The Cross of Initiation | The Mystic Rose: Symbol of the Unfolded Monad | So Many Men, So Many Devachans | The Problem of 777 Lives | Quality Incarnations | Imbodiments on the Ascending Arc | Principles and Rounds: Fifth and Sixth Rounders | Septenary Elements Universal | The Atmic Consciousness | Lost Souls and "Failures"
G. de P. — The matter of the trained human ego's having to go through initiation unaided and unprotected by its higher parts is one of great importance, and in the atmosphere of the thought that has been aroused by the various observations made, I want to add something of my own. It is perfectly true that we can receive help from others, for love is always permissible, and it is the sustaining power because it is like health and like fresh air. But when the test comes we have to take it alone. The initiate is in the universe, a part of it, the pulses of the universe are pulsing through him. He has the help of the universe precisely because it is a part of him. But no one helps him by holding him up, or wiping the sweat or dew from his forehead, or giving him injections, etc. The soul must stand naked before the test, and conquer by its own inner powers. If it succeeds, we have an adept. If it fails, there are other chances, but he gets no help in a direct way whatsoever. If he did, it would be no test. He must learn to fit himself to be one of the stones in the Guardian Wall. The position is one of such heavy responsibility, one involving so much, that there can be no weak links. There is not only no favoritism, there is absolutely no pity shown for the naked soul. If pity were shown, and the soul were helped over and allowed to succeed by supporting hands, the result would be a weak vessel, incapable of holding its own against the terrific impact of cosmic forces outside. The Guardian Wall is composed of human and spiritual stones which are strong in every fiber and have proved themselves to be such before they can be builded into the wall.
Several weighty and momentous matters are involved here, and I want to drive it home into your minds that it is the unprotected, unshielded, trained ego, the human ego, which must make good or fail. Now if it is helped, if it is shielded, what is the use of undergoing the test? The test becomes a mere play, a farce, a cheating. In a school, who is it that learns? The divine entity living in the heart, in the soul, of each child? Obviously not. It is the child which must learn or fail. If the child learns it graduates. In an honest school, if it does not learn it does not graduate, though out of compassion it may be allowed to slip out with some degree of honor, especially if the child is earnest.
Just so is it with initiation, which is an intensification and hastening of the evolutionary process. It is that part of the human being which is tried, not a part superior to the trial, but that part which is tried and tested which must succeed or fail. And if somebody helps it, or suffers for it, or answers its questions, or casts a shield of protection around it, wherein lies the virtue in the trial out of which it comes successfully? It is no trial, it is a weakening process. It is like a man in the water. He either must swim or drown. Now suppose we take the man in the water as a test to learn whether he can swim. If someone stands in the water and holds him up, that is no test of the question: can the man swim? Precisely with initiation, because upon that man's success lies the soul's weal, the soul's safety, the safety of the souls of human beings. He must be tested to be pure gold throughout, without a streak of weakness, not a single point, not an atom can fail under stress. That is why initiation is fearful. And only those are allowed to attempt it whom the teachers believe to be capable of passing through the fire of trial and coming out purified.
What is it that undergoes initiation, so far as we humans are concerned? It is not the divine part of us. It is not the spiritual part of us. It is not the manasaputric part of us. All these are beyond the initiations that we humans go through. It is we, failing, fallible, weak, struggling, aspiring and sometimes succeeding, human egos who have the chance when the time comes in initiation to rise from the initiatory trance, a spiritual being — or to fail. It is a testing and a searching out and a purification in the fire of suffering. The poppycock that is talked about initiation by the quasi-mystics and would-be occultists today is awful, and it is right and needful that you should know these things.
I have told you a million times, it seems to me, that the human constitution is composite. There is a world of occultism in that one statement. "Oh yes, composite. We know. It has a divine soul, and a spiritual soul and a human soul and an astral body, a linga-sarira, and a physical body. Composite, yes. Oh, we understand." I have not yet, found an adequate understanding among you of that simple statement that the human being is a composite being. I have attempted by both direct and round-about manners to awaken the intuition in your minds as to the meaning of this statement. I have called to your attention the fact that in addition to our usual exoteric enumeration of the seven principles, there are different monads in man, and that not only is every principle septenary or duodenary, but likewise that these different monads in man, while they form his constitution as we are now constituted, are nevertheless not all of them what I call I, and each one of you calls I. That is the human monad. That human monad is as septenary as our present constitution is, which means that the human monad alone, singling it out of the other monads in our present constitution, has a divine part, a spiritual part, a mental or intellectual part, a psychical, an astral and a physical.
Now it is this human monad, the human ego part of that monad, which is I, which is you; and it is this portion of the constitution which must be so to say temporarily wrenched apart from all the other elements in the human constitution, and must stand alone. It has its own inner god, its own human monad's god — not the atman of the usually understood septenary, but its own atman or inner god. And all initiation, which means all testing, all trial, all purification, of any monad or ego is for the purpose of bringing out the particular divinity of that ego which is being tested. Along this same line of thought you now perhaps will see the reason of H. P. Blavatsky's statement which has intrigued so many of you, that the manasaputra, the manasaputric influence within us and above us, is like a plank of salvation thrown down to us. When the manasaputras incarnated within the early human protoplasts, they awakened the manasic portions in the human egos — they themselves were manasic devas — and they still hover over us inspiring, aiding, helping, guiding. But it is not the manasaputra of me and of you, because this I and this you belong to the one we call the human monad.
You can picturate the situation for yourselves if you like after the manner of a cross. Marvelous symbol again! The upright of the cross we can say is the line of the ordinary human constitution as given in our exoteric books: atman, buddhi, manas, kama, and so forth. The transverse or horizontal where it joins the upright on its line of junction we may call the human ego. We put it there because we are but humans. Now that line of juncture, where the general, the upright, traverses and crosses and therefore aids and lifts the horizontal, or the individual I or you, is, as HPB says, our plank of salvation, our contact with the universe in the upright sense.
