds, the gulf
between them
and those worlds unbridged. On
globe D of
the fifth Round, they were again thrown
down into
bodies and appeared as large monkeylike
creatures,
leaping forty feet at a bound, and
appearing to
enjoy making tremendous springs
high into the
air. In the time of the fourth human
race on this
globe D they became domesticated, act-
'The official
titles of the Heads the King and the
Priest, the
Ruler and the Teacher of a Root Race.
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
ing as
guardians of their masters '
property and
as
playmates of
the children of the household, much as
faithful
watch-dogs may be now, carrying the children
on their
backs and in their arms, and developing
intense
affection for their human masters; the
children
nestled delightedly in their thick soft fur,
and enjoyed
the huge bounds of their faithful guardians.
One scene may
act as a type of the individualisation
of such
creatures.
There is a
hut in which dwells a Moon-man, his
wife and
children; these we know in later times
under the
names of Mars and Mercury, the Mahaguru
and Surya.
1 A number of
these monkey-creatures
live round
the hut, and give to their owners
the devotion
of faithful dogs ; among them we notice
the future
Sirius, Herakles, Alcyone and Mizar, to
whom we may
give their future names for the purpose
of
recognition, though they are still nonhuman.
Their astral
and mental bodies have grown
under the
play of their owners f human intelligence,
as those of
domesticated animals now develop under
our own;
Sirius is devoted chiefly to Mercury,
Herakles to
Mars; Alcyone and Mizar are passionately
altached
servants of the Mahaguru and
Surya.
One nigh^
there is an alarm ; the hut is surround-
'See 'Rents
in the Veil of Time 1 in The Theosophist of
1910, 1911.
The Mahaguru is the Lord Gautama, Surya is
the Lord
Maitreya. Why did these animals come into this
close
connection with those who were to be their Masters on
the then
far-off Earth? Had they been plants tended by
them, as we
tend our plants now, in the higher cases for
the Lords
Gautama and Maitreya were men on the second
Chain or in
the lower cases animals and plants that had
an affinity
for each other?
EARLY TIMES
ON THE MOON CHAIN S3
ed by
savages, supported T>y their domesticated
animals,
fierce and strong, resembling furry lizards
and
crocodiles. The faithful guardians spring up
around their
masters' hut and fight desperately in
its defence;
Mars comes out and drives back the
assailants,
using some weapon they do not possess ;
but, while he
drives them backward, a lizard-like
creature
darts behind him into the hut, and catching
up the child
Surya, begins to carry him away.
Sirius
springs at him, bears him down, and throws
the child to
Alcyone, who carries him back into the
hut, while
Sirius grapples with the lizard, and, after
a desperate
struggle, kills it, falling senseless,
badly
mangled, over its body. Meanwhile a savage
slips behind
Mars and stabs at his back, but Herakles,
with one
leap, flings himself between his master
and the
weapon, and receives the blow full on his
breast, and
falls, dying. The savages are now flying
in all
directions, and Mars, feeling the fall of
some creature
against his back, staggers, and, recovering
himself,
turns. He recognises his faithful
animal
defender, bends over his dying servant, and
places his
head in his lap.
The poor
monkey lifts his eyes, full of intense
devotion, to
his master 's face, and the act of service
done, with
passionate desire to save, calls down a
stream of
response from the Will aspect of the
Monad in a
fiery rush of power, and in the very
moment of
dying the monkey individualises, and
thus he dies
a man.
Our damaged
monkey, Sirius, has been very much
chewed up by
his lizard-enemy, but is still living,
and is
carried within the hut; he lives for a considerable
time, a
crippled wreck, and can only drag
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
himself about
with difficulty. It is touching to see
his dumb
fidelity to his mistress; his eyes follow
her
everywhere as she moves about; the child Surya
nurses him
tenderly, and his monkey comrades, Alcyone
and Mizar,
hang round him; gradually his
intelligence,
fed by love, grows stronger, until the
lower mind,
reaching up, draws down response from
the higher,
and the causal body flashes into fteing,
shortly
before his death. Alcyone and Mizar live on
after his
death for some time, one-pointed devotion
to the
Mahaguru and Surya their most marked
characteristic,
until the emotional body, instinct
with this
pure fire, calls down an answer from the
intuitional
plane, and they also reach individualisation,
and pass
away.
These cases
are good instances of the three great
types of
methods of individualisation,
1 in each of
which the
downflow of the higher life is through
one aspect of
the Triple Spirit, through Will,
through
Wisdom, through active Intellect. Action
reaches up
and calls down Will; Love reaches up
and calls
down Wisdom; Mind reaches up and calls
down
Intellect. These are the three 'Eight Ways'
of
Individualisation. Others there are, that we shall
turn to in a
moment, reflexions of these in denser
matter, but
these are * Wrong Ways' and lead to
much sorrow.
Henceforth
these consciousnesses that we have
been
specially following are definitely human, and
have the same
causal bodies which they still use;
they are in
globe E as human beings, but are not
taking any
definite part in its ordinary life. They
'See on this
C. W. Leadbeater's 'Modes of Individualisation/
in The Inner
Life, vol. ii, 6.
EARLY TIMES
ON THE MOON CHAIN 35
float about
in its atmosphere like fishes in water,
but are not
sufficiently advanced to share in its
normal
activities. The new emotional body on
globe E is
produced by a kind of protuberance
formed round
the emotional permanent atom; the
newly
individualised are not born as children of its
inhabitants,
who, it may be said in passing, are not
prepossessing
in appearance; their real progress
as human
beings cannot be said to begin until they
land again on
globe D in the sixth Round. Some
consolidation
and improvement there certainly is
in the
emotional body floating in the atmosphere
of globe E,
in the mental similarly floating in that
of globe F,
and in the causal likewise in that of
globe G-.
This improvement is shown in the descent
through the
atmospheres of globes A, B and C of
the sixth
Round, wherein the matter drawn into
each body is
better of its kind, and is more coherent.
But, as said,
the effective progress is on globe
D, whereon
physical matter is once more donned.
Among the
advanced animals in this fifth Round,
living in
contact with primitive human beings, there
are some who are
of interest because they later drift
together into
a type founded on a similarity of the
method of
individualisation. They individualise in
one of the '
Wrong Ways' aforesaid. They try to
imitate the
human beings among whom they are, in
order to gain
credit for superiority with their fellow-
animals,
strutting about, full of vanity, and
constantly
* showing
off'. They are monkey-like
creatures,
much like those previously observed, but
distinctly
cleverer and with more imaginative, or,
at least,
imitative faculty, and they play at being
human beings,
as children play at being grown up.
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
They
individualise by this intense vanity, which
stimulates
the imitative faculty to an abnormal degree,
and causes a
strong feeling of separation, an
emphasising
of the dawning *P of the animal, until
the effort to
be distinguished from others calls
down an
answer from the higher levels, and the
ego is
formed. But the effort to rise above their
fellows,
without either admiration or love for any
one above
them, to rise only in order that they
may look
down, does nothing to change animal
passions into
human emotions, and lays no foundation
folr future
harmonious growth of 'the emotional
and
intellectual natures. They are independent,
self-centered,
self-sufficient, each thinking of
himself only,
with no thought of co-operation, or
union for a
common purpose. When they die,
after
becoming individualised, they dneam away
the interval
between death and rebirth on globe D
in the sixth
Bound, much in the same way as did
the other
individualised animals described, but
with one
difference a difference of enormous import
to the lines
of growth that in the previous
cases the new
human beings had their minds fixed
lovingly on
their adored owners of globe D, and
their
emotions were thus strengthened and improved,
whereas those
individualised by vanity
fixed their
minds only on themselves and their own
excellences,
and hence had no emotional growth of
love.
Another set
of animals is individualised by admiration
of the human
beings with whom' they come
into contact,
and they also seek to imitate them,
not because
they wish to outstrip their fellows, but
because they
regard the human beings as superior
EARLY TIMES
ON THE MOON CHAIN 37
and wish to
he like them. There is no strong love
of them or
wish to serve them, but there is much
desire to be
taught and great readiness to obey,
growing out
of the admiration felt for them as
superior
beings. They are trained by their owners,
first to
perform tricks and then to do trifling services,
and in this
way they grow into a certain
sense of
co-operation with their owners; they try
to please
them and to win their approval, not because
they care
specially for them, but because the
permitted
co-operation, resulting from the approval
won, brings
them nearer to the greater beings with
whom they
work. When they individualise through
the growth of
intelligence, the intellect is ready
to submit to
discipline, to co-operate, to see the advantages
of united
effort, and the necessity for
obedience.
They carry into their intermediate existence
this sense of
united work and willingness
to submit to
direction, to their own great advantage
in the
future.
Another type
is developed along a most unfortunate
line, that of
mind rendered keen and alert
by fear;
animals hunted for food or owned by
savage types
of men, and 6ften cruelly treated,
may reach
individualisation by efforts to escape
cruelty, by
planning how to escape when chased ; they
develop craft
and cunning and similar faculties,
showing a
distorted ingenuity bred of fear, with
much
suspicion, distrust and revengefulness. When
the mind has
been thus strengthened to a certain
point in
contact with man, albeit along most undesirable
lines,
individualisation results; in one
case we
observed that a creature's mate was killedf
and there was
a great rush of hatred and passionate
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revenge,
causing individualisation ; in another a
lynx-like
animal individualised by an intense desire
to inflict
pain, as yielding a sense of power over
others; but
here again the stimulus was a malign
human
influence and example. The long interval
between
individualisation and re-birth is in these
cases filled
with dreams of successful escapes, of
treacherous
revenges, and of cruelties inflicted on
those who
misused them during their last animal
lives. The
unfortunate result throws responsibility
on the man
who caused it, and makes a link in
future lives;
it would perhaps be not unreasonable
to regard all
such individualisations as premature
"taking
the human shape too soon". We shall
find these
types again in the sixth Bound, working
out their new
humanity along the lines determined
by their
respective methods of individualisation. It
would seem as
though only the three kinds of individualisations
caused by a
downflow from above
were in the
Plan, and that the forcing upward from
below was
brought about by the wrong-doing of
man.
Ere following
both these and our friends of other
types into
their lives on globe D on the sixth Bound,
we may glance
at the higher civilisation of the cities
of the Moon
Chain in this, its fifth, Bound. There
were many
communities scattered over the globe
leading
distinctly primitive lives; some, like those
in the hut
already mentioned, who were kindly, although
little
developed, fighting vigorously when
attacked,
while others were savage, quarrelsome
and
continually at war, apparently for the mere
lust of
blood-shedding and cruelty. In addition to
these various
communities, some large, some small,
EARLY TIMES
ON THE MOON CHAIN 39
some nomad,
some pastoral, there were more highly
civilised
people, living in cities, carrying on
trades, ruled
by settled governments. There did
not appear to
be much in the way of what we should
call a nation
; a city and a considerable sometimes
a very
extensive area around it, with scattered
villages,
formed a separate State, and these States
entered into
fluctuating agreements with each other
as to trade,
mutual defence, etc.
One sample
may serve as illustration. Near what
corresponds
to the Equator is a great city but
it looks more
like a cemetery with a large extent
of cultivated
land round it. The city is built
in separate
quarters, according to the class of inhabitants.
The poorer
people live out of doors during
the day, and
at night, or when it rains, crawl
under flat
roofs, reminding one of dolmens, which
lead into
oblong holes, or chambers, cut out of the
rocks. These
are like underground burrows going
a long way
and communicating with each other, a
regular
labyrinth; the entrance-door is made of a
huge slab of
stone, resting on upright smaller
stones as
pillars. These rooms are massed together
thousands of
them lining the two sides of one
long circular
street, and forming the outside ring
of the city.
The higher
classes live in the domed houses within
this ring,
built on a higher level, with a wide
terrace in
front, forming a ring right round like
the road
below; the domes are supported on short
strong
pillars, carved all over, the carving showing
a fairly
well-advanced civilisation. An immense
number of
these domes are joined together
at the lower
edge, and make a kind of community
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city, a belt,
with again a circular terrace above its
inner edge.
The centre of the city is its highest
part, and
there the houses themselves are taller,
with three
domes, rising one above another; the
central one
has five domes, one on the top of the
other, each
successive dome being smaller than the
one below it.
The upper ones are reached by steps
inside one of
the pillars on the ground floor, and
winding round
the central pillar above. It seems
as though
these had been hewn out of a pinnacle
of living
rock. In the higher domes no provision
seems to be
made for light and air. The highest
dome has a
kind of hammock hanging from the
centre, and
this is the prayer room ; it appears that
any one who
is praying must not touch the ground
during his
prayer.
This is
evidently the highest humanity of the
Moon, who
will later become the Lords of the Moon,
reaching the
Arhat level, the goal set for the lunar
evolution.
They are already civilised, and in one
room a boy is
writing, in a script which is wholly
unintelligible
to us.
Those of the
lunar humanity who in this Bound
were entering
on the Path were in touch with a
loftier band
of Beings, the Hierarchy of the time,
who had come
over from the second Chain to help
evolution on
the third. These lived on a lofty and
practically
inaccessible mountain, but Their presence
was realised
by those on the Path, and was
generally
accepted as a fact by the intelligent humanity
of the time.
Their disciples reached Them
when out of
the body, and occasionally one of Them
descended
into the plains, and lived for a while
EARLY TIMES
ON THE MOON CHAIN 41
among men.
The dwellers in the central house of
the city just
described were in touch with These,
and were
influenced by Them in matters of serious
concern.
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CHAPTER IV
THE SIXTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN
WE comfc
again to Globe D, but now in the sixth
Round, and
our individualised animals are born
into it as
men of a simple and primitive, but not
savage and
brutal, type. They are not handsome
according to
our present ideas of beauty hair
ragged, lips
thick, noses squat, and wide at the base.
They are
living on an island, and food has run short,
so that, in
his first fully human life, Herakles appears
on the scene
engaged in a vigorous struggle
with another
savage for the corpse of an eminently
undesirable-looking
animal. Fighting among the
islanders
themselves does not seem usual, and only
occurs when
food runs short; but there is much of
it in
repulsing, from time to time, the invasions
from the mainland,
where the savages are particularly
brutal
cannibals, fiendishly cruel, and much
dreaded by
their gentler neighbours. These unpleasant
neighbours
cross the straits on primitive
looking
rafts, and pour over the island, destroying
as they go.
They are regarded as demons by the
islanders,
who nevertheless fight fiercely in selfdefence.
The islanders
kill all whom they take
prisoners,
but do not, like the mainland savages,
either
torture them living, or eat them dead.
42
THE SIXTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 4:*
These savages
of the mainland are from those
who became
individualised by fear in the fifth
Round, and
among them may be recognised Scorpio,
whose hatred
of Herakles, so prominent in future
lives, may
here have had its root, as even in this
very primitive
humanity they are in opposed tribes
and fight
furiously against each other. Scorpio, in
Herakles'
second life in this community, leads an
attack on a
tribe inhabiting the island, presently to
be mentioned,
and Herakles was in a rescue party,
which assailed
the savages on their return home,
and succeeded
in crushing them, and in saving a
wounded
captive of a much more evolved type, who
was being
kept for torture.
Among the
islanders at this same time we find
Sirius, and
also Alcyone and Mizar; there do not
seem to be
any special relationships life is communal,
and people
live promiscuously 'beyond
those which
are formed by personal attractions in
any one life.
