G. de P. — I am now ready to answer questions.
Student — A question was once raised here as to how it was that the animals appeared before men. Is it right to suppose that the animals were not animals as we know them now, but were perhaps ethereal forms that had evolved through the mineral, then through the vegetable, and which in a later round will evolve into the human form? Is that correct?
G. de P. — No, it is not. Where did you find the suggestion that the beasts preceded the human race in time?
Student — I have not read it. I just imagined that my comments might be a possible solution of the question.
G. de P. — No, just the contrary. The mammalians are posterior in time of appearance to the human stock, and actually sprang from the human stock, and that was because both the human stock as it presently exists and has existed, and the mammalians, are of fourth-round origination.
Now, with regard to the animal stocks beneath the mammalian, those are hangovers or carry-overs from the third round, and even to a certain extent from the second round of the present planetary manvantara. The mammalian beasts as they at present exist are evolved descendants from their primal parents, who originated from the human stock of the third root-race of this globe in this fourth round. The third root-race at that time had not yet become the conscious vehicles of the manasaputras, or sons of mind. In other words, intellect had not evolved a vehicle enabling the intellectual powers to manifest within that early race. That race also, physically speaking, was very plastic. It was a semi-astral race — at least in its first part. Its methods of propagation were those that you will read of in HPB's Secret Doctrine.
The first races on this earth during this fourth round issued their chhayas or astral doubles. Later subraces propagated their species by dividing into two parts. Then still later came budding. Still later came the throwing off of small portions of the human physical body, or propagation by spores, or seeds, although those seeds at first were large, very large. Later in time, during the first portion of the third root-race, came the androgynous or hermaphroditic period, which gave place to the true sex-form of propagation which exists at present.
At the time when this third root-race, and before it the later part of the second root-race even, was propagating its kind by throwing off from itself portions of the body, this would happen by bits breaking off and growing to the size of the parent. The mammalian beasts can trace their ultimate origin to that fact, because certain of the cells thus thrown off by the then human stock for various reasons did not grow into human bodies just like their parent-bodies. You cannot call the early third root-race true men, because men as we now know ourselves did not then exist. But these particular cells that I speak of did not grow into other humans — as the humans were at that time — but followed the dominant line of evolution inherent or coming to the front in these cells or aggregate of cells. It is to these divergent cells that can be traced the primal beginnings of the mammalian beast strain.
Now with regard to the beast stocks which came before the mammalian beast stock — the horse and the bovine species, the cat and the dog, etc. — I say with regard to those who are beneath or not so highly evolved as the mammalian beasts, these also originated in the early "human" stock which later became mankind as we know men, but these sub-mammalian beasts originated in the preceding or third round. We cannot say that when these lower beasts originated in what later became the human stock, that human stock was then human as we now know it, because it was not. In other words, the "man" of the third round was not the highly evolved man of this present fourth round, and I am referring here to the fourth globe in both third and fourth rounds.
Thus then, from this human stock which had not yet become human as we now know it the animals below the mammalian beasts originated. Just as the mammals came from the human stock in this fourth round and during the third root-race, so did the reptiles, the fishes, the shellfish, and, as a matter of fact, so did the vegetation, but not in this present fourth round. The mineral kingdom came over from the third round and even from the second round. The plant kingdom likewise came over from the later part of the second round and from the third round. The lowest of the beasts such as the fishes, worms, insects, reptiles — all below the mammalian beasts — likewise came over from the third round; and were originated in that third round in and from what was then the life-wave which in this fourth round became truly human. Do you understand?
Many Voices — Yes.
G. de P. — You see the difficulty is that if we speak of "human" and of "human beings" in connection with the leading life-wave of the third round, and even the early third root-race of this round, this word human immediately puts a false idea into your mind, because we did not become truly human as we now are until about the middle point of the third root-race in this fourth round on this fourth globe. But that racial strain or life-wave which became human was the actual strain of our remote ancestors, and from it we have become what now we are; but that racial strain was never a beast strain.
I repeat that the beast strains in their beginnings originated in the leading racial strain both in the third round and in this fourth round which eventuated in present humanity. This racial strain was the man of those periods, but man not as yet intellectual, although not a beast, but still not intellectual man — not man enlightened with mind.
For instance a newborn babe, or a babe in its first or second year, in our present state of evolution is human, but is not yet a man. Intellect is not manifesting there. Judgment is not yet manifest there. Discrimination is not yet showing. The wonderful corridors of memory have not yet been opened in the babe's mind; and yet the babe is the being who is growing to produce the adult, the man.
Similarly at the period in human racial evolution, which corresponded to its infancy or very early childhood when the racial mind had not yet come into operation, then the mammals in this fourth round came into being, from cells or cellular aggregates that this infant humanity cast off in just precisely the same way as it cast off those parts of itself which developed into other human beings like unto their parents. But those particular cells or cellular aggregates for a number of reasons did not grow into other humans, but were arrested in development. As the cells then were just as full of life as they are now, but not under the dominant control of the mentality of humans, each such cell could — if the opportunity offered, if the environment was right, as then it was, and there were no hindrances — each such particular cell or cellular aggregate could develop into an entity deriving from what that cell or cellular aggregate held within itself as a dominant energy. Such inferior dominant energies thus working through these particular cells arrested in development produced the first ancestors of the mammalian beasts. Do you understand all this?
Many Voices — Yes.
G. de P. — The human germ-cell even today, if it were not held in the dominant human grip of the human vitality and mind, the racial mind, so that its inherent cellular svabhava or characteristic is held strictly in abeyance, thus compelling it to follow the human line — even a human germ-cell, today, I repeat, could and probably would develop into some living entity which might be almost of any type, but beneath the human type. Just so the beasts originated from the human stock.
Let me see if I can make this even a little more clear, because I have been amazed that there should be so much misunderstanding about this matter. Let us return in thought to the first portion of the third root-race. The method of physical propagation at that time was by what is now in biology called budding: a small portion of the body would rise on the surface, take on an appearance somewhat like that of a boil or of a cancer. This protuberance or bud would grow, swell, and as time went on, be united to its parent only by a filament connecting it with the parent-body. This filament would gradually grow thinner and smaller, and finally the bud would drop off and immediately begin to grow into an entity exactly like its parent. Thus did the late Second root-race and early third race propagate. The rule was for the bud to grow into a being like its parent, but nevertheless occasionally some of these buds, for a number of reasons, instead of growing into beings like unto the parent, would seem to have been arrested in development; for some reason they seemed to have no possibility of continued normal development, and instead branched off into a sideline and grew into what we would now probably call a beast. There were many, many beasts of those days which have since become extinct, animal races which have since died out. Some of the races which then were originated have survived.