But we must learn to find that universe through the divinity of our own monadic ego, within and above our own human monad, in other words to find the atman belonging to our human ego, that is the horizontal, as well as the general atman of the human constitution in and of the vertical. To use this figure of speech again, we must learn to find the divinity of the horizontal as well as of the vertical. Now the perfect god, and in a smaller degree the perfect man, is he who has learned to make the upright and the horizontal coalesce in his constitution and to blend in unity. Do you catch the mystical thought that I am trying to give — to see the divinity within his own essence and essay to be it? And at the same time to see and essay to be the cosmic divinity which is likewise in him and of him — the vertical.
Each new initiation — and fasten this thought in your minds — means coming a step nearer to that inner divinity which is not the ordinary atman of us, of the upright of the cosmic cross, but that divinity which is the very heart of the heart of the core of the core of the human monad, as yet a feebly manifesting evolutionary pilgrim.
That is why the mystic teaching was given in the Christian scriptures: my divinity, my divinity, how thou dost glorify me. No longer am I dependent upon the manasaputra above me. From within my own cosmic essence, from within the god of my own human monad, I have become, and through myself, my own godhood. How thou dost glorify me, thou divine part of me! Notice the peculiarly apt and aphoristic Greek: ho theos mou, ho theos mou — the god of me; the Greek is emphatic in its grammatical construction. Not merely my god, but the god of me. {See The Esoteric Tradition, 3rd & Revised Edition, pp. 38-41}
And mark you, this can only come in initiation after the other cry comes: O god of me, why hast thou forsaken me? Yes. The god of the upright, because now the child must learn to walk, to find himself. The god, his god, himself, his divine self, not his outer god of the ordinary human constitution commonly called atma-buddhi-manas, but he finds the atma-buddhi-manas of the horizontal so to speak, of the individual, of the human monadic essence. Thus, every monad within the human constitution is septenary or duodenary, according to the way of counting, and every initiation that takes place, as far as I know, as far as I have been taught, in cosmic time or cosmic space, whether of man or of god or of being of the underworld, is just the same thing in principle. Details may change; places, individuals, may vary. But the fundamental idea and rule are the same. This is why it is that death and initiation are identical. So is sleep. I have said these things a score of times. Sleep, initiation, and death are all one. Sleep is the same thing, but happily veiled from our unwitting vision, from our ignorance and stupidity because we are too sunk in desires of this world to see, to realize. Initiation is a conscious awakening to the verities. And death is exactly the same thing in even greater degree than initiation, but because it is not undertaken with one's own will for the specific purpose of quickening our evolution, it is an automatic function of the portions of our constitution. Perhaps I am wandering a little too far afield, but these are hints for you. Your intuition may work upon them. I repeat that sleep and death and initiation are all essentially the same thing.
I hope all the dear companions will forgive me if I have spoken with too great emphasis tonight. I thought the opportunity was too good to miss.
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Man is a microcosm, a copy in the small of what the universe is in the great. That is what is meant when reference is had to the different monads in a man, of which monads the human monad is the one that concerns himself most intimately because it is he. Now cast your gaze forwards into the future. All these different monads of the principles of his constitution will have been evolving, each one on its own plane and in its own way, his own human monad among them. When that destined future comes, he then from being a mere man will have expanded into a universe of which he will have developed to become its god, the hierarch of it. He will be surrounded with what then will be the different parts of that universe, and all the surrounding boundless naturally will be represented in him: things higher than the god, things on the plane of the god, things lower than the god. But what now is the human monad will then be the god.
The symbol of the cross is one that can be employed only during the periods of manifestation. Therefore the mystical saying has it that the Christ spirit, the buddhi within us, the buddhic essence if you like, is crucified on the cross, the cross of spirit-matter, or the cross of matter as it is commonly phrased. Please understand that the transverse or the horizontal is itself fully septenary. The transverse itself contains its atman, buddhi, manas, kama, right down the line.
As time goes on, and we ascend, or rather climb up the ascending arc, the cross will slowly disappear. The famous medieval Rosicrucian symbol which you will remember is that of a cross with the rose at the junction point — the rose and the cross — is a magnificent symbol, which the modern Rosicrucians brag about but of which they understand absolutely nothing.
As evolution proceeds in working its magic of unfolding growth, the horizontal shortens, the vertical shortens, until finally both vanish into the center or combined monad. The many have rebecome the One, the individual has become the universal symbolized by the beautiful figure of the full-blown rose. The cross has disappeared into the rose, a symbol of the unfolded monad.
When evolution opens, the mystic rose or the auric egg — suggesting beauty and spiritual fragrance — will begin slowly to develop the cross of the new manvantara on the new and higher plane on which the pilgrim will then be evolving. Little by little the vertical will begin to grow. Little by little the transverse or horizontal will begin to grow, until finally the cross again appears, a cross of spirit and matter conjoined, meeting at the center where the monad of that particular pilgrim or evolving entity abides.
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Since devachan is essentially higher manasic, we make our devachan while we live, because it is a continuation of our higher mentation after death. Consequently, the devachan, depending upon the man, can range from a mere fool's paradise of dream up into the nirvanic range of highly spiritual men; and especially of those whose inner being has been aroused, whose minds have been brightened, illuminated, awakened, invigorated, by theosophical study.
So the way you live will be the way you will devachanize — to invent a verb. Devachan is a continuation of your state of consciousness after the interlude called the kama-loka. When the devachan begins, then the free mind begins automatically to reproduce and to elaborate upon the most beautiful pictures that the man had in his life; and whatever these pictures were, they will be his devachan. Thus, there is a devachan truthfully for every man, and as many kinds of devachan as there are minds to create them.
