I agree with those who just cannot see how the One could do otherwise than become the multitude. Consider the Universe around us everywhere. It represents the many. Reason tells us that being subservient to one common law, essentially formed of one common cosmic stuff, originally all the multitudes of beings and entities in this Universe must have come forth from one cosmic fountain of being and life. It is the teaching of Occultism of all the ages that back to that divinity all things are marching now: out from divinity as unself-conscious god-sparks for aeons and aeons of cosmic pilgrimage, undergoing all the various marvelous adventures that life in all its phases brings; then rising on the pathway and re-entering the bosom of the Divine, to issue forth again at the next cosmic Maha-manvantara. It is incomprehensible to me that anything else could take place; and there are so many remarkable illustrations that can be given of this eternal process.
SEDIMENTATION ON OUR EARTH
When the Masters or H. P. B. speak of the 320 million years since sedimentation on our earth took place, they refer to the beginning of this Round on Globe A; and when the impulse of the three elemental kingdoms, followed by the mineral kingdom, reached our earth, then not only sedimentation but volcanic action began. That is all there is to that. If you will read what I have to say on that in my Fundamentals of the Esoteric Philosophy (and I labored hard in that book to make the process of evolutionary development on the different globes during a Round clear): if you will look to that book, you will have it, I hope, clear enough for comprehension. As a matter of fact, we have so much teaching that our dear people forget most of it! That is the plain truth. Our books are just packed with information; and one of the greatest helps possible to us students is to learn to collate and build up a picture by that collection, bringing together fact after fact and never being satisfied until we have made a proper place for every fact. Then you have a picture, and you won't forget it.
CORRESPONDENCES IN THE ROUNDS
The Fourth Round is a copy of a more advanced type of everything that took place in the Third Round. Similarly, the Third Round was such of the Second. Remember that, after all, forms and shapes and bodies are all relatively unimportant.
There was a time in the Third Round correspondential to the descent of the Manasaputras in this Fourth. There was a time in the Third Round correspondential to the arrival of sex on this earth. There was a time in the Third Round correspondential to what will happen in the future when sex will disappear in this Round. And so with all events through which we have passed and are to pass in this Fourth Round.
Indeed, during the First Round, even, there was organized intelligence on this earth, not merely mindless entities. If you think that there was no intelligence of any kind in the First Round, it shows that you keep your thoughts restricted too much to human evolution. But there are the different evolutions of the Dhyan-Chohanic Kingdoms; and even in the First Round there were human beings. Never mind what the bodies were; that is of no importance. There were beings with will-power, who thought and felt. They were few, to be sure, but they did exist; and they were the star-sons, the Sons of the Firemist spoken of by H. P. B., the first grand Adepts on this earth and indeed on the other globes of our chain. There were very few because this was the First Round. There were more in the Second; more in the Third; more in the Fourth. There will be still more in the Fifth, and so forth; because every new Round raises every Kingdom one cosmic sub-sub-plane higher on the evolutionary scale. So much for that comment.
MAN-BEARING GLOBES
It is true that globes in a Solar System, or Planetary Chain too — it is the same thing really — can advance so high in their evolutionary or emanational development that they have passed the stage where human beings or the human kingdom can find place on such globes of a chain, because they have passed high above the human kingdom — the whole chain has. But that is only half the picture. The other reason why there are non-man-bearing globes, that is chains in our Solar System which are not man-bearing, is that these other, forming the other part of the picture, have not yet reached the point where their life-waves have risen to the human stage. Do you see?
So then, the idea is that every globe in a planetary chain has been, is, or will be, man-bearing some time, some time. Those not yet having reached the stage of man-bearing produce the lower kingdoms, or some of them. Those which have evolved beyond or higher than the possibility of bringing the human kingdom on their globes bear the races of the Dhyan-Chohans exclusively, and beings even beyond those last.
So there are man-bearing chains or globes in our Solar System, and there are those which are non-man-bearing. As a matter of fact, you can say the same thing about any kingdom. There are globes in our chain which bear Dhyan-Chohans, as an example, and others which do not bear Dhyan-Chohans.