Thus were the mammalian beasts originated in this fourth round. They sprang from the human stock, and this fact would seem obvious enough too. The human stock today is the most advanced on the face of the earth. It is also the weakest physically, and in its youth the most helpless. The human babe is perhaps the most helpless offspring of all the mammalian stocks. It could not live unless it were carefully cared for and protected, whereas the young of the beasts when they are dropped in most cases can take care of themselves almost from the moment of birth; but the human babe cannot do that. The reason is that the major part of the energies of the inner human constitution is gathered together in order to form a fit and appropriate — and such is nature's working in the case of mankind — impersonal vehicle, an expressive vehicle, so that the divine splendor of the monad within can more easily manifest its transcendent spiritual and intellectual powers. With the beasts the opposite is the case. Nature in the case of the beasts is attempting to perfect a vigorous astral vehicle and vigorous physical body.
At a still later period of the third root-race evolution, instead of a single cell or cellular aggregate budding off, a single large cell was exuded by such a third root-race human being. Please remember that the mere size of a vital cell is of no intrinsic importance at all. Some of the cells therefore of this third root-race period were large, as large as ostrich eggs today, or perhaps much larger. Remember also that an egg is a cell, a typical cell. Some of the cells at that far distant age were very small, even microscopic in size. Every cell was a life center, with almost untold capacities for evolutionary development within it, once it began its course of growth.
In the preceding remarks you have the key to the whole matter. Thus the mammals originated from the early human stock in this fourth round. Thus also the entities below the mammalian beasts originated in the third round in just the same way, mutatis mutandis.
Do you know that the physical bodies of the mammalian beasts are today more highly evolved in specific directions than the human body is? That is a fact. They are more specifically evolved, but nevertheless not superior to the human body. Evolution of a body does not necessarily mean general superiority. Evolution means bringing out what is latent within the evolving entity, whether that evolving entity be god, man, or beast. Consequently, when I say that the mammalian beasts are more fully evolved specifically than the human body is, I mean that they have gone farther in their own lines of physical evolution — they are more specifically evolved.
For instance, consider the long fan-like ears of the elephant and its long proboscis-nose, and the wing of the bat. The bat is perhaps the most perfect flyer on earth. Its flight is the swiftest for its kind, and the most silent, the most efficient, and yet it is not a bird. Take again the whale: here is a case of intense and far-advanced specific evolutionary growth.
All this means also that the human body today is the most primitive mammal on earth. That also is a fact. This entire body of teaching I tried to bring out clearly in those lectures which I gave in the Temple at Point Loma in 1927, and which have recently been collected and printed as the book, Theosophy and Modern Science. [Condensed and republished as Man in Evolution, 3rd Revised Edition, 2016]
This is a long answer to your question, but I hope that it is at least fairly clear. Do you understand?
Student — Yes, thank you. I understand a great deal better.
G. de P. — Remember that the human stock was the original and originating stock of all the animate and inanimate entities on the earth. The human stock originated not only the mammalian beasts but also all the beasts and living entities which are below the mammalian. The human stock in still earlier rounds originated the vegetation. And, as a matter of fact, the ethereal racial strain which was to become human threw off from itself in the first round what we now call the mineral kingdom. Thus you see that all entities are connected together. All are interlinked and interlocked and interrelated.
Are there any other questions?
Student — I have been for a long time wishing to bring forward a question on this point, and now seems a good opportunity. The great difficulty comes in regard to the changeover from the early third root-race astral condition to the actual physical man, and the actual physical mammals. HPB says that the forty Stanzas of Dzyan that are omitted from her book, The Secret Doctrine, refer to this matter. I would like to know whether we can have any light on it, because it is the most difficult point in our whole philosophy.
We can see the beginning as you have just been explaining it so extremely beautifully, and we know the primitive physical man existed in the Lemurian period of geology; but the point is, how did the astral man densify and gradually become physical and subject to physical gravitation, gaining physical weight from being an astral body which, presumably, would be invisible to us now in the ordinary way? The astral body is just that link between astral man and physical man, and astral mammal and physical mammal. That is what the Darwinians practically always ask us about, and what are we going to say to them? We have never had that clearly brought out. I know it is one of the mysteries, but may more light be thrown on it?
G. de P. — If I understand your question correctly, you ask: how could astral man produce physical beast? Is that the question?
Student — Not exactly. How could he live at all? I mean the link between him in the astral condition and in the physical condition. At the time when he began to be something on the physical plane, he was not on the physical plane in the ordinary sense, and yet he was something intermediate.
The matter of the bat that you mentioned is, of course, a question that has puzzled the scientists. There was a bat fully formed and found among the earliest fossils. How did it come there? It must have precipitated quickly. But it is what happened between that original condition and the later condition that we cannot understand fully. It is this junction between the two states that we have discussed many times and have never been able to get quite clear in our minds.
G. de P. — That seems very simple if I understand your question aright again. It is all a matter of progressive solidification. The first race was distinctly and purely astral to our present physical senses — the physical eyes of the men of the fifth root-race of our fourth round on our present physical earth. And man of the first root-race on this earth during the fourth round would have appeared as translucent and vaporous as a wispy cloud, perhaps even more diaphanous than that. The second race was somewhat more materialized, a little denser. The third race much more so. The fourth race was the grossest, the densest, the most material man of all, more material even than we are today.
If you could resuscitate a fourth-race man and bring him into this room this evening, you would see before you a magnificent physical body, perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five feet tall. He would not be able to stand upright in this room. The thing that probably would strike you most of all would be the intense grossness of his flesh — the heavy, gross, sensual, characteristics of that human physical being; and yet he might be a high, spiritual initiate of that fourth root-race. I am now speaking only of the fourth-race physical body.
If you could bring in the same way a third root-race man into this room this evening he would tower — I will now take a period towards the end of the third root-race — he would tower some sixty feet in height perhaps, and would be proportionately broad. He would be a giant, and yet you would perhaps marvel at the curiously ethereal aspect that his body would present to your present eyes.
If you could bring a second-race individual into this room tonight — which you could not do because that individual would be a hundred feet or more in height — you would see before you a thick cloudy body, a cloudlike body almost diaphanous. Perhaps you could almost see through it as you can almost see through a jellyfish. And as regards the first race, if such an entity were to extend a protrusion of its physical body — because the first root-race did not possess our present human form at all — if a protrusion of an entity of the first root-race could be brought into this room, it would perhaps seem like a wisp of transparent, diaphanous cloud that had drifted in.
The races became progressively more material from the first to the fourth, and we, the fifth on the ascending arc, have grown somewhat more ethereal than the fourth root-race was.
So therefore you see that the change was gradual. The mammalian beasts when they originated in the third root-race from the third root-race stock were themselves beings of equivalent ethereality. They were not the gross heavy beasts of today. The early third root-race men were not the gross heavy physical men of today. Have I grasped your thought? Is the answer responsive?