For instance, some people are so purely personal that even human love which fills all their lives — beautiful as it is — nevertheless has become a spiritual vampire in their lives. They will have a devachan of the loved one, a perfect fool's paradise, but in a wholly spiritual manner. On the other hand, a high chela whose dreams are of self-forgetfulness, of doing good, of discovering the noblest and most beautiful things in life, not only human life but inner life, will have a devachan so wide, so blissful, so inexpressibly glorious, that it will verge into the nirvana, because the mentality there is no longer self-centered and running like a crazy little thing around its own center of mentation. But as the aspirations of the man during his incarnation were universe-wide, his mentations in his devachan will be universe-wide. So many men, so many devachans.
We have an analogy between the life-waves passing from globe to globe in a round of our own chain, and the monads passing from planetary chain to planetary chain in the outer rounds. Thus we as a life-wave are at the present time on globe D, although essentially our inner essence is no more attached to globe D than to any other globe of our chain; but for the time being our monads are in station or fastened here. Therefore, for this time being, globe D is more important to us than the other globes, relatively speaking of course. But when our life-wave shall have moved on to globe E, or globes F, G, or any other, for that globe-manvantara, for that time period, we shall be more particularly attached to that or the next or the subsequent globe.
I think it would be a great error to take our Master's words 777 as being the numerical sum of all incarnations or imbodiments of the human soul, either on a globe, or on a chain, or during a round. That is not what is meant. Brother R has himself explained the matter perhaps without fully realizing it, because the Master's words themselves stated what is meant. 7 + 70 + 700 — a sort of mystical or qabbalistic enumeration reckoned by the Master in a somewhat different way as a qabbalistic cube, 7 x 7 x 7, and these are called quality incarnations rather than incarnations counted up as a sum.
Seven rounds, a quality-imbodiment governing all subsequent reincarnations during a round. Seventy, ten in each round: a subordinate quality governing all subsequent imbodiments or incarnations during those minor periods within the round period, 7 x 1, 7 x 10, 7 x 100. Seven hundred — here again seventy times ten: the same rule within the last that I have spoken of. But remember it does not refer to the sum total of actual reincarnations. Read the Master's words in The Mahatma Letters, pp. 82-3, on subraces, greater races, etc., etc., and note that he states himself the solution of the riddle:
(7b) As the above described race: i.e., at each planet — our earth included — he has to perform seven rings through seven races (one in each) and 7 x 7 offshoots. There are seven root-races, and seven sub-races or offshoots. Our doctrine treats anthropology as an absurd empty dream of the religionists and confines itself to ethnology. It is possible that my nomenclature is faulty: you are at liberty in such a case to change it. What I call "race" you would perhaps term "stock" though sub-race expresses better what we mean than the word family or division of the genus homo. However, to set you right so far I will say — one life in each of the seven root-races; seven lives in each of the 49 sub-races — or 7 x 7 x 7 = 343 and add 7 more. And then a series of lives in offshoot and branchlet races; making the total incarnations of man in each station or planet 777. The principle of acceleration and retardation applies itself in such a way, as to eliminate all the inferior stocks and leave but a single superior one to make the last ring. Not much to divide over some millions of years that man passes on one planet. Let us take but one million of years — suspected and now accepted by your science — to represent man's entire term upon our earth in this Round; and allowing an average of a century for each life, we find that whereas he has passed in all his lives upon our planet (in this Round) but 77,700 years he has been in the subjective spheres 922,300 years. Not much encouragement for the extreme modern reincarnationists who remember their several previous existences!
Should you indulge in any calculations do not forget that we have computed above only full average lives of consciousness and responsibility. Nothing has been said as to the failures of Nature in abortions, congenital idiots, death of children in their first septenary cycle, nor of the exceptions of which I cannot speak. No less have you to remember that average human life varies greatly according to the Round. Though I am obliged to withhold information about many points yet if you should work out any of the problems by yourself it will be my duty to tell you so. Try to solve the problem of the 777 incarnations.
I repeat: the key to all this mystical or qabbalistical tangle deliberately stated here by the Master is not to be taken as a simple numerical sum in addition, but refers to quality-imbodiments or quality-expressions of monadic attributes, as a study of the Master's words will show; for it should be obvious that there is more than one imbodiment in a root-race, as the Master immediately goes on to state. What is here stated about the 777 has as its foundation the fundamental thought that man is composite, formed of different monads, whose qualities or attributes find expression in different root-races, subraces, and sub-subraces; and each such quality-expression is an imbodiment of that expression or attribute, although the process of bringing forth these quality-expressions or monadic attributes is of course in a way already given in the teaching of the repetitive reimbodiments. I wanted to avoid your getting the impression that 7 + 70 + 700 was the actual sum total of a human being's reimbodiments.
Student — I have three questions. One: you have stated that the globes of our earth-chain are planets scattered about in space, not far from our earth. If so, when we die, do we go first to the astral globe of our chain and then on to the others of our chain in our circulations of the cosmos, leaving our atoms belonging to each principle on these globes, before the reincarnating ego goes to the bosom of the spiritual monad for the rest of the circulation through the sacred planets to the sun; or are our atoms left on these latter, to be picked up on our return?
Two: "Each monad has its own particular star." Does that mean that each of our seven monads of our seven principles has its particular star?
Three: speaking of the fact that one cannot die until his star comes into position for that event, how may we know what star, or when it comes into position at our birth and death?
G. de P. — These are intuitive questions, but I cannot answer them at length for reasons which should be apparent. The first question calls for an answer as follows: on the outward journey we drop in each sphere the life-atoms native to that sphere, and on the return journey we pick them up again. Thus the monad unclothes itself on the outward journey from heavy garments of more material things, and this is its ascent. On the return journey it reclothes itself in the life-atoms formerly dropped, and thus invests itself again with the garments of the lower realms enabling it to manifest and live therein.
Question two: the answer is yes.
