{Wurzburg, October 3, 1885}
Honoured Sir and Confederate,
Yesterday Franz Gebhard delighted me with his arrival and rejoiced my ears with the following quotation from a letter, that you may have heard already.
"Besides the block of Humanity to which we belong, passing round the chain of planets — as correctly described in E. B. — there are six other similar blocks simultaneously evolving on other parts of the chain."
To this I listened in silent dismay, and would have remained dumb on the subject for ever had not Master's far away tones struck me like a Sac . . . [MS. damaged here. — Ed.] box on the ear coming from the N.W. direction (for a wonder! He must be roaming somewhere in Europe my Boss) and saying: "Now don't you let Sinnett go off again on the wrong track. Explain." Just as though I had led you deliberately on to wrong tracks and not your own Madame Barbe Bleue's vile curiosity! Easy to say "explain," I wish He would Himself; for if I do and you do not understand me, or — which is as likely I shall not be able to "explain" so that you should understand, I shall be responsible for it and the only one blamed as usual. However, listen, and you may perhaps realise also what led even Mohini off the right mechanical track and made him write the unutterable flapdoodle he has in Man — from the simply mechanical-cosmos-arrangement standpoint and tolerably correct one, if understood as applying to the "simultaneous evolution" of the six races you are talking about, in a Socrates-like way, with your daimon whispering it in your ear. For I don't see how you could have got the idea in any other way.
There are six races besides our own, which makes seven races, if you please. Seven upper ones and seven nether, or lower ones which make in all the 14 Brahmanical lokas spoken about in the Vedanta. This is the exoteric text: "From the five quintuplated elements (the five quintuplated Buddhas of Rhys Davids and exoteric Buddhism) — proceed or spring, one above the other, the worlds Bhur, Bhuvar, Swar, Mahar, Janas, Tapas and Satya; and one below the other, the nether worlds called Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Rasatala, Talatala, Mahatala and Patala." Now all the Orientalists have made a worse mess of it than you would, had I not been ordered to come benevolently to your rescue. Wilson makes of it in Vishnu Purana (pp. 209, 225 Vol ii) a regular olla podrida. Nor shall your great mathematician Elliot do you any good in the calculation of duration as you want him for he has not the root number which cannot be given. So "Boss" says, not I. However.
What I give you now — please do not use it before it comes out in Secret Doctrine — for it is from there as Master gave me.
These seven worlds above and seven beneath — cannot be referred by you as "blocks" of humanity — and here Mohini is quite right in saying, "the Monads, recognisable on earth as human cannot properly be so called when evolving on other planets" — though the word "planet" is also wrong, "world" would have been a better term. These (to us) invisible worlds, in which evolute "simultaneously with our block of Humanity" other Humanities, or rather sentient and intelligent Beings (invent a word for how can we call them "humanity"?) are not on other planets, for each of the 7 globes or planets of our chain has such a dual septenary circle of rings — Saturn being the only half frank and sincere planet in this case — and it is that which set Hume on his ears in the beginning with Master K.H., and that led Mohini to contradict you in appearance — for while he was thinking of this — he had never learned much of the physical or mechanical arrangement of our chain; and also why Mah. K.H. was ever saying of you two — "both are right and both wrong."
Now I beg of you not to materialise in your fifth principle way these worlds. They have no relation whatever with space and time as understood by your greatest mathematicians, but are entirely out of space and time — in the Kantian way, though in space and time Dhyan Chohanic conceptions and even those of Devachan. If you have ever understood what Zollner really meant by his "fourth dimension of space" you may proceed in the following wise and think of these seven upper worlds and the seven lower, like this: —
1. Our globe D — has three dimensions of space of its own (the triad); for Bhur — is at the head of matter. But it has seven in reality, though only four can be known in this 4th Round, and the seven dimensions of space being the lot of globe D's 7th Root Race in the 7th Round.
(But it has five senses in the 5th Root Race and shall have seven physical senses in the 7th R.R. by the end of this Round; for the senses pertain to the evolution of the 1st Root Race of our 4th Round in which Speech also developed fully. I mean the five senses as known to physiology.) Remember we are just about the middle point of Rounds (3 1/2 R.) and have passed the half of its Root Races, as to the Spiritual senses the count
2. Now Bhuvar pertaining to the Element (the spirit, not material) Water — it has 6 dimensions of space and 4 senses, sound, touch, form (or sight), and taste.
3. Swar — 5 dimensions — and 3 senses — sound, touch and form (or sight) for it pertains to the heat or Fire-Element.
4. Mahar — (Element of Air) — 4 dimensions and two senses — sound and touch.
5. Janas — (Ether element) 3 dimensions, one sense — Sound including all others.
6. Tapas — (Super Ether, — no element known here) 2 dimensions. The seven senses purely spiritual.
7. Satya totality of Being or of Existence or one Spiritual dimension including all; and one sense — the Universal sense or "Brahma's Egg" —
Above is Sat.
(or Parabrahm), the Secondless
Reality.
These worlds spring from evolution while the seven nether — proceed on the way to involution, with Atala, Vitala, Sutala, Rasatala, Talatala, Mahatala and Patala — the dimensions and senses follow in the same order — the seventh being the internal or "material egg of Brahma" in esoteric phraseology, in contradistinction to Brahma's egg — the repository and receptacle of all those 14 worlds. The Materialistic exoteric religions see in them seven heavens and seven hells. The initiates know them to be 14 planes of existences one within the other — and if possible to be represented by any figure then going thus, like the centripetal and centrifugal forces — one to the right and the other to the left. The blue pencil represents evolution, red involution. [The dotted line represents the blue pencil and the black line the red. — Ed.]
1. Central point, Brahma's Egg. The All Spirit.
2. Central point Brahma's Internal Egg — MATTER. N.B. Here matter is purely spiritual — "The Spirituality of Evil the other being the Spirituality of good."
None of these worlds are to be conceived of by the materialists of this Earth. Each is on a different plane of Existence, within and around our world which is the seventh at both ends — if end there be.
Therefore the conch is sacred — the conch the weapon in the left hand of Vishnu the Preserver, and the Chakra or wheel in the right hand — standing for Eternal Cyclic Evolution and Involution. But these 14 worlds or "six other blocks of Humanity" as you call them, are neither inside nor outside, neither above or below — they are utterly independent of locality as said before. So do not materialise them, but read Kant or better yet E. Von Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious" II vol. though we think that you shall get disgusted with it. He is very incomplete H. Schleiden says — but yet the clearest of all German philosophers on Principium Individuationes, and with the help of Esoteric philosophy would find himself on the right track.
I shall send you in a day or two Mohini's "Man" corrected (passages that are incorrect only, of course). A second edition in view of Secret Doctrine absolutely needed. And the letter I sent you — as necessary. Correct and edit it and send it to me to copy and send to the Theosophist.
And now goodbye — Try to etherealise your thoughts — my noble colleague and confederate, and may the Lord God of Israel pour upon you a little of his Spirituality such as he poured on Hoseah, the cultured and chaste orator.
By the bye — speaking of the Lord God, I made a discovery: "worth a twopenny damn" — is not original with the cultured Myers. It is the spontaneous brain production of Lord Wellington, I find. "So glad"! for now I am on a real level for culture and poesy with English Aristocracy. Love to dear Bossess and household.
Yours in space and time, as out of it,
H.P.B.
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