The intervals between death and rebirth
are very
short, a few years at most, and our
savages are re-born
in the same community. The
second life
shows advance, for help comes from outside
which
quickens their evolution.
A stranger
lands upon the island, a man of much
higher type
and lighter complexion a clear bright
blue than the
muddy-brown islanders, who cluster
round him
with much curiosity and admiration. He
comes to
civilise the islanders, who are docile and
teachable, in
order to incorporate them in the
Empire, from
the capital city of which he has come.
He begins by
astonishing them. He puts water into
a bowl made
of the shell of a fruit, and, taking a
small
seed-like ball out of his pocket, he drops it
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into the water
; it catches fire and he lights some dry
leaves and
presently has a blazing fire, the first fire
seen by the
savages, who promptly run away and
climb up
trees, gazing down with terrified eyes
at this
strange leaping shining creature. He coaxes
them down
gradually, and they approach timidly,
and, finding
that nothing harmful ensues, and
that the fire
is pleasant at night, they incontinently
decide that
he is a God, and proceed to worship
him, and also
the fire. His influence being thus
established,
he further teaches them to cultivate the
ground, and
they grow a vegetable, like a species
of cactus^
but red-leaved, which produces underground
tubers,
somewhat resembling yams; he cuts
open the
thick stems and leaves, dries them in the
sun, and
shows them how to make a kind of thick
soup with
them. The inside pith of the stems is a
little like
arrowroot, and the juice, squeezed out,
yields a
coarse sweet sugar. Herakles and Sirius
are close
comrades, and in their clumsy ignorant
way discuss
this stranger's proceedings, both feeling
much
attracted to him.
Meanwhile, a
party of savages from the mainland
had attacked
a tribe living at some distance
from the
settlement of our tribe, had killed most
'of the men,
carrying off a few as prisoners, with all
the women of
marriageable age and the children,
and killing
the elder women ; the children were carried
off as
animals might have been merely as
specially
delicious food. A wounded fugitive arrived
at the
village with the news, and implored the
fighting men
to rescue the unhappy captives; Herakles
and a troop
went off, not averse to a fray,
and falling
on the savages when, they were heavy
with
gormandising, succeeded in killing the whole
THE SIXTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 45
band, with
the exception of Scorpio, who was absent.
In a hut they
found a wounded man, evidently, from
his colour,
of the same race as the stranger who
had come to
the island, who was being kept with a
view to
torture, and subsequent feasting on what
remained of
him. He was lifted on a litter of
crossed
spears if long sharpened sticks may be so
designated
and carried back to the island, with
two or three
rescued captives, and the younger women
who had been
kept alive. Sorely wounded as
he was, he
gave a cry of joy on recognising the
stranger, a
well-loved friend from the same city as
himself, and
he was taken into the stranger's hut.
There he
remained until well, and recounted how
he had been
sent to exterminate the savage tribes
on the
mainland coasts ; his army had been surrounded
and
annihilated instead, himself and some of his
officers and
men having been captured alive. They
had been put
to death with horrible tortures, but
he was left
for awhile to gain strength, being too
weak to
promise amusement by long resistance to
torture, and
had thus been saved. Herakles nursed
him in his
rude way with dog-like devotion, and sat
for hours
listening as the friends Mars and Mercury
talked
together in. a tongue to him wholly
unknown.
Mercury was something of a doctor, and
his friend
grew rapidly better under his care, his
wounds
healing and his strength returning.
The people
were becoming a little more civilised
under the
influence of Mercury, and when Mars,
recovered,
decided to return to the city, Mercury
resolved to
remain awhile with the devoted tribe
he was
educating. An expedition was sent off to
convoy Mars
through the dangerous belt inhabited
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by the
man-eating savages, and a small escort
accompanied
him as far as the city, Herakles
insisting on
becoming his servant, and refusing to
leave him.
There was much rejoicing in the city
on his
return, as the people had thought him dead;
the news of
the destruction of his army and of his
own narrow
escape roused great excitement, and
preparations
for a new expedition were at once set
on foot.
The city was
distinctly civilised, with large and
handsome
Buildings in the better quarters, and an
immense
number of shops. There were many domesticated
animals, some
of them used for draught
purposes and
for riding. Commerce was carried
on with other
cities, and there was a system of
canals
connecting the city with many at great distances.
The city
itself was divided into quarters,
the different
classes inhabiting different parts of it;
in the centre
of it the people were of a distinctly
high typo and
blue complexion, and the ruler and
his highest
nobles were in touch with a group of
people living
secluded in a somewhat inaccessible
region. These
people, some of whom will be known
later as the
Lords of the Moon, were themselves
pupils of
still more exalted Beings, who had come
thither from
some other sphere. Some of the humanity
of the Moon
succeeded in going beyond the
Arhat
Initiation, and their superiors were evidently
from a
humanity which had reached a far higher
stage.
It was from
These that an order reached the Ruler
of the city
which was the capital of a large Empire
for the
extermination of the savages of the
mainland
coasts ; the expedition was led by Viraj
TEE SIXTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 47
who looked
much like a North American Indian
with Mars
under him, and was an overwhelming
force.
Against such a body the poorly armed and
undisciplined
savages had no chance, and they were
completely
annihilated; Scorpio, once more, was the
chief of a
band and he and the men with him fought
desperately
to the last. Herakles followed Mars as
his servant
and fought under him, and when the
battles were
over, and it was decided to transplant
the docile
savages from the island to the mainland,
and to
incorporate them as a colony of the Empire,
Sirius and
Herakles met again, to their mutual delight,
as great
according to their small capacity as
the deeper
joy of Mars and Mercury on their higher
level. Mercury
took his people over to the mainland
and
established them there as cultivators of
the soil, and
then returned to the city with Mars,
Herakles
persuading Sirius who was nothing loth
to accompany
them. Thus the two became dwellers
in the city,
and there lived to a great age, attaching
themselves
very decidedly to their respective
masters, whom
they regarded as Deities, as belonging
to a divine
race and omnipotent.
The
extermination of the savages though done
in obedience
to an order that none dared to disobey
was regarded
by the soldiers, and even by most of
the officers,
as only part of a political plan of conquest,
intended to
enlarge the borders of the Empire;
these tribes
stood in the way, and therefore
had to be
cleared out of it. From the higher standpoint,
a stage had
been reached beyond which these
savages were
incapable of advancing on the Moon
Chain, bodies
suitable to their low stage of evolution
being no
longer available. Hence, as they died,
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or wero
killed off, they were not re-born, but passed
into a
condition of sleep ; many bodies of similarly
low types
were annihilated by seismic catastrophes
which laid wjiple
districts waste, and the population
of the globe
was very much diminished. It was
the 'Day of
Judgment ' of the Moon Chain, the
separation
between those who were capable and
those who
were incapable of further progress on
that Chain,
and from that time forward all was
directed
towards the pressing forward as rapidly
as possible
of those who remained ; it was a preparation
of the*
remaining population for evolution on
another
Chain.
It may be
noted that, at this time, the year was,
roughly, of
about the same length as at present;
the relation
of the globe to the sun was similar, but
was different
as regards the constellations.
The whole
tribe partially civilised by Mercury
escaped the
dropping out, while in the city, Herakles
and Sirius,
together with the households and
dependents of
Mars and Mercury1 also just slipped
over the
dividing line, by virtue of their attachment
to their
respective leaders; they married if the
term may be
applied to the loose connections of that
time into the
low-class city population, and incarnation
succeeded
incarnation in the lower classes
of the more
civilised people of the time, with very
little
progress, intelligence being very poor and
development
very slow. Sirius, in one birth, was
observed as a
small tradesman, the shop being a
*In the
household of Mars were : Herakles, Siwa, Corona,
Vajra,
Capella, Pindar, Beatrix, Lutetia, Theodoros, Ulysses,
Aurora. In
the household of Mercury : Sirius, Alcyone, Mizar,
Orion,
Achilles, Hector, Albireo, Olympia, Aldebaran,
Leo, Castor,
Rhea.
THE SIXTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 49
hole ten feet
square, in which he sold things of
various
kinds. Herakles, twelve lives further on,
was seen as a
woman labouring in the fields, advanced
enough to
cook her rats and other edibles
instead of
eating them raw, and With a whole pack
of brothers
as husbands Capella, Pindar, Beatrix,
Lutetia.
Women were scarce at the time, and a
plurality of
husbands was very common.
Very many ,
lives later, improvement was visible ;
the members
of the above-named groups were no
longer so
primitive, and others had come up below
them, but
they were only very small employers of
labour,
shop-people and farmers, and they did not
go much
beyond that stage on the Moon. In one
life to which
our attention was attracted by the
curious
agricultural proceedings, Sirius was the wife
of a small
farmer, who employed other men. The
harvest was
rather a nightmare. Much of the vegetation
belonged to
what we should now call the fungus,
family, but
gigantic and monstrous. There
were trees
which grew to a great height in a single
year, and
which were semi-animal. The cut-off
branches
writhed like snakes and coiled round the
axe-wielders,
contracting as they died; red sap,
like blood,
gushed out under the strokes of the axe,
and the
texture of the tree was fleshy; it was carnivorous,
and during
its growth, seized any animal
that touched
it, coiling its branches round it like an
octopus, and
sucking it dry. The harvesting of this
crop was
considered to be very dangerous, and only
very strong and
skilful men took part in it. When
the tree was
cut down and the branches lopped off,
they were
left to die ; then, when all movement had
ceased, the
rind was stripped off and was made in50
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to a kind of
leather, and the flesh cooked and eaten.
Many of the
growths we must call plants were
semi-animal
and semi-vegetable; one had a large
ambrella-like
top, with a slit in the middle which
allowed the
two halves, armed with teeth, to open
out; it bent
over, with these jaws gaping open,
hanging above
the ground, and any animal brushing
against it
was seized, and the two halves
closed over
it; then the stem straightened itself,
and the
closed halves again formed the umbrella
surface,
while the animal within them was slowly
sucked dry.
These were cut down when the jaws were
above and
closed, and the skill required consisted
in leaping
out of reach, as the top swooped downwards
to seize the
aggressor.
Insect life
was voluminous and gigantic, and
served
largely as food to the carnivorous trees.
Some insects
were fully two feet long, and of most
formidable
aspect, and were greatly dreaded by the
human
inhabitants. The houses were built as quadrangles,
enclosing
very large courtyards; these
were covered
in with strong network, and in the seasons
when the
large insects were about, the children
were not
allowed to go outside these enclosures.
Those who
individualised in the fifth Bound by
vanity were
born for the most part into city populations,
and life
after life they tended to drift together
by similarity
of tastes and contempt for others,
even though
their dominating idiosyncrasy of vanity
led to much
quarrelling and often-repeated ruptures
among
themselves. Separateness became
much
intensified, the mental body strengthening in
an
undesirable way, and becoming more and more
THE SIXTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 51
of a shell,
shutting out others. The emotional body,
as they
repressed animal passions, grew less powerful,
for the
animal passions were starved out by a
hard and cold
asceticism, instead of being transmuted
into human
emotions; sex-passion, for instance,
was destroyed
instead of being changed into
love. The
result was that they had less feeling,
birth after
birth, and physically tended towards sexlessness,
and while
they developed individualism to
a high point,
this very development led to constant
quarrels and
rioting. They formed communities,
but these
broke up again, because no one would
obey; each
wanted to rule. Any attempt to help
or guide
them, on the part of more highly developed
people, led
to an outburst of jealousy and resentment,
it being
taken as a plan to manage or belittle
them. Pride
grew stronger and stronger, and they
became cold
and calculating, without pity and without
remorse. When
the tide of life flowed onwards
into the
fifth globe of emotional matter they remained
in activity
for but a short time, the emotional
body being
dwarfed until it became atrophied,
and on the
sixth globe the mental body became hardened
and lost
plasticity, leading to a curious truncated
effect, by no
means attractive reminding one,
indeed,
oddly, of a man who had lost his legs from
the knee
downwards, and had his trousers sewn up
over the stumps.
The type
which in the previous Round individualised
by
admiration, and was docile and teachable,
also tended
to come mostly into city populations,
and formed
the better class of labourers at first,
rising
through the lower middle class to the upper,
developing
intelligence to a very considerable
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extent. They
were free from the excessive pride
of the
preceding type the pride which deeply tinged
their auras
with orange and showed a clear, bright,
and rather
golden yellow. They were not devoid
of emotion,
but their emotions, while leading
them to
co-operation and to obedience to those
wiser than
themselves, were selfish rather than loving.
They saw
clearly that co-operation brought
about better
results than strife, and they co-operated
for their own
advantage rather than with any
desire to
spread happiness among others. They
were much
more intelligent than the people whom
we have been
specially following, and their orderliness
and
discipline quickened their evolution. But
they gave the
impression of having developed in
their mental
bodies (by a clear vision of what was
most to their
own advantage) the qualities which
should have
had their roots in their emotional bodies,
founded in
and nourished by love and devotion.
Hence the
emotional bodies were insufficiently developed,
though not
atrophied as in the previously
mentioned
type. But they also profited little by
their sojourn
on globe E, while considerably improving
their mental
bodies on globe F.
Globes E, F,
and G, were most useful to the
groups of
egos who had individualised in one of
the three
'Eight Ways,' and were hence developing
in an
all-round, rather than in a lop-sided,
fashion, as
was the case with those who individualised
in the 'Wrong
Ways,' so far as intelligence was
concerned;
but, after all, these egos would be compelled
later to
develop the emotions they had in the
early days
stunted or neglected. In the long run, all
powers have
to be completely developed ; and in gazTHE
SIXTH ROUND
ON THE MOON CHAIN 53
ing at the
huge sweep of evolution from nescience to
omniscience,
the progress or the methods at any particular
stage lose
the immense importance which they
appear to
have as they loom through the mists of
our ignorancg
and propinquity.
As these
three globes on the ascending arc of the
sixth Round
came successively into activity, very
great
emotional and mental progress was made by
the more
advanced egos. As only those were embodied
on them who
had passed over the critical
period, the
'Day of Judgment' on the Moon Chain,
there were no
hopeless laggards to be a clog on
evolution,
and growth was steady and more rapid
than before.
When the Round was over, preparations
began to be
made for the exceptional conditions
of the final
Round, the seventh, during which
all the
inhabitants, and much of the substance, of
the Moon
Chain were to be transferred to its successor,
that in which
our Earth is the fourth, or
central,
globe.
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CHAPTER V
THE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON
CHAIN
THE Seventh
Round of a Chain differs from the
preceding
Rounds in that its globes, one by one,
pass into
quiescence on the way to disintegration,
as their
inhabitants leave them for the last time.
When the
period arrives for this final departure
from each
globe, such of its inhabitants as are capable
of further
evolution on the Chain pass on, as
in earlier
Rounds, to the next globe; while the
others, for
whom the conditions of the later globes
are
unsuitable, leave the Chain altogether when they
leave the
globe, and remain in a state hereafter to
be described,
awaiting re-embodiment on the next
Chain. Thus
the stream of departures from each
globe on this
Round leaving out any who may
have attained
the Arhat level divides into two,
some going on
as usual to the globe next in succession,
while others
take ship to sail over an ocean,
the further
shore of which is the next Chain.
Normally, a
man is free to leave a Chain unless
dropped out
as temporarily hopeless-^only when he
has reached
the level appointed for the humanity
evolved on
the Chain. That level in the Moon
Chain, we
have already seen, was equivalent to that
54
THE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 55
which we now
call the fourth, or Arhat, Initiation.