Three: it is perhaps very fortunate for us that we are not able, at least the majority of us are not able, to know just when our physical death will occur. I fancy that there are very few human beings who, if they cast in the scales of their judgment what they really would like in the premises, would not prefer to leave things exactly as merciful mother nature has left them. I do not think it a good thing to attempt to find out a more definite, a more exact, answer to this question.
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By quality incarnation is meant the bringing forth, in a series of human reimbodiments, of all the different purusha and prakriti qualities inherent in the human being as a microcosm, a small copy of the macrocosmos. As there are 7, 10, and even 12 planes in our solar cosmos, each one of these planes having its especial series or scale of qualities or attributes, all are latent or more or less manifested in every human being. They come out continuously more and more as the reimbodiments take place one after the other in serial order. Many of these higher planes, although latent, lying as yet unmanifest within us, are to come forth in the future as qualities, attributes.
Many of our theosophists do not realize that all the qualities of our past lives or reincarnations cannot find expression in any one succeeding life, nor do all the karmic treasured-up storehouse of experiences come again into fruition in any one earth life. Thus it may be that if we call the present life A, and the next one B, and the following one C, and so forth, it may be that we shall run A, B, D, C, F, G, E — different qualities not all coming out seriatim like the spokes in a turning wheel. Sometimes it happens that the human ego in the next life brings out qualities which in the ordinary course might not or would not have come out for two or three lives ahead. The seriatim next life is, as it were, jumped over. And this introduces many complications in human existence, so that sometimes it appears that we have to go back and do an incarnation that we should have done three or four imbodiments agone. We pick up the threads that we had dropped. As we must pick up that thread by a certain time before we can take the next forward step, we have to go back and pick it up and work it out, untangle it.
This does not always happen, but it is not infrequent, and it is the haunting fear of the chela that his forward progress in chelaship may by karmic necessity be temporarily interrupted by karma, obliging him to go back and pick up an imbodiment, as it were, that he had jumped over, interrupting the smooth forward progress of things. This again is one of the reasons why chelaship, while the ideal of us all, is so surrounded with precautional measures of warning.
It is not really going back. It is merely a way of expressing the fact that progress has to hold until that omitted or jumped-over term can be expressed in imbodiment.
I almost think it is a benefit for the man who jumped over some imbodiments, because he can then approach them no longer as something new with fewer powers, but with a strengthened understanding and heart in certain lines that his later imbodiments which he would not yet have undergone, now enable him to do. Nature is very merciful in these things.
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Which parts of the human constitution are they which reimbody themselves on the ascending arc as the monad rises, winging its way on the outer rounds to the other sacred planets?
Think now: there are different monads in the entire human constitution. Each such monad has its own svabhava. Each such monad again is particularly and karmically bound to one of the globes of our planetary chain. It would be quite erroneous to suppose that the ego which reinfleshes itself on this globe D and produces a man, is the identical ego which after the death of the man again reimbodies itself on globes E, F, and G on the rising arc, or A, B, and C on the descending arc.
That particular monadic center of the human constitution which finds its field of karmic action on this globe D, our earth, imbodies itself here, and we call this reincarnation. In exactly identical fashion the other parts of the human constitution which find respectively their fields of action and of expression on the other globes of the chain, are the ones which reimbody themselves respectively on these different globes. When the life-wave shall reach globe E or globe F or globe G or any other globe, that part of the human constitution imbodies itself on this or that or some other one of the globes of the chain.
If that thought is clear, you have a perfectly clear-cut answer to your question. Thus then, what takes place for the individuals of a life-wave when a life-wave reaches any globe is now taking place here, because our life-wave is now here on globe D, and bringing out of us, because here is its particular field of expression, that part of our constitution which can express itself on this globe D. When we as a life-wave collectively shall reach globes E, F, and G, in turn, or any other, those portions of our constitution which find their fields of expression on globes E, F, and G, or the others, will manifest themselves, each one on its appropriate globe: X on globe E, Y on globe F, Z on globe G, and so forth on other globes of the chain.
Thus, after individual death, the same rule is followed. It is not the man after death which is wrenched out of its devachanic felicity in order to take on an imbodiment on globe E or F or G. It begins its devachan at some indeterminate period after the man dies, and is withdrawn into the bosom of the spiritual monad; and its devachan increases in intensity until it reaches its maximum, then decreases in intensity until it is ready for reinfleshing or reincarnation on this earth again.
I will recapitulate. The reimbodying ego — or the reimbodying monad is perhaps a better expression — has its field of activity in our planetary chain, as the divine monad has in our galaxy, and as the merely human astral monad has on this earth, this last producing a man. Now this reimbodying ego which has its field of expression or of activity on the globes of our planetary chain emanates from itself, or sends forth from itself, whenever it reaches a globe, the ray of consciousness which in itself is correspondential to the globe thus reached. Exactly as it has done here on earth: it has sent forth the ray which is appropriate to and fit to express itself here on this globe D producing us, as men. Consequently, it will not be the man, the present I, you, which will reimbody itself on globe E or F or G or globe A or B or C, either when the life-wave as a whole reaches these different globes, or after the death of us as individuals.
There will be, however, a temporary imbodiment, usually very short, after a man's death, of the appropriate ray on each of the other globes of the chain. The reason that such imbodiments there are so temporary is because our life-wave as a whole is now on this globe D. When our life-wave as a whole shall reach some other globe, be it globe E or F or G on the upward arc, and correspondentially so on the downward arc, then our longest imbodiments as individuals will be on the globe where the life-wave then is stationed — just as now, our longest imbodiment is here on earth because our life-wave is here. Thus when our life-wave after we leave this globe D shall reach globe E, then distributively as individuals our longest imbodiments will be on globe E; and when we go the rounds of the chain when we die on globe E, on coming to globe D, for instance, on our way back to globe E, our imbodiment here will be very short, a mere temporary projection of a ray, an imbodiment upon this globe, a touching of it, long or short as the case may be, but never very long. Then we, in due course of the peregrinating monad, move on to globe E where our life-wave as a whole is then residing. There we shall have our longest reimbodiment because the life-wave is there.
