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The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/V

THE EARTH-CHAIN We have just passed the middle point of the evolution of our chain of worlds. There are to be seven rounds — seven journeys round the seven globes. Three of those journeys have been completed, and we are now on the fourth (the middle) globe of the fourth round. The middle point of our world-period ought to be the culmination of the fourth or Atlantean root-race, and as we are now at a comparatively early period in the history of the fifth root-race it is evident that we have only just passed that middle period. We do not know, however, whether the middle point in evolution corresponds to the middle point in time, for we do not know whether all the rounds or all the race-periods are of the same length. As I have mentioned before, the probabilities seem to be that they differ, perhaps even differ considerably; and there is reason to hope those lying in front of us may be somewhat shorter than those which are behind us. As I have already said, it is useless even to speculate on the actual length in years of these enormous periods. Some years ago we took considerable pains to verify one of the remote dates given in The secret Doctrine , that of sixteen and a half million years since the separation of the sexes in the middle of the third root-race. We found that separation to be a long process which extended over more than million years and was taking place at different times in different parts of the world. Selecting a time when it seemed to have been fairly achieved, we calculated from that time to the present by observing certain astronomical changes, and our result was within a hundred thousand years of Madame Blavatsky's. As this was an observation made years after her death, and by methods absolutely different from any that I have known her to use, I think we may accept it as a very good corroboration. From what we saw in the course of that enquiry we came to the conclusion that all those earlier radical changes in the constitution of man extended over really enormous periods of time, but that the later changes connected with the development of civilizations passed much more rapidly, so that these latter could be counted by thousands of years, while the former required actually millions. Without then pledging ourselves to anything in the way of dates as regards the earlier part of this stupendous evolution, let us glance rapidly over the work done so far in this earth-chain. Before the solar system was brought into manifestation, the LOGOS formed the entire scheme of it in His mind, and by doing so brought it all simultaneously into existence upon His mental plane. At what level that mental plane may be we cannot tell; it may be what we call the mental cosmic plane, or it may be higher still. To it Madame Blavatsky, so far as it concerns our solar system, has given the name of “the archetypal world,” and the Greeks seem to have called it “the intelligible world.” All that we hear or read as to an instantaneous creation of the whole system out of nothing refers to this formation of cosmic thought-forms. Indeed, from one point of view it seems as though we were in truth an expression of the Planetary LOGOS Himself, and as though the evolution were taking place within His body, as though the globes were centres in that body, or rather, not the globes that we see, but the spirit of them — their higher principles. From this point of view globe A would be the expression of His brain or mental body, and all these forms would exist in His mind. For our mental plane is not only the third subdivision of the lowest cosmic plane; it is also at the same time the lowest subdivision of an aspect or manifestation of the LOGOS. We may take it that He manifests Himself along seven lines or through seven aspects, and that each of these that we call planes is the lowest form of one of these aspects, so that the atomic part of our mental plane is really the lowest subplane of the mental body of the Planetary LOGOS. Before the Manu of a chain or of a round commences the task appointed for Him, He examines the part of that mighty thought-form which refers to His work, and brings it down to some level within easy reach for constant reference. The same thing is done at a somewhat lower level by the Manu of each world and of each root-race. Each Manu at His own level has before Him the model towards which He has to build, and He endeavours to make His race or His world, as the case may be, as nearly as possible an exact copy of what the LOGOS intended it to be. As He has to build with existing materials He can usually approach the required perfection only by degrees; and so the earlier efforts at the formation of a race, for example, are often only partially successful. In the first round of the earth-chain the Manu in charge brought down all the archetypes for the whole of the chain. Although many of these will not be fully perfected down here until the seventh round, the germs of all of them were already there even in the first round. For every kingdom in nature He selected a certain set of forms, which He wished to have vivified during the first round, with the view of developing from them at later stages everything which the LOGOS wished the earth-chain to produce. The scheme of these forms, materialized down to a level where they could use them, was handed over to certain of the Lords of the Moon, who were entrusted with the work of setting the activities of the first chain in motion. They made these forms in each of the seven worlds of that first round, and as they made them the animal-men from the moon entered them, solidified and used them, and from them generated others which could be inhabited by the moon-animals which occupied the stages below them. On each of the planets these lunar animal-men began at the lowest level, with the forms necessary for the first elemental kingdoms. Then they passed through in rapid succession the second and third elemental kingdoms, and then the mineral, vegetable and animal until they reached the human. Having done this on each planet they attained humanity for the last time on the seventh planet of the lunar chain. Since then they have rested from that particular kind of labour, for on the second round and afterwards they were human from the beginning. The conditions during that first round were different from any that have prevailed since. First, the life was in all cases a stage higher, for when the planets were first brought into existence they were at the same level as those of the moon-chain. Globes A and G, for example, which are now on the lower levels of the mental plane, were then the theatre for life belonging to the higher levels. The globes themselves were built even then of the lower mental matter, but it was not in a condition to be inhabited by beings at its own level — not sufficiently condensed nor sufficiently at rest. Globes B and F, though composed of astral matter, were then utilised only for forms of lower mental matter. Mars and Mercury were still in a condition largely gaseous and etheric, and only astral bodies were employed by the entities who lived their lives upon these two planets. Our own planet D already contained a good deal of solid physical matter, but in a condition of heat so intense that there were still lakes and seas and even showers of molten metal, so that it would have been quite impossible for people with bodies in the slightest degree like ours to live there at all. The inhabitants, however, used only vehicles of etheric matter, and therefore were not at all incommoded by these conditions. In the interval between the first and the second round the matter of the various globes had time to settle down into a more orderly condition, so that each of them could be inhabited by entities using vehicles at the level its of its own matter. It is difficult for us to imagine what the evolution of that first chain can have been; it is even difficult for those of us who have repeatedly watched it to give any account of it in words upon the physical plane. It is by no means easy to realize even the present condition of globe A. We can understand that the men of that globe are living in their mental bodies, and we can imagine to some extent that the group-souls of animals and vegetables may somehow or other exist at such a level; but what can a mineral be upon the mental plane? It would correspond to our thought of a mineral. Yet perhaps we should be wrong to assume that such a thought-form as we could make of gold would be the only representative of gold on that level; the thought-form which exists there is that of the Manu, and is moulded by a power altogether beyond comparison with that of our mentality. Every article which exists on the physical plane must also exist in a certain sense upon all the planes above it, since it is a manifestation of the divine life, and must therefore have its connecting link through all the planes. It must be on these higher correspondences of the minerals that certain effects are produced which constitute for them the evolution of those less material globes; but the idea is not one which can readily be explained or made to gear in with the conceptions of the physical brain. It is the bringing down of the mind-energies flowing from the LOGOS — from His cosmic mental plane to that prakritic mental which is our mental plane. It is His idea of a mineral, materialized as low down as our thought of the etheric body of a mineral. When the whole thing was brought down upon globe D in the first round the etheric body of a mineral was formed, but even then it was not a whole etheric body, because at this early stage only some of the sub-planes were fully vivified. The very atoms also were more sluggish, since only one set of spirillae was in activity. In each round an additional force was poured into the atoms, and that brought an additional set of spirillae into play, so that now as we are in the fourth round we have four sets of spirillae in activity; but even now our atom is as nothing in comparison with that which will exist in the seventh round, when all the sets of spirillae will be fully working, and the entire atom will be what the LOGOS intends it to be. The man of globe A in the first round can hardly be called a man at all; he is a thought. He is what will some day be a mind-body — the germ of a mind-body, bearing perhaps the same relation to its later possibilities as the embryonic form of an infant after the first month bears to the fully developed human body. He has marvellously little consciousness at this early stage. As we have said, on the astral globe B in the first round everything was brought down to the lower mental level and fixed definitely there, with a little commencement of astralisation. On Mars men had definite astral bodies, but they were as yet imperfect, for only matter of certain subplanes was then to be had. A little touch of etheric matter was also introduced, though only certain kinds of ether were available. On the Earth in this round men had etheric bodies, but they were mere drifting shapeless clouds, though towards the end of the world-period they began to aggregate around themselves gaseous matter as well as etheric. They appear to have absorbed from the intensely heated surrounding atmosphere whatever they required in the way of nutriment. They seem to have had a succession of manifestations which I suppose we must take as corresponding to races — apparently, however, only root-races, for there were but seven; and one incarnation (if we can call it an incarnation) for each individual lasted through the whole race. It appears, however, that the world-periods were enormously longer then even than they are now, but it is not easy for us, with our ideas of what life means, to understand how these most primitive of men could contrive to evolve at all. The condition of the world has already been described, but we may note that some of the chemical elements were already beginning to combine. By the end of the world-period the temperature was considerably reduced, perhaps to about a thousand degrees Fahrenheit on the average, though it remained much hotter than that in certain districts, and in others it had even got down to the level of boiling water. On globe E (Mercury) they had apparently only the three higher ethers — not four as they had had upon the earth. But they had obviously progressed, and were much more alive than they had been, though even now their consciousness seemed amoebalike. Nevertheless, it is clear that man was already beginning in a blind way to work both upwards and downwards — downwards to densify his lower vehicles and upwards to make them more conscious. Primitive though everything was, it is