But we found,
much to our surprise, that, on the
seventh
Eound, groups of emigrants departed from
globes A, B
and C, while the huge mass of the population
of globe D
left the Moon Chain finally ay
the life-wave
quitted that globe to roll onwards to
globe E. Only
a comparatively small number remained
behind to
carry on their evolution on the
three
remaining globes, and of these some departed
finally from
the Chain as each globe dropped into
inactivity.
It appears
that, in a seventh Round, the mighty
Being to whom
has been given the title of the 'Seed-
Manu of a
Chain* takes into His charge the humanity
and lower
forms of living beings which have been
evolving
thereon. A Chain Seed-Mann gathers up
into Himself,
takes within His mighty far-reaching
aura, all
these results of the evolutions on the Chain,
transporting
them into the Inter-Chain sphere, the
Nirvana for
the inhabitants of the dying Chain,
nourishing
them within Himself, and finally handing
them over at
the appointed time to the Root-
Manu of the
next Chain, who, following out the plan
of the
Seed-Manu, determines the times and places
of their
introduction into His kingdom.
The Seed-Manu
of the Moon Chain appeared to
have a vast
plan, according to which he grouped the
Moon-creatures,
dividing them, after their last
deaths, into
classes, and sub-classes, and sub-subclasses,
in a quite
definite way, apparently by some
kind of
magnetisation ; this set up particular rates
of vibration,
and the people who could work best at
one such rate
were grouped together, and those who
worked best
at another rate were similarly grouped,
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
and so on,
when He was dealing with huge multitudes,
as on globe
D. These groups appeared to
form
themselves automatically in the heaven-world
of globe D,
as figures on a vibrating disc form themselves
under the
impact of a musical note; but on
the three
earlier globes more easily distinguished
lines of
cleavage appeared, and people were sent
off by a
great Official, evidently working on a definite
plan. The
Seed-Manu was aided in His gigantic
task by many
great Beings, who carried out His
directions,
and the whole vast plan was worked out
with an order
and an inevitableness which were unspeakably
impressive.
He appeared, among other
things, to be
choosing out the Officials for the next
Chain, those
who, in the long course of evolution,
would pass
ahead of their fellows, and become
Masters,
Manus, Bodhisattvas, in the various
Bounds and
Races. He evidently selected many
more than
would be needed, as a gardener chooses
out many
plants for special culture, out of which a
later
selection may be made. Most, if not all, of
this choosing
was done on globe D, and we shall
return to it
when we reach that world. Meanwhile
we will
consider globes A, B, and C.
On globe A of
the Moon Chain, we see that a part
of the humanity
is not taken on to globe B, but is
compelled to
leave the Chain because it can make
no further
progress on it. The great Official who
has charge of
the globe has not been able to evolve
some of the
people in the way He desired has, in
fact, found some
of the human material too rigid
for further
evolution, and so He ships it off when
the life of
the globe is over. This boat-load, as we
call it, for
the number is not large, consists of our
THE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 57
friends with
the orange-hued auras, who have
brought their
mental bodies to a point beyond which
they cannot
develop on the Moon Chain, except mischievously;
they have so
shut themselves into their
mental shell,
and have so starved the germs of their
emotional
bodies, that they cannot safely descend
any further;
moreover they are far too proud
to wish to do
so. The causal bodies are a rigid
shell, not a
living expanding form, and to let them
pass on into
globe B would only mean a fatal
hardening of
the lower mental. They are very
clever, but
quite selfish, and have cut themselves
off from
further progress for the time, save a
progress
which would be harmful. The Official is
clearly
dissatisfied with these orange-hued people,
and does His
best for them by shipping them off;
glancing
forward, we see that we shall meet some
of these
again in Atlantis, as Lords of the Dark
Face, priests
of the Dark Worship, leaders against
the White
Emperor, and so on. Meanwhile, they
will rest in
the Inter-Chain sphere, self-centred as
ever.
The group of
people before-mentioned, whose
auras showed
the golden-yellow of disciplined intellect,
together with
the rest of the inhabitants of
the Chain,
passed on to globe B, including some
who had
reached the Arhat level on globe A, and
who on globe
B became Adepts. From globe B the
golden-yellow
group was shipped off, for they also
had not
sufficiently nourished the emotional side
to make the
formation of a fairly developed emotional
body,
possible for them on globe C. Their
willingness
to obey shaped for them a fairer future
than that of
the orange people, and we meet them
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
again in
Atlantis as priests of the White temples,
gradually
forming emotional bodies of a good type.
Both these
first boat-loads enter on the terrene evolution
at its fourth
Round, being too advanced to
take part in
its earlier stages. It seeifts that it is
necessary on
each globe to develop the qualities
which will
need for their full expression a body of
the material
of the next; so our yellow people could
go no
further, but had to be shipped off to the Inter-
Chain sphere.
From globe C
went off a small number who had
reached the
Arhat level, who had developed to a
lofty point
both intellect and emotion, and who
needed no
further evolution on the Moon Chain ; they
therefore
left it by any one of the usual seven Paths.
One group of
these is specially interesting to us,
because they
formed part of one division of the
'Lords of the
Moon' the group called Barhishad
Pitrs in The
Secret Doctrine who superintended
the evolution
of forms on our Earth Chain. On
leaving globe
C, they went towards the region where
the Earth
Cljain was building, to be joined later by
a number of
others who also gave themselves to
this work.
Globe A of the terrene Chain began to
form as the
lifewave left globe A of the lunar Chain.
The Spirit of
a globe, when its life is over, takes a
new
incarnation, and, as it were, transfers the life
with himself
to the corresponding globe of the next
Chain. The
inhabitants, after leaving the Chain,
have long to
wait ere their new home is ready for
them, but the
preparation of that home begins when
the Spirit of
the first globe leaves it and it becomes
a dead body,
while he enters on a new cycle of life
and a new
globe begins to form round him. Molecules
are built up
under the direction of Devas,
THE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 59
humanity not
being at all involved. The Spirit of
a globe is
probably on the line of this class of Devas,
and members
of it perform the work of building
globes all
through the system. A great wave of life
from the
LOGOS builds up atoms in a system by the
intermediary
of such a Deva; then molecules are
built, then
cells, and so on. Living creatures are
like
parasites on the surface of the Spirit of the
earth, and he
does not concern himself with them,
and is
probably not normally conscious of their
existence,
though he may feel them slightly when
they make
very deep mines. The Arhats who, leaving
'globe C of
the Moon Chain, selected the path
which leads
to the Earth Chain, passed, as said, to
the region
where globe A of the Earth Chain was
forming; it
commenced with the first Elemental
Kingdom,
which flowed upwards from the middle
of the globe
the workshop of the Third LOGOS as
water wells
up in an artesian boring and flows over
the edge on
all sides. It came from the heart of
the Lotus, as
sap comes up into a leaf. These Lords
of the Moon
took no active part at this stage, but
seemed to be
looking on at the building of a worlcto-
be. ^Eons
later they were joined by some of the
Lords of the
Moon from globe G of the lunar Chain,
and these
made the original forms on globe A
giving their
Chhayas, or Shadows, to make these,
as The Secret
Doctrine phrases it and then the
Lives came
and occupied the forms in succession.
Globes B and
C were similarly built up round their
respective
Spirits, as the latter left their lunar predecessors.
Our physical
Earth was formed when
the
inhabitants left globe D of the Moon Chain ; the
Spirit of the
globe left the Moon, and the Moon
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
then began to
disintegrate, a very large part of its
substance
passing over to build up the Earth.
When the
inhabitants began to leave the Moon finally,
globes A, B
and C of the terrene Chain were already
formed, but
globe D, our Earth, could not
go far in its
formation till its congener, globe D of
the lunar
Chain, the Moon, had died.
The groups
which were, as said, small in number
which left
the Chain from globes A and B were,
as we have
seen, people who had shot on ahead intellectually,
but who had
been individualised in the
fifth Round.
The Arhats who left globe C had been
individualised
in the fourth Round among a city
population,
and thus were brought into a civilisation
where the
pressure quickened their evolution;
surrounded by
more highly advanced people, they
were
stimulated into more rapid growth. To be
ready to take
advantage of these conditions it is
evident that
their development as animals on the
previous
Chain must have reached a higher point
than that of
those who individualised in the same
Chain in
primitive country districts. It seems as
though the
humanity of a Chain can only advance
towards and
enter the Path, when the individualising
of animals on
that Chain has practically ceased,
and when only
exceptional cases of individualisation
will occur in
the future. When the door of the
human kingdom
is shut against animals, then the
door to the
Path is opened to humanity.
As said, the
groups which left the Chain from
globes A, B
and C, were small in number, the mass
of the
population on each globe passing on to the
next in the
usual way. But on globe D, things became
very
different ; there the immense majority of
THE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MUON CHAIN 61
the
population, when the period for the death of the
globe was
approaching, after leaving their physical
bodies for
the last time, were not prepared for transference
to globe E,
but were shipped off to the
Inter-Chain
sphere, the lunar Nirvana, to await their
transference
to the new Chain preparing for them.
If we compare
the other groups launched on the
ocean of
space to boat-loads, we have now a huge
fleet of
ships launched on that same ocean. The
general fleet
leaves the Moon ; only a small population
is left, set
aside for reasons which will presently
appear, and
these leave globes E, F and G in
small groups,
boat-loads only to keep up our metaphor.
The group of
egos that we have been following as
samples of
the lower humanity of the Moon shows
marks of
distinct improvement on globe D; the
causal body
is well marked, the intelligence is more
developed,
and the affection for their superiors has
deepened and
intensified; instead of a passion, it
lias now
become a settled emotion, and is their most
distinguishing
characteristic. To this group may
be given the
name of Servers for although the instinct
is still
blind and half-conscious, yet to serve
and please
the higher people to whom they have
devoted
themselves is now the dominating motive
in their
lives; looking forward, we see that this
remains their
characteristic through the long series
of lives to
come on earth, and they do much
rough pioneer
work in the future. They love their
superiors and
are ready to obey them,
"
without
cavil or
delay". A marked change has come over
their
physical bodies in this Round; they are now
bright blue,
instead of being muddy brown as be62
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
fore. They
are brought together physically during
their last
incarnations on the Moon, and much arranging
is going on
for a considerable time before
this: the
strengthening of ties between groups of
egos is
brought about by guiding them to re-birth
in
communities, and a very large number, indeed
most, of the
characters in Rents in the Veil of Time
appear here ;
and it seems likely that the remainder,
were we able
to recognise them, would be among
friends of
later days, for these are all Servers,
ready to do
whatever they are told, to go whither-soever
they are
sent. They are marked out by a
slight
downpour of the higher life, which causes a
little
expansion of a thread of intuitional matter,
connecting
the intuitional and mental permanent
atoms, and
makes it a little broader above than below,
like a small
funnel ; large numbers of people far
more
intelligent than they are do not show this, and
it is
connected with the germinal desire to serve,
absent in
those otherwise more advanced people.
The group
includes many types, and does not consist,
as might be
expected, of people of one Ray, or
temperament;
there are persons who became individualised
in any one of
the three Right Ways,
through the
aspects of Will, Wisdom, and active Intellect,
1 each
stimulated into action by devotion to
a superior.
The method of individualisation comes
in only as a
cause of subdivision within the group,
and affects the
length of the interval between death
and re-birth,
but does not affect the characteristic of
serviceableness.
It affects the rate of vibration
of the causal
body, which is formed in the several
cases by an
endeavour to serve: (1) by an act of
'Atma, Buddhi,
Manas.
TEE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 63
devotion; (2)
by a great outburst of pure devotion;
and (3) by
devotion causing an effort to understand
and
appreciate. The actual formation of the causal
body is
always sudden; it comes into existence as
by a flash;
but the preceding circumstances differ
and affect
the rate of vibration of the body thus
formed. An
act of sacrifice in the physical body calls
on the Will,
and there is a pulsation in spiritual
matter;
devotion, working in the emotional body1
calls on
Wisdom, and there is a pulsation in intuitional
matter;
activity in the lower mind calls on
the Active
Intellect, and there is a pulsation in
higher mental
matter. We shall presently find our
group of
Servers subdivided into two by these differences,
the first two
forming a sub-group, with
intervals of
an average of seven hundred years between
births, and
the third ^orming a second group
with
intervals of an average of one thousand two
hundred
years. This difference will come out on
the Earth
Chain at a more advanced stage of evolution,
and the two
sub-groups reach the Earth in
the fourth
Eound with an interval of 400,000 years
between them,
apparently planned to bring them
to birth
together at a certain period, when their
joint
services would all be required ; so minute in its
details is
the Great Plan. This division does not
affect the
relation between Masters and disciples,
as pupils of
each of the two Masters who are to be
the Manu and
Bodhisattva of the sixth Boot Race,
were found in
both sub-groups. Thus the germinal
desire to
serve, seen by the higher Authorities, is
the mark of
this whole group, and the differences in
individualisation,
affecting the interval between
lfThe vehicle
of desire, Kama.
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
death and
re-birth, subdivide the group into two.1
At the head
of this group stand many whom we
know as
Masters now, and high above them are
many who were
already Arhats, who transmit to
those below
them the orders received from far
mightier
Beings. The Manu of the Race it is the
seventh Eace
of the globe is in charge, and He is
obeying the
orders, carrying out the plan, of the
Seed-Manu,
who directs all the preparations for the
transfer of
the huge population. Some of the advanced
people know
vaguely that some great
changes are
impending, but these changes, though
far-reaching,
are too slow to draw much attention;
some
co-operate unconsciously, but effectively,
while thinking
that they are carrying out
great schemes
of their own. There is one man,
for instance,
who has an ideal community in his
mind, and who
gathers together'a number of people
in order to
form it ; he is trying to please a Master
who is an
Arhat of the Moon, and people are attracted
by him and
collect round him, forming a
definite
group with a common aim, thus subserving
the Great
Plan. We, at our low level, look up to the
Arhats and
higher people as Gods, and try, in our
very humble
way, to fall in with any indications of
their wishes
that we can catch.
This group of
Servers, as its numbers die out
*It will, of
course, be understood that the seven hundred
and one
thousand two hundred years' intervals are 'averages/
and the
'exact' length of each interval will depend
on the length
and conditions of the preceding life. There is
this marked
difference between the sub-groups, as though
the members
of the one lived with greater intensity than
the other in
the heaven-world, and thus crowded a similar
amount into a
briefer time.
THE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 65
for the last
time, having reached the required level
on globe D,
is regathered on the mental plane, the
heavenly
world, and its members remain there for
an enormous
time, having always before them the
images of
those they love, notably of the more advanced
egos to whom
they are especially devoted.
It is this
rapt devotion which so much helps their
development,
and brings out their higher qualities,
so that later
on they are more receptive to the influences
which play
upon them in the Inter-Chain
sphere. They
are included in the general mass of
the egos
called by H. P. Blavatsky ' Solar Pitrs/ and
by A. P.