You notice what a fascinating picture of the future this gives to us. We recognize first that our human earth-personalities, while excessively interesting to us as individuals, are but expressions of one phase of the hundred-faceted character which each one of us has on the different globes of the chain. Each one of us expresses the particular facet of character which is appropriate there; that is, on each one of the globes we have as individuals a chance to manifest that side or facet of our svabhava, of our character, which is appropriate for manifestation and development and exercise on such globe.
You see again another deduction from these beautiful truths. We are really children of the universe, at home everywhere because on every globe we have kinship with it; some part of our character is native there, and on that globe expresses itself. So it is when on the outer rounds we peregrinate to the other sacred planetary chains. After our death here we merely touch the globes on these chains, because our life-wave is not then in that chain. But when during the outer rounds the time comes in the immensely distant future for our life-wave as a wave to reach one of these sacred planetary chains, then and there in that planetary chain we shall be fixed for a whole chain-manvantara, and then and there it will be our station, just as earth's planetary chain is for the time being. Is that thought clear? Good!
It strikes me, that there is a very important ethical deduction we can draw here. While our experiences on this earth globe, or globe D, are just as important in their way as our experiences on the other globes and indeed on the other planetary chains, yet our lives on this globe D are not of such vast importance as we imagine them to be. They are just phases in the soul's experience. And when we compare all the other eleven globes of this chain, and all the twelve globes of each one of the other planetary chains, we see how relatively insignificant each single earth-life is in the scale. It is immensely important, it is a link and cannot be omitted, if we look upon it from that standpoint; but when we compare it with all the other lives we pass elsewhere, this teaching has a tendency to destroy our favorite egoisms, and our immense attachment to things of earth. We realize that this single earth-life is like a traveler spending but a day-night in a single hotel — and not a very good one at that, one of the worst possible of the whole solar system, because on the lowest plane — and that it is the other globes which give us the opportunities to bring into action, and give us the exercise of the far nobler parts of our constitution, which after all we really love the best, the intellectual and the spiritual and the ethical.
I might add here that when our meetings began some years ago, I had to speak in elementary style so that I would be understood. Now I would say the reimbodying monad instead of the reincarnating ego. Therefore a more accurate way of expressing my answers would have been to say the reimbodying ego emanates from itself on globe E the ray or portion of the reimbodying ego's svabhava which is fit for or appropriate to that globe as its field of expression, native there. In those days we were just working out of what we might call the HPB and WQJ and KT phase, when reincarnating ego was used in a rather all-inclusive sense, very much as the Christians still use soul.
Remember this fact: that we earth-men could not live on a higher globe. We are not fit for it. We could not properly express ourselves there. Now the earth-man we might describe as the human-animal monad which has its field of activity on earth, enlightened of course by the higher parts of our constitution still working through us and trying to influence us, giving us our ethical sense, and our spiritual aspirations, and our high intellectual power, and so forth. But we as earth-men would be entirely out of place on a higher globe such as E or F or G, or the still higher globes on the ascending arc. Similarly so when we as a life-wave reach globe E, we shall manifest on globe E what we can call the globe E parts of our constitution; and the globe D parts will be in abeyance. We shall not remember them, we shall not be fond of them, we shall not care about them. They will have sunk into obscuration, lying like seeds which will not sprout until we reach globe D again, their proper soil. Similarly so, our globe E parts would not be fit for expression on globe F or on globe G. This is a very simple thing to understand.
Thus you see you have from this angle of thought the answer to the question which was asked about the possibility of the astral monad's imbodying itself on globe E for instance, the next globe on the ascending arc. It does not, because that monad is particularly the earth-child. Of course, in far distant ages of the future every monad, being a learning and growing entity, will have evolved by unrolling forth from within itself higher powers and attributes, will have become a nobler being and therefore fit to express itself on higher globes than is our globe D. But at the present time it could no more find fit imbodiment on globe E as a field of expression than can a beast reincarnate itself in a human body. There is no attraction for the beast to enter a human womb. As a matter of fact, it is repelled therefrom. There is not anything in the beast that would call it to the human psychomagnet. It has not the aspiration which would bring it to a human womb. It just simply does not go that way.
So it is with all the globes of the chain. It is the reimbodying monad whose field of activity is our planetary chain; and this reimbodying monad has attributes, faculties, powers, within its own substance or svabhava which are called forth, and manifest themselves, when the reimbodying monad in its peregrinations reaches the different globes in serial order. On each one there descends from the reimbodying ego the ray native to that globe, fit to live there, fit to express itself there, and therefore attracted out from the reimbodying ego into the atmosphere of that globe — just as the reimbodying ego of us humans now, because our life-wave is here on globe D, finds called forth from itself what we can call the earth-man part of us.
Just here you will find place for the statement that has so often been made, that even those beings equivalent to the beasts on globe F or on globe G are actually, if we could compare them with us, higher than we are as humans on globe D, because the globes of F and G are so much higher than globe D, they are on a spiritual plane, or half-spiritual. Naturally what we can by comparison with our earth call the human beings on globes F and G are incomparably finer and grander in every way than we human beings are on this our globe D.
I think that is all.
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There are seven rounds — using the septenary division of HPB — each round developing a particular principle of the seven principles which are we. We are now in the fourth round, which means that during the entire period of this round the kama-element is in development or evolution. This means that from the first globe to the last during this fourth round, the kama-round, all the evolutionary stages are in process of bringing forth the septenary divisions or grades of kama, the fourth principle. Thus on the higher globes of the chain — whether during sleep, whether after death, or when the life-wave now on this earth shall reach to these globes on the ascending arc — as long as this fourth round lasts or endures it will be the different phases of the kama principle that will be brought forth.