Student — Yes, as far as we can expect to understand it.
G. de P. — Well, let me take the physiological growth of a human being today. I will tell you something. A child even today when it first begins its embryonic growth is thickened astral. Now there you are! That astral grows slowly more concrete, more physical in appearance, as the growth of the human embryo proceeds until it is born a babe. Everyone knows that the flesh of a babe seems to be tenderer than the flesh of a full-grown adult. The pebbled skin of an adult, for instance, is quite different from the soft, delicate, smooth skin of a newborn babe. Do you understand me?
Student — Yes.
G. de P. — If I have not answered your question, please come at me again, because it is sometimes very difficult to understand questions as long and as involved as yours was. I know also how difficult it is to ask questions of that kind in short and clear terms.
Student — The real difficulty is of course just at the time of actual physicalization, if you may call it that. For instance, it became at a certain period necessary that they should eat other fruits or other animals, or something like that, yet before that time, are we to imagine them eating astral fruits or astral animals?
G. de P. — Yes, certainly, in a certain sense of the word, but they did not require eating as we now require it.
Student — That is something that HPB avoids very carefully. She did not cover that particular point.
G. de P. — I don't think that she avoided it. The matter seems to be obvious.
Student — She says that 43 slokas are missing in her Secret Doctrine [1:478], and you have filled up the gap very wonderfully.
G. de P. — Let me add this. I think I see better now what is in your mind. The earth was in its fourth round when our fourth-round humanity appeared, but appeared as an astral humanity. I see where your hesitation is now. The first, second, and earliest third-race man did not eat as the fourth-race man did, nor as we now do. The later third-race man did begin to eat, but the method of taking material into the body for nutrition of the first, second, and earliest third root-races was by osmosis — endosmosis — very much in the same way as we feed ourselves through our lungs today, to a certain extent. Don't you realize that air is food? You take in the oxygen from the air just as you take in water to the stomach, or vegetables, or cereals, and the digestive processes thereafter proceed, and the body takes from this wonderful process called digestion just what it really needs — which is not much, by the way. Just as our lungs draw nutrition from the air, so in the earliest part of the third root-race was the entire physical being of the mankind of that day fed from the surrounding atmosphere. But these changed very quickly after the first period of the third root-race. Then as the body of man coarsened, grew denser, physically speaking, but weaker ethereally, as the body of the third-race man grew denser through the long, long ages that passed, it began to copy what the beasts who were already on earth did — especially the mammalian beasts, but also to a certain extent what the fishes and the reptiles did. With the dawn of intelligence came watchfulness and observation. Men began to see and understand what was passing around them, and observed intellectually, and then they said to themselves — to adopt the language of the Stanzas which HPB employs — "Come, let us do as they, the beasts, do." Do you understand?
Student — Oh, yes, I think I do.
G. de P. — Thus they began to eat and to drink.
Student — That makes it wonderfully clear now. It gives much that has been thought over, but never so clearly understood.
G. de P. — You do understand then?
Student — Oh yes, that clears up most of the points.
Student — I would like to ask two questions, and in regard to one I should like to submit what I have worked out, but I don't know whether it is correct or not. My question is: what relation does the laya-center bear to the monad, whether it be the monad of a planet or of a solar orb or of a human being?
I thought that when a monad needs to pass on to another sphere for manifestation it is attracted to a laya-center. If it is, there must be a karmic connection between the two. Does the monad issue forth the laya-center first, and then when the cyclic time comes for its manifestation, does it follow? Then when its manifestation continues, does it again reabsorb the laya-center, and is the laya-center then a principle of the monad? That is my first question.
G. de P. — You have uttered a number of varying ideas. The laya-center is not exterior to any monad. Each monad at its own heart is a laya-center. Do you understand that?
Student — Yes.
G. de P. — A laya-center is the mystical point where either ethereal matter enters the physical world, or physical matter in this world passes out and upwards into the superior world, let us say for purposes of illustration the astral world. Any laya-center is the center around which an entity is builded, whether that entity be sun or planet or human being, or the seed of a plant or what not. Laya comes from the Sanskrit verbal root li meaning to "dissolve." It is so called because it is the point where physical matter dissolves or becomes etherealized into ethereal matter and passes into the astral plane; but the same process takes place inversely from the astral world into the physical world through the same laya-center. Do you understand that thought?
Student — Yes, I can follow you perfectly. It opens up a new line of thought; only, if the laya-center is this point around which the monad builds, then what is it? Is it a principle?
G. de P. — The laya-center is not so much a point, Doctor, around which the monad builds, as it is a characteristic of the heart of the monad itself. Do you understand that now?
Student — Yes, that is different.
G. de P. — The monad is not a physical, concrete entity, which can be separated off from everything else. It is a consciousness-center. These certainly are deep questions.
Student — Isn't it the monad itself at one stage or aspect?
G. de P. — It is the monad itself, but not at a stage, because the laya-center is always there. The laya-center is actually not a point in space which is a locality. It is an attribute or a condition. That perhaps is the best word — a condition of the heart of the monad which at a certain time enables the energies which are characteristic of the monad to ascend or descend through that monad's heart. For instance, you have a spiritual impulse, you are illumined with some great idea. You would confuse your mind if you tried to locate that inspiration, or to locate that idea. It is in you. It is a part of you. It is a condition of your consciousness. Being a spiritual idea, it shows this because it has penetrated like a ray into your brain-mind, and enlightened that brain-mind. This condition of "passing up" or "coming down" is what is called the laya-center — center meaning not so much locality as the center of consciousness, a condition or state of the consciousness. Do you understand?
Student — Yes, thank you.
G. de P. — This is a spiritual conception and it is wholly wrong to look upon it as a physical entity. For instance, a sun is builded around a laya-center. You could say with equal truth, a sun is builded around a spiritual heart. You could say with equal truth that this spiritual heart is a condition of the essence of the monad, in which condition there is a passing up or down, both perhaps at the same time, of the lower rising through aspiration into the higher, or of the higher descending through evolution equally into the inferior.
Try to imagine from what I have just said what a laya-center is. In one sense of the word I will admit that it is not far wrong to look upon it as a mathematical point, the center of your consciousness. The self-point, and the essential laya-center, are selfhood. The essential laya-center is but another way of saying that the essential selfhood of an entity is eternal — the essential selfhood.
Now then, let us try to go a step farther. Why should a sun, for instance — and the same observations will apply to a human being or a plant, or anything — why should a sun have a certain form? Why should it be located in a certain portion of space? This is accounted for by karma, the consequences of preceding conditions. The laya-center is not "located" in any one part of space which part it cannot leave. Just as consciousness will carry you in thought to the utmost limits of our own stellar galaxy, so does a sun pass along the circulations of the universe, pass along the highways of space. It is carrying its laya-center with it. Just so a human being in traveling around the earth carries his laya-center with him. It is himself. It is the core of his being in one sense of the word.