Sinnett 'First-class Pitrs'. Other huge
multitudes
are also reaching the mental world
none being re-born
who have reached an appointed
level, which
appears to be the possession of a fully
formed causal
body and are falling into great
groups under
the play of the powerful magnetic
force before
mentioned, rayed down upon them by
the
Seed-Manu. As strings at different tensions
answer to
different notes, so do the causal bodies of
these people
and none, as just said, are here exoept
those whose
causal bodies are fully formed
answer to the
chord He strikes, and they are thus
separated
off. People who come forth through the
same
Planetary Euler are drafted into different
groups ;
friends fall into different groups ; Jione of
the ordinary
ties seem to count. The egos are automatically
sorted out
and wait on in their own
places, as a
crowd, in continental countries, is sorted
off iijto
waiting-rooms, to await the arrival of
their own
particular train in this case, to use our
former image,
to await their own ship.
We noticed
especially two of the ship-loads, be66
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
cause we
ourselves formed part of them; one included
the coming
Manu and Bodhisattva, those who
are now
Chohans and Masters, together with many
of the
Servers who are now disciples, or approaching
that level.
These all apparently belonged to the
sub-group
with the seven hundred years' average
between
earth-lives. Another included many who
are now
Masters and disciples, with perhaps half
the persons
mentioned in the Rents in the Veil of
Time, all
belonging to the sub-group with the one
thousand two
hundred years' average. These two
ship-loads
contained many, if not all, of those who
are to form
the Heavenly Man, and they were then
divided into
the two sub-groups. Vaivasvata Manu
and the
present Bodhisattva were seen together on
globe D, but
they passed on to the higher globes of
the Moon
Chain.
This great
mass includes: (1) the Servers aforesaid,
a very mixed
lot of many grades, united by
one common
characteristic. Then (2) there is a
large group
of highly developed egos who are approaching
the Path on
the line of Service therefore,
but too far
ahead of the former group to be
classed with
it and who are yet not near enough to
the Path to
reach it within the remaining life of
the Chain.
Then (3) a huge group of very good
people but
people who have no wish to serve, and
are not
therefore yet turned towards the Path, and
who will form
the bulk of the population of Atlantis
during its
good period. (4) A small but striking
group of egos,
united by the common characteristic
of highly
developed intellectual power, future
geniuses,
varied as to character and morals, a group
manifestly
destined to leadership in the future, but
THE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 67
not
dedicating themselves to Service, nor turning
their faces
to the Path. Then three very large
groups: (5)
good, and often religious, people merchants,
soldiers,
etc., fairly clever, self-centred, thinking
mainly of
their own development and advancement,
knowing
nothing of the Path, and therefore
with no wish
to enter it; (6) bourgeois-commonplaceweak,
a very large
group of the type described by the
naming; (7)
undeveloped, well-meaning, uneducated
folk, the
lowest class who have the causal body
fully formed.
These are all
in the heaven-world of the Moon,
awaiting
their despatch to the Inter-Chain sphere.
As
convulsions begin to rend the Moon, preparatory
to the
disruption of its crust, other types pass
also into
this world; a very considerable number
of the Solar
Pitrs, or First-class Pitrs who are
capable of
making further progress on the remaining
globes of the
Chain, where we shall meet them
again come on
into the heaven-world to await
transference
in due course to globe E.
Below these
first-class Pitrs comes an immense
class of egos
who have not fully formed the causal
body, Mr.
Sinnett's i Second-class Pitrs'; a network
has formed
itself, connecting the ego and the lower
mind, and,
from the appearance of this the name
of
'Basket-works' has been given to them. The
mass of these,
when the Moon begins to approach
dissolution,
pass out of the body for the last time
on the Moon
Chain, and are gathered together in
the emotional
world. There they fall asleep, for
they cannot
function therein; when this emotional
world of the
Moon becomes uninhabitable, they lose
their
emotional bodies, and remain inward-turned,
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
like bulbs
awaiting shipment to another land, to be in
due course
shipped off to the Inter-Chain sphere, to
sleep through
ages, until the third Round of the
Earth Chain
offers a suitable field for their growth.
There are
some Basket-works, however, who show
a capacity
for further evolution on the Moon Chain,
and they will
pass on to the higher globes when
these come
into activity, and there form the causal
body,
reinforcing the Solar, or First-class Pitrs.
The last
class above the animals are the Animal-
Men, Madame
Blavatsky's 'First-class Lunar Pitrs,'
Mr. Sinnett's
' Third-class Pitrs'. These are distinguishable
by delicate
lines of matter which link
the germinal
ego to the dawning lower mind.
They are
gathered up, like the Basket-works, in the
emotional
world, when they pass out of the body for
the last time
on the Moon, and remain unconscious
in the mental
world; they are in due time shipped
off, and
sleep away aeons of time, and finally reach
the Earth
Chain and begin the long work of building
on globe A,
working through all the kingdoms
up to the
human, and then remaining human through
the
succeeding globes of the Round, and through
the following
Rounds. Some of these 'Lines,' as
we may name
them for distinction, are also held
back when the
mass is shipped off, and are sent on
to globe E
for further evolution, and become Basketworks,
joining thus
the class which was above them.
So far we
have followed the fate of the varied
classes of
lunar Humanity. Some part of it
dropped out,
the failures, in the sixth Round, and
were
'hung-up' until the next Chain gave a suitable
field for
further evolution. Some, the orangehued,
left globe A
in the seventh Round. Some, the
THE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 69
golden-yellow,
left globe B. Some Arhats left from
globes A, B,
and C, and some of them went over to
the forming
Earth Chain from globe 0. Then we
have the
classes that left globe D; those with fully
formed causal
bodies, those with basket-work, those
with lines.
Those that remained passed on to globes
E, F, and G,
some leaving each globe, when they
had made all
the progress of which they were capable;
some
Basket-works, higher-class Pitrs and
Arhats thus
went away from each globe. Most of
the animals
went off to the Inter-Chain Nirvana a
regular
Noah's Ark; a few, who were capable of
becoming
Animal-men, were taken on to the later
globes.
The
determining cause of these different causal
bodies lies
in the stage at which indivisualisation
occurred. In
the lower parts of the animal kingdom
very many
animals are attached to a single groupsoul,
and the number
diminishes as they climb towards
humanity,
till in the higher class of animals
there are but
ten or twenty attached to a group-soul.
Contact with
man may bring about individualisation
at a
comparatively low stage; if the animal, say a
dog, has been
for a long time in contact with man,
and is one of
a small group of ten or twenty, then,
on
individualising, a complete causal body is formed.
If there are
about one hundred in the group the
sheep-dog
stage a basket-work causal body would
be formed; if
there were several hundreds pariah
dogs, as in
Constantinople or India he would have
the
indication of the causal body made by the connecting
lines.
These stages
remind us of somewhat similar differences
in the
vegetable kingdom; the more highly
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
developed
members of the vegetable world pass
directly into
the mammalian animal kingdom. The
decent gentle
animal does not become a cruel and
brutal
savage, but only a pleasantly primitive man.
The kingdoms
overlap, and a really nice animal
may be a more
agreeable companion than some human
beings.
An entity may
stop for a shorter time in the
animal stage
and a longer time in the human, or
vice versa.
It does not seem really to matter, as it
always 'gets
there' in the end, just as longer or
shorter times
in the heaven-world work out to the
same stage of
progress among men. It is probably
a mere human
folly which makes one feel that it
is pleasanter
to be the best of one's kind at the
time, and
that one would rather have been a banyantree
or an
oak-tree than a flight of mosquitoes, a
splendid
mastiff than a clay-eating or man-eating
savage.
To return.
Globes E, F, and G seem to have been
used as a
kind of forcing-houses for special cultures,
for enabling
some to reach the Path, or attain Arhatship,
who could not
accomplish it on globe D,
although in a
fair way towards it, and to permit
some, who
were approaching a higher stage, to enter
it. They were
centres more than globes. Their
population
was small, since the bulk of human and
animal kind
had been shipped off from globe D, and
was further
diminished by the sending off successively
of a
boat-load from each globe as it passed into
quiescence. The
boat-load from globe E consisted
of some who
were already on the Path and who had
there become
Arhats, some Basket-works who had
completed the
causal body, and some Lines who had
TEE SEVENTH
ROUND ON THE MOON CHAIN 71
become
Basket-works. When these left globe E, the
remaining
population, consisting of those below the
Arhat level
who could bear the strain of further
forcing, were
carried over into globe F. Those who
left passed
into the Inter-Chain Nirvana, and were
there sorted
out into the classes they had attained,
as late
letters with an extra stamp are sorted into
the heaps to
which they belong.
A similar
process went on upon globe F, and it
was deeply
interesting to notice that the Lord Gautama
Buddha and
the Lord Maitreya were among
those who
passed onwards, both from globe E and
globe F, and
reached the first great Initiation on
globe G. They
had dropped out in the seventh round
of the second
Chain, not being able to bear the
forcing
process on globes E, F, and G of that Chain,
the
conditions being too strenuous, and only suitable
for those who
could attain the prescribed level
of success
for that Chain, or could pass from the
class they
were in to the class above. They entered
globe D of
the Moon Chain in the fourth Bound as
primitive
men, with the animals of the second Chain
who were
nearly ready for individualisation.
They took
together, on globe F, their vow to become
Buddhas, but
the arrangements were not the
same as on
our earth. There was a kind of Heavenly
Council in a
heavenly world the Buddhist Sukhavati
and the great
Being to whom they made their
vow and who,
as the acting Buddha, accepted it,
was He who is
called Dipankara in the books. They
reached
Arhatship on globe G, ere leaving the
Chain.
The Lord
Buddha Dipankara came from the fourth
Chain of the
Venus Scheme; the physical globe of
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that Chain
was the Moon of Venus, which was seen
by Herschel
but which has disappeared since his
time. He was
one of the members of the General
Staff, spoken
of on p. 13, who may be sent to any
Chain needing
help. The Lord Dipankara was followed
in the great
office of the Buddha by the Buddhas
of the Earth
Chain; we know of the Lord Kashyapa,
for instance,
the Bodhisattva of the third
Boot Race,
taking Buddhahood in the fourth; and
the Lord
Gautama Himself, the Bodhisattva of the
fourth Root
Race, taking Budhahood in the fifth.
He was
succeeded by the Lord Maitreya, the Bodhisattva
of the fifth
Root Race, who will take Buddhahood
in the sixth.
He will be followed by the
coming
Bodhisattva of the sixth Root Race now
known as the
Master K. H. who will take Buddhahood
in the
seventh.
It must be
remembered that Buddha is an Official
who has to
superintend much more than a humanity;
He is the
Teacher of Devas, Angels, as well as of
men, so the
fact that a given humanity may be at
a very low
stage of evolution does not do away with
the need for
that high office.
We noted also
the Master Jupiter rmong those
who entered
the Path on globe G.
THE
INTER-CHAIN NIRVANA
The human
mind reels before the enormous
periods of
time concerned in evolution, and one takes
refuge in the
old and modern idea that time has
no fixed
existence, but is long or short according to
the working
of the consciousness of the being conTBE
SEVENTH ROUND
ON THE MOON CHAIN 73
cerned.1 In
the Inter-Chain Nirvana the really working
consciousnesses
were those of the Seed-Mann of
the Innar
Chain and the Eoot-Manu of the terrene.
What time may
be to Their consciousnesses who
may pretend
to guess!
The Great
Plan is in the mind of the Seed-Manu,
and the
Eoot-Manu receives it from Him and works
it out in the
new Chain over which He presides. The
results of
the evolution in the Chain whose life is
over are
gathered up within the aura of the Seed-
Manu, and are
arranged, tabulated, filed if one
may use terms
drawn from our common life in
perfect
order. On these intelligences of many
grades,
inward-turned, living a strange slow subjective
life, without
idea of time, He pours intermittent
streams of
His stimulating magnetism. A
continuous
stream would break them into pieces, so it
plays on them
and stops, and they doze on for perhaps
a million
years, slowly assimilating it; and
then another
stream plays on them, and so on and on,
for millions
upon millions of years. As we watched
that strange
scene, many analogies rose up in our
minds; bulbs
laid carefully on shelves, inspected
from time to
time by a gardener; cots in a hospital,
visited day
by day by a physician. The time drew
nearer and
nearer when the great Gardener was to
give out His
bulbs for the planting, and the planting
ground was
the Earth Chain and the bulbs
were living
souls.
'See the
suggestive little book, Two New Worlds, by
E. E.
Fournier d'Albe.
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CHAPTER VI
EARLY TIMES
ON THE EARTH CHAIN
MEANWHILE the
Earth Chain had been slowly
forming, and
the Lords of the Moon had been looking
on at the
building as we saw1
; the time
had come
for shipping
off to the new Chain the first of those
who were to
evolve in it during the coming ages.
The Seed-Manu
determined the contents of each
shipload and
the order of its going, and the Root-
Manu
distributed them as they arrived successively
on globe A of
the terrene Chain.
The Occult
Government of the Chain may here be
briefly
sketched, though only in broad outline, so
that the
student may realise something of the greatness
of the
evolutionary Plan which he is to survey.
At the head
is the Seed-Manu of the preceding
Chain,
Chakshushas, something of whose vast work
we have seen
in the lunar Chain. He is aided by Officials
who report to
Him how the members of any
special
division have responded to tttfc influences
He has thrown
upon them during their stay in the
Inter-Chain
Nirvana. Just as the least advanced
in '
age
' are sent
out to perform the task of inhabiting
the most
primitive forms, and the more advanced
follow when
the forms have evolved to a higher
state, so,
out of any special division brought ever
'See Ante, p.
59.
74
EARLY TIMES
ON THE EARTH CHAIN 75
from the Moon
and stored in the Inter-Chain Nirvana,
those who
have progressed least under His influence
during the
time of retirement are sent out
first of
their class into the new world.
The Root-Manu
of the terrene Chain, Vaivasvata,J
who directs
the whole order of its evolution, is a
mighty Being
from the fourth Chain of the Venus
Scheme ; two
of His Assistants come from the same
Chain, and a
third is a high Adept who attained e'arly
in the lunar
Chain.2 A Root-Manu of a Chain
must achieve
the level fixed for the Chain or Chains
on which He
is human, and become one of its Lords ;
then He
becomes the Manu of a Race; then a Pratyeka
Buddha; then
a Lord of the World; then the
Root-Manu,
then the Seed-Manu of a Round, and
only then the
Root-Manu of a Chain. He directs the
Manus of
Rounds, who distribute the work among
the Manus of
Races. Further, each Chain yields a
number of
successful human beings, 'the Lords of
the Chain/
some of whom devote Themselves to the
work of the
new Chain, under its Root-Manu.
We thus find,
for our Chain, seveto classes of
Lords of the
Moon, working under our Root-Manu,
drawn from
the seven globes of the Moon Chain;
they form one
of the two great classes of Helpers
from outside,
who are concerned in the guiding of
lfThe
Root-Manu Vaivasvata must not be confused with
the Manu
Vaivasvata of the Aryan Root Race. The former
was a far
loftier Being, as will be seen from the statement
of His long
ascent, made in this same paragraph.
2 It must be
remembered that when a man reaches the
level
appointed for the Chain on which he is evolving, he
may remain
upon it and proceed on his further evolution,
as Adepts,
attaining now on our globe, may, without leaving
it, reach the
higher levels of the Hierarchy.