clear that each globe was an advance on that which had preceded it. But in all cases it appears that he had not yet the full consciousness even of any subdivision of matter in which he happened to be working. The impression given rather is that each subdivision was again subdivided, and that he was able to use only this fraction of a part. There seems little to be said with regard to evolution on globes F and G, except that there for the first time we begin to notice the curious phenomenon of failures. On every globe from the first a certain small portion of each kingdom had been intentionally left behind, in order to act as seed for the next occupation of the planet in the following round. If this were not done all the trouble of making the forms afresh would have to be undertaken on each globe in each round; whereas by the present scheme a certain population is always left on each planet, from which the race can be reproduced in the next round when necessary. The great wave of life moves from planet to planet, as the LOGOS wills it. When He fixes His attention upon one globe, the life flames out there and evolution pushes rapidly forward. When he withdraws His eyes from it the life fades away, the wheels of progress slacken and the wave passes on to the globe to which His attention has been turned. But the life does not die out altogether. A small population, human, animal, vegetable, still remains, but does not increase. It usually maintains its numbers at about the same level through the untold millions of years until that planet is entered again. When the life-wave reaches it once more, when a vast number of egos are ready to incarnate in it, the stagnant race suddenly becomes wondrously prolific, and great changes and vast improvements of alls kinds are quickly introduced, and vehicles are soon evolved fit to receive the coming inrush of a far more highly evolved humanity. Meantime the small and comparatively torpid race has been providing for those who are engaged in the inner round to which I have already referred. As I have said, in the earlier globes of the first round this seed was purposely left behind; but towards the end of that round there were egos who did not achieve quite what was expected of them — who were not fit to go on to globe G at the time when the normal evolution of globe F was over. Such entities were left behind, and worked on steadily among the remnant, passing perhaps, in, process of time, to join the remnant of globe G; possibly also, by means of some extraordinary impulse, occasionally being able to hurry on to try to overtake the life-wave, but more often continuing to lag behind, until they are overtaken by the life-wave on its next journey round the globes. In this latter case they usually find themselves in a class of monads lower than that to which they had previously belonged. This process is a kind of reversal of the procedure of the inner round. In the inner round the ego runs on ahead of the life-wave, and by making an extra journey round the globes raises himself one class higher. These laggards fall behind the life-wave and, by losing one round, drop into an inferior class. A certain proportion of these failures appear on every planet and in all the various kingdoms — mineral essence that ought to have reached the vegetable level, vegetable life that should have touched the animal, animal life that should have becomes individualized. No matter of the lower planes is ever carried over from planet to planet. When, for example, we leave this planet in order to incarnate upon Mercury, only the egos will be carried over. Those egos will draw round themselves mental and astral matter belonging to their new planet, and they will obtain physical bodies by entering the baby vehicles provided by some of those who are already inhabiting Mercury. Just at first those vehicles will be of but poor quality, no doubt; but it will not be the first-class monads who require them, for it is a law of this system of evolution that those who reach the highest level on one planet are never born in the early races of the next planet. They do not need such primitive evolution as those early races would give, and so they join the evolution of the planet when a certain proportion of its people have evolved to somewhere near their level, and can provide them with fitting vehicles. Exactly the same thing happens as egos pass from chain to chain. The most developed of the lunar inhabitants are not found in the first round of the earth-chain, but come in only in the middle of the fourth. The egos who incarnate in the first root-race on any planet are those who have not progressed beyond the middle of the evolution on the previous planet, just as it was the animal-men from the moon who did all the work in this first round of the earth-chain of which we have been speaking. In connection with this first round it may be well to explain the apparent difference which exists between the Theosophical teaching and the theories of Darwin. In this first round, when form appeared for the first time so far as our planetary chain is concerned, the human shape was evolved from the animal, just as the Darwinian theory suggests, though it is also true that in our present fourth round the process was reversed, and the human form existed on this globe before those of any of the mammals which we now know. For the inconceivably slow process of natural selection from accidental variation we substitute an intelligent direction both of the selection and of the variations; for we hold that the forms evolved only in order that they may be a fitter expression for the evolving life within. Our attitude towards Darwinism is that we agree in broad outline with its discoveries, but carry them much further, since we propound a spiritual as well as a material evolution. In the second round the forms made in the first round were already there, so that it was not necessary to repeat the building process. Each subplane of each plane is divided into seven, so that in each plane there are forty-nine subdivisions. In this second round man was working at and through the first and second subdivisions of each of the subplanes, so that while he had matter of all the planes in him it was only the two lower subdivisions of the two lower sub-planes that were active. Man may be said to be building his lower quaternary gradually through the earlier half of his evolution. In this second round the races were much more definite, and were clearly distinguishable one from another. Men were no longer mere drifting clouds of etheric or gaseous matter, but had succeeded in developing a certain amount of solidity, though they were still unpleasantly jelly-like in consistency and indeterminate in shape. Madame Blavatsky compares them to pudding-bags, because of the curious shapeless projections which they had instead of arms and legs. At the beginning of the round they put out these projections temporarily, just as an amoeba does; but constant repetition of the process at last made the projections permanent, and moulded them into some approximation to the form into which they were destined finally to settle. Many of these people were so light and tenuous that they were able to drift about in the heavy atmosphere of the time. Others rolled along rather than crept, but none of them were able to maintain themselves in an upright position without assistance. Man was still lamentably incomplete as regards his higher vehicles. He had what he considered a mind, and something else that might stand for a feeble astral body, but his consciousness was still dim and vague and he had little thinking power; he was all instincts and almost no reason. In this round the animal-men maintained and improved their human position, and by the end of it the first class of the animals had definitely attained humanity. Just as all the archetypes of the mineral kingdom had been fully brought down in the first round, though not yet fully worked out, so were all the vegetable archetypes brought down in this second round, though it was long after that before they were all realized. It is probably chiefly to the vegetation of this period that we owe our coal deposits. In the course of the third round we come to more comprehensible conditions. Even in the earlier globes man became more human in shape than he had been before, though even then he was still cloudy, gigantic and far from beautiful. On Mars in this third round man had for the first time what may be called a recognizably human body, though at first it was still etheric, and more like some kind of reptilian monkey than like man as we know him now. He was still somewhat jelly-like, and if one pressed in his skin by a poke of the finger the hole remained for a long time before it filled out again. He had rudimentary bones — more gristle perhaps than bone, but he was not stiff enough to stand, and so he lay about groveling and wallowing in the soft warm mud at the sides of the rivers. Mars had much more water then that it has now, and much of the country was pretty, though the vegetation was peculiar. The atmosphere was what we should now consider unbreathable — full of chlorine and quite suffocating. All the animal archetypes were brought down in this round, though many of them were not worked out until the middle of our present round. On the earth in the third round great changes took place. Even from the beginning men were more compact and began to try to stand upright, though they were still shaky and uncertain, and always fell back to all-fours when pursued or frightened. They began to have hair and bristles upon the body, but they were still loose and flabby. Their skins were dark and their faces scarcely human; strangely flattened with eyes small and set curiously far apart, so that they could see sideways as well as in front. They had the lower jaw very heavily developed, and practically no forehead, but just a roll of flesh like a sausage where the forehead should have been, the whole head sloping backwards curiously. The arms were much longer in proportion than ours, and could not be perfectly straightened at the elbows, a difficulty which existed with the knees also. The hands and feet were enormous and misshapen, and the heels projected backwards almost as much as the toes did forwards, so that the man was able to walk backwards as rapidly and certain as in the other direction. This curious form of progress was facilitated by the possession of the third eye at the back of the head, which still remains to us in a rudimentary form as the pineal gland. Even yet men had scarcely any reason, but only passions and instincts. They knew nothing about fire, and were unable to count. They ate chiefly certain slimy creatures of reptilian nature, but they also dug up and ate some kind of primitive truffle, and I have seen them tearing off the tops of gigantic tree-ferns in order to eat the seeds. Towards the middle of the occupation of this planet the separation of the sexes took place, and soon after that the second order of moon-men began to come into incarnation. They were in the first place born of the existing humanity, but they soon established a new type for themselves, becoming smaller, more compact, lighter in colour and generally speaking much more what we should now call human in appearance. There was constant war between them and the earlier and more gigantic inhabitants, who caught and ate them whenever opportunity offered, but the later arrivals, having much more intellect, were presently able to dominate their gigantic congeners, and to keep them in some sort of order. Indeed, practically the whole of the world presently passed into their control, and the earlier races had either to adapt themselves to the more civilized life or to be driven off into the less desirable parts of the country. The world was still far from being as quiescent as at the present time. Earthquakes and volcanic outbursts were still painfully common, and life was distinctly precarious. The configuration of the land was entirely different, and mountains seem to have attained stupendous heights, unknown to us now. There were enormous waterfalls, and great whirlpools were also common. When the race passed on to Mercury we find on the whole a decided improvement. Much more affection appeared, and men showed distinct traces of unselfishness, sharing their food instead of snarling over it as they had frequently done at the earlier stages. The presence of the moon-men had given a great impetus to progress, and though the bulk of humanity were still very animal and undeveloped, traces of co-operation and rudimentary civilization already began to appear. There is not much to be said with regard to the sixth and seventh planets, so we will turn to the consideration of our present fourth round.