Look upon a laya-center as a channel between the high and the low, between spirit and substance. When a human being rises out of the gross, passional characteristics of ordinary humanity and becomes a demigod walking the earth, this is because he has ascended through his laya-center into loftier inner realms of his own being. He has raised his self-consciousness, and this is an actual transfer of energies and substances from below upwards, and it is done through the laya-center, the center of his being, his essential self, his essential egoity. Oh, I do hope you understand this?
Student — Yes, very well.
Student — Does not the nucleolus of a cell correspond to the laya-center of that cell, the center of consciousness and activity?
G. de P. — Yes, in a way. Just as the nucleolus of a cell represents the point at and through which the incoming and growing individuality of the entity-to-be comes or passes, just so does the same thing take place in the laya-center of a human being, or of a sun or of any entity or thing. The illustration is a fairly good one, I think. The laya-center of a cell, just as you have pointed out, may be physically represented by the nucleolus — not that the nucleolus which is a physical thing is the laya-center per se, but its action corresponds to that of the laya-center. Out of the nucleolus come all things that the cell is destined to grow into.
I have found in talking with brother-theosophists that the laya-center question is the one that they seem to find most difficult in all their studies, and I can readily see why. But having said thus much, remember also that just as an ego expresses itself through a brain and physical body, which are localizations of individuality, just so does the laya-center of an entity express itself through concrete localizations also. This accounts for the fact that entities are builded up by aggregate groups of atoms around a center or heart which is the laya-center. Therefore, a laya-center is the heart of the entity, and in this sense of the word on the lower planes such as the astral and physical planes a laya-center may be said to have position or localization, but such position or localization is not fixed in abstract space from which it cannot move.
Student — Do the words involution and evolution have any significance in connection with the laya-center?
G. de P. — Yes, quite true. It is through the laya-center of an entity that involution takes place and evolution takes place, and these two always work together.
Student — At the last meeting you promised to tell us something very interesting about the globes, with the blackboard. I took the opportunity of preparing a question, if it will be of any help.
In Chapter 3 of The Ocean of Theosophy, W. Q. Judge refutes Sinnett's claim that the seven globes of the earth-chain "do not interpenetrate each other but are only connected by magnetic currents." Mr. Judge declares that they are united in one mass and do interpenetrate each other, though, of course, they differ in substance. He quotes The Secret Doctrine in support of his contention against Sinnett. In the ES Report for February 13, 1930, you also speak of the globes as being united in one single unity.
But in the KTMG of August 12th, and on a previous occasion, you strongly suggested that there is an actual separation in space of the seven globes, a scattering was the word used, I think. There is evidently some hid meaning that could not then be published in The Secret Doctrine or in The Ocean of Theosophy. Can any further light be given here on this subject?
G. de P. — The reason that it was not published was simply because it is so difficult to understand by people who have not been trained to study these difficult things.
Listen. The seven globes of our earth-chain — and these same observations will apply to any solar or planetary chain — are coadunated into a unity of life, but they are not consubstantial. They form a unity, but are not a unit. They are seven distinct and separate globes existing in different parts of space, which does not mean widely separate from each other because they interpenetrate, and thus they form one unitary body. A man's physical cadaver, his physical body, is a unitary aggregate of different organs connected by one life, or one aggregate of life-forces, themselves containing one dominating intelligence which is imposed over numberless decillions of inferior little entities, atomic and cellular, which are all growing intelligences; and yet the arm is not in the eye, nor is the foot in the mouth. So with the seven globes of the planetary chain.
HPB usually draws the planetary chain in symbolic form, like this:
That is the way in which she usually draws and connects the seven globes of a planetary chain: globes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G. But the globes do not exist in space just like this symbolic diagram. In one sense of the word, and a very true sense too, they may be looked upon as existing more like this diagram:
Imagine seven concentric spheres or circles. They are all coadunated together around one laya-center or heart, so far as a planetary chain goes; yet each globe has its own individual laya-center, also the globe that is at the heart is the physical globe, and the outermost one is what you might call the most spiritual or globe G. Now the objection — a very strong one — to this delineation of the seven globes is that you immediately ask: but where is globe A? You see the difficulty. This is an objection to this manner of trying to figurate in drawing just how the seven globes exist. Therefore HPB's choice was a much better one, because it showed that two globes, the two highest globes, are on one cosmic plane; that the two next inferior globes are on the next lower cosmic plane; the two still more inferior globes are on the next lower cosmic plane; and one globe, our globe D, is on the lowest or seventh cosmic plane. This figure of seven concentric circles nevertheless is valuable because it suggests strongly the idea of the coadunation of all the globes, showing them as all bound together into one entity, and yet being distinctly seven separate globes.
Now suppose we take a departure in thought. Try to forget both these diagrams, the one of the seven concentric circles and the other of the seven globes as HPB delineated them, her diagram suggesting a necklace of seven pearls. Let us try another diagram, putting the seven globes more or less at random but on different planes, with one globe, globe D, as the lowest to represent our earth. We have therefore a third symbolic diagram.
Let us call these circles globes A, B, C, D, E, F, G. This diagram would be just as good in illustration, if by this way of drawing the seven globes we were desirous of emphasizing the fact that they are seven distinct globes scattered about in space, which fact is also true. Yet they are all coadunated, making one unity; and are each one of different stages of matter. No two of these seven globes are of exactly the same degree of matter. A and G, for instance, although on the same cosmic plane, are not exactly of the same degree of ethereality. Thus, if we follow this last sketch or diagram of the seven globes, the Life-wave begins its evolution on globe A, descends to globe B, then passes on into globe C, and finally comes to globe D, thence it passes to globe E, up the ascending arc to globe F, and ends the round on globe G. Now what happens then? I might say merely in passing that there are three more globes that are never spoken of, making ten globes in all.
Student — Is there some sort of matrix holding them together?
G. de P. — Not so much a matrix as the bonds of karmic unity. You simply cannot get the right idea about these things until you clean your minds of physical likenesses or physical similarities. There are seven distinct globes. These seven globes exist on the four lowest of the seven cosmic planes. Our globe D exists alone on the lowest or the seventh cosmic plane. The two globes superior to our globe D or earth exist on the next superior cosmic plane — or the sixth, counting downwards. The two globes superior to these two exist together on the fifth cosmic plane counting downwards, and the two highest globes of our chain, respectively A and G, exist on the fourth cosmic plane counting downwards.
