Studies in "The Mahatma Letters"
The present article closes this series of studies by Dr de Purucker. It is in answer to the following question which has puzzled not only beginners but also many older students of Theosophy: "In The Mahatma Letters, pp 94-5, it is explained how the different Kingdoms gradually come on the Planetary Chain. first the Elementals, then the Mineral, the Vegetable, the Animal, and then the Human. It is also stated somewhere else that Man is the oldest of the Kingdoms on this earth, and the channel or vehicle through which the other Kingdoms came into being. How can you put these two statements together to satisfy the minds of beginners?" Other series of comment and teaching left by Dr de Purucker will be given in future issues of the Forum.
THE BUILDING OF THE GLOBES
To ask for a brief answer to the whole complex subject of the evolution of the ten classes of Monads, and the development of the Planetary Chain — for this is what it amounts to — is to ask for a tremendous lot! The subject if properly treated would require one hundred books, each one devoted to one aspect.
Nevertheless, everything can be boiled down or generalized to a statement, and I will try to do it as follows: There are ten or even twelve classes of Monads, which means reimbodying entities in different evolutionary grades; and evolution, remember, means growth from within outwards, not the Darwinian theory of haphazard, chancy addings upon addings.
Now then: During the first Round, all the ten or twelve Kingdoms combine to build the globes of a chain, or rather rebuild them from their past imbodiments. This is the first Round; and while of course there is distinct order amongst them in their work of doing this, it is extremely complicated. But get the main idea, that all the classes of monads, ten or twelve or seven, however you choose to count them, all co-operate during the First Round. It is like the picture of a wealthy man going to build a house. He and his architects and his contractors, and his foreman, all get together and lay the plans, and then they collect the workers and all the materials, and all co-operate together to build the house.
I hope I make my idea clear. Once the house is builded, then everything falls into regular order of day-to-day life, as soon as the owner and his family — and to carry on our analogy we will have to say the architects and contractors belonging to the family — all come in together and live in this huge house.
Beginning with the Second Round the different classes of Monads sort themselves out, because now the lines have been laid, the different houses or globes of the chain have been constructed in at least elementary fashion, and sorting themselves out the different classes of monads thereafter come in serially one after the other, each class following its own path of evolutionary karman or karmic evolution.
But it is always the more evolved which set the pace and give the plan and make the pathways for the least evolved to follow on after. Thus it is that man, not counting now the dhyan-chohanic monadic classes above the human, but counting only the human and the other six classes below the human — the human, I say, sets the pace and lays the pathways for the other monadic classes beneath the human; and thus it is that the human is really the repository or evolutionary and originating storehouse of the other classes of monads seeking imbodiment, I mean those under the human monadic class; and this is the meaning of the statement which is very true, that from the beginning of the Second Round, continuing during the Third, and even up to the Fourth Round where now we are, the human monads or the human stock were the storehouse out of which the animals sprang during the Third Round, out of which the vegetables sprang during the Second Round, and out of which the minerals sprang even during the First Round, when they all were co-operating together. There is the whole thing on your thumb-nail, if you get it.
To recapitulate: During the First Round, when everything is still in the elementary stage, all the classes of monads co-operate to lay the foundations of the globes, and build them up to the point where the classes, beginning with the Second Round can, each class, follow its own line of evolution upon this groundwork laid by all the classes during the First Round.
The First Round therefore is like the embryonic stage in human birth in the womb of nature. The Second Round so to speak begins with the birth of the child, or the birth of the animal, or the birth of the plant or the seed; and thereafter each class of monads, or family or kingdom, having been separated out, follows its own special destiny along the lines laid down by the higher classes: the human for all classes beneath the human; the dhyan-chohanic monads or classes for all beneath them, including the human of course.
The seven classes or ten may be reckoned as follows: three classes of elementals or three kingdoms of elementals; the mineral class or kingdom; the vegetable class or kingdom; the animal class or kingdom; the human class or kingdom; and then above the human, three dhyan-chohanic classes or kingdoms, of which the highest is, according to the rule just laid down, the chiefest and the main repository or originating storehouse or governing group of minds of all the lower classes.
Just as we humans follow in the footsteps of the dhyan-chohans who help us and from whom we sprang in a sense, so the animals and the vegetables and the minerals, each slowly follows in the footsteps of the kingdom above itself. Thus it is that the animal kingdom actually sprang mainly during the Third Round from the human stock, not according to the Darwinian sense; but the human stock threw off germs or monads — not human germs or monads, but animal germs or monads carried by the human as sleeping monads. But when these were thrown off, and no longer under the human control, then they formed a class of their own called the animal class of monads, and thereafter began to evolve each along its own line; and the specializations in evolution since the Third Round, which were repeated during this Fourth Round — these specializations have been enormous: such as the quadrupeds developing four legs, or the fishes developing fins, or the birds developing wings and legs; or again the whale, which is distinctly an animal mammal, and not a fish, taking to the water and looking like a fish; or a bat which is a mammal and not a bird, nevertheless taking to the air and looking like a bird. All these are what are called specializations, and they have greatly confused the evolutionist-scientists who cannot make head or tail out of the immensely complex problem because they have not the esoteric keys. Yet all these monads were originally thrown off as germs, life-germs, from the human kingdom; and once thrown off, no longer under human control, as stated above, they began to evolve on their own and to specialize.
Thus the highest class of dhyan-chohanic monads guides and helps the second or lower class of dhyan-chohanic monads. The second or lower class of dhyan-chohanic monads guides or helps the third or still lower class of dhyan-chohanic monads. These last guide or help the human monads. The human monads guide and help the animal monads. The animal monads unconsciously guide and help the vegetable monads. The vegetable monads unconsciously guide and help the mineral monads; and these last help the three kingdoms of elemental monads, in the same order.