Thus, on this earth, being the fourth of the seven, we have the kama-kama. On globe E, being the fifth of the seven, we will have the manas-kama; on globe F, the sixth of the seven, we shall develop the buddhi-kama; on globe G or the last according to septenary classification, we shall have the atman-kama.
Now naturally during the fifth round, for example, it will be the fifth or the manasic principle within us which will be striving to bring itself forth into relatively full activity from the beginning of the fifth round to its end. During the fifth round on this globe D we shall no longer be kama-kama humans, but kama-manas humans; and as this is the particular human quality, therefore is it said that during the fifth round there will be the especially important moment or time of choice, determining our destiny, whether we shall succeed in passing the danger point of choice, or not.
As regards the outer rounds, now or in the past or in the future, the different monads or consciousness-centers in our human constitution are each one peculiarly native to its own respective planetary chain of the sacred planets. Thus there is a chain-monad in us belonging to this chain. There is likewise a chain-monad for Mars; one for Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, Venus, and other planets — some of them visible, some not.
When our life-wave shall abandon this chain and pursue as a wave its course along the outer rounds, the next planet that it reaches will bring forth from our constitution the particular monad which is peculiarly native or sympathetic to that chain; just as now we are here on this chain, and the chain-monad or monad which is particularly akin to this chain is in process of development. Thus it is not correct to say that the human entity as we now know him, on this globe at present, will be the same monad which will be manifesting during the outer rounds on the other sacred chains. On each such sacred chain, it will be the monad specifically sympathetic to that chain, having especial links of sympathy with that chain; and identically so with the chain next in serial order, and so forth. Nevertheless all monads keep together at all times, but in each chain one is dominating.
In other words, when we shall reach the next chain, shall this earth-chain monad now undergoing evolution be then entirely quiescent, in nirvana, not manifesting? Obviously not. Because the other monads native to the other sacred chains are even now manifesting on this chain also, though more feebly than is the monad appurtenant to or sympathetic to this chain-monad.
Our monad on this chain will on the next Sacred chain, and the subsequent ones of the different sacred chains, be less strong in self-expression. The dominant will be the monad appurtenant to that next chain, and so forth.
Our chain during our present fourth round is bringing out the kama quality. This kama quality has a septenary range from the atman to the sthula-sarira. This earth being the fourth globe in serial order, we are now manifesting the kama-kama, as already stated. When the life-wave shall reach globe E we shall manifest the manas-kama, next the buddhi-kama on globe F, the atman-kama on globe G.
Now the same thing exactly takes place during sleep and after death, only in feebler degree than when the life-wave reaches the globes of the ascending arc. You see how complex this thing is, and yet how simple in principle when unraveled by the master-key — analogical reasoning. After death as we rise along the ascending arc, on globe E, although the earth-child, the human being, is already beginning its devachan, we must pass through globes E, F, G, and the higher globes. But as we go to each of these globes after we die, the strong attraction of each of these globes on the ascending arc will as it were pull forth from the pilgrim auric egg of the monad traversing those different globes of the ascending arc its corresponding ray. Thus, on globe E, there will be a temporary rush forth, feeble or strong, according to the individual case on globe E, of a certain manasic part of the kama which will be manifesting on globe E when the life-wave reaches E, and when our regular imbodiments take place there for a time, as they are now doing on this globe D.
So then, each one of the other monads of the constitution, while manifesting as best it can on this chain as long as we are here, will not be in the full flower of its activity, will not become the dominant, until each one such monad reaches the chain where it is especially at home, native or sympathetic to that chain. The other monads will be recessive there, as all the other monads (except the one appurtenant to this chain) are recessive in us now, this chain-monad being now the dominant one.
Thus obviously in the sixth round it will be the buddhi quality which will be in evidence. On the seventh round, which HPB graphically calls the last, it will be the atmic qualities which will then be in process of unfoldment.
During this fourth round we are evolving kama as stated; but owing to the spiritual aspiration always firing our inner nature, millions of the present life-wave or human race run ahead of their fellows; and during the afterdeath states, and during sleep, by this forerunning capacity or fact, undergo a quickened evolution, so that even today there are millions of the race who practically are fifth rounders. They are the more evolved people in whom the intellectual, the manasic parts, although in the fourth round, are nevertheless now evolving strongly, but in fourth round circumstances. A very curious and interesting event in human history. By that I do not mean the history of nations, but — the history of the ego.
Very, very rarely indeed does an individual forerun the forerunners and manage to pass through sixth round experiences, and these exceedingly rare individuals are the buddhas — although this is done, mind you, during the time period of the fourth round. Yet even here, while these fifth rounders are people who are really fifth rounders, I mean as the life-wave as a whole will be during the fifth round on this globe, yet because we are in the kama principle still, they are fifth rounders of the kama. I wonder if you catch the thought that I am trying to put over.
It would be more accurate in a sense to say that these fifth rounders are like relatively fully developed individuals on globe E, as they will be when the life-wave reaches globe E during this fourth round. This answers the question: If fifth rounders are already here, what will these fifth rounders do when the fifth round has its hundreds of millions of years to pass through? The answer will be that these fifth rounders will enter as excellently evolved and ready students of the manasic part then in process of full evolution. They will forerun even during the fifth round into the sixth round, thus forerunning the average or bulk of the fifth rounders.
So even the fifth rounders now are fifth rounders according to the kama principle; but when they reach the fifth round, when the life-wave is going through the globes during the fifth round, they will then nevertheless have essentially fifth-round experiences to go through, but enormously helped and running ahead faster, because they had managed to go through kamic fifth round experiences during the kama or fourth round. That is why we have unusually evolved people amongst us, fifth rounders, people whom we usually call geniuses or highly evolved individuals.