Now is it not sufficiently obvious by what I have just said that these four cosmic planes with their respective globes are distinct each from all the others? Furthermore, please remember that these seven globes are not the seven principles of the planetary chain. Each globe is a substantial entity, but nevertheless the analogy between the seven principles of man, or of the universe, and the seven globes of the chain, remains as a bare analogy. Despite all that, the seven globes are not the seven principles of the planetary chain, because each globe has its own seven principles. Again saying that the globes are not just one globe in seven different degrees of materiality or ethereality, remember also that these globes to a certain extent interpenetrate each other. Now that may seem a little hard for you to understand.
Student — That is just what I wanted to ask.
G. de P. — To a certain extent these globes interpenetrate each other, but that does not mean that they are simply all one globe in seven different states or stages of substance. They interpenetrate each other because each globe has an atmosphere, just as our physical globe has an atmosphere that the scientists know about, and which we call air. But our globe has another atmosphere, an astral atmosphere, extending for thousands of miles away from it in every direction, not merely, let us say, 120 or 130 miles or something like that, which the scientists say our physical air reaches to, but a vital-astral atmosphere, an ethereal atmosphere, extending out into space for thousands of miles, and thus touching and linking with the next two higher globes. The same rule prevails with all the other six globes as well as with our earth.
As a matter of fact, the seven globes of our chain are merely a copy in the small of what the seven sacred planets of the solar system are — these being the seven sacred planets of the ancients. Just as these seven sacred planets are scattered about in space, each one following its own orbit and yet linked together in our teachings as the seven sacred planets, all these being coadunated in evolution, so are the seven globes of our planetary chain linked together in evolution to form a planetary chain. They are coadunated, but in the case of the seven globes of the planetary chain they are not consubstantial. Nevertheless the principle is just the same as that which exists as regards the seven sacred planets of the ancients.
The three different designs on the blackboard were drawn each one merely to illustrate one aspect or one way of looking at the planetary chain of seven globes and their interconnections and interrelations. Each diagram, therefore, is imperfect because incomplete, and by so much each diagram is an imperfect representation. Nevertheless each one is correct in the sense that it conveys to your mind an idea. Please always remember that a schematic diagram in occultism is to be taken because illustrative of an idea, and not because it is a photographic production of an actuality. In other words any such diagram is symbolic.
The diagram containing the seven concentric circles emphasizes the idea of coadunation. The way HPB had it emphasizes the idea of the seven distinct and separate globes. The diagram that I have drawn last emphasizes the idea that the seven globes of the planetary chain are scattered about in space, and are not to be considered as forming a collar or necklace having a symmetrical, quasi-circular form.
Student — But in regard to the analogy between the human and the earth-globe. You say that the different physical and astral globes are separated in space. But in the human being they are not separate, are they?
G. de P. — They certainly are, because you must be referring to the seven principles of the human being, as the human being is not composed of seven planetary globes.
Student — I thought the physical was built on the astral, and that the physical penetrates the astral.
G. de P. — It does, but it would be more correct to say that the astral penetrates the physical; and this is done very much as the globes interpenetrate one another.
Student — And are we separated like that?
G. de P. — You mean, I suppose, are our principles separated? The answer in a sense is, yes, although all originate from one source, and each lower one is the child of the next higher one, and all are composed of the substance of the auric egg in its various planes of substance.
For instance, you take the atman. It permeates all your principles. Indeed, every principle permeates all the others. They all interpenetrate each other. Your buddhi is not in your brain, for it is not localized there. It surrounds you as an influence, an atmosphere, as well as permeating all the principles beneath it in dignity. It extends out beyond you for hundreds, indeed hundreds of thousands of miles. The atman within you actually reaches from sun to earth. I mean yours, and mine too. But all the principles express their energies within the concreted or individualized entity which is called the auric egg. It is in its lowest form the last expression on the material plane of the collected six principles, or rather the collected energies of the six principles. Just let me add, that you are one although you are so widely scattered about!!
Student — We have these different representations giving us different ideas. It occurs to me to ask if we can truly grasp it all, short of an initiation.
G. de P. — You cannot. That is quite true. Your remark is very apt. I have pointed out to you many times that the only way by which really to know, really to understand, a thing, is to be it. Do you get the idea?
Many Voices — Yes.
G. de P. — In initiation, you are shown how to become, or, if you like the phrase better, you are made to become, for the time being, the thing or things or entities you have to know or understand. For instance, in some of the initiations the cognizing entity, the percipient ego — call it what you like — the recognizing consciousness, goes to the underworld, actually becomes a soul in torment in order to know what it means. It may go to the sun for the time being in order to become a god, a solar god, to know what that means. It enters the planets Venus, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, etc., and for the time being you become at one in consciousness with that to which you go, so that you may know and understand, from being it, from having become it for the time being.
For instance, you may have a pet, a pet dog. You watch it, you study it, you notice its pretty antics, you see it at play, and your brain-mind gives you some vague and general idea of what its consciousness is. But really to know that dog, from the inside so to speak, you would have to become that dog for a while, retaining in the interim your own individual consciousness as the observer. Do you understand?
Many Voices — Yes.
Student — I understand that it took us to the latter part of the third root-race of this fourth round in order to become human as we are now, intellectual beings. I was wondering if it would take us as long a time during the fifth round and the sixth round, etc., because we have been through all these experiences. Do we have to take so long a time to go through them again during the succeeding rounds? In the seventh round, won't we be able to enter it as self-conscious beings instead of going through the whole process of evolution in the mineral, and plant and animal kingdoms first? Or shall we have to wait until we reach the tenth globe?
G. de P. — No. Your question is very intelligent indeed. Actually, each round is a little shorter than the preceding round, and the seventh round is the shortest of all, the reason being that the entity is approaching graduation from that schoolhouse which is the planetary chain. Having studied as in a schoolroom for so many aeons of years, having become proficient in the lessons learned there, the entity takes its last and final examinations with relative ease and quickness, and passes through the last or seventh phase of learning much more quickly and easily than it did in the preceding times. Furthermore, after the first round, an entity in passing through each new round thereafter very quickly goes through a review of what it had experienced previously, and beginning with the fifth round, the next round, the host of human monads passes a very short time in all the kingdoms below the human.
Student — Then could you tell us what we have to go through in the eighth, ninth, and tenth rounds?
G. de P. — No, I am afraid that I could not do that.
Student — Thank you.
Student — May I ask a question?
G. de P. — About the globes?
Student — Yes, about the globes. From what you have explained I take it to be a fact that the seven globes of the chain were all born at once. Is that correct?
G. de P. — No, it is not.
Student — Then this is the point: does globe A of the lunar-chain give its energy to globe A of the earth-chain?
G. de P. — That is right.
Student — In regard to the initiation question: is it possible for the one going through the initiation rites to go to the other globes of the earth-chain, to send his consciousness there?
G. de P. — That is exactly what happens in the fourth degree of initiation.
Student — And are the influences from these higher globes of the chain, E, F, and G, able to penetrate our present earth?