On globe A in this fourth round mind became definite on the lower mental level, and so we may say that in this round man began really to think. The result at first was by no means good. In the previous rounds he had not been sufficiently developed to originate thought-forms to any great extent, and so the elemental essence of the globes had been affected only by the thoughts of the devas, which left everything harmonious and peaceful. Now that man began to interject his selfish and jarring thoughts, this comfortable condition was very largely disturbed. Strife, unrest and disharmony were introduced, and the animal kingdom drew decisively apart from man, and began to feel fear and hatred towards him. All the archetypes for humanity were brought down at the beginning of this round — among others, archetypes of races which have not yet come into existence. From examining these it is possible to see what the men of the future will be like. They will have finer vehicles in every way, and will be distinctly more beautiful in appearance, expressing in their forms the spiritual forces. When the life-wave reached Mars in this fourth round, it found in possession of the planet, besides the ordinary seed-humanity, another and most unpleasant race, which is spoken of in The Secret Doctrine as the “water-men, terrible and bad.” They were descended from the type which had been left behind in the previous round as not fit to make progress, and they had since then been engaged in developing the evil side of their nature. They were the usual half-reptile, half-ape, but with a horrible tarantula-like appearance about the eyes, and a fiendish delight in cruelty and evil. They seem also to have had a certain amount of low-class mesmeric power, and were a kind of primitive edition of the Malakurumbas as described by Madame Blavatsky in her account of the hill tribes of the Nilgiris. When the life-wave came around, the incoming humanity soon established itself sufficiently strongly to free itself from the fear of these monstrous savages. It was to resist possible attacks from them that the first fortifications were erected by man, and it was also to be able to defeat their malignity that men began first to build primitive cities and live together in considerable numbers. At first they built them principally of wood and mud, though sometimes of piles of unhewn stone. At this period some of the Lords of the Moon incarnated among them and taught them many things — among others the use of fire, which, however, they did not yet know how to produce for themselves. The greater Beings lighted their fires for them, and then they kept them perpetually alight. Very early a stringent law was made that a public fire should always be kept burning in a building specially dedicated to it, and the young girls who could not as yet either work or fight were usually left to watch it. From this no doubt arose the first idea of a sacred fire ever to be kept burning as a religious duty, and of the appointment of vestal virgins to guard it. Sometimes, however, it happened that, from a great flood or tempest or some other catastrophe, a whole district was left for a time without fire, and then the people often had to travel far in order to obtain and carry back to their homes this prime necessity. Some bold spirit conceived the idea of obtaining fire in such an emergency from the crater of a volcano, and many lives were at one time and another lost in such attempts. This was in the fourth root-race. The men of the fifth root-race were comparatively advanced, for they built their houses of hewn stone, though without mortar. They were a proud and warlike people, but had some curious ideas. They appear to have had no initiative whatever, and they regarded anything new with horror, as exceedingly immoral and repulsive. They had no perseverance, and even yet but little reasoning capacity. Everything was done on impulse, and nothing was under control in any way, so long only as it was nothing new. Yet in many ways they would compare favourably with some races which exist on earth now. The men of the sixth race were a much more powerful set of people, with a considerable amount of will and determination. They soon dominated the fifth, taking up its civilization and carrying it much further. They succeeded in subduing the whole of the planet and brought it under one rule, although the enormous majority of its inhabitants belonged to the fifth race. These people had much more mind than the others, and possessed some inventive genius, but it was their tendency to do everything by fits and starts, and not take up a piece of work and carry it through. There was some psychic development among them, but it was usually uncontrolled. Want of control, in fact, was a permanent characteristic of this Martian civilization. Everything was erratic, even though the people were capable in certain ways. The people of the seventh race in turn got the power into their hands, not by force, but rather by superior mental development and cunning. They were not so warlike as the sixth, and they were always smaller in number, but they knew more in many ways than the sixth. They were coming nearer to modern ideas; they had a more definite sense of right and wrong; they were less fierce and more law-abiding; they had a definite policy and lived according to it. Their supremacy was entirely intellectual, and they possessed to a high extent the art of combination. Their social polity seems to have been something like that of ants or bees, and in some ways they would compare favourably with many races of the present day. It was in this race that we first noticed writing as a fairly common accomplishment They knew something of art, for they had both statues and pictures, though totally different in every way from ours. They were also the first race who took the trouble to make good roads.

