I wonder how many of our members have studied carefully the articles by G. de P. in the May, June and July issues of The Theosophical Forum. It is seldom, it seems to me, that so much material on a given point of our teachings has been brought together consecutively and elaborated with such detail. The very repetitions help towards clearness in one of the most difficult aspects of technical Theosophy.
The existence of a definite monad at the core of each of our principles, while of course implicit in The Secret Doctrine, is a point of knowledge we owe to G. de P. It is one of the keys which, without his help, the majority of us would have been unable to find. And it has cleared up for us some of the occult processes of evolution that would otherwise have remained obscure.
It is what grows out of these articles that is most illuminating and helpful to me. It places universal brotherhood as a fact in nature on a much firmer basis. Consider what it means in this connection that our animal souls will be the higher humanity of the next Globe-chain. Also that we will then be the Manasaputras who will awaken in that humanity the light of Manas or self-consciousness. Here is how G. de P. puts the matter:
Who were the manasaputras who awaked us intellectually? They were those who had attained Dhyan-Chohanship on the moon at the end of the Seventh Round, and we were then their animal monads. They found us out again, they sought us out again, our higher selves as it were waiting for them, waiting until our bodies were ready, until the human rupas were sufficiently subtil, flexible, to receive the intellectual fire . . . So shall we at the end of our Seventh Round become Dhyan-Chohans and be the manasaputras to the humanity of the next round who are now our human animal monads. (July issue, pp. 297-8)
Here, too, is further evidence as to how practical are these deeper teachings of technical Theosophy. For are we not now suffering many things because of the mistakes and failures of the moon-men whose animal souls we were? This is part of our unfortunate karmic heritage from the moon.
So then, what of ourselves? What are our present faults and failures impressing upon our animal souls that they will have to struggle against in the next chain? Does this not place upon us a more compelling moral responsibility than just that of our own karmic salvation? If we are true students of Occultism this thought should give us an added motive for self-mastery.
Everyone who is a responsible human being feels an instinct to protect and help the animals below us. We have humane societies all over the world to protect them. And nothing arouses the detestation of decent men and women more than cruelty to an animal.
Yet how cruel we are most of the time to these developing animal souls within us. Cruel in the sense that we should call it cruelty to see a parent indulging a child in every form of self-indulgence, bad temper and meanness. When we are selfish or cruel or mean we impress upon the life-atoms of our animal souls just these qualities. They are qualities which when they become men will help to retard their spiritual evolution. And at the same time this will hold us back from our own path of progress in the future.
This does indeed give us something worth while both to think about and to act upon. The karmic implications of this teaching offer a manifold field for thought and study. And we are led afresh through these articles to realize how endless are the fresh lines of discovery and self-knowledge and self-directed evolution which open out of a study of Theosophy. It is indeed a continuous revelation.