G. de P. — They do it constantly, and in proportion as the human being can sense or catch these higher or more spiritual rates of vibration, just in that degree is he what ordinary human beings call a great man. A sixth-rounder really is one whose consciousness is not only of the sixth round — or rather as the average man will be in the sixth round on this earth — but his consciousness is one which is like that of the inhabitants of the sixth globe. Do you understand?
Student — Yes.
G. de P. — There is an analogy all through these different degrees of growth.
Student — One more question. If globe D of the moon-chain is fading away, what is globe E doing? If the lunar globe D gave birth to globe D of the earth-chain, what is the lunar globe E doing?
G. de P. — It also is fading away. All the seven globes of the moon-chain are slowly becoming dissipated, each one on its own plane.
Student — In other words, they all went into pralaya at once?
G. de P. — They all went into pralaya, but not all at once. Globe A of the lunar-chain went into its pralaya first. Then it was followed by globe B which cast all its life-essences and forces and energies out into space, and slowly informed the laya-center destined to become globe B of the earth-chain. While doing this, globe B of the lunar-chain entered upon its disintegration; and so on all around the lunar-chain.
Student — Then is globe C of the earth-chain now more or less in pralaya?
G. de P. — Globe C of the earth-chain? Do you mean the globe preceding our present globe D of the earth-chain? It is not in pralaya, but it is in obscuration. There is a big difference between pralaya and obscuration. Pralaya means disintegration. Obscuration means quiescence, sleep, dormancy. When a man dies he goes into pralaya — that is, his physical body dies. When a man is asleep, the physical body is in obscuration. Do you see the idea?
Student — Yes, thank you.
G. de P. — A race can be in obscuration many times before the race finally dies or enters into its pralaya. Let me tell you something here. The mineral kingdom as we have it on our present globe D is now in obscuration. The plant kingdom on our globe D as it exists at present is in obscuration, but not so fully as is the mineral kingdom. The animal kingdom, or beast kingdom, as it exists today, is beginning its period of round-obscuration — just beginning it. What I have said shows the reason why the mineral kingdom is so quiescent. The plant kingdom is a little less obscured, and is not quite so still as are the minerals. And the animal or beast kingdom is beginning its obscuration, and therefore it is more active than are the two other inferior kingdoms. The human kingdom is not in obscuration at all as a kingdom, although races may be racially in obscuration for short periods. Do you get the idea?
Many Voices — Yes.
G. de P. — Consequently, when the mineral kingdom is in its activity it is enormously more active than the mineral kingdom on our globe D today is. If I were to tell you that the mineral kingdom, when it is fully active, is so active that you would see the rocks move and crawl, you would then perhaps get the idea. And I am not wandering far from the truth in telling you that the vegetable kingdom, for instance, when it is fully active, is very much more active than our vegetable kingdom is today as it now exists on earth. For instance, you would possibly see trees move their branches about almost as human beings move their arms: reach to earth, take things, envelop and surround passing entities, and do things like that. There are, I believe, even on earth today, certain plants which capture flies. That fact will give you the idea of what I am trying to hint at.
Thus a man, when he is awake during the daytime, is active, makes movements, goes around; he does things. At nighttime he is in obscuration, or asleep. His body then lies quiescent, occasionally moving; it is breathing, the blood is flowing, he may turn in bed, he may murmur a few words, he may have a dream; but the body as a whole is in obscuration. So it is with these kingdoms. When the mineral kingdom is active and not in obscuration as it is on earth today, one way of manifesting its energies is by tremendous volcanic activity. If you could be there at the time you would see the earth actually pulsating, rising and falling, moving, flowing, as if alive.
The scientists who do not believe in the ancient wisdom and who do not know anything about it, and who have not the intuition to understand these things, think that because the mineral kingdom is so still, relatively immovable, it is dead. It is not. It is very much alive. But it is sleeping. It is dormant. Furthermore the mineral kingdom as it exists today is the sishta, or the highest portion of the mineral evolutionary activity that had its end and then left the mineral kingdom sleeping. So also with the plant kingdom. What is left today of the plants are the sishta, or remnants — the last, the most evolved entities, before the plant kingdom went into its more or less, but not quite, perfect obscuration. And when the next mineral awakening comes, the present minerals, or rather the minerals as they then will be — practically the same as now — will begin to move, will begin to awaken, will begin to enter upon a mineral period of activity. Similarly the plant kingdom. As you see, it is all wheels within wheels. All is living. All is animate. Some things are sleeping, and some things are awake.
Sometimes an entire planet goes into obscuration. Such is the case with the planet Mars at the present time. But I must also point out that the obscuration period does not last for any one planet — and I am now speaking of planetary obscuration — it does not last, I repeat, until the life-wave passes through all the succeeding globes, then passes through its interplanetary nirvana, and after that entering globes A, and B, and C, reaches our globe D again. Do you see what I am striving to say? I mean that our globe D, when it is in obscuration, does not remain in obscuration so long a time as I have just described. The reason of it is that there are life-waves following each other, each wave being composed of families of entities.
Our human family is one of such groups. When we shall have left globe D, globe D will go into obscuration, but it will not remain in obscuration until our human family circles through globes E, F, and G, then goes through the interplanetary nirvana, and then returns down through globes A, B, and C, in the fifth round. Our globe D will not wait in obscuration all that time; and when we shall have left it as a human family, another family of monads will enter our globe D. Do you understand what I am trying to tell?
Many Voices — Yes.
G. de P. — I want to add just this: you see therefore that there are families of evolving entities following one after each other in every round, and all going around the seven globes. One family coming after the other, and each such family leaving behind, when it abandons the globe, its sishta, its remnants, meaning the highest evolved representatives that that particular family has up to that time brought forth. They remain on the earth to be the seed-nursery for the time when that family will come during the next round.
Student — Is it because we are preparing to leave globe D that the lower kingdoms are already in obscuration?
G. de P. — No. They are in obscuration because their representative life-waves have passed on to the higher globes entirely or partially. At present the case is entirely so with the mineral kingdom, and very largely so with the plant kingdom, and only partially so with the animal kingdom. The entities of this last or animal kingdom are just beginning to pass on to the globe E — the next one following our globe D. Hence, as I said before, the animal or beast kingdom is only beginning to enter upon its obscuration period. The monads composing that beast kingdom are beginning to leave the earth, passing on to the next higher globe. Similarly will the human kingdom do, when its time to leave this globe D shall have come, towards the end of our seventh root-race. It will begin by the forerunners leaving our globe D and passing over to globe E; and that process of passing over will continue until all the monads of the human family shall have left our globe D for globe E, excepting the sishta, the remnants — those left behind to be the seeds for our same human family when it comes again to globe D in the next or fifth round.
Student — I see. What is the difference between pralaya and nirvana?