I believe that I have already explained why the earlier races of our present world-period differ from all the rest. We were in fact recapitulating the first, second and third rounds for the benefit of those monads who, though considerably behind the rest, could by a special effort of this sort be helped to overtake them. During the third root-race was repeated all that had happened in the middle of the third round — the materialization of men on to the physical plane and their separation into sexes. After this had been fully achieved, and a reasonable continuity of form had been arrived at, a number of special efforts were made, by the authorities in charge of the evolution, to consolidate humanity and set it definitely on its way to the higher spiritual advancement which lies before it on the upward arc of the chain. The first step was the descent of seven of the leading Lords of the Moon, in order to provide vehicles for the seven great types or rays of men. We are told in The Secret Doctrine how each stood on his own lot, and cast off shadows which were inhabited by the men of the lower race. This somewhat mystical statement means simply that these great men duplicated, by an effort of the will, their own etheric doubles; in fact, they materialised round themselves an additional etheric double, made it permanent and then stepped out of it. The other entities of lower race who were just being brought down to the physical level eagerly seized upon these vehicles, entered them and tried to use them. Not being yet fully adapted to them, they found it difficult to maintain their position, and were constantly slipping out. As soon as this happened, some other entity would seize the etheric body, and slip into it as though it were an overcoat, only presently to find it slipping from him in turn, and to see it seized by somebody else. Many of these etheric doubles were made, and by degrees the less developed people learnt how to inhabit them permanently, so that the process of further materialization could be undertaken, and in this way gradually bodies were produced which served to express the seven great types and their sub-types. The bodies of the children of these entities were by no means equal to those of their fathers, but still certain types were established, and however much the forms deteriorated they were still habitable. As soon as these lines were definite the special classes of monads from the moon, who had been individualized at an earlier stage for the purpose, were brought down to take possession of them. These were the three classes who had been individualized on globes A, B and C of the lunar chain, and I have already described how the first of these classes, the orange-coloured group, refused to do its duty precisely because the forms were still in so unsatisfactory a condition. Because of this refusal the forms destined for them had to be occupied by an altogether lower class; and the consequence was that, instead of maintaining the advancement which had been gained by so much effort, the forms were allowed to drop back again into a condition even worse than before. Their undeveloped possessors even intermingled with some of the animal forms. This is what Madame Blavatsky called the sin of the mindless, and the result of it gave us various types of anthropoid apes. The fifth, sixth, and seventh subraces of the third root-race were much more what we should now call human than their predecessors. The description previously given of a third-round man would fit aptly enough the man of the fifth Lemurian subrace. These have been often spoken of as the egg-headed people, from the resemblance of their skulls to an egg with the small end up. They had still but little forehead, and the eyes were set near the top of the egg. The men of the sixth subrace were chiefly remarkable for their colour. They were no longer black or brown-black like the fifth subrace, but blue-black shading towards the end of the race into a distinct but rather livid blue. The seventh subrace, beginning as grey-blue, passed down through various greyish shades into a kind of grey-white. A fair idea of the type of their faces may be obtainable from the statues which they themselves erected, some few of which still remain upon Easter Island. They had long horse-like faces, the trip of the nose being at first above the centre, and at the end of the race exactly in the centre, of a line drawn from the top of the forehead to the chin. The forehead was still a mere roll of bone, though growing a little higher towards the end of the subrace. They had thick clumsy lips and broad and flat noses, characteristics which have survived in a less aggravated form among the negroes who are perhaps now their nearest representatives. No race of pure Lemurian blood now exists; though the pigmies of Central Africa appear to represent a long-isolated fragment of the fourth subrace, decreased to their present stature during millions of years in accordance with that curious law which appears to impose diminution of size upon the last relics of a dying race. Most negro tribes have a considerable admixture of Atlantean blood; in the case of the Zulus, for example, we have in general build and bearing a close representative of the Tlavatli subrace of the Atlanteans, although the colour and some of the faces are Lemurian. The men of this seventh subrace were great builders in a rough cyclopean fashion, and they had also a certain rude idea of art. It was during the period of this third root-race that there occurred one of the greatest events connected with human evolution — the descent of the Lords of the Flame from Venus. It has already been mentioned that Venus is considerably further advanced in evolution than our earth-chain, and in consequence of that fact many of her adepts are able to move freely about the solar system, and to go and offer assistance wherever it is needed. The determined effort had been made to bring up the backward members of our humanity, by affording the additional opportunity to those who needed it of running once more through such evolution as the first, second and third rounds can give; and when that was over this further tremendous stimulus of the descent of these Great Ones was brought to bear as a final effort, to individualize as large a number as possible of the more backward entities before what is called “the shutting of the door,” the period when for the sake of further evolution no more entities could be admitted from the animal kingdom into the human. This band of Great Ones then arrived from Venus and at once took charge of evolution. Their Leader is called in Indian books Sanat Kumara, and with Him came three lieutenants and some five and twenty other adepts as assistants. About a hundred ordinary human beings who were in some way affiliated to these Great Ones, or perhaps had been individualized by Them, were also brought over from Venus, and merged into the ordinary humanity of the earth. It is these Great Ones who are spoken of in The Secret Doctrine as projecting the spark into the mindless men and awakening the intellect within them. We must not allow ourselves to be misled by this rather curious expression into supposing that the Lords threw some part of Themselves into the human bodies. They acted rather in the nature of a magnetic stimulus; They shone upon the people as the sun shines upon flowers, and drew them up towards Themselves, and so enabled them to develope the latent spark and to become individualized. Another point worthy of notice is that none of the Lords from Venus took incarnation in our humanity at all. They did not (and indeed could not) take human bodies; They build for Themselves instead vehicles like the highest ideals of the human form in appearance, yet absolutely unlike it in that they were uninfluenced by time and incapable of change or decay. I have myself seen several of these marvellous vehicles, and although they have been worn upon this earth for sixteen million years they still remain precisely as on the day when they were made. They must be regarded as a kind of permanent materialization; bodies built like statues, and yet to the sight and the touch presenting the appearance of ordinary living men. I know that in The Secret Doctrine Madame Blavatsky mentions some of the sons of mind, who came to this earth to help, as incarnating among the people whom they were trying to benefit; but she applies this title to the Lords of the Moon as well as to the Lords of the Flame, and it was the former only who entered into ordinary human bodies and so for the time became part of another race. The great Lords of the Flame have done Their work long ago, and most of Them have passed away from us to take up Their tasks elsewhere. Only a very few still remain with us, holding some of the highest offices of the Hierarchy which works for the good of humanity. But for the help kindly given to us by these great Leaders the world would have been a very different place to-day. Without Them not only would millions, who became human under the impetus which They gave, be still in the animal kingdom, but all the rest of humanity would be far behind the position in which it now stands. This fourth round is that which is especially destined to the development of the desire-principle in man; it is only in the next or fifth round that he is intended to devote himself to the unfolding of the intellect. Owing, however, to the stimulus given by the Lords of the Flame the intellect has already been considerably developed, and we are therefore for a whole round in advance of where we should have been but for Their help. At the same time it should be said that the intellect of which we are now so proud is infinitesimal compared to that which the average man will possess at the culminating point of the next or fifth round. Among other plans for the helping on of evolution, the Lords of the Flame brought from Their planet certain additions to our kingdoms. They imported wheat as a specially desirable food-stuff for humanity, and they also brought in bees and ants — the former to modify the vegetable kingdom and assist in the fertilization of flowers, as well as to provide a pleasant and nutritious addition to human food. It will be noted that both bees and ants live in a manner quite different from that of the purely terrestrial creatures, in that with them a group-soul animates the entire ant or bee community, so that the community acts with a single will, and its different units are actually members of one body in the sense in which hands and feet are members of the human frame. It might indeed be said of them that they have not only a group-soul but a group-body also. Our human evolution has attempted to imitate all these importations, but with somewhat indifferent success. In imitating bees we have produced wasps; and in imitating ants we have produced what are commonly called “white ants,” as well as curious little ant-flies which are almost indistinguishable from them. The nearest that we have been able to get to wheat is rye, but the crossing of the wheat with other native terrestrial grasses has given us oats and barley. After this comes the history of the mighty Atlantean race, to which even to-day belong the majority of earth's inhabitants. Towards the middle part of this race came in the first order of moon-men, ship-load after ship-load of them, each taking their places just where they could themselves evolve best, and where they could be of the greatest use to the rest of evolving humanity, to the forefront of which they naturally immediately gravitated. Later than the great Atlantean race came the wonderful history of the Aryans — a grand civilization built up by the great Manu Vaivasvata. Although as yet comparatively in its youth, it already dominates the world, but its greatest glory lies still in advance of us. Soon, under another Manu even better known to us, the sixth root-race will be born. But the story of all this will be found in Mrs. Besant' s new book Man: Whence, How and Whither, which contains details of the results of all the recent investigations into the subject.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/V


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/VI

MODES OF INDIVIDUALISATION Those who have been following the recent discoveries and investigations will remember that in an article not long ago I mentioned the existence, within one of the great classes of monads, of two types which, though equal to one another in development, differ greatly in their intervals between lives, one of them habitually taking nearly double the length of heaven-life which is customary with the other. As the amount of spiritual force generated is roughly equal in the two cases, it follows that one type of man must exhaust that force more speedily than the other. Into the same portion of time, as we measure it, he compresses a double amount of bliss; he works as it were at higher pressure, and therefore concentrates his experience and gets through nearly twice the amount in any given period, so that his seven hundred years is fully equivalent to the twelve hundred of a man of the other type. The fundamental difference between these two varieties results from the way in which, in each case, individualization was attained. We know that the monad manifests itself upon the nirvanic plane as the triple spirit, and that, when an ego is called into existence as an expression of this triple spirit, its manifestation is arranged in a certain well-recognised form which has frequently been explained in our literature. Of the three aspects one, the spirit itself, remains upon its own plane; the second, the intuition (or, as our President has now decided to call it, the itself through the matter of the buddhic or rational pure reason) puts itself down one stage and expresses plane;(1) the third, intelligence, puts itself down two planes, and expresses itself through matter of the upper part of the mental plane.