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the general
evolution of the Earth Chain. The
second
important class of Helpers from outside are
Those known
as the Lords of the Flame, who arrive
from Venus on
the fourth globe, in the fourth Round,
in the middle
of the third Boot Eace, to quicken
mental
evolution, to found the Occult Hierarchy of
the Earth,
and to take over the government of the
globe. It is
They whose tremendous influence so
quickened the
germs of mental life that these burst
into growth,
and there followed the great downrush
through the
Monad that we call the third Life-Wave,
causing the
formation of the causal body, the * birth'
or ' descent
of the ego' for all those who had come
up from the
animal kingdom; so instantaneous was
the response
of the myriad inhabitants of Earth that
They are
sometimes said to have 'given', to have
'projected'
the spark of mind; but the spark was
fanned into
flame, not projected; the nature of the
gift was the
quickening of the germ already present
in nascent
humanity, the effect of a sun-ray on a
seed, not a
giving of a seed.1 By the Lords of the
Flame was
concentrated the power of the LOGOS
upon the
Monads, as the sun-rays might be concentrated
by a lens,
and under that influence the responsive
spark
appeared. These are the true Manasaputras,
the Sons of
Mind coming, as They did
from the fifth,
the mental Bound of Venus the
Sons of the
Fire, the Lords of the Flame,2
lThe Secret
Doctrine, iii, 560.
2The word
Manasaputra is used in The Secret Doctrine
to indicate
not only These, but also all egos who are sufficiently
advanced to
quicken into activity the germ of
mind in
others, as we may now do with animals. The
word thus
covers a huge class, containing many varying
grades in
evolution.
EARLY TIMES
ON THE EARTH CHAIN 77
The seven
classes of the Lords of the Moon were
distributed
by the Root-Mann over the Earth Chain
to take
charge of the Rounds and globes, while the
Manus of
Races took special care of the evolution
of Races,
each of one Root Race.
THE FIRST
ROUND
The Lords of
the Moon from globes A, B, and C
of the lunar
Chain were the three classes who watch-,
ed over,
without partaking in, the physical construc*-
tion of the
globes of our Chain, as they were formed
successively
round the Spirit of each globe, as before
described.1
They appear to have superintended
the detailed
work of the Lords who attained later.
The lowest
class, from globe G, made the primitive
archetypal
forms on globe A of the Earth Chain in
the first
Round, and guided the Lines who came in
to fill them,
and to evolve therein. The next class,
from globe F,
superintended the evolution of forms
in the second
Round ; that from globe E the similar
evolution in
the third; and that from globe D the
similar
evolution in the fourth.2
Furtheij, we
find
some of the
Lords from globe E working on Mars
in the fourth
Round, while those from globe D become
active later
on the Earth.
When the
despatch of the first entities from the
Inter-Chain
Nirvana began, the first ships brought
the Lines,
and the great mass of animals from globe
D of the Moon
Chain ; the first shiploads succeeded
each other at
intervals of about one hundred thou-
*See Ante, p.
59.
2 All these
are included under the name Barhishad Pitrs
in The Secret
Doctrine.
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
sand years,
and then the supply stopped, and an
immense
period followed, during which the new arrivals,
the pioneers
on our Earth Chain, were pursuing
their long
journey of the first and second
Rounds and
part of the third.
The worlds are
curious, like churning whirlpools;
our Earth,
the most solid, is hot, muddy, sticky, and
much of its
territory does not seem to be anchored
down very
firmly. It is seething, and constantly
changing in
consistency; huge cataclysms engulf
great
multitudes from time to time, and in their
embryonic
condition they do not seem very much
the worse for
the engulfing, but increase and multiply
in huge caves
and caverns, as though they were
living on the
surface.
The first
Bound of the Earth Chain had its globes
on the same
levels as the seventh Round of the
Moon Chain;
globe A was on the higher mental
plane, with
some of the matter scarcely awakened;
globe B was
on the lower mental; globe C on the
emotional;
globe D on the physical; globe E on the
emotional
again ; globe F on the lower mental ; globe
G on the
higher mental. In the second Round the
whole Chain
descended, and three globes became
physical, C,
D, and E; but the living things on them
were etheric
in substance, and pudding-baggy to
borrow H. P.
Blavatsky's graphic epithet in form.
Globes C and
E, which we now call Mars and Mercury,
had at that
time physical matter, but in a glowing
gaseous
state.
The human
bodies on the Earth during the first
Round were
amoeboid, cloudy, drifting things, mostly
etheric, and
thus indifferent to the heat; they
multiplied by
fission. They seemed to succeed each
EARLY TIMES
ON THE EARTH CHAIN 79
other in
Races but without separate incarnations,
each form
lasting for a Race. There were no births
and no deaths
; they enjoyed an amoeba-immortality,
and were
under the care of Lords of the Moon who
had achieved
Arhatship on globe G. Some etheric
floating
things appeared to be trying, but not very
successfully,
to be dreams of vegetables.
The minerals
were somewhat more solid, for they
were largely
pelted on to the Earth by the Moon in
a molten
condition; the temperature might be anything
above 3,500
C. (6,332 F.), for copper was in
the condition
of vapour, and it volatilises in an
electrical
furnace at this temperature. Silicon was
visible, but
most of the substances were protoelements,
not elements,
and the present combinations
seemed to be
very rare; the earth was surrounded
by huge
masses of vapour shutting in the heat, and
hence cooled
very slowly. At the Pole there was
some boiling
mud, which gradually settled down,
and after
some thousands of years a green scum appeared,
which was
vegetable; or perhaps it would
be more
accurate to say that it would become vegetable
later on.
SECOND ROUND
In the second
Round the temperature of globe D
had dropped
considerably, and the copper had cooled
down and
become liquid, in some places solid.
There was
some land near the Poles, but flames burst
out if a hole
was made, as at some points on the
sides of the
cone of Vesuvius. The pudding-bag
creatures did
not seem to mind the heat, but floated
about
indifferently, reminding one in their shape of
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
wounded
soldiers who had lost their legs and had
had their
clothes sewn round the trunk ; a blow made
an
indentation, which slowly filled up again, like
the flesh of
a person suffering from dropsy; the
fore part of
the thing had a kind of sucking mouth,
through which
it drew in food, and it would fasten
on another
and draw it in, as though sucking an
egg through a
hole, whereupon the sucked one grew
flabby and
died; a struggle was noticed in which
each had
fixed its mouth on the other, and sucked
away
diligently. They had a kind of flaphand, like
the flap of a
seal, and they made a cheerful kind of
chirruping
trumpeting noise, expressing pleasure
pleasure
being a sort of general sense of bien-etre,
and pain a
massive discomfort, nothing acute, only
faint likes
and dislikes. The skin was sometimes
serrated,
giving shades of colour. Later on, they
became a
little less shapeless and more human, and
crawled on
the ground like caterpillars. Later still,
near the
North Pole, on the cap of land there, these
creatures
'were developing hands and feet, though unable
to stand up,
and more intelligence was noticeable.
A Lord of the
Moon an Arhat who had attained
on globe F of
the Moon Chain was observed,
who had
magnetised an island and shepherded on to
it a flock of
these creatures, reminding one of seacows
or porpoises,
though with no formed heads;
they were
taught to browse, instead of sucking each
other, and
when they did eat each other they chose
some parts in
preference to others, as though developing
taste. The
depression which served for mouth
grew deeper
into a kind of funnel, and a stomach
began to
develop, which was promptly turned inside
out if any
alien matter which was disapproved
EARLY TIMES
ON THE EARTH CHAIN 81
of found its
way in. One turned himself entirely
inside out,
and seemed none the worse. The surface
of the Earth
being still very uncertain, they occasionally
got burnt or
partially cooked; this they
evidently
disliked, and if it went too far they collapsed.
The heavy
atmosphere made floating their
usual method
of locomotion, and this was pleasanter
to look at
than the writhing motion adopted on the
ground,
recalling the "
loathly
worm". Reproduction
was by
budding; a protuberance appeared, grew,
and after a
while broke off, and led an independent
existence.
Their intelligence
was infantile, and one was seen
who had aimed
at a neighbour with his mouth, and,
missing him,
had caught hold of his own lower end,
and then went
on sucking contentedly till, presumably
becoming
uncomfortable, he spat himself out
again. One
fellow found out that by rolling his lower
end in mud,
he could float upright instead of lengthwise,
and appeared
to be very proud of himself.
Gradually the
end which contained the funnel tapored
off somewhat,
and a small centre appeared in
it, which, in
far future ages, might become a brain.
A small
protuberance appeared, and the habit was
formed of
drifting forward, with this in front, as
carrying the
mouth, and impacts being constantly
made on this,
development was promoted.
Vegetable
life developed during this period, aided
by the heavy
choking atmosphere ; there were forestlike
growths, much
resembling grass, but forty feet
high and
proportionately thick. They grew in the
warm mud, and
flourished exceedingly.
Towards the
end of this period, some of the Earth
was quite
solid and only reasonably warm. There
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
was much
tumultuous cracking, apparently due to
shrinkage,
and every hill was an active volcano.
Mars became
more solid, cooling more rapidly in
consequence
of its smaller size, but life on it was
much like
that on the Earth.
THIRD ROUND
In the third
Round Mars was quite solid and firm,
and some
animals began to develop, though at first
they looked
rather like clumsy chunks of wood, sawed
off a log.
They recalled sketches made by children
who had not
learned how to draw; but as time
went on,
there were beings who were distinctly human,
though more
like gorillas than men.
The configuration
then was very different from
that of the
Mars now known to us. The water question
had not
arisen, for about three-fourths of the
surface was
water and only one-fourth dry land.
Hence there
were no canals, as now, and the general
physical
condition much resembled that of the Earth
of to-day.
The people
who began with the linear indication
of the causal
body had by this time developed basketwork
of a kind
coarser, we noticed, than that which
had been
developed on the Moon. When this stage
was reached
the Basket-works from the Moon came
streaming in,
ship-loads again being sent off by the
Seed-Manu to
the Earth.
Looking at
the Inter-Chain Nirvana, in order to
trace out the
coming of the Basket-works to Mars,
we came upon
an interesting point. The ' shelves'
on which the
'bulbs' were stored were clearly of the
higher mental
matter; but the bulbs brought over
in the
Seed-Manu 's aura were brought over through
the spiritual
sphere, and the basket-work of Moon
EARLY TIMES
ON THE EARTH CHAIN 83
mental matter
would thus be disintegrated, and
would need to
be reformed before these entities began
their terrene
career. They would have slept
for ages in
the spiritual sphere, and then would have
been
reclothed in Basket-work of the equivalent
terrene
mental matter. There is no continuity of
mental matter
between Chains. The distance, of
course, may
be disregarded, as the terrene Chain occupies
much the same
position as the lunar, but the
discontinuity
of the mental matter renders necessary
the
disintegration and reintegration of the Basketwork
causal
bodies.
We saw a Manu
coming over to Mars with a shipload
of
Basket-works, reminding us of the stories
in the Hindu
Puranas of the Manu crossing the
ocean in a
ship, bearing with Him the seeds of a
new world,
and those in the Hebrew records of Noah,
preserving in
an ark all that was needed to repopulate
the Earth
after a flood. The legends preserved
in the
Scriptures of religions are often stories containing
the records
of the past, and the Manu truly
came to the
Martian world to give a new impulse
to evolution.
Arriving on Mars, He founded a colony
of His
Basket-works thereon.
Tracing back
this particular set, the first arrival
of
Basket-works in the terrene Chain, we found that
they had come
from globe G of the lunar Chain,
having
thereon become Basket-works. They were
the least
developed of the Basket-work crowd, having
been the last
to reach that stage; the Manu
guided them
to take birth in the most promising
third-Race
families on Mars, and, as they grew, He
led them off
to His colony, where they would more
quickly
develop into fourth Race people. In the
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colony the
people moved by a central will like bees
in a hive,
the central will being that of the Manu;
He sent out
streams of force and directed all. Two
other sets of
these Basket-work bees came to Mars,
those who
reached this stage on globes E and F of
the Moon
Chain ; they arrived in reverse order from
that of their
leaving the Moon, those from globe F
forming the
fourth-Race on Mars, and those from
globe E the
fifth. They developed some affection and
some
intelligence under the fostering care of the
Manu; at
first living in caves, they soon began to
build, and to
teach the aborigines to build under
them, even
Basket-works becoming leaders at this
stage of
evolution.
These people
were hermaphrodite, but one sex was
usually
developed more than the other, and two individuals
were necessary
for reproduction. Other
forms of
reproduction also existed among the lower
types, and
there were some embryonic human beings
of the hydra
kind who reproduced by budding and
others by
exudation, while some were oviparous. But
these were
not found among the Basket-works.
In the
fifth-Race the social arrangements changed,,
as more
intelligence was developed; the bee system
disappeared,
but they still had little individuality,
and moved
rather in flocks and herds, shepherded by
their Manu.
The baskets became more closely
woven, and
represented what could be done by the
unf >!ding
life in those who were emphatically selfmade
men, unaided
by the great stimulus given in the
fourth Round
by the Lords of the Flame. This type
which moves
in flocks is still largely represented
among us by
the people who hold conventional ideas
because
others hold them, and are wholly dominated
EARLY TIMES
OX THE EARTH CHAIN 85
by Mrs.
Grundy. These are often quite good people,
but are very
sheepy and flocky, and are appallingly
monotonous.
There are differences among them,
but they are
like the differences between people who
buy tea by
the quarter-pound or by the ounce, noticeable
chiefly by
themselves.
One fierce
type of Basket-work was observed, not
living in
communities, but wandering about in forests
in pairs ;
their heads ran up to a point behind matching
the chin in
front, and the head ending in two
points looked
odd and unattractive. They fought by
butting
against each other like goats, the top of the
head being of
very hard bone. There were some yet
lower types,
curious reptilian creatures, living in
trees. They
were larger than the Lines and far less
intelligent,
and ate the latter when they had the
chance.
There were
also on Mars some carnivorous brutes ;
a huge
crocodile-like animal was seen fiercely attacking
a man, who
rushed at it with a club, which did
not seem a
very effective weapon. However, he
stumbled over
a rock and fell headlong into the
creature's
jaws, and so came to an untimely end.
The third
Round on the Earth much resembled
that on Mars,
the people being smaller and denser,
but, from our
present standpoint, still huge and
gorilla-like.
The bulk of the Basket-works from
globe D of
the lunar Chain arrived on our Earth in
this Round,
and led the human evolution ; the Basketworks
from Mars
fell in behind them, and the whole
resembled
fairly intelligent gorillas. The animals
were very
scaly, and even the creatures we must call
birds were
covered with scales rather than feathers ;
they all
seemed to be made of a job lot of fragments
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
stuck
together, half bird, half reptile, and wholly
unattractive.
Still, it was a little more like a world
than the
preceding globes, in fact than anything we
had seen
since we left the Moon ; and later on cities
were built.
The work of the Lords of the Moon who
in this Round
were Arhats from globe E resembled
the training
of animals more than the
evolution of
a humanity. But it is noticeable that
they were
working on sections, as it were, of the
different
bodies, physical and subtle. The third subplanes
of the
physical, astral and mental spheres
were being
specially worked through, and the spirillae
of the atoms
on these sub-planes were being vivified.
1
The methods
of reproduction on our Earth during
the third
Round were those which are now confined
to the lower
kingdoms of nature. In the first
and second
Races, not thoroughly densified, fission
still occurred
vut in the third and onwards the
methods were:
budding-off like hydras in the less
organised ;
the exuding of cells from different organs
of the body,
which reproduced similar organs, and
grew into a
miniature duplication of the parent; the
laying of eggs,
within which the young human being
developed.