G. de P. — Oh, an enormous difference! They are two different things entirely. Pralaya means dissolution, disintegration. Nirvana means a state of evolution or attainment so high and so spiritual that all of the humanity of a human being has become evolved into quasi-divinity, temporarily or permanently as the case may be, because it is possible for a lofty spiritually-minded human being, even today, to have a temporary nirvana. Such a temporary nirvana, by the way, is one of the loftiest experiences of the sixth degree of initiation. The mahatmas experience that. Do you understand?
Student — Yes.
G. de P. — Nirvana is a state. Pralaya means dying, death, dissolution, disintegration.
Student — Can this state of nirvana take place without the form being destroyed at all?
G. de P. — Oh, yes.
Student — I see. Because I have wondered, when a globe-chain goes into nirvana after its complete cycle of rounds, whether the forms remain or whether they re-form again as the moon-chain after the nirvana.
G. de P. — You have the answer to your question in what happened to the moon-chain at the end of the lunar seventh round. All the entities composing the ten classes of monads which had enlivened and invigorated that moon-chain at the end of the lunar seventh round passed over to the seven laya-centers in order to build up the earth's planetary chain of seven new globes. But what was left behind of the moon-chain consisted of the lowest monads of the mineral kingdom, which compose the seven decaying corpses of the seven globes of the lunar chain.
These lowest mineral monads came trailing along over to the new earth-chain as the ages passed and as the lunar chain continued to disintegrate. Just the main body is disintegrating. As it disintegrates its atoms pass over to the earth, and this is what HPB refers to when she says that the earth is soaked through and through with the evil influences of the moon. There are two meanings to her observation: one psychical, to which I cannot allude here; and one physical which I have just tried to explain. The atoms from the disintegrating moon pass to the earth and carry with them all the influences and elements of decay and death of which the moon-chain is the field. Do you understand?
Student — Yes, thank you very much.
G. de P. — I hope you do.
Student — Has what you said about the vitality of the mineral kingdom any relation to the old geomancy that was practiced by means of stones, that HPB speaks of? Could you tell us anything about the rocking stones and how they were used?
G. de P. — Well, the rocking stones were a different thing entirely. Those stones were made to rock by the exercise of magical powers, which every human being has in himself but which very few human beings know how to use — fortunately! For instance, if you knew how to do so, you have the power in your constitution to raise the roof of this room two, six, ten, fifty, feet straight up; indeed to tear it from its bindings to the walls. By the exercise of your willpower you could close the folding door by your side over there. You could cause rain to fall, and quite easily too.
The will of man is a magical agent of unsuspected powers. Those stones that you speak of were made to rock by willpower. They were poised so that they could be rocked, and when the magician who knew how to do so unleashed or unloosed the psychical and spiritual powers within him he could perform wonders; and he did so.
Student — Didn't those stones play an important part in the spiritual cycles? Or were the rocking stones simply a sort of phenomenon?
G. de P. — It was this way. Such examples of the use of human psychical and quasi-spiritual powers were never, or at least very rarely, used by white magicians. They were used by magicians who, in most cases, were trying to do in their time what their ancestors of the fourth root-race did — the great magicians of the fourth root-race — trying to obtain control of men and circumstances by using, and in fact misusing, the powers latent in man, prostituting them to material uses instead of to the spiritual and intellectual. Now that is the truth in the majority of cases, but not invariably the truth.
Student — That would not apply to the stones that the Egyptians used for producing anaesthetic effects?
G. de P. — Oh, no. There were exceptions, of course.
Even today the white magicians use physical means if such means are wholly impersonal, and for an end so good and necessary that there is a legitimate reason for doing so.
Student — Does not this power of the Masters in using the energies of nature depend upon the fact that those energies are natural, living entities? Does it not depend upon the fact that they for the time being are those entities, and rule them by that power in the universe that makes for union — by love? Does not the white magician make those energies of nature serve him because he has learned to do it, because a part of his being, his love, has entered into them?
G. de P. — That is the case always with the white magicians. The Brothers of the Shadow use the same forces of nature for other purposes. The Brothers of the Sun, the white magicians, use precisely the same forces, and often in the same way, but solely for impersonal and holy purposes. Their actions are dictated, just as you say, by love for their fellowmen. Therein lies the difference between the black and the white — between the White Brothers and the Brothers of the Shadow. In the one case, impersonal love dictates the action; the objective is a noble one, an impersonal one, to do good. And in the case of the Brothers of the Shadow, the motive is an evil one.
Student — I would like to ask a few questions that are connected together. Is it then correct to think that the elemental kingdom on globe A in the first round was the manifestation of what we are today — I mean the same beings as the humanity of today?
G. de P. — Yes, the same entities which then manifested in elemental form. You speak, however, of the elemental kingdom. Please remember that there are three elemental kingdoms — that is, three classes of elementals.
Student — I had not thought of that. I did not know which one. Next I want to ask: on globe A in the first round there was a humanity of human beings. Now was that humanity the sishta of the last manvantara, and have they evolved to dhyan-chohanship, or gods, by this time?
G. de P. — What are you referring to when you say: "are they the sishta of the last manvantara"?
Student — Well, if they came on earth —
G. de P. — Who came on earth?
Student — Those human beings who came on globe A in the first round. They came on earth as evolved human beings. They must have lived and attained in some past manvantara in order to have arrived at that stage.
G. de P. — Quite true. They were not the sishtas. The sishta matter applies only to entities left on any globe of a chain at the end of any round through that chain. I think I misunderstood your first question which was not very clear. The three kingdoms of elementals came indeed first on globe A; but those elementals were not the entities who became human beings during the fourth round on our globe.
The first kingdom to appear, when by evolution a new planetary chain comes into being, are the three kingdoms of elementals who build up the elementary work or preliminary sketches of the chain-to-be. Immediately after them come the dhyan-chohans of the preceding chain who then take charge of things, and who thereafter direct and govern the course of evolution in that chain during the succeeding seven rounds. Nevertheless, in a certain sense these same dhyan-chohans directed the preceding preliminary work of the three elemental kingdoms by overshadowing or inspiring — much as an architect will lay down the plan of the building-to-be from which the laborers thereupon begin to build the foundation.
And among these dhyan-chohans who thus come — and there are seven classes of them also, actually ten — were the entities who became human during the fourth round, fully human I mean; and these entities are we. There are ten classes of beings who left the moon-chain when that moon-chain died, beginning with the elementals and ascending in dignity upwards to the highest dhyan-chohans; and each one of these ten classes of monads has its own work to do in building up the chain-to-be — the earth planetary chain to become.
What is your next question?
Student — In The Secret Doctrine it says that it is only in the first round that heavenly man becomes a human being on globe A, and re-becomes a mineral, plant, and animal on globes B, C, etc. But that in the second round evolution changes entirely its procedure. Could you tell us how it proceeds in the second round?