______________________

(1) Our President has recently decided to endeavour as far as possible to replace the Sanskrit terms in our literature by English words; from this point onwards, therefore, I shall use the words “pure reason” in place of “buddhi,” and “rational plane” instead of “buddhic plane”. The personality is also triple in its manifestation, and is an accurate reflection of the arrangement of the ego; but like all other reflections, it reverses itself. The intelligence reflects itself in the lower mind on the lower part of the same mental plane: the pure reason mirrors itself in the astral body, and, in some way much more difficult to comprehend, the spirit in turn reflects itself upon the physical plane.

It is obvious that, when an ego is formed, all three of these manifestations of the spirit must be called forth, but the first connection may be made through any one of the three. It has previously been explained that individualization from the animal kingdom usually takes place through association with the humanity of the period. Such examples of it as we occasionally see taking place round us at the present time will serve as instances for us. Some particular domestic animal, well treated by its human friends, is stimulated by its constant contact with them up to the point where it breaks away from the group-soul to which it has previously belonged. The process has been fully described in Man Visible and Invisible and The Christian Creed, and I need not repeat that description here. But a point which is not mentioned in those earlier works is the possibility that the first connection may be made in various ways — between the lower mind and the higher; between the astral body and the pure reason; or between the physical body and the spirit itself. A domestic animal (when well treated) usually developes intense affection for its master, and a strong desire to understand him, to please him, and to anticipate what he is going to do. Sometimes, for a few minutes, the master turns affectionate thought upon the animal, or makes a distinct effort to teach him something; and in these cases there is a direct and intentional action passing from the mental or astral body of the master to the corresponding vehicle of the animal. But this is comparatively rare, and the greater portion of the work is done without any direct volition on either side, simply by the incessant and inevitable action due to the proximity of the two entities concerned. The astral and mental vibrations of the man are far stronger and more complex than those of the animal, and they are consequently exercising a never-ceasing pressure upon the latter. We can see therefore that the character and type of the master will have a great influence on the destiny of the animal. If the master be an emotional man, full of strong affections, the probability is that the development of any domestic animal of his will be chiefly through its astral body, and that the final breaking of the link with the group-soul will be due to some sudden outrush of intense affection, which will reach the rational aspect of the floating monad belonging to it, and will thus cause the formation of an ego. If, on the other hand, the master be unemotional and if the chief activities in his nature are of the intellectual type, it is the nascent mental body of the animal which will be stimulated, and the probabilities are that individualization will be reached because that mental development rises to a level too great to permit any longer of enfoldment within the group-soul. In yet another case, if the master be a man of great spirituality or of intensely strong will, while the animal will develope great affection and admiration for him, it will yet be the will within the animal which is principally stimulated. This will show itself in the physical body by intense activity, and indomitable resolution to achieve whatever the creature may attempt, especially in the way of service to his master. It is difficult to rid oneself of the idea that the distance between the spirit and the physical body must be far greater than that between the lower mind and the intelligence, or between the astral and rational bodies. But this is not really so, for it is not a question of distance in space at all, but of the conveying of a sympathetic vibration from the reflection to the original. When we think of it in this way; it is obvious that each reflection must be in direct connection with its original, whatever the distance between them may be — in closer connection than it is with any object which is out of the direct line, no matter how much nearer in space the latter object may be. The desire of the animal to rise constitutes a steady upward pressure along all these lines, and the point at which that pressure finally breaks through the restrictions, and forms the required link between the monad and its personality, determines certain characteristics of the new ego which thus comes into existence. The actual formation of the link is usually instantaneous if the first connection is made through affection or will, but it is much more gradual when it is a case of mental development; and this also makes a considerable difference in the current of the future evolution of the entity. In the course of the recent investigations we discovered that, out of a great mass of people who were individualized practically simultaneously at a certain point in the moon-chain, those who had attained individualization gradually by intellectual development came into incarnation upon earth roughly about one million years ago, and have since taken between any two lives an average interval of about twelve hundred years; whereas those who had attained individualization through an instantaneous uprush of affection or will did not come into terrestrial incarnation until about four hundred thousand years later, though as they have since taken an average interval between lives of about seven hundred years their condition at the present time is practically the same. I cannot emphasise too strongly that this difference of interval must not in the least be supposed to indicate that those who came in later generate less of spiritual force during their earth-lives. If there be any difference, it appears to be in favour of the men of shorter interval, for they (being as a rule more devotional) seem to be able to generate even more force in a given space of time than the others. Perhaps it would express the facts still better to say that they produce in a way a different kind of force; probably both are necessary, each as a complement to the other. The difference of interval between lives means merely that they take their bliss in a much more concentrated form, and therefore work out the result of an equal expenditure of force in much less time. Indeed, it appears very much as though the period of their respective entries upon terrestrial life had been arranged especially in order that, after running through about the same number of incarnations, they might arrive at the same point, and be able to work together. Later investigations have convinced us that there is far greater flexibility with regard to these intervals between lives than we at first supposed. It is quite true that the amount of force which a man has to work out, first in the astral plane and then in the heaven-world, is precisely what he has developed during his earthly life — plus of course such further force of the same kind as he may generate during his astral or heaven-lives respectively. But it is evident that the rate at which this amount of force exhausts itself is by no means always the same. The necessity of bringing groups of people into incarnation together, in order not only that they may work out mutual karmic inter-relations, but also that they may all learn to labour together towards one great end, is evidently a dominant factor in regulating the rate of the expenditure of force. A study of the lives of Alcyone will show that this must be so, since it is unquestionable that a number of people, living each his or her own life, must inevitably generate widely-varying amounts of spiritual force; yet in life after life of that entrancing story it is contrived that these people shall come back together, in order that they may pass through similar preparatory experiences, and that the bonds of affection between them may be knit so strongly that they will be incapable of misunderstanding or mistrusting one another, when the strain of the real work comes upon them in the future. Besides the differences in the mode of individualization which I have just mentioned, there are also differences in the degree of individualization, which corresponds to the stage of development at which it takes place. It has been explained in Theosophical literature that as an animal group-soul gradually evolves within its own kingdom it breaks up into smaller and smaller subdivisions. Quadrillions of flies or mosquitoes are attached to one group-soul, millions of rats or mice, hundreds of thousands of rabbits or sparrows. But when we come to such animals as the lion, the tiger, the leopard, the deer, the wolf or the wild boar, only a few thousand will be found to belong to one soul, while among domesticated animals such as sheep and oxen the number is smaller still. Individualization is possible only from seven kinds of animals — one for each of the seven great lines or types. Of these we already know certainly the elephant, the monkey, the dog and the cat; and the horse is possibly a fifth. Up to each of these heads of types leads a long line of wild animals, which has not yet been fully investigated; but we know that wolves, foxes, jackals and all such creatures culminate in the dog, and lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars and ocelots in the domestic cat. When we reach these seven individualisable animals we find usually only a few hundred attached to each group-soul, and as their development continues the souls break up rapidly. The pariah dog of India or Constantinople is nothing but a half-tamed wolf, and a thousand of such creatures may well represent only one soul; but in the case of the really intelligent pet dog or cat one soul hovers over not more than ten or a dozen bodies. Now it makes much difference at what stage of this higher animal life individualization takes place, and this is dependent largely upon the opportunities which offer themselves. Even a pariah dog is presumably capable of individualization, but it could be only a very low type of individualization. The animals of the moon-chain were not the same as those of to-day, and so we cannot draw exact parallels; but assuredly the pariah dog could at most individualize into nothing more than a separated fragment of the group-soul with a monad hovering over it, connected perhaps by a line or two of spiritual matter — corresponding therefore to the animal-men from the moon, who led the way in filling the forms in the first round. On the other hand the really intelligent and affectionate pet dog or cat, whose owner looks after him properly and makes a friend of him, would certainly, when he individualized, obtain a causal body at least equivalent to that of the first order of moon-men, while various intermediate types of domestic animals would produce the basket-work causal body, such as that obtained by the second order of the moon-men. It will be seen therefore that the amount of real work done in the attainment of any given level is practically always the same, though in some cases more of it is done in one kingdom and less in another. It has already been made abundantly clear, in the course of our investigations, that entities attaining to the culminating point in one kingdom do not enter the lower levels of the next higher kingdom. The life which ensouls an oak-tree, a banyan, or a rose-bush will pass directly into the mammalian order when it enters the animal kingdom; whereas the life which leaves the vegetable kingdom at a much lower level may pass into the stage of insects and reptiles. In just the same way, a being who reaches the summit of intelligence and affection possible in the animal kingdom will overleap the absolutely primitive conditions of humanity, and will show himself as a first-class individuality from the beginning of his human career; whereas one who leaves the animal kingdom at a lower level will quite naturally have to begin correspondingly lower down in the scale of humanity. This is the explanation of a remark once made by one of our Masters, when referring to the cruelty and superstition shown by the great mass of humanity: “They have individualized too soon; they are not yet worthy of the human form.” The three methods of individualization which I have already mentioned, through the development of affection, intellect, and will, are the normal lines which we may suppose to have been intended in the scheme of things. Individuality is, however, occasionally attained in certain other ways which we may perhaps define as irregular methods, since it would seem that they can scarcely have been part of the original plan. For example, at the beginning of the seventh round of the moon-chain a certain group of beings were at the point of individualization, and were drawn towards it by their association with some of the perfected inhabitants whom we call the Lords of the Moon. An unfortunate twist, however, entered into their development, and they began to take so great a pride in their intellectual advance, that that became the prominent feature in their character, so that they were working not to gain the approval or affection of their masters, but to show their advantage over their fellow-animals, and to excite their envy. It was this latter motive which pushed them on to make the efforts which resulted in individualization, and so the causal bodies which were formed showed almost no colour but orange. The authorities in charge of that stage of evolution nevertheless allowed them to individualize, apparently because if they had been permitted to continue their evolution in the animal kingdom any further, they would have become worse instead of better. We have therefore the extraordinary spectacle of a detachment of egos (what we have lately been calling a ship-load), numbering about two millions, who had individualized themselves entirely by pride, and who, though clever enough in their way, possessed but little of any other quality. The fruitage of the first, second and third globes of the seventh round of the lunar chain was intended to play a certain part in the development of humanity on the earth. At a certain stage in the development of that planet we know that seven of the Lords of the Moon — one belonging to each great type — descended to the earth and began to cast off etheric bodies for the shaping of the new race. The entities who occupied these vehicles intermarried, and when their descendants became numerous these three ship-loads of egos were called upon to descend and occupy these vehicles, and thus establish the type of the humanity that was to come. “One-third refuses; two-thirds obey.” It was the members of this orange-coloured ship-load from planet A of the lunar chain who declined these lowly vehicles, while the golden-coloured egos from globe B and the rose-coloured group from globe C accepted the conditions, entered into the vehicles, and fulfilled their destiny. The future career of these orange-coloured egos showed clearly enough the undesirability of the line along which they had come, for not only did they refused to take the primitive bodies which were assigned to them (thus leaving them to be occupied by very much lower animal types, and so leading to the sin of the mindless), but all through their history their arrogance and unruliness caused constant trouble to themselves and to others who were infected by their foolishness. Eventually the law of evolution forced them to occupy bodies in many respects considerably worse than those which had at first been offered to them; and though that lesson taught them something, and they seem to have recognised that a mistake had been made, even when they mingled with ordinary humanity we find them invariably in opposition, and perpetually making trouble by standing upon their own dignity at inopportune moments. By constant collision with natural laws the great majority of them have by degrees been driven more or less into line with the rest of humanity; but even now we may distinguish some of them by the occasional recrudescence of their old objectionable characteristics; they are still “turbulent and aggressive, independent and separative, prone to discontent and eager for change,” as our President has described them.