These were hermaphrodite, and gradually
one sex
predominated, but never sufficiently to
represent a
definite male and female.
The passing
of the life-wave from one globe to
another is
gradual and there is considerable overlapping;
it will be
remembered that globe A of the
terrene Chain
began to form when globe A of the
lunar Chain
was in process of disintegration, the
passing of
the Spirit of the globe being the signal of
'See Ante,
pp. 27, 28.
EARLY TIMES
ON THE EARTH CHAIN 87
the
transference of activity.
1 Thus
life-activity is continuous,
though egos
have long periods of rest. A
glohe
'
passes into
obscuration' when the attention
of the LOGOS
is turned away from it, and thus His
Light is
withdrawn. It passes into a kind of coma,
and there is
a residuum of living creatures, left behind;
these
creatures do not seem to increase in
number during
this period. But while the Races
die out, the
egos inhabiting them having passed on,
the globe
becomes a field for the Inner Round, a place
to which egos
in a transition state can be transferred
for special
treatment in order to quicken their evolution.
The globe to
which the attention of the LOGOS
is turned
starts into active life, and receives the
streams of
egos ready to gc forward on their journey.
Another point
that may be noted is the recurrence
of types at a
higher level of evolution, in which they
form but
transitional stages. As in the development
of the human
embryo of to-day, the fish, reptile, and
lower mammalian-types
appear, repeating in a few
months the
aeonic evolution of the past, so do we see
in each Round
that a period of repetition precedes
that of new
advance. The third Round laboriously
worked out in
detail that which the third Race in
the fourth Round
would reproduce with comparative
swiftness,
while the second Race would similarly
reflect the
second Round, and the first Race the first
Round. This
broad principle once grasped, study
becomes more
easy, as the outline is clear into which
details are to
be fitted.
'See Anie,
pp. 58, 59.
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CHAPTER VII
EARLY STAGES
OF THE FOURTH ROUND
IN taking a
preliminary bird's-eye-view of the
fourth Round,
one important and far-reaching
change is
apparent in the surroundings amid which
human
evolution is to proceed. In the three preceding
Rounds the
elemental essence was practically
untouched by
man, and was affected only by
the Devas, or
Angels, by whose influences it evolved.
Man was not
sufficiently developed to affect it to any
serious
extent. But in this Round man's influence
plays a very
important part, and his self-centred
thoughts
create swirls in the elemental essence surrounding
him. The
elementals, also, begin to show
more
hostility to him, as he emerges fronji the animal
state into
the dominating human, for he is, from their
standpoint,
no longer an animal among animals, but
an
independent and domineering entity, likely to be
hostile and
aggressive.
Another most
important characteristic of the
fourth Round,
the midmost of the seven, is that, in
it, the door
was shut against the animal kingdom,
and the door
was opened to the Path. Both statements
are general ;
here and there an animal, by very
special help,
may still be evolved to a point where
a human
incarnation is possible for it, but in almost
all cases no
human body can now be found of sufficiently
low
development for its embodiment; so also
88
EARLY STAGES
OF THE FOURTH ROUND 89
might a man
who had attained Arhatship or more
on the Moon
Chain climb yet higher, but all below
that rank who
had complete causal bodies did not
enter into
evolution on the Earth Chain until the
later third
and early fourth Root Races,
On Mars in
the fourth Round we find a number
of savages
who had not been sufficiently advanced
to leave that
globe for the Earth when the mass of
the egos went
on in the preceding Round. On each
globe some
fail to go on, and remain behind as the
globe begins
its period of obscuration; and they
return to
this same globe when again it recommences
full
activity, and form a very backward class ; these
were
Basket-works of a very poor kind, and were
savages of
the brutal and cruel type, some of those
who had
individualised through fear and anger.
Mars, in the
fourth Round, felt the stress of scarcity
of water, and
it was the Lords of the Moon
Arhats who
had attained on globe E who planned
out the
system of canals and the Basket-works who
executed them
under Their direction. The Martian
seas are not
salt, and the polar snowcaps, aa they
melt, supply
the water necessary for irrigation, and
thus enable
the ground to be cultivated, and crops
to be raised.
The fifth
Martian Root Race was white, and made
considerable
progress, and the Basket-work developed
into a
complete causal body. They were good,
well-meaning,
and kindly, though not capable of any
large ideas,
of widely spread feelings of affection, or
of
self-sacrifice. At a quite early stage, they began
to divide
food instead of fighting over it, developing
the social
feeling to some extent.
The first and
second Root Races on the Earth
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
were going on
before Mars was deserted, some entities
being
available for these primitive conditions
whom Mars in
its later stages was too advanced to
accommodate,
and the full attention of the LOGOS
not being
turned on to the Earth in these early
times. The
Lords of the Moon Arhats who had
achieved on
globe D of the lunar Chain brought
into these
early Races a number of backward entities,
so that these
served as special coaches for the laggards,
many of whom
repaid the care bestowed upon
them, and
entered the first sub-race qf the third Boot
Eace, as its
lowest types ; they were egg-headed, with
an eye at the
top of their heads, a roll like a sausage
representing
a forehead, and prognathous jaws. The
egg-headed
type persisted for a very long time, but
became much
modified in the later sub-races of this
third Root
Race, and specimens of them are found
in later
Lemurian times. The blue people who formed
the powerful
sixth sub-race, and the white who
composed the
seventh sub-race, were finer types, but
were still
Lemurian, and showed a trace of eggheadedness,
due to the
retreating foreheads.1 The
population of
the Earth during the first and second
Root Races
was very limited, and this special help
appears to
have been given because in the fourth
globe of the
fourth Chain "the door is shut". Furthermore,
everything
possible was done to bring forward
all of whom
anything could be made, before the
coming of the
Lords of the Flame, in the middle of
1While this
is going through the press a report has appeared
in the
newspapers of the discovery of some skulls
of this type,
hut no particulars are yet available. See The
Theosophist
for August, 1912, in 'On the Watch-Tower,'
p. 631.
EARLY STAGES
OF THE FOURTH ROUND 91
the third
Root Race, should make the gulf well-nigh
impassable
between the human and animal kingdoms.
Mars, at the
end of its seventh Root Race, had a
very
considerable population to pour into the
Earth, and
these came streaming in for the third
Root Race, to
head it until the more advanced egos
from the Moon
Chain should come in to take over
the leadership.
These Basket-works, whose causal
bodies were
now completed, had made considerable
progress on
Mars, and they now prepared the way
for the more
advanced people who were soon to
arrive. It
was they who fought with the savage
reptilian
creatures, slimy and backboneless, who
were the
"water-men terrible and bad" of the
Stanzas of
Dzyan, the re-embodied remnants of the
previous
Rounds, who had been i water-men/ i.e.,
amphibious,
scaly, half-human animals, on Mars.
The many
schemes of reproduction characteristic
of the third
Round reappear in this third Root Race,
and run
simultaneously in various parts; of the
Earth. The
bulk of the population passed on
through the
successive stages and became mostly
oviparous,
but there were various little side-shows
in which
earlier methods persisted. It seems as
though the
vaiious schemes of reproduction were
suitable to
egos at different stages of evolution, and
were kept
going for laggards after the bulk of the
people had
passed beyond them. The egg-scheme
was dropped
very slowly; the shell became thinner
and thinner,
the human being within developing into
a
hermaphrodite; then he became a hermaphrodite
with one sex
predominant; and then a unisexual
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
being. These
changes began some sixteen and a half
million years
ago, and occupied some five and a half
to six
million years, physical bodies changing very
slowly and
reversion frequently occurring. Moreover
the original
number was small, and needed time
for
multiplication. When this last type became quite
stable, then
the egg was preserved within the feminine
body, and
reproduction assumed the form which
still
persists.
To sum up :
we have the first Root Eace, repeating
the first
Bound, etheric clouds drifting about in a
hot heavy
atmosphere, which enclosed a world rent
by recurrent
cataclysms ; these multiplied by fission.
The second
Boot Bace, repeating the second Bound,
was of the '
pudding-bag'
type, described under the
second Bound;
these multiplied by budding. The
early third
Boot Bace, repeating the third Bound,
was
human-gorilla in form, and reproduction was at
first by
extrusion of cells, the 'sweatborn' of The
Secret
Doctrine. Then comes the oviparous stage,
and finally
the unisexual.
Some very
special treatment was applied to some
of the eggs ;
they were taken away by the Lords of
the Moon, and
were carefully magnetised and kept
at an equable
temperature, until the human form, at
this stage a
hermaphrodite, broke out; it was then
specially fed
and carefully developed, and when
ready, was
taken possession of by one of the Lords
of the Moon,
many of whom became incarnate in
order to work
on the physical plane, and they used
these carefully
prepared bodies for a long period
of time; some
Devas also took some of these prepared
bodies. This
seems to have been only a few
centuries
before the separation of the sexes.
EARLY STAGES
OF THE FOURTH ROUND 93
While the
later Egg-borns were in possession, the
very best of
the Basket-works came in, straight from
the
Inter-Chain Nirvana, and these were quickly followed
by the lowest
of those who had gained complete
causal bodies
on the Moon. Between the highest
of the first
and the lowest of the second there
was but
little difference. The first boat-load of the
latter
consisted of those who had responded but
little to the
influence of the Seed-Manu, from globes
G, F, and E,
of the lunar Chain, the majority being
from G, the
stupidest of those who had gained complete
causal
bodies. The second boat-load had a
large number
from globe G, a low section from globe
F, and a
still lower from globe E. The third contained
the best from
globe G, with some fairly good
from globe F,
and good from globe E. The fourth
boat-load had
the best from globe F, and all but the
very best of
globe E. The fifth boat-load brought the
best of globe
E with a few from globe D. These all
seemed to be
sorted out by ' age 'rather than by '
type,
'
and were, in
fact, of all types. One individual was
noticed who
was a chief in the savage mainland tribe
which took
Mars prisoner on the Moon, one who had
individualised
through fear. All these incarnated
among the
Egg-borns, some hundreds of thousands
of them.
Then came,
from ten to eleven million years ago,
when
separation of the sexes was fully established,
the important
stage when some of these incarnated
Lords of the
Moon descended on the seven-pointed
Lemurian
Polar Star, and formed etheric images
of
themselves, which were then materialised into
greater
density, multiplying these for the use of the
incoming
egos; the Lords were of different types,
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
the " seven
men each on his lot," and gave bodies
suited to the
seven Bays, or temperamental types
of humanity,
making the forms on the points of the
Star.
At this stage
there were four human classes, pressing
on each other
to obtain better human forms.
These were:
(1) the set of the best Basket-works
above-named,
with the five boat-loads from globes G,
F, and E,
possessing complete causal bodies; then
(2) the
Basket-works from Mars; then (3) the Lines,
who had been
here all the time; then (4) the last,
composed of
those who were only now coming up out
of the
animals. Below these were the animals,
plants, and
minerals, with which we need not concern
ourselves.
The coming of
these into the etheric forms provided
by the Lords
of the Moon was something of a
struggle, for
there were often many claimants for
a single
form, and the one who succeeded in gaining
it could not
always hold it for more than a few
moments ; the
scene recalls the Greek idea that the
Gods made the
world amid shouts of laughter, for
it decidedly
had its comic element, as the egos
struggled for
the forms and could not manage them
when they had
obtained them. It is one of the descents
into matter,
the final materialisation of the
body of man,
the completion of 'the fall of man'.
Gradually
they became accustomed to the new * coats
of skin,' and
settled down to reproduce the seven
great
temperamental types. In various parts of
the world
other ways of reproduction continued for
long periods
of time; the successive stages overlapped
very much,
owing to the great differences in
evolution,
and the classes that came in from other
EARLY STAGES
OF THE FOURTH ROVND 95
Rounds had
not been in the two early Boot Races
on Earth; the
tribes following the early methods
gradually
became sterile, while the true men and
women
multiplied greatly, until humanity, as we
know it now,
was definitely established all over the
world.
The forms as
thrown off by the Lords of the Moon
were fairly
good-looking, but being etheric they were
very readily
modifiable, and the incoming egos much
distoited
them; the children born of them were distinctly
ugly;
probably those using them were accustomed
to think of
the egg-shaped head and sausage-
roll
forehead, and hence these reappeared.
After many
generations of well-established human
beings, descended
from the etheric materialised
forms, had
been evolved, the Arhats urged on those
who had left
globes A, B, and C of the lunar Chain
because they
could make no further progress on
it that they
should descend and take incarnation in
the bodies
now ready for their indwelling. There
were three
boat-loads of these ; more than two million
orange people
from globe A, rather less than
three million
golden-yellow from globe B, and rather
more than
three million pink from globe C about
nine millions
in all; they were guided to different
areas of the
world's surface, with the view that they
should form
tribes. The orange, on seeing the
bodies
offered to them, refused to enter, not out of
any
wickedness but from pride, disdaining the unattractive
forms, and perhaps
also from their ancient
hatred of
sexual unions; but the yellow and pink
were docile
and obeyed, gradually improving the
bodies they
inhabited. These made the fourth Lemurian
sub-race, the
first which was in any sense, ex96
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
cept the
embryonic, human; and it may be dated
from the
giving of the forms. It is interesting to
notice that
H. P. Blavatsky in The Secret Doctrine
speaks of
this fourth sub-race as 'yellow,' apparently
noting the
incoming of the golden-yellow people
from globe B
of the Moon Chain; she can hardly
have been
referring to the established colour of the
fourth
sub-race, as that was black, and the black continued
even in the
lower classes of the sixth subrace,
in which the
higher classes were of a quite
respectable
blue. Yet even in those there was an
underlying
tinge of black.
The area
allotted to the orange tribe was thus left
open, and the
bodies they should have used were
gladly seized
upon by the entities just emerging
from the
animal kingdom, the lowest of the classes
before
mentioned, the very poorest human type;
these, not
unnaturally, felt little difference between
themselves
and the ranks from which they had just
emerged, and
hence arose the "sin of the mindless".
It is
interesting to note the karma of this refusal
of the orange
people to take their due place in the
work of
peopling the world. Later, the law of evolution
forced them
into incarnation, and they had
to take lower
and coarser bodies, the Lords of the
Moon having
gone on into other work; they thus became
a backward
race, cunning but not good, and
passed
through many unpleasant experiences; they
diminished in
number by constantly coming into collision
with the
common order, and being hammered,
largely by
suffering, into ordinary folk. A few
strong,
remorseless and unscrupulous became
Lords of the
Dark Face in Atlantis ; some were seen
among the
North American Indians with refined but
EARLY STAGES
OF THE FOURTH ROUND 97
hard faces ;
some few still persist, even down to our
own day the
unscrupulous among the kings of
finance,
statesmen like Bismarck, conquerors like
Napoleon; but
they are gradually disappearing, for
they have
learned many bitter lessons. Those who
are wanting
in heart, who are always fighting, always
opposing
everything everywhere, on general
principles,
must ultimately, in a realm of law, be
beaten into
shape; a very few may end in black
magic, but
the steady pressure is too great for the
majority. It
is a hard road to choose for progress !
THE COMING OF
THE LORDS OF THE FLAME
The great
Leraurian Polar Star was still perfect,
and the huge
Crescent still stretched along the
equator,
including Madagascar. The sea which occupied
what is now
the Gobi Desert still broke
against the
rocky barriers of the northern Himalayan
slopes, and
all was being prepared for the most
dramatic
moment in the history of the Earth the
Coming of the
LORDS OF THE FLAME.