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Student — Are not the dhyani-buddhas or chohans who were the directors of the building of our earth-chain and its humanity the regents of the seven sacred planets — giving birth to the celestial bodhisattvas in charge of our earth globes? They gave us our seven principles, hence at death we have to make the outer rounds through the sacred planets to the sun — to our father stars, etc.
G. de P. — The question is extremely interesting and intuitive, but very complicate. We must never forget that the seven principles of an individual, whether human being or other, are not given to him. If that were so, one may ask: what remains of the individual if everything he is is just given to him from different sources? The seven principles we are — or as is commonly said, we have — we are because we are integral portions of the universe, which is septenary. Therefore we are seven-principled entities ourselves. Just as in a little child the principles flow forth into ever-enlarging manifestation as increasing age comes, so do we as human beings grow into an ever greater enlargement of our sevenfold being as we evolve through the ages. What happens is that surrounding nature, which means surrounding hierarchies and the various hierarchies of dhyani-buddhas or planetary regents or what not, aid us, foster us, help us, and as it were feed us. But we ourselves are individuals because component integral parts of the universe. Yet for all this, the question asked contains a solid substratum of occult truth, for it is just from surrounding nature that we draw all that we are, and it is thus that we are component, integral parts of it. Thus, in a sense, we can say that although we are intrinsically and through eternity monadic essences of a septenary character, yet we draw as from fountains the different parts of our septenary constitution from these different dhyanic hierarchies.
Now the same thing exists with regard to a planetary chain or a solar chain or a galaxy. Every such unit is an individual, a septenary or a duodenary, according to the way we count; but the surrounding influences and powers do foster, help us, feed us, as it were, by their life energies, and thus compose and build us. So it is quite correct to say that the globes of a chain or the chains in a solar system, are builded up and guarded, fostered, and fed — let us take our own planetary chain as a concrete example — by the regents of the other planetary chains. Those other regents do so by a constant interchange of influences, of energy, of substances, or of life-atoms. But each chain is an individual septenary or duodenary.
Then likewise the various dhyani-chohans and dhyani-buddhas of a chain are integral parts of the hierarchy of that chain, from the highest running downwards through all the different grades of our own planetary-chain hierarchy. Take our own globe D as a very concrete example in point. Being a member of the earth-chain, its main source of influence or of life, outside of its own inner fountain of vitality, comes from the other globes of our chain, originally from our own chain-regent and the hierarch of our chain and all the subordinate powers under that regent. But every other planetary chain in the solar system aids in building and "feeding" our globe D, just as every other planetary chain in our solar system aids in building our entire chain. We reciprocate in identic manner by giving of our life essence as a chain, and as a globe D, to all the other planetary chains and globes of our solar system. So there is a constant interchange, interconnection, interblending, of life energies. Thus our own planetary-chain hierarch is the summit or acme or hyparxis of the hierarchy of our planetary chain, which means under our own planetary regent and under the subordinate chain regent of our globe D. There is a hierarchy of subordinate intelligences constantly at work, each to each.
Well now, it has been exceedingly interesting to me to listen to the stenographic record of these fine old meetings we held together in the early days. One of the thoughts that ran through my mind as I listened to the reading was this: how greatly have we all evolved in understanding since those times! We now appreciate, I think, very clearly the difficulties in understanding the intricate points of teaching which then faced us. I mean that I doubt very much if today these same questions would be asked, because our understanding has grown. We see a good deal of the unnecessary aspect of some of the questions that we have heard read. We understand the teaching better, we have a larger grasp of it.
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The consciousness passed through by the monads on each one, and therefore on all the different globes, is svabhavic to that globe. Yet above and beyond in dignity and in svabhavic consciousness is the consciousness of the atman which is universal; and this consciousness can be reached by the monads on any one of the globes. It is the highest consciousness of all.
Thus, although during our long evolutionary journey towards perfection we must pass through these different globe-consciousnesses, in other words as monads must develop and perfect the relative consciousness rays belonging to each globe, yet on any one globe and beginning now there is always the atmic consciousness which we can intuit, and which certain rare individuals even imbody. This is the supreme consciousness not only of our own individual monad, but of the chain.
If you notice, the great spiritual teaching of the Masters of Wisdom throughout time has been an emphasis on just this point. Make yourself at one with your Father in Heaven, in other words with the atman. Thus you will find ineffable peace, ineffable wisdom, ranges of consciousness coextensive with the galaxy. Anyone of us can begin to do that now on globe D, on globe E, on globe F; and on the higher globes our capacity for so doing is merely enlarged.
But it is our right, our duty so to do now, just as much as it will be on the highest of the globes, and the marvel of this wonder is that we can do it now. It is a strange paradox that while we shall in due course of evolution be obliged, in order to obtain a complete rounding out of our monadic consciousness, to pass through every globe of the chain, time and time again, during each chain-round, yet at any moment on any globe, any monad which has attained self-consciousness can self-consciously begin to develop the atmic consciousness.
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Lost souls are those egos whose link with the higher part of their respective constitutions has been broken. There being therefore nothing linking them with the higher part of the constitution, they sink, they drop ultimately into the Pit, into the Eighth Sphere, into the Planet of Death; and because it is the egoic soul which does this, we speak of lost souls.
Now I am going to put our thought right on the frontier of deeper teaching, and I have to speak with immense reserve, so please do not fasten your attention so much on my words, but try to get my meaning. Lost souls are what the Masters and HPB have at various times called failures. These lost souls are spoken of as being annihilated; at other times as being wiped out; at other times as sinking into the Pit or Eighth Sphere. These words, these phrases, show you that these lost souls are merely annihilated, or wiped out, so far as this cosmic plane is concerned. They are failures which sink into a lower cosmic plane. The word annihilation, the phrase wiped out, do not mean that they are literally destroyed so that nothing whatever remains. They are destroyed out of this plane, annihilated out of this plane. Their link with their former higher nature on and in this hierarchy has been broken. They drop into a lower hierarchy as failures.
