The Theosophical Forum – December 1941

THE CLOSING OF THE DOOR INTO THE HUMAN KINGDOM AND THE MOMENT OF CHOICE IN THE FIFTH ROUND (1) — G. de Purucker

I would like to say a few words about this "door" into the human kingdom. Of course it is not a door. That is just a way of speaking. Thus the door into a profession means graduation of the student. When the animal graduates interiorly, in other words has brought forth from within, the human qualities, it has graduated into the human kingdom; that is its door.

Now, the difference between the beasts, the plants, the stones, the men, the elementals, and the Dhyan-Chohans, the difference as amongst these, or between any two of them, is one not only of potentiality, but of developing ability. Thus the human child is potentially a man or woman, but not yet so, and will not have the adult ability until he is fully grown. The potentiality is there, but the ability lacks. It is not yet brought forth from within. It will come as the child grows. Just so with the beast. The potentiality of humanhood is there, but the beast is not yet human because it has not yet brought forth from within itself human qualities, attributes, power of thought, power of feeling, self respect, all the qualities that make us men men.

Why was there a door into the human kingdom which closed at the bottom point of the present manvantara? It simply means that the animals at that point had not as yet brought forth front within themselves those spiritual, mental attributes, which would enable them to climb up towards the next kingdom, which happens to be the human. They could not make the grade. They did not want to; they did not know anything about it because they were not yet awakened within themselves. The humans did. Consequently there was no door for the humans. They came down the Arc of Descent, passed the critical point, and began to climb up the Arc of Ascent; and we humans shall continue to climb until the end of the Seventh Round.

Here is a very interesting thing to note: There will be a door for us humans at the mid-point of the Fifth Round, and those humans who do not pass through that door, in other words who cannot then and there begin the grade upwards and enter into the lowest Dhyan-Chohanic kingdom in the Sixth Round, will be by the fact "failures," and will gradually die out, and will have to wait until the next Planetary imbodiment. But those humans who will make the grade, in other words who will make the upwards choice — when the great moment of upwards choice comes — they will continue to ascend the arc.

How does this all arise? There are ten or even twelve classes of monads. We may describe them thus: the three Dhyan-Chohanic classes above the human, that is the highest Dhyan-Chohanic, the intermediate, and the lowest of the Dhyan-Chohanic; then comes the human, then the beast, then the plant, then the stone, then come the three elemental kingdoms. Thus we have three elemental kingdoms on one hand, three Dhyan-Chohanic kingdoms on the other, and four intermediate kingdoms, human, beast, plant and stone, making ten distinct classes of monads; which merely means again, monads divisible into these ten classes because the individuals of each class have brought forth the qualities, attributes, in other words the type, attracting such monads to aggregate together in kingdoms or classes.

When any individual, any one of these ten classes, through evolutionary development brings out latent powers, attributes, faculties, within itself, it gradually rises and passes through the door into the next kingdom, graduating from the lower into the higher, and we call that a door. All the individuals congregate together who are like each other. All the X's are attracted together, all the Y's, all the Z's — in other words, to use the old proverb, "Birds of a feather flock together."

As regards the beasts: they will all show a tendency to die out in this manvantara, and it is a peculiar process which that one statement doesn't really cover, but it gives you a key. As for instance, all the beasts that were on earth in this Fourth Round will reappear again on this globe earth in the Fifth Round, but will have a shorter time here. In other words, they will come and disappear more quickly; in the Sixth Round still more quickly; whereas in the Seventh Round it is probable that only the very highest of the beasts, the apes and perhaps a few more, will remain. The others will have died out. The reason is they could not "make the grade" in any way. It is my own opinion, subject to correction by those who know vastly more than I do, that probably the next Round, the Fifth, will see almost the last of the great majority of the beasts.

As regards the apes, there is an exceptional case. They are not human, but they are over-shadowed by humanhood. Human-hood is just beginning, as it were, to cast its rays into the ape's brain. If they can "make the grade," they will become men of a very low and degenerate type. No, the word is wrongly chosen — of a very low and undeveloped type during the next Round.

These classes are all monads, just as man is a monad. He makes his body to improve as he himself evolves. But when men's bodies become too gross for them, the bodies die out, the human monads won't have anything more to do with them, they are cast aside. "These are not fit rupas for us," they will say, and the bodies will vanish in that way. We shall then bring forth bodies approaching the type of Dhyan-Chohanic vehicles, that is bodies fit for Dhyan-Chohanic entities, which we shall have become during the Sixth and Seventh Rounds; and some humans more advanced than others even during the end of the Fifth Round.

So you see, all these ten classes of monads have the same potentialities, but do not rank alike, for they are exactly like human children in different grades in a school, from the little ones up to the graduate young folk leaving the university. The potentialities are the same, but the different degrees of development vary greatly, and it is these differences of evolutionary development which actually are the ten monadic classes.

But I want to remind you once again that even we humans during the next Round shall have an opportunity to enter the open door into the lowest of the three Dhyan-Chohanic kingdoms; and this open door has been hinted at by H. P. B. and the Masters under the term "the moment of choice," or the time of choice. It means this: that when we shall have reached the middle point of the Fifth Round, more explicitly, the middle point of the Fourth Root-Race on the Fourth Globe during the Fifth Round, shall we be ready? Shall we have evolved to the point where we see the beyond and desire to go onwards towards it? If we have, we shall then pass through the door of choice. We shall then begin to approach the place that the lowest Dhyan-Chohanic kingdom now holds, and that kingdom will have gone a step higher. The Dhyan-Chohanic kingdoms are simply monads who have passed through the human stage, and they are ascending to the god-stage. They will become gods if they are successful. So we shall become Dhyan-Chohans if we "make the grade."

I will just say this: There is absolutely no time to lose, life is so rapid. We humans learn so slowly, and time is as fleeting in a single incarnation really as it is in a manvantara. There is no time to lose to make up your mind to succeed. And it does not require any abnormal asceticism or martyrdom or anything of the sort. It simply means being more human, so that by continuously becoming more truly human, you become more Dhyan-Chohanic. It doesn't mean only intellectual growth. It means moral growth, intellectual growth, psychical growth, but above everything else moral and spiritual growth.

Who are these Dhyan-Chohans we have been speaking of? If you can imagine the very grandest kind of a human being that your loftiest flights of fancy can picturate, you will come somewhere near, perhaps. They are just like we are, thinking, feeling, evolving beings, above us as we are above the beasts. They have their representatives on this earth called sishtas, remainders.

As a matter of fact, and turning for a moment to the subject of Rounds, it is interesting to note that the Third Dhyan-Chohanic kingdom will enter this earth when we as a life-wave shall have gone on to Globe E. They are the higher class coming on the Round behind us, not in evolution, because they are higher than we, but merely so far as serial appearance is concerned; and these Dhyan-Chohans are now evolving on Globe C.

Referring now to our former topic: I have often thought what a world of warning lies in the words of the Master in the Mahatma Letters, "How many millions will perish?" It does not mean that they will be annihilated, it means that they will lose the remainder of this manvantara because they have been malingering before the moment of choice comes, unwilling to see, therefore too weak to go on, too indifferent to climb, lacking in spiritual and intellectual imagination to wish to become stronger and better and finer and nobler. Therefore these will not "make the grade." The truth is they just don't want to.

FOOTNOTE:

1. From a talk given in the Temple, Point Loma, California. (return to text)



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