G. de P. — That is a very deep question, and would require a very long answer. I am searching for words which will convey clearly and without too many of them an answer to your question. Globe A is formed first by the three kingdoms of the elementals coming over from the moon-chain who sketch out what that globe A is to become — make a sketch, as it were, around the laya-center through which they descend into activity. They are followed by the most evolved entities of the lunar chain that was, who thereafter begin to take direct charge as dhyan-chohans, or gods, of the formation of the new planetary chain. Kingdom one of the elementals comes first, and builds the first elemental kingdom on globe A. When its work is done, it leaves behind it its sishta or remainders, and passes down the scale one degree in order to begin the formation of the first elemental sketch of globe B. When the first elemental kingdom on globe A has thus finished its work there and gone to globe B, then the second elemental kingdom comes into globe A, and runs through its own seven races of activity. When its seven races of activity are ended it leaves its sishta behind, and passes on to globe B; at the same time globe B, feeling this impulse of the inrushing elementals of kingdom number two, sends forth the elemental kingdom number one, which had been working there, and which now leaves its sishta on globe B, and passes one step downwards in order to build up the first elemental sketch of globe C.
Now returning in our thought to globe A again: when the second elemental kingdom has finished its work on globe A, then the third elemental kingdom comes in to globe A, and then the elementals on globes B and C each move a step forwards or downwards, and the first elemental kingdom thereupon begins the formation of the elemental sketch of globe D. When this third elemental kingdom of globe A has run through its seven root-races or seven periods of activity on globe A, then the mineral kingdom comes into globe A and runs through its seven races, and finishing leaves its sishta behind and passes to globe B which has been built up by the three elemental kingdoms that preceded the incoming mineral kingdom. The third elemental kingdom had commenced coincidently with this to leave globe B and to pass over to globe C. The second elemental kingdom coincidently leaves globe C in order to pass on to globe D. And the first elemental kingdom which has been occupied in building up the elementary sketch of globe D coincidently passes on to do the same work on globe E; and thus these kingdoms pass forwards, one after the other, until all the globes have been sketched out and builded to the extent of one round. At the end of this first round which takes place on the seventh globe all the seven kingdoms have passed through the planetary chain during this first round.
Student — Yes, but the human kingdom on globe A — do not the dhyan-chohans create it, do they not bring it into being?
G. de P. — They bring it into being, certainly. But we, who became the human kingdom on this globe D of our fourth round, were not human beings on the moon-chain.
Student — I understand. It was the dhyan-chohans who were humans on the moon-chain.
G. de P. — Those who are the dhyan-chohans of the earth-chain were the human kingdom on the moon-chain. We who are the human kingdom on this chain will be the dhyan-chohans of the next chain.
Student — And the human kingdom on globe A is one of the first hosts of human beings that came over from the moon-chain?
G. de P. — That is correct. They were the dhyan-chohans, the former human kingdom on the lunar-chain, having completed the seven rounds of the lunar-chain; and they built up the human kingdom on globe A of the earth-chain during the first round. Now then, the first round has very briefly been sketched.
During the second round, the whole scheme changes in important particulars, for the reason that all the lines of future evolution are now ready and waiting, and hereafter the life-waves or classes of monads follow each other from globe to globe, one after the other, much like the trains which leave some great central station in a large metropolis one after the other each day — each day, in this case, being a round in the planetary chain. Do you understand me?
Student — Yes.
G. de P. — Those lines were laid by the work of the seven classes accomplished during the first round, and thereafter all the classes of beings follow along the tracks thus already laid and prepared and waiting for them.
Student — Didn't you tell us once that the dhyan-chohans become men in the first round?
G. de P. — Yes, they do. Dhyan-chohans, I may add in passing, is a very general term meaning "spiritual entities." As a phrase dhyan-chohan means "Lord of Meditation," and refers to the spiritual part of the constitution of any entity: god, human, beast, plant, mineral, elemental. No matter what the kingdom is, the spiritual parts of that kingdom are the dhyan-chohans; just as in a human being today, his spiritual part is a dhyan-chohan, although not as yet by any means clearly manifesting through the human vehicle.
At the end of the seventh round of the earth planetary chain, the human vehicle will have become so spiritualized that it will be able properly and adequately to manifest the transcendent powers of the god within. When we speak of the dhyan-chohans coming from the lunar chain and building up the earth-chain, the expression dhyan-chohans when thus generally used without qualification refers to the entire seven (or ten) classes of entities. Do you understand me?
But when you particularize the classes then we must speak of the three elemental kingdoms, and the mineral kingdom, and the plant kingdom, and the animal kingdom, and the human kingdom, and then in addition three kingdoms higher than the human kingdom, which last three were the three highest classes of the dhyan-chohans who had left the lunar chain after the lunar chain's last or seventh round.
I hope that all this is clear to you. I believe that it is now ten o'clock. You have embarked upon lofty themes tonight, and I wonder just how far I have succeeded in answering satisfactorily.
Many Voices — Excellently! Wonderfully!
G. de P. — Well, I hope so. Sometimes when you leave the room, I query how much better I might have done if I had had a greater command of language.
Please remember also the following before we leave each other tonight. The whole scheme of the planetary chain and its evolving entities is not difficult to understand in its elements, and hence I am continually striving to give you, first, a general view. What really is very confusing to the mind is the intricacies of the working of nature's living forces. That is indeed complicated, just as it occurs in a human physical body. Consider how wonderful a thing the human constitution is, how marvelous, how complicated, built up of numberless entities, each one a living entity, a learning, growing thing! — with its spiritual nature, its psychological, its astral, its physical nature; and yet all these entities combine to form the human constitution which is a microcosm or little world. So simple is a human being when we look at him from the general point of view, and so marvelously intricate and complicated when we follow the devious byways and paths of his constitution. Just think what health is: a wonderful balance of the forces of the human, mental, psychological, astral, and physical being. It seems so simple to say that, so easily understood, and yet were we to analyze what we mean when we speak of the balance of the forces in a human physical being we should enter upon a perfect welter of marvelous thoughts!
Well, I think that we had better now close the meeting.
Please forgive me if I have not been able to answer fully all your questions. Remember two things: first, that some questions which are asked I am not allowed to answer properly, but I am also required to give some kind of answer which will be truthful and yet which will not betray keys that are not given to me to give. The second thing to remember is that often I am very tired when these gatherings take place, and I know — at least I have the feeling — that, try as hard as I may, I have not been fully successful even in answering questions to which you are entitled to receive answers. So I ask you to forgive me and to bear with me; and by patience, and by studying together, at least we shall teach each other some things of benefit and receive mutual help. Your love and trust in me are great helps to me. I also feel that the love I have for you all, and the trust I have in you all, will be something that you can carry in your hearts and minds and that they will help you.