Some few of the cleverest of them have made no inconsiderable mark upon human history, for they developed into the celebrated “Lords of the Dark Face” of Atlantis, of whom we read so much in The Secret Doctrine; and later such special distortions became world-devastating conquerors, caring nothing for the thousands who were slain or starved in the course of the gratification of their mad ambition, or (later still) equally unscrupulous American millionaires, well called by their parasites “Napoleons of finance.” Another abnormal method in which individuality has been gained is through fear. In the case of animals who have been cruelly treated by man, there have been cases in which the cunning developed by strenuous efforts to understand and avoid the cruelty has caused the breaking away from the group-soul, and produced an ego possessing only a very low type of intellectuality — an ego who, when he puts himself down into the lower planes, must inevitably, because of the nature of his permanent atoms, draw round him mental and astral vehicles capable only of expressing the less desirable passions. A variant of this case is the type of ego in which the attitude caused by the cruelty has been rather that of intense hatred than of fear. That force also is strong enough to develope such intelligence as may be necessary to injure the oppressor, and in that way also individuality has been secured. It is not difficult to imagine the kind of human being that would be produced along such lines as these, and this is the explanation of the existence of the fiendishly cruel and blood-thirsty savages of whom we sometimes hear, of the inquisitors of the Middle Ages, and of those who torture children in the present day. Of them it is distinctly true that they have come into humanity far too soon, and are displaying under its guise an exaggerated form of some of the very worst characteristics of the most unpleasant types of animals. Yet another variant is the entity who is individualized by an intense desire for power over others, such as is sometimes shown by the chief bull of a herd. An ego developed in such a way often manifests great cruelty, and appears to take pleasure in it, probably because to torture others is a manifestation of his power over them. On the other hand those who have been individualized at a comparatively low level along one of the regular lines — as by affection — provide us with a type of equally primitive but joyous and good-natured savages — savages, in fact, who are not savage but kindly, as are many of the tribes to be found in some of the islands of the Southern Seas. As we look at these early stages of our development upon the Moon-chain, it often seems as though the mode of individualization of an ego depended upon mere chance — upon “the accident of environment.” Yet I do not believe that this is so; even for animals the environment is not accidental, and there is no room for chance in a perfectly-ordered universe. I should not be surprised if further investigation should reveal to us that the very mode of the individualization was somehow pre-determined either for or by the monad himself, with a view to preparation for whatever portion of the great work he is to undertake in the future. There will come a time when we shall be part of the great Heavenly Man — not in the least as a myth or a poetic symbol, but as a vivid and actual fact, which we ourselves have seen. That celestial body has many members; each of these members has its own function to fulfil, and the living cells which are to form part of them need widely-different experiences to prepare them. It may well be that from the dawn of evolution the parts have been chosen — that each monad has his destined line of evolution, and that his freedom of action is concerned chiefly with the rate at which he shall move along that line. In any case our duty is clear — to push ahead as rapidly as we can, watching ever to discern the divine purpose, living only to fulfil it, striving always to help onwards the great scheme of the LOGOS by helping our fellowman.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/VI


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/VII

THE SEVEN TYPES The seven great types or rays do not correspond to the planes, for each type is to be found upon all the planes. One may symbolize the planes as horizontal, as they are usually represented in Theosophical diagrams; and then if we proceed to draw seven vertical columns cutting across the seven planes at right angles, those columns will symbolize the types. This will cut up our diagram into forty-nine square, and in reality each of these forty-nine has also forty-nine subdivisions in the same manner, because each plane has seven sub-planes, and each type has seven sub-types, which are produced by the influence upon it of each of the other types in turn. A diagram which clearly explains this may be found in The Secret Doctrine, Vol. III, p. 483. There are seven great types of men, coming out from the seven great Planetary LOGOI. Each of us belongs to one of these, but each has also a sub-ray from one of the other types. If a man belongs to the blue or devotional type, and has the wisdom ray as his sub-type, he will be wise in his devotion; but if his sub-ray be also devotional, he may be blindly devoted having no discrimination, and therefore unable to see any blemish in the object of his worship. Yet though each of us, as has been said, has come out through one or other of the seven Planetary LOGOI, it does not at all follow that he will return through the same LOGOS. Each of the great root-races will produce as its flower and result what is called in the sacred books a Heavenly Man, one mighty Being who actually includes within Himself all those members of the root-race who have made themselves worthy of such inclusion — includes them precisely as our physical body includes millions of cells. True, we have all of us incarnated in other root-races, but we belong to that root-race in which we finally succeed in attaining adeptship, and it will be of the Heavenly Man which represents that race that we shall form a part.