The Lords of
the Moon and the Manu of the third
Root Race had
done all that was possible to bring
men up to the
point at which the germ of mind could
be quickened,
and the descent of the ego could be
made. All the
laggards had been pushed on; there
were no more
in the animal ranks capable of rising
into man. The
door against further immigrants into
the human
kingdom from the animal was only shut
when no more
were in sight, nor would be capable
of reaching
it without a repetition of the tremendous
impulse only
given once in the evolution of a
Scheme, at
its midmost point,
A great
astrological event, when a very special
collocation
of planets occurred and the magnetic
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
condition of
the Earth was the most favourable
possible, was
chosen as the time. It was about six
and a half
million years ago. Nothing more remained
to be done,
save what only They could do.
Then, with
the mighty roar of swift descent from
incalculable
heights, surrounded by blazing masses
of fire which
filled the sky with shooting tongues of
flame,
flashed through the aerial spaces the chariot
of the Sons
of the Fire, the Lords of the Flame from
Venus; it
halted, hovering over the < White Island/
which lay
smiling in the bosom of the Gobi Sea;
green was it,
and radiant with masses of fragrant
many-coloured
blossoms, Earth offering her best
and fairest
to welcome her coming King. There He
stood,
"the Youth of sixteen summers,
" Sanat
Kumara,
the ' Eternal
Virgin-Youth, ' the new Ruler of
Earth, come
to His kingdom, His Pupils, the three
Kumaras, with
Him, His Helpers around Him;
thirty mighty
Beings were there, great beyond
Earth's
reckoning, though in graded order, clothed
in the
glorious bodies They had created by Kriyaehakti,
the first
Occult Hierarchy, branches of the
one spreading
Banyan-Tree, the nursery of future
Adepts, the
centre of all occult life. Their dwelling-
place was and
is the Imperishable Sacred Land,
on which ever
shines down the Blazing Star, the
symbol of
Earth's Monarch, the changeless Pole
round which
the life of our Earth is ever spinning.
1
lfThe use of
these occult symbols misled the readers of
The Secret
Doctrine, (perhaps even its writer) into the
mistake that
the 'Pole' and 'Star' mentioned in the Occult
Commentary
were the physical North Pole and North
Star. I
followed this mistaken idea in my Pedigree of
Man. A. B.
EARLY STAGES
OF THE FOURTH ROUND 99
A Catechism
says: "Out of the seven Kumaras,
four
sacrificed themselves for the sins of the world,
and the
instruction of the ignorant, to remain till
the end of
the present manvantara . . . These are the
Head, the
Heart, the Soul and the Seed of undying
knowledge.
" H. P.
Blavatsky adds: "Higher than
the 'Four' is
only ONE on Earth as in Heaven
that still
more mysterious and solitary Being' ' the
Silent
Watcher.1
Until the
Coming of the Lords the shiploads from
the
Inter-Chain Nirvana had arrived separately,
but now, with
the tremendous stimulus given, fecundity
increased rapidly
like everything else, and
perfect
fleets were wanted to bring in egos to inhabit
the bodies ;
these came pouring in, while others
of lower
types took possession of all the animals
with the
germs of mind who were individualised at
the Coming,
the Lords of the Flame doing in a
moment for
millions what we now do by long care
for units.
And now the
Arhats from globes A, B, and C
came into
incarnation, to help the Manu in founding
and
civilising the fifth, sixth and seventh sub-races
of the
Lemurians. The fourth sub-race continued,
the very egg-
headed one, with a stature of from
twenty-four
to twenty-seven feet in height, loosely
and clumsily
built, and black in colour; one whom
we measured
was twenty-five feet in height.
1 Their
buildings
were proportionate to their size, cyclopean
in structure,
made of enormous stones.
The Arhats
became Kings in the later sub-races,
the
King-Initiates of the myths which are truer than
history.
1 The Secret
Doctrine, ii t 294, 295. (See bottom next page.)
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A
King-Initiate would gather a number of persons
round Him,
forming a clan, and then would teach
this clan
some of the arts of civilisation, and direct
and help them
in the building of a city. One large
city was
erected under such instruction on what is
now the
island of Madagascar, and many others were
similarly
built over the great Crescent. The style
of
architecture was, as said above, cyclopean, impressive
from its
hugeness.
During the
long period thus occupied, the physical
apearance of
the Lemurians was changing. The
central eye
at the top of the head was retreating, as
it ceased to
function, from the surface to the interior
of the head,
to form the pineal gland, while
the two eyes
at first one on each side of it were
becoming
active. The Greek legend of Cyclops is
evidently a
tradition from the early Lemurian age.
There was
some domestication of animals; one
egg-headed
Lemurian was seen leading about a scaly
monster,
almost as unattractive as his master.
Animals of
all sorts were eaten raw among some
tribes human
flesh was not despised and creatures
of the grade
of our slugs, snails and worms, much
larger than
their degenerate descendants, were regarded
with peculiar
favour as toothsome morsels.
curiosity may
arise as to how we measured him :
first by
standing by him, when we came, respectively, a
little below
and level with his knee; then by setting him
against a
first-floor balcony at Headquarters, where he
could rest
his raised hands on the parapet and put his
chin on them.
We later measured the height of the parapet.
The poor
image was not made welcome when he put
his head over
the balcony: "Take him away," said the
owner of the
balcony; "he is very ugly and enough to
frighten
anybody." Perhaps he was, poor thing.
EARLY STAGES
OF THE FOURTH ROUND 101
While the
sixth sub-race was developing, a large
number of
Initiates and their disciples were sent off
from the
Inter-Chain Nirvana to the Earth,1 to
help the Manu
of the fourth Root Eace by incarnating
in the best
bodies He had so far evolved. The
very best
bodies being given to those who had exhausted
their karma,
their occupants were able
to improve
them, and to get out of them everything
which they
were capable of yielding. These Arhats
and their
pupils worked under the Lords of the
Moon and the
Manus of the third and fourth Root
Races; the
seventh sub-race, the bluish-white, was
evolved by
their help, and furnished men and
women of a better
type for further moulding by the
Manu of the
fourth.
*It may be
noted that while the general rule was that
the less
evolved should be sent first to the Earth, exceptions
were made
where help was wanted, as in this ease
with this
special boat-load.
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CHAPTER VIII
THE FOURTH
BOOT RACE
THE Head of
the Hierarchy began, almost immediately
after His
coming, to make arrangements for
the founding
of the fourth Root Race, employing
the future
Manu to pick out the smallest, densest
and best of
the Lemurian types available ; and while
the founding
and growth of civilisation under the
King-Initiates
were going forward among the Lemurians,
the Manu of
the coming Race was diligently
seeking for
the egos suitable for His purpose, and
selecting for
them appropriate incarnations. He
gathered
together, in one case, thousands of people,
and finally
selected one, after tests that lasted over
many years,
evidently experiencing much difficulty in
finding
desirable ancestors for His Race. Tribes
were set
apart, their members inter-marrying for
long periods,
and the Manu chose promising specimens
and
transplanted them; He and His disciples
incarnated in
the progeny of these to raise the physical
level. He
carried on various experiments simultaneously
on the points
of the Star, utilising the
differences
of climate. It looked at first a hopeless
task, as
though negroes and mulattoes should intermarry
to make a
white race ; but after generations
of selection
within a tribe, He would take away one
or two, and
pair them off with another one or two,
similarly
selected from another tribe. The third-
102
THE FOURTH
ROOT RACE 103
Race Manu had
evolved a blue type for His sixth
sub-race, and
a bluish-white for His seventh, though
the masses of
the Lemurians remained black; some
of the fourth
sub-race also mixed in with the blue,
and slowly,
very slowly, the general Lemurian type
improved. It
is noticeable also that when, in other
parts of the world
a lighter-coloured or better type
appeared it
was sent off to the Manu, and He tried
to find for
it a suitable husband or wife ; we observed
one that was
thus sent in from the Madagascan city,
and others
similarly came in from elsewhere.
More rapid progress
was made after the arrival of
the
Initiates, mentioned at the close of the last
chapter, the
best of the bodies improved by their
indwelling
being taken by the Manu for the shaping
of His first
sub-race; the fourth Eace had thus,
ultimately, a
very fine founding and nursing, thanks
to the large
number of developed people who took
the lead and
pressed things forward. The Manu
was able,
finally, to take the bodies of the seventh
sub-race,
improved by the Initiates using them, as
the nucleus
of His first sub-race, the Rmoahal, of
the fourth
Eoot Race. All who were taken on into
the fourth
Root Race were the Initiates and their
disciples in
these bodies, and none at this stage were
taken from
those who had previously been evolving
on the Earth
Chain.
Subba Rao
distinguished the Lemurians as blueblack,
the
Atlanteans as red-yellow, and the Aryans
as
brown-white. We find the fourth Race Manu
eliminating
the blue from the colour of His people,
passing
through purple into the red of the Rmoahal
sub-race, and
then, by mixing in the blue-white ot
the seventh
Lemurian sub-race, He obtained the
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
first
sub-race which seemed to be fully human, and
that we could
imagine as living among ourselves.
After the
race-type was fully established, He thus
had the
materials for the rich red-brown of the Toltec,
the third
sub-race, the most splendid and imperial
of the
Atlantean peoples, which ruled the world
for tens of
thousands of years. After a long period
of patient
working, about a million years having been
spent in
taking stupendous trouble and care, He
reached a
fair resemblance to the type given to Him
to produce ;
then He definitely founded the Race, He
Himself
taking incarnation, and calling His disciples
to take
bodies in His own family, His posterity thus
forming the
Race. In the most literal sense the
Manu of a
Race is its Progenitor, for the whole Race
has its Manu
as its physical ancestor.
Even the Manu
's.immediate descendants, however,
were not a
very attractive-looking crowd, judging
by our
present standard, although a vast improvement
on the
surrounding population. They were
smaller, but
had no nervous organisation worth
speaking of,
and their astral bodies were shapeless.
It is
extraordinary what He made of such a body
for Himself,
moulding and shaping it after His own
astral and
mental bodies, and modifying the pigment
in the skin,
till He worked it into more of the colour
that He
wished for His Race.
After this
many generations passed before the
young Race
took possession of its continent, Atlantis,
but from this
point onwards ship-loads of
egos begin to
come in from the Inter-Chain Nirvana,
to inhabit
the fourth Race bodies. The Manu
arranged with
the Root-Manu to send Him large
THE FOURTH
ROOT RACE 105
numbers of
egos ready for incarnation those from
globe D of
the Moon Chain who had complete causal
bodies, and
who had individualised in the lunar
fourth arid
fifth Eounds. Some of these came into
the Tlavatli
sub-race, and some later into the Toltec,
when it was
evolved ; and then He again incarnated
in the
latter, and founded the City of the
Golden Gates,
the first of many successive cities of
that name.
The founding was about one million
years ago,
one hundred and fifty thousand years before
the first
great catastrophe which rent the continent
of Atlantis.
The Toltec
was at this time the ruling Eace, by
virtue of its
great superiority. It was a warrior race
going all
over the world and subduing its inhabitants,
but its pure
types never formed the lower classes
anywhere.
Even in the City of the Golden Gates,
only the
aristocracy and the middle class were Toltec ;
the lower
classes were of mixed blood, and were
largely
composed of men and women taken captive
in wars with
other sub-races, and reduced to servitude
by their
conquerors.
At this time
arrived on Earth a ship-load of egos,
in a group of
whom which kept much together we
are specially
interested, as it contained many old
friends,
Sirius, Orion, Leo and others ; some of these
were
ear-marked on their arrival by Vaivasvata
Manu the Manu
of th6 fifth Eace as part of His
future
materials. Hence H. P. Blavatsky speaks of
the founding
of the fifth Eace as occurring one million
years ago,
though it was only led out from Atlantis
79,997 B. C.
These, later, formed the group
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
with an
average 1,200 to 1,000 years' interval between
death and
re-birth.1
The interval
between death and re-birth was at
this time
naturally somewhat shorter, for the material
gathered in
these primitive lives was not
enough to
make a long interval, however thinly
spread out.
The people were not yet capable of
deep feeling,
though making something out of the
heaven-life.
In the heaven-world these egos kept
together, and
the filmy beings connected with them
in the
intuitional sphere showed a strong affinity for
each other.
In the lower spheres there was apparently
a dull,
groping, sense of 'want,' as though they
were very
dimly sensing the absence of the old
friends of
former lives and of the Inter-Chain interval,
who were
still sleeping away in the Inter-chain
Nirvana, not
to arrive on Earth for another 400,000
years. In the
intuitional sphere, these 700-year
people were
in touch with the 1,200-year group, but
it was only
when the former arrived on the Earth
that there
was a time of general rejoicing among
the egos in
the higher mental sphere, due chiefly to
the arrival
of those who were the most deeply loved
and revered
the future Masters. Those immediately
connected
with some of the earlier group were still
in that
Nirvana, although others had come to earth
with the
1,200-year set, among them the two future
Masters who
now wear English bodies.2 A good
irThese
intervals must be taken provisionally; the intervals
between death
and re-birth in this group and in the
one mentioned
below were relatively about as these lengths.
2They were once
Sir Thomas More and 'Philalethes'
Thomas
Vaughan.
THE FOURTH
ROOT RACE 107
deal of
slight retarding or hastening of re-birth was
resorted to,
in order to keep the group together in
incarnation.
In one of
these early lives, Corona1 a very fine
fighter came
from the City of the Golden Gates, and
conquered the
Tlavatli tribe in which our friends had
incarnated.
Unconscious as he was of the tie between
them, he was
yet influenced by it, and treated
the tribe
kindly: instead of carrying them off as
slaves, he
introduced various improvements and
incorporated
the tribe into the Toltec Empire. Sirius
took several
births in the Tlavatli sub-race, and then
passed into
the Toltec. Glancing forward, we saw
him once
incarnated among the Rmoahls, in order
to be with Ursa
and others, then several lives were
passed in the
Turanian, the fourth sub-race a
Chinese stage
and a number in the Akkadian, the
sixth; he was
observed trading among a people who
resembled the
Phoenicians of later times. He did not
take the
sub-races in any special order, and it is
difficult, at
present, to generalise on this question.
Ship-loads of
egos continued to arrive, and the
main cause of
separation seemed to be the method
of
individualisation. Egos of all Bays, or temperaments,
of similar
general development were mixed
up, but those
of different intervals between rebirths
were not. Nor
was there any mingling of the large
classes of
the Moon-Men and Animal-Men. Unless
an individual
had been taken through the Inner
Round, and
had undergone its special forcing, when
he passed
into the class ahead of him, the broad
lines of
distinction remained, and one class did not
'Known in
later history as Julius Ceesar.
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
overtake
another. Even when the Basket-works had
completed
their causal bodies, the basket origin remained
discernible.
The first
ship-load containing the 700-year group
arrived on
Earth about 600,000 B. C., some 250,000
years after
the first great cataclysm which rent
the continent
of Atlantis. With it came the future
Masters, Mars
and Mercury and others, and Mars
was born in
the north in the Tlavatli sub-race,
with Surya
and Mercury for his father and mother.
Herakles was
also in the family, as an elder sister.
