Evolution into the Human Kingdom — I
Evolution into the Human Kingdom — II
Evolution into the Human Kingdom — III
Here are two questions that have been asked of me: “You have told us, G. de P., that in the human constitution there is an animal monad which in the next chain-imbodiment will become a human being. You have likewise told us that the animals on, say, our globe of this chain, on our globe, will be humans in the next chain-imbodiment. Question: How do you make this out? Where stand the humans-to-be who are now the animal monads in man? Where will they be when compared with the future humans on the next chain-imbodiment who are now here our beasts?”
The other question is this: “You stated some little time ago, that from the very beginning of this present chain-imbodiment, we who are now humans as monads have always been humans. How then do you account for the other teaching regarding the door into the human kingdom which closed at the middle point of the Fourth Round, in other words during the Atlantean race?”
What I said a moment ago is true. It is our teaching that the present human monads have been human monads from the beginning of this chain-imbodiment; and please remember we are speaking of monads now. I have likewise stated that there is in man an animal monad which in the next chain-imbodiment will be human. Now I will take the first question first: The answer is this: Those animals which are now called animal monads and which are the animal parts of us men — I do not mean the physical body, that is the physical part of men, but the animal part, in other words our animal, the human animal of us, the instincts, the thoughts, the motives, the attributes, the qualities that make the human animal, and of which the body is merely an expression, the open door — these will be the humans in the human kingdom in the next chain-imbodiment; and our present animals will then be the lower and lowest units of the human kingdom in the next chain-imbodiment.
To make this more comprehensible let us reverse the process. Instead of looking ahead, we will go back to the moon, the moon-chain, the time when we were all on the moon. We then, we higher humans now in this chain-imbodiment, were on the moon the individual animal monads in the then humans of the moon-chain. In other words the men on the moon-chain had, as we now have, animal monads as part of their constitution. When the moon-chain finished its manvantaric evolution and died as a chain, giving birth to this chain, the moon-humans then had become Dhyan-Chohans, had entered the dhyan-chohanic kingdom. Their animal monads had then become human, each going up a step.
Now then, what were the humans on the moon were the lowest of the Dhyan-Chohans in this imbodiment. What were the animal monads in the moon-men are now the humans in this chain-imbodiment. Again, what the animals are now, as I have already stated, on this earth or in this chain-imbodiment, will be the lower and lowest humans in the next chain-imbodiment. Reverse the process on the moon. What the moon-animals were when the moon ended its Seventh Round, then became human, not the high humans, but they entered the human kingdom. They were men, but the lower part of what we now call the human kingdom.
So we have the animals on the moon become the lower humans here. These lower humans as well as the higher humans when this earth-chain ends its Seventh Round will be Dhyan-Chohans; and our present human animal monads will be then the higher humans of the next chain-to-be, the child of this chain; and our animals now, i.e., those who make the grade, on this earth when the Seventh Round ends, will be the lower and lowest humans in the next chain-imbodiment. So you see we have thus: animals entering the human kingdom, not the bodies, the monads. That is where your constant confusion comes in. You keep thinking of bodies. I am talking of monads. What are now the monads manifesting through the animals, when the Seventh Round of this chain is ended, will have evolved, which means developed, unfolded — the monads will have unfolded to become human, so that in the next chain-imbodiment the animals will then be human. What kind of humans? The highest? No, we have already stated the higher will be what are now the animal monads in us men, as we were on the moon the animal monads in the moon-men. And the animals on the moon reached humanity, the human stage, at the end of the Seventh Moon-Round, i.e., those who made the grade, so that they could then become men in the human kingdom, and are amongst us now on this earth as the lower and lowest humans.
It is an old, simple teaching that every Theosophist knows, that not only are there 7, 10, 12 classes of monads, but that each such class or family (kingdom is another good word) has its own special divisions, so that our human kingdom has its special divisions; the Masters and the Buddhas at one end, the almost animal humans at the other end, like the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Andaman Islanders, and so on. Between these two classes of men there is an enormous psychological, spiritual, and intellectual range. But they are all men, they all belong to the human kingdom, because all have attained conscious self-consciousness.
The other question is this, and it leads right on from this first one. I will repeat the question: “G. de P., you stated some time ago that we human monads have been human from the beginning of this chain-imbodiment. How is this reconciled with the other statement made by H. P. B. and you that the door into the human kingdom closed at the middle point of our Fourth Round, in other words during the Atlantean race? There seems a contradiction here.” From what has been stated, you see clearly that there is no contradiction because the answer to the first question shows that the human monads were humans from the very beginning of our chain-imbodiment, because they attained humanity at the end of the Seventh Moon-Round.
What then is the meaning of this phrase, “door into the human kingdom closing at the middle point of the Fourth Round”? It means this: That all those entities coming from the moon-pitris, lunar pitris, which we can use now as a very general term meaning all monads coming from the moon — there are lunar human pitris, lunar animal pitris, lunar plant pitris, lunar mineral pitris, lunar dhyan-chohanic pitris — it means that all these were the fathers of everything, that is of our own chain now, the lunar fathers of all the kingdoms.
I will make a short excursus now before continuing my answer, because it may make the answer clearer. You remember that H. P. B. and others have written of families or classes of monads, in other words these are the different kingdoms of nature. H. P. B. counts them as 7, because the septenary classification is easier, and she wrote to make things easier. A more complete classification is that of 10, 10 kingdoms, 10 classes of monads. The most complete is that of 12.
Now H. P. B.’s 7 kingdoms or classes of monads were the following, counting from the highest down: 3 classes of Dhyan-Chohans, the human kingdom, the beast kingdom, the vegetable kingdom, and the mineral kingdom, seven. She merely mentioned but did not include 3 more lower than the mineral, the elemental kingdoms, three in number thus making 10 — 10 kingdoms of nature. What then are the other two kingdoms of nature to make the complete number 12, corresponding by the way to the 12 globes of the chain, to the 12 Houses of the Zodiac, or the 12 Logoi of the sun? They are these: No. 1, and the first and the lowest, if you wish, counting upwards now, is the root-manu; the 12th is the seed-manu, using the terms employed by H. P. B.; and thus you have your 12. You see therefore that the kingdom of the Manus is higher than the highest kingdom of