For each root-race there is a Manu and a Bodhisattva, and these are respectively the brain and the heart of the Heavenly Man of the root-race. We who work in the Theosophical Society are most of us following along one or other of these two lines, and so we shall find ourselves grouped round one or other of those centres in that glorious future. But in the Heavenly Man, as in the man on earth, there are seven centres, and each of these centres is represented by an official of the Occult Hierarchy. Some men will be drawn to one of these centres, and some to another, so that there is the fullest possibility of development for all possible types and dispositions. These Heaven-born Men so formed are the true inhabitants of the solar system, the mind-born sons of the Planetary LOGOI, destined themselves to be the Planetary LOGOI of the future, and of them we shall be living, conscious component parts; and yet at the same time each of us will have the fullest liberty and the highest possible activity. Incomprehensible, of course, to our present power of thought, but utterly true, nevertheless. Well for us if we can attain our level and take our part along with the great Masters who are the leaders of our Society. If that be too high for us at present, there will be other opportunities in the future — others, and yet others, stretching away in endless vistas. Yet those of us who are earnest students in this Society have now a glorious opportunity, of which we should do well to take the fullest advantage; for if we lose it who knows how many lives of hard work it will take us to earn such another? Soon the Teacher of angels and men will show Himself upon earth once more; happy are we in that we are allowed to help (even though it be ever so little) to prepare the way for His coming; happier yet will be those of us who shall see Him face to face, who will be privileged to work under Him in the service of humanity when that day of the Lord shall dawn!

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/VII


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/VIII

STRAY NOTES ON RACES

The Irish Race.

The Spanish Race.

The Jewish Race.

The Atlanteans.


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/IX

THE IRISH RACE

The Irish are not of Atlantean stock, but belong to the fourth sub-race of the fifth root-race. It is true that Ireland was part of the Atlantean continent, and that the earliest inhabitants were of the Rmoahal, the first sub-race of the fourth root-race; but no recognisable trace now remains of these aborigines, who were a small dark people somewhat of the type of the Laplanders of the present day. Nor is there much now left to bear witness to the first invasion from Africa of a host led by an Ethiopian queen; but there are still some tokens of the next arrivals — a race called the Firbolgs — big, hairy-faced men who appear to have come down from Iceland — probably people of the same stock as the Ainus of Japan. The great majority of the Irish nation (not counting the Scottish immigrants of Ulster) is composed of the descendants of two races — the Tuatha-de-Danaan and the Milesian. The Tuatha-de-Danaan were men of the Caucasian stock, practically identical with the early Greeks, and they reached Ireland by a circuitous northern route, having moved up gradually through Russia, and round by Sweden and Norway, in the manner of the curious slow, wholesale migrations of those earlier days. They were a handsome race with oval faces, clear complexion, mostly dark hair, and deep blue or almost violet eyes. Sometimes the hair was lighter and the eyes were grey, but the other type was the more common, and one may often see it exactly reproduced among the Irish peasants of to-day. The Tuatha-de-Danaan were not only so much handsomer, but also intellectually and spiritually so very much in advance of the mixed race which they found in Ireland that they were regarded by the latter as of celestial lineage, and to this day tradition speaks of them as a race of gods who ruled Ireland during a golden age, which is by no means so entirely legendary as historians generally suppose. Ireland was unquestionably the seat of a high civilization and a centre of philosophy and learning while the neighbouring island of England was largely covered by dense forests and peopled by naked savages who painted themselves blue. The Tuatha-de-Danaan reigned in Ireland through many ages of power and great glory, but their civilisation waned in time, as all others do, and at last they were overcome by an invasion of the Milesians from Spain — a race far inferior to them in culture, spirituality and general development, but having the rude physical strength of youth and much knowledge of the lower magic. These were a bullet-headed people, rugged and often positively ugly of face, with light or vividly red hair — a type which may also still be seen sometimes among the peasantry of the southern part of the country almost in its original purity. Far inferior as they were to the Tuatha-de-Danaan, the Milesians were still a variant of that same fourth sub-race of the Aryans; and since these two types are its main constituents, it is to that sub-race that we must assign the Irish of the present day — Celts, near of kin to the Highlander of Scotland, the Welshman, the Cornishman or the Breton. At present there is unfortunately a wide-spread poverty and general lack of prosperity among the Irish nation in its native Erin — a condition of affairs which the Irish usually attribute to oppression by the conquering English. This “oppression,” so far as it is a fact, and not a figment of the imagination, comes from the radical difference between the two races, which causes a curiously complete lack of mutual understanding. The stolid matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon cannot possibly comprehend the point of view of the imaginative and poetical Irishman, and the motives of the latter are always a sealed book to the former. The average English peasant lives almost entirely upon the physical plane, and his thought runs naturally along lines connected with his every-day interests and experiences. The average Irish peasant of the south and west lives very much upon the astral plane, and cares comparatively little about physical conditions so long as he has the accustomed astral atmosphere about him. His thoughts are usually far away from the mechanical daily round, and occupied with legends of the past, or with the stories of saints and angels and fairies. I well remember the plaintive amazement of an English landlord who, shocked at the condition of some of the cabins on his estate, had built for his labourers neat little staring brick cottages with all the latest improvements. With great difficulty he persuaded some of the peasants to try the new dwellings upon which they looked with such strong disfavour, but after a day or two every one of them went back again to the old cabins with their mud floors and leaking roofs, vowing that there was no home like the old home, with all its inconveniences. The truth was that they thought so little of the physical that these inconveniences were hardly felt at all, and weighed as nothing in the balance against the comfortable homelike feeling of the astral radiations of the old walls, to which they had been accustomed from childhood. But the Englishman knew nothing about astral vibrations, and could only marvel at the stupidity and obstinacy of people who actually preferred a miserable and unquestionably filthy old hovel to a new and clean cottage. The drunkenness which is so sadly common among the peasantry is largely referable to the same cause; it is not physical but astral sensation which is sought, and to some extent obtained, by means of the absorption of alcohol. The average Irish peasant may perhaps drink more than his English compeer, but his thoughts are on the whole far purer and more elevated. To him all women are sacred for the sake of the Virgin Mother to whom he prays, and statistics show that crimes against the weaker sex are far rarer in Erin than in Albion. The Englishman endeavours to be accurate; the Irishman cares little for accuracy, but prefers to say rather what is most courteous, or what he thinks will please. In a word, they represent two different sub-races; their development runs along quite different lines, and only the wisest and most liberal of each can possibly understand and make allowance for the peculiarities of the other.

It is probable that many causes combine to produce the poverty and general lack of prosperity of the Irish. Without raising any of the vexed questions about which party opinions clash, the occultist may examine with interest at least one cause which is never suspected by those who discuss the subject in this prosaic twentieth century; and that is the working of a curse pronounced against the race (or perhaps one should rather say a spell laid upon it) no less than two thousand years ago at the time of the Milesian conquest. Students of early Irish history will remember how persistently it is stated that the invading Milesians were able to hold in thrall the distinctly superior race which they had overcome, because they cast upon it the glamour of a great illusion. This legend has a basis of fact. The priests of the Milesian religion were well acquainted with certain types of magic, and as the country was conquered they occupied it with strongly magnetized centres. They established one of these every few miles, until they had a net-work of them covering the whole southern and western part of the land, and even now, after the lapse of two thousand years, a strong influence radiates from them.

