The apparent contradiction between the teaching of the Masters as put forward by their direct messenger, H. P. Blavatsky, and as understood by Mr. Sinnett is capable of very easy explanation. The solution turns on the words "solar system". If that term be held to denote the solar system known to Western Science, the sentence given by Mr. Sinnett is meaningless; but reference to the series of letters from which the isolated passage respecting Mars is quoted at once shows the meaning attached to the "solar system" in the correspondence. I naturally turned to the letters themselves — copies of which I have — to solve the puzzle, and I found that Master K.H. used the term in a special and quite definite sense.
He explains three kinds of manvantaras, pralayas, etc. — universal, solar, and minor. A minor manvantara is composed of seven rounds, i.e., the circuit seven times of a planetary chain of seven globes. To such a chain our earth belongs. A solar period consists of seven such sevenfold rounds, i.e., forty-nine; seven such planetary chains compose a "solar system"; in three of such chains our Earth, Mars, and Mercury form the D globe. Globe D of the Mars chain and globe D of the Mercury chain are visible to us, because those chains are sufficiently near our own in evolution, one behind us, one ahead of us, for their matter to affect our senses, while the remaining four chains are too far away in evolution to have enough in common with us for visibility. Mars and Mercury bear a special relation to our Earth in the whole evolution of the solar system, though not part of the Earth chain. The other four planetary chains belonging to our solar system are too far behind us or in front of us for even their globes D to be seen.
Other planets belonging to the solar system of Science as arranged in the West do not belong to the solar system of the Esoteric Philosophy, and it is the ignoring of this which has led to the confusion. A western reader naturally gives the term his own sense, not knowing that in the teachings it was used in a quite different one. And so, once more, we find the Masters' doctrines self-consistent.
[Note. The above article, sent for coincident publication in Path and Lucifer, is an important contribution, as it furnishes a final explanation which, if properly taken, will tend to assuage controversy. On page 163, Vol. I, Secret Doctrine the author, referring to this subject in a foot note, says: "Copies of all the letters received or sent with the exception of a few private ones — 'in which there was no teaching', the Master says — are with the writer". Some may have imagined that this statement in the foot note was a "license" taken by the author of the Secret Doctrine, but surprises are not uncommon, and there seems to be very little doubt about the truth of the assertion. It is extremely easy to misunderstand in respect to the "almost ideal machinery of the occult Cosmos" when we are dealing with it in English words produced by a thoroughly materialistic development, but in the course of time the teachings given out all will be found in harmony as our views expand. The word "solar", for instance, connotes only ideas in relation to the visible sun, and yet it is the only English word we could vise if we wished to speak of an unseen solar orb superior to and governor of our visible one. In time, however, all these perplexities will be relieved. — Ed.]
FOOTNOTE:
1. Published also in Lucifer, of November, 1893. (return to text)