Surya was the
Chief of the tribe, and Mars, his
eldest son,
soon became its foremost warrior.1 At
the age of
fifteen, he was left for dead on a battlefield,
but was
searched for and found by his sister,
who was
passionately devoted to him, and who
nursed him
back to health. He succeeded his father
as Chief, and
had his first experience of earthly rule.
There was one
quite small but interesting group,
only 105 in
number, who arrived about the same
period, 600,000
B. C., but who did not come from the
Moon. It was
a contingent arranged for specially by
the Head of
the Hierarchy, and seemed to consist
of some who
in Venus had been pet animals of the
Lords 'of the
Flame, and were so strongly linked to
Them by affection,
that without Them they would
not have
evolved. They had individualised on Venus,
and were
brought over here, and He placed them all
in the first
and second Hays. There were other small
groups,
abnormal in evolution. Thus one little
group,
belonging to the third Bound, was sent over
to Mercury,
for the special treatment possible under
*See the
Proem for these and other names.
THE FOURTH
ROOT RACE 109
Mercury
conditions, and was then brought back
here. Some
underwent treatment of this kind in
preparation
for the fifth Eoot Race. It may be
noted that H.
P. Blavatsky speaks of some who came
to the Earth
from Mercury.
Herakles'
third birth on earth was in the same
tribe, in
which many members of the group were
re-united.
They had a certain amount of civilisation,
but the
houses were mere huts, and the
climate being
warm the clothing was scanty. The
life was
marked by the re-knitting of the undesirable
link with
Scorpio, and has therefore a certain importance
for those
concerned. The tribe in which
Herakles was
a warrior was attacked by a very
savage tribe
to which Scorpio belonged; the plan
of the latter
was to surprise the other tribe and
slaughter it
as a sacrifice to their deity, or, failing
that, to
commit suicide, and thereby gain power to
torment their
enemies from the other world. They
performed
magical rites of an Obeahlike nature,
which, though
done in secret, seem to have become
known to
Herakles. The final suicide was essential
to the
success of the whole plan of after-death activity,
and the weird
spells, with many tremendous
'curses and
swears,' became then effective: the result
of these was
apparently as much dreaded by
their foes as
it was valued by themselves. The attack
failed, and
they proceeded to carry out the
alternative
to victory, a general suicide with gruesome
rites.
Herakles, partly because his religion
did not
permit suicide, partly moved by superstitious
fears, and
partly by the thought that the savages
would make
nice brawny slaves, interfered and
saved a
number of them whom he captured and
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
bound. Later
on these folk plotted to assassinate
him, and he
had them executed; thus began again,
this time on
earth, a long series of antagonisms not
yet
exhausted.
It may be
noted, as bearing on the closeness of
ties set up
between individuals and enduring for
hundreds of
lives, that from this time forward a set
of persons
within the large groups of 1,200-and 700-
years' people
a set which we may, for the sake of
distinction,
dub 'the Clan' while visiting almost
every country
in the world, kept generally together,
and Sirius,
Especially, was rarely found to marry
outside this
little group. Taking a bird's-eye-view,
we notice
that there were occasional gatherings of
the whole big
Clan, as in the City of the Golden
Gates when
Mars was King, in Peru when he was
Emperor, in
the mainland near the White Island
under the
Manu, and in the second and third subraces
at their
beginnings and their migrations to
take a few
instances out of many. Herakles turned
out to be a
fighting sort of person, clinging closely
to Mars ;
Sirius a more peaceful one, following Mercury
continually;
Alcyone is also of that ilk, with
Mizar. A good
many belonging to the larger groups
with whom we
were very familiar in those early
days,
however, seem to have dropped out by the
way, and we
have not met them in this life; some
may be just
now in the heaven-world. The Theosophical
Society is
another instance of the gathering
of this same
Clan, and people are coming into it all
the time, who
turn out to be old friends. Some again,
like Corona,
are just now awaiting a favourable opportunity
for
incarnation.
The
ship-loads continued to come in for a long
THE FOURTH
ROOT RACE 111
time, only
ceasing with the catastrophe of 75,000 B.
C., so the
phrase as to shutting the door evidently
applies only
to the animals coming up into humanity,
and not to
those whose causal bodies were already
developed.
The anthropoid apes, of whom H, P.
Blavatsky
spoke as still admissible to human bodies,
would belong
to the animal kingdom of the Moon,
not to that
of the Earth; they took up bodies produced
by the
"sin of the mindless," and are the
gorillas,
chimpanzees, orang-utangs, baboons, and
gibbons. They
might be looked for in Africa, and
might
incarnate there in the still existing very low
human races
of Lemurian type.
Coming down
to 220,000 B. 0., to the City of the
Golden Gates,
we find Mars there ruling as Emperor,
and bearing
by inheritance the title of * Divine
Ruler,'
transmitted from Those who had ruled in
the past, the
great Initiates of earlier days. Mercury
was the chief
Hierophant, the head of the
State
religion. It is remarkable how these two come
down together
through the ages, one always the
Ruler, the
Warrior, the other always the Teacher,
the Priest.
Noteworthy also is the fact that we
never saw
Mars in a woman's body, whereas Mercury
did take one
from time to time.
There was
quite a gathering of the Clan at this
time. The
Crown Prince was then Vajra, and Ulysses,
who had been
a successful leader on the frontier,
was Captain
of the Imperial Guard. This Guard
formed a
picked body of men, even the privates being
of the upper
classes, and they had charge of the
Palace; they
were not supposed to go out to war,
but rather to
strut about in gorgeous uniforms, to
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MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
nials, and
increase his splendour. Later, however,
after the
death of Ulysses, Vajra became Captain of
the Guard,
and he persuaded his father to allow him
to take his
troop off into a campaign; being always
a turbulent
and restless person, he was not content
to luad a
life of show and luxury, and his soldiers,
who adored
him for his dash and courage, were willing
enough to
exchange their golden breastplates
for the
severer armament of war. Among them we
find a number
of our Clan: Herakles was there, with
Pindar,
Beatrix, Gemini, Capella, Lutetia, Bellona,
Apis, Arcor,
Capricorn, Theodoros, Scotus and Sappho.
Herakles had
as servant-boys three Tlavatli
youths,
captured in battle by his father and given to
him Hygeia,
Bootes, and Alcmene. The soldiers
were
distinctly rowdy, indulging in orgies of eating
and drinking,
and then rioting about the city; but
they had the
merit of respecting 'learning, paid
reverence to
the priests, and attended religious ceremonies
as part of
their Palace duty. They had a
certain code
of honour among themselves and kept
it very
rigidly, and in this was included the protection
of the weak.
Their homes were not unrefined,
a,fter a
fashion, though not squaring with modern
ideas.
The death of
Ulysses, the Captain of the Guard,
must not be
passed by unnoticed, for it linked in indissoluble
bonds the
three persons chiefly concerned.
The Emperor
Mars had placed in the Captain's
hands the
care of his son Vajra, a daring, reckless
lad ; for the
times were dangerous, conspiracies were
rife in the
Golden City, and the capture of the person
of the Crown
Prince would have been a great triumph
for the
conspirators. Hence Ulysses would not allow
THE FOURTH
ROOT RACE 113
the Prince to
leave the Palace grounds, much to that
young man's
disgust. One day the Captain and the
Prince were
sitting at some little distance from the
Palace, and a
band of conspirators, greatly daring,
crept up
under the shelter of some bushes, and suddenly
pounced upon
the two. The Prince was struck
down
senseless, but Ulysses, bestriding his body,
fought
fiercely against the assailants, shouting for
help. His
cries were heard, and as he fell bleeding
across the
body of his young master, pierced by
many wounds,
some soldiers of the Guard came
rushing up,
and the conspirators took to their heels.
The two
unconscious bodies were lifted on to stretchers,
carried to
the Throne-room of the Palace, where
the Emperor
was sitting, and there laid at his feet.
The dying
Captain raised his eyes to his Emperor:
' '
Sire, forgive
; I did my best. ' '
The Emperor
stooped down, and dipped his finger
in the blood
welling up from the Captain's breast;
he touched
with it the forehead of the dying man,
his own
forehead and his feet, and musically his
voice fell
upon the silence: "By the blood that was
shed for me
and mine, the bond between us shall
never be
broken. Depart in peace, faithful servant
and
friend."
The words
reached the ears already becoming dull;
Ulysses
smiled, and died. The young Prince, who
was only
stunned, revived. And the bond lasted on,
millennium
after millennium, and became the bond
between
Master and disciples, for ever unbreakable.
The lives of
Herakles were not remarkable in any
way for a
long time. They were spent in fighting,
when the body
was that of a man, in having very
numerous
babies when it was that of a woman.
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The spread of
black magic in Atlantis led up to
the second
great catastrophe of 200,000 B. C., which
left as
remnants of the great continent which had
joined Europe
and Africa to America the huge
islands of
Kuta and Daitya. They endured until
the
catastrophe of 75,025 B. C.1 overwhelmed them
beneath the
waters of the ocean we now call the Atlantic.
During the
next hundred thousand years, the
peoplo of
Atlantis flourished abundantly, and built
up a mighty,
but over-luxurious, civilisation. Its
centre was in
the City of the Golden Gates the
name was preserved
but it spread far and wide
over the
world, both over Africa and the West. Unhappily
with the
civilisation spread again also the
knowledge
giving control over nature which, used
for selfish
purposes, becomes black magic.
Members of
the Clan came into it, more or less,
sometimes
being born into families immersed in it,
and breaking
away; sometimes dallying with it and
being a
little tarred therewith. Some experiences
of Alcyone's
that often tormented him in the form
of dreams in
a later life may here be put on record.2
They happened
in a life that occurred about 100,000
B. C. Corona
was then the White Emperor at the
City of the
Golden Gates ; Mars was a general under
him, and
Herakles was the wife of Mars. A great
rebellion was
being plotted, and a man of strange
and evil
knowledge, a 'Lord of the Dark Face/
leagued with
the dark Earth-Spirits who form the
Usually given
roughly as the 80,000 B. C. catastrophe.
2See
"Rents in the Veil of time" The Theosophist, May,
1910.
THE FOURTH
ROOT RACE 115
1 Kingdom of
Pan, 7 the semi-human, semi-animal
creatures who
are the originals of the Greek satyrs
was gradually
gathering round himself a huge
army which
followed him as Emperor, the Emperor
of the
Midnight Sun, the Dark Emperor, set over
against the
White. The worship he established, with
himself as
central idol huge images of himself being
placed in the
temples was sensual and riotous, holding
men through
the gratification of their animal
passions.
Against the White Cave of Initiation in
the City of
the Golden Gates was set up the Dark
Cave in which
the mysteries of Pan, the Earth-God,
were
celebrated. All was working up toward another
great
catastrophe.
Alcyone, some
one hundred and twenty lives back,
was the son
of a man who followed the hideous rites
of this dark
cult, but he held himself much aloof,
shrinking
from the wild orgies of animalism that
enchained the
bulk of the worshippers. But, as is
too often the
case, he fell into the trap baited by a
woman's
beauty, and met a grievous fate. The story
may be told,
as it throws light on the conditions
which brought
down later upon Atlantis the heavy
doom
pronounced by the Occult Hierarchy.
------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales. UK. CF24 - 1DL
CHAPTER IX
BLACK MAGIC IN
ATLANTIS
AN EPISODE
ALCYONE is
lying half asleep, half awake, on a
grassy bank
sloping down to a rippling brooklet.
His face is
perplexed, even anxious, the reflex of
his troubled
mind. He is the son of a wealthy and
powerful
family, belonging to the priesthood, the
* Priesthood
of the Midnight Sun,' vowed to the
service of
the Gods of the Nether World, whom the
priests
sought in the gloom of night, in dark earthcaverns
opening into
passages that led down, down,
into unknown
depths.
At this time,
the great civilised nations of Atlantis
had drawn
into two opposed camps ; the one, looking
to the
ancient City of the Golden Gates as their sacred
metropolis,
maintained the traditional worship
of their
race, the worship of the Sun the Sun in
the beauty of
his rising, clad in the bright colours of
the dawning,
encircled with the radiant youths and
maidens of
his court; the Sun in the zenith of his
glory, the
blazing strength of his mid-heaven, scattering
abroad his
brilliant rays of life and heat; the
Sun in the splendid
couch of his setting, touching
into rarest
softest hues the clouds he left as promise
of his
return. The people worshipped him with
choral
dances, with incense and with flowers, with
joyous songs,
and with offerings of gojd and gems, m
BLACK MAGIC IN
ATLANTIS 117
with laughter
and with minstrelsy, with joyous
games and
sports. Over these children of the Blazing
Sun the White
Emperor bore rule, and his race
had for long
millennia held unchallenged sway. But
gradually the
outlying kingdoms, ruled by his lieutenants
had become
independent, and they were beginning
to join
together into a Federation, rallying
round a man
who had appeared among them, a remarkable
but sinister
figure.
This man,
Oduarpa by name, ambitious and crafty
by nature,
had realised that, in order to give stability
to the
Federation and to make head against the
White
Emperor, it was necessary to call to his aid
the resources
of the darker magic, to make compact
with the
denizens of the Nether World, and to establish
a worship
which would attract the people by
its sensuous
pleasures, and by the weird unholy
powers it
placed within the reach of its adepts. He
had himself,
by such compact, extended his life ovey
an abnormal
period, and, when going into battle,
rendered
himself impervious to spear or swordthrust
by
materialising a metallic coating over his
body, which
turned weapons aside as would a shirt
of mail. He
aimed at supreme power, and was in
a fair way to
reach it, and he dreamed of himself
as sitting
crowned in the Palace of the City of the
Golden Gates.
The father of
our youth was among the most intimate
of his
friends, and privy to his most secret
designs, and
both hoped that the lad would devote
himself to
the forwarding of their ambitions. But
the youth had
dreams and hopes of his own, nourished
silently
within his own heart ; he had seen in the
visions of
the night the stately figure of Mars, a
118
------Cardiff Theosophical Society in Wales-------
206 Newport Road, Cardiff, Wales. UK. CF24 - 1DL
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
general of
the White Emperor, Corona, had gazed
into his deep
compelling eyes, had heard, as from
afar, his
words: "Alcyone, thou art mine, of my
people, and
surely thou shalt come to me, and know
thyself as
mine. Pledge not thyself to mine enemies,
thou who art
mine." And he had vowed himself his
subject, as
vassal to his lord.
Of this was
Alcyone thinking, as he lay musing
by the
stream. For another influence was playing
upon him, and
his blood ran hotly in his veins. Illpleased
at his
indifference to their worship nay,
at his
shrinking from it, even in its outward rites
of animal
sacrifice and poured out oblations of
strong drink
his father and Oduarpa had conceived
the plan of
drawing him into the secret mysteries
by the
allurements of a maiden, Cygnus, dark and
beauteous as
the midnight sky star-studded, who
loved him
deeply, but had so far failed to win his
young heart
with her charms. Between her dusky
brilliant
eyes and his half-fascinated gaze would float
the splendid
face of his vision, and he would hear
again the
thrilling whisper: "Thou art mine."
At length,
however, she had so far won him persuaded
to the task
by her mother, a veritable witchhag,
who had told
her that thus alone might she gain
his love as
to obtain from him a promise that he
would
accompany her to the underground caves in
which the
magical rites were performed, which drew
the denizens
of the Nether World from their retreats
and gained
from them the forbidden knowledge
which changed
the human into the animal form,
thus giving
opportunity for free play to the passions
of the brute
hidden in man, passions of lust and