Great crowds of nature-spirits of a certain type are still irresistibly attracted to these centres, gambol round them and are permeated by their influence, and unconsciously become its ministers, and spread it all over the country wherever they go. The spell which the Milesian priests laid upon the people was two-fold — the curses of disunion and lethargy — that they should never be able effectively to combine together, but always quarrel among themselves, and that they should apathetically submit to the domination of whoever wielded or inherited the magnetic power. If any English ruler had ever known enough of magic to understand and utilise this heritage of the Milesian priests, the history of Ireland might have been different. As the Anglo-Saxon is usually blankly ignorant and blatantly incredulous with regard to all that side of nature, a very curious thing has happened. Consciously or unconsciously the Roman Church has come into that heritage, and profits by what still remains of the power of that ancient spell, and her rule is unquestioned through all the districts where long ago those priests of an older faith established their magnetic centres.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/IX


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/X

THE SPANISH RACE The whole question of racial Karma is a difficult one, and I do not think that we have as yet sufficient information at our command to enable us to speak definitely upon the subject. This much is certain — that whenever we find markedly unusual conditions surrounding a race, we may conclude that the Manu in charge of that portion of evolution has in hand a number of egos who need just those conditions for their progress. The law of cause and effect must obviously govern national as well as individual affairs, though its action is complicated by the fact that the egos who form the race when the effect arrives are usually not those who were there when the cause was set in motion. For example, it may be not unreasonable to suppose that the fact that Spain has somewhat ignominiously lost the whole of South America and Mexico, has a definite karmic relation to the awful cruelty and rapacity shown in her conquest of those countries; yet we imagine that the Spaniards who suffered loss when those countries freed themselves can hardly in all cases have been reincarnations of those who wrought such appalling havoc under Cortes and Pizarro. On the other hand, it is very probable that some of them may have been, for we know that people of the lower classes return very much sooner than those of the first class, and usually have to incarnate several times in the same branch-race before they have learnt all its lessons.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/X


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/XI

THE JEWISH RACE

The peculiar conditions of the Jewish race exist primarily because at this particular stage the Manu needs them for the proper training of some of the egos under his care. We can only guess at the racial karma which made those conditions possible. Perhaps the explanation is to be found in the fact that the Jewish race is descended from those Atlantean Semites who were drawn away into Arabia, apart from their fellows, by the Manu of the Fifth root-race when he was making his first segregation. That first attempt was not wholly successful, and a second segregation took place into the Gobi district, from which in due time was produced the first sub-race of the new root-race. When a second sub-race was needed, the Manu sent emissaries to the descendant of those who had been left behind in Arabia, hoping to mingle with theirs the blood of the new root-race; but they were so strongly impressed with the idea (which he himself had originally implanted in them) that they were a chosen race, set apart from the world and forbidden to intermarry with others, that in the name of his own teaching they now rejected his overtures, and he had to seek elsewhere for what he wanted. The particular sub-race from which the Jewish nation is directly descended had moved across from Arabia to the Somali Coast, in order to avoid conquest by those who followed the new teaching of the Manu. They then split off even from that dissenting band, and made their way along the shores of the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, until they entered upon the territory of Egypt. The Pharaoh of the time received them hospitably, and assigned them a tract of land on which to dwell, and they settled down there for some centuries; but as a later Pharaoh sought to levy from them some impost to which they objected, and also to force them to perform for him certain unpaid labour, as his other subjects did, they protested against his claims, and continued their migration by crossing the Sinaitic desert and settling themselves in southern Syria, dispossessing, after much fighting, other robber tribes of much the same blood as themselves. The karma of that rejection has left them ever since a race apart, the same egos to a large extent incarnating again and again in that line instead of passing from race to race in the usual way. Whether some blind perception of this difference may help to account for the treatment they have received at the hands of other races I cannot definitely say, but it may also be partially due to the fact that because of the tradition of that original selection by the Manu they have always had a feeling somewhat similar to that of the Brahmans — that they are superior to all the rest of the world; and the rest of the world has not always appreciated the attitude which they adopted in consequence of that belief. They were originally a nomad tribe like the Bedouin Arabs, and lived largely by robbery, their deity being confessedly but a private tribal god who fought against the gods of other nations and was perpetually vaunting himself as superior to them, although it will be remembered that in one case he was not able to overcome certain other races “because they had chariots of iron” (Judges, I, 19). Just like all other elemental tribal deities, he required constant sacrifices of blood, and in order that he might receive plenty of these he was always exceedingly jealous lest any of his followers should desert him, and make their offerings to other deities. The requiring of blood-sacrifices is an invariable criterion as to the status of a deity; no entity in the least deserving of respect or worship ever made such an abominable demand. It will be found that he often suggested mean and dishonourable plans — which is quite a common thing for a tribal deity to do, but would of course be utterly impossible for any higher entity. The carrying away into captivity in Babylon of a number of these turbulent people was quite the best thing that could happen to them. They then for the first time came into contact with a highly civilized race, and for the first time heard of a supreme God of whom everything was part. Then they characteristically tried to identify their own tribal deity with this Supreme Being, and so caused much confusion. When they returned from this captivity they rewrote their scriptures from the memory of the older men, and then they put into them a certain admixture the higher ideas about a supreme deity. The Founder of Christianity took possession of a Jewish body; all the earlier teachers of the religion were of the same race, and so, unfortunately, they brought over into Christianity this mixed conception of a god who is full of irreconcilable characteristics, being at the same time jealous, cruel and revengeful, and yet omniscient, omnipresent and compassionate. Even at the present day the Christian church still reads in its highest service the ridiculous old Jewish commandments, with which is incorporated the statement of the jealousy of the deity, while in another part of the very same service she acclaims him as “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God.” If the Christians could only have left these primitive Jewish conceptions alone, and taken with reference to God the teachings of their Founder, who spoke of Him always as the Father in heaven, many of the troubles of the Church would have been avoided.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/XI


text:
The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/XII

THE ATLANTEANS

The Atlanteans had as a race no sense of the abstract, and were unable to generalise; for example, they had no multiplication table; arithmetic was to them a system of magic, and a child had to learn elaborate rules without ever knowing the reason for them. For example, he was taught that if 8 came beneath 8 in the particular form of magic which we now call addition, the figure 6 must be noted as the result, and the next figure to the left-hand side in the result must be increase by 1. If however the particular magic happened to be subtraction, a cipher was the result; if it was division the figure 1 appeared; if it was multiplication the figure 4 was the result, and the next figure to the left must be altered by 6. But he never knew that 8 plus 8 equals 16, or that 8 times 8 equals 64! A similar elaborate set of rules had to be memorized for every conceivable position of all the figures up to 10. These four sets or types of mathematical magic had to be learnt just as though they were four conjugations of a verb. Most of their calculations, however, were made by means of machinery — a kind of abacus or framework something like that now used by the Chinese and Japanese, by means of which it is even now possible to make quite elaborate calculations — as, for example, to take the square root of any number. The Atlanteans were clever at amassing facts, and had prodigious memories; also they invented a good deal of quite complicated machinery, though most of it would seem to us now quite clumsy in its action. We see another curious trace of their limitations in the religion which the Egyptians inherited from them. They had observed and noted most of the types of elemental essence and nature-spirits, and they had named them all, and invented special forms of spells for each, by which it could be controlled; and they went on elaborately learning all these, with the feeling that if any but the right spell was applied to a particular elemental, he would probably prove destructive. Yet they never realized that the force behind the spells was in every case the human will, and that a determined exertion of that, without any spell at all, would have been equally effective in all these different places. The Book of the Dead contains great numbers of these, and only that portion of it which it was thought would be needed by each dead person was placed along with him in his tomb. The Turanian sub-race of the Atlanteans made a series of experiments in what is now called democracy, and carried it to even wilder lengths than its most rabid exponents at the present day have yet suggested. The results were so utterly intolerable that the whole race broke up into anarchy and chaos; and China even now bears the impress of the violent reaction in the direction of aristocratic government which followed. The Turanians had their animal passions very strongly developed, and were in many ways not what we should call pleasant people.

title: The Inner Life, v. II/Sixth Section/XII