In one of the letters of the Master you will read a very significant passage there wherein the great teacher tells us that some of the beings who initiate evolution on our own planetary chain are failures from higher spheres. Actually they are lost souls from higher spheres. To us they are spiritual beings.
Now there are — there must be "failures" in the ethereal races of the many classes of Dyan Chohans or Devas as well as among men. But still as these failures are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from their Dyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms — this then happens. When a new solar system is to be evolved these Dyan Chohans are (remember the Hindu allegory of the Fallen Devas hurled by Siva into Andarah who are allowed by Parabrahm to consider it as an intermediate state where they may prepare themselves by a series of rebirths in that sphere for a higher state — a new regeneration) born in by the influx "ahead" of the elementals and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual Force in the aura of the nascent world of a new system until the stage of human evolution is reached. Then Karma has reached them and they will have to accept to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active Force, and commingle with the elementals, or progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom to develop little by little the full type of humanity. In this commingling they lose their high intelligence and spirituality of Devaship to regain them in the end of the seventh ring in the seventh round. — The Mahatma Letters, Letter 14, p. 87
Note how full of meaning is the phrase you so often hear me use, that man is a composite entity; that he is not, as many used to think he was, a soul and a body as the Christians teach; but that in his constitution, whether we look upon it as sevenfold or twelvefold, there are a number of different monads, egos, souls. Now, when such a soul or ego or monad breaks the antaskarana linking it with the higher portions of its present constitution, there being nothing then to hold it up, it sinks into absolute matter and finally is annihilated so far as this hierarchy is concerned, so far as that constitution is concerned, and sinks into the hierarchy beneath. Such a being is a lost soul and a failure.
The first planet into which it sinks is technically called the Planet of Death. This planet is otherwise called the Pit, and by other names such as the Eighth Sphere, meaning the sphere not belonging to our own sevenfold planetary chain, but a planet belonging to a chain beneath ours; and because it sinks downwards it is called sinking into the Pit. These are but ways of phrasing the thought; and I repeat that such lost souls are failures with us, in our chain, on our globe. They enter the lower — well, I think I have said enough. But have you got the thought that these lost souls are not absolutely wiped out in the literal sense of it so that nothing whatever remains? They are annihilated and wiped out in so far as our chain is concerned. Therefore our globe D being the lowest one, it is on this globe that such failures for the chain take place. Such failures or lost souls sink into the chain beneath us.
This is touching on deep teaching, but I really do not see how the subject can properly be understood, after listening to the discussion tonight, without throwing this extra ray of light on it. We are met continually with this difficulty. Our teachings are so wonderful that to have a perfectly complete understanding of the simplest of our teachings you would have to be a Master. But we can all have various degrees of light upon a teaching, each one of us according to his understanding, and according to his inner development.
I might say as a rider in conclusion that this last thought, this last fact of occult doctrine, should teach us to be modest in our statements of our theosophical verities. For all we know, we may read a teaching in one of our standard books and think we have understood it, and doubtless we have to a certain extent. But let not one of us think we know all about it. Almost certainly there is a great deal more to know which the book does not state, but which is to be known some day if you win onwards.
So even these lost souls, which in another sense we can describe as monads which are too heavily weighted with matter longer to endure in our chain, sink as failures into the Pit, wherein they begin a new evolutionary cyclic course in the manner in which the failures that the Master speaks of — failures out of a higher chain into ours — help to build this chain and guide the evolution of beings inferior to us.
Then if you will remember also one really extraordinary and yet very significant fact: that we call evil in our chain that which is out of harmony here. As dear KT used to phrase it, there is a spark of divinity even in the most degraded, which is but another way of stating the sublime truth that even the lost souls, the failures, dropped monads, are out of tune with us and therefore workers of evil here. They cannot live here, the atmosphere is too thin and ethereal for them to breathe. But they drop by attraction to their own habitat lower than ours, where actually they can be workers of good. Isn't that a strange paradox? But don't get the idea for a moment that the lower chain is all evil in the sense of our chain. Evil is inharmony where you are. It is being crooked, twisted, distorted, out of tune, and therefore a discord where you are.
All in the universe is ultimately derivative from divinity. When two things harmoniously conjoin in sympathy — and think what sympathy means, the Latin word is compassion — in unity of purpose, unity of thought, unity of feeling, then you have harmony and beauty, sympathy and right.
You have also heard the statement that the Masters have made in the same connection, that the Guardian Wall guards humanity against evils of which it has no cognizance. What are these evils? They are simply entities and powers and influences and forces which, were they to enter our human sphere, would wreak evil upon us because they are not coordinate with us. They are not in sympathy with us, though in themselves just as good as we are. In their own spheres, in their own lands, they are no more evil than we are.
Make the application of that thought to these failures: they could not make the grade with us. They are out of tune here. They have proved it. Whatever their struggles may have been, that merely shows the fundamental essence of divinity within them; but they could not be harmonious here, and their yearnings were for other spheres. Their attractions were thither, and thither they dropped. Of course, in later evolutionary ages they will work out of those lower spheres and by a transmutation of substance and feeling and energy they will come up to where we are again and then march forwards.
I have often wondered how many times you and I as human monads may have been such failures in the past, before we passed the ring-pass-not, went beyond it and became native and familiar where now we are, so that we can be good here because we can be harmonious here — in relationship and sympathy and compassion with what is here. The world, the universe, is full of mysteries of all kinds. So you see another reason for the teaching of the great sages that even for the evil man we should have no hatreds. We should have the heart of compassion, the understanding mind. We should be pitiful, never condemning, never judging. Condemn the evil, the distortion, the disharmony, the twistings, because that is wrong, it means the thing is out of tune. But do not condemn the unfortunate monad which finds itself in a wrong environment. I do hope I have made myself understood on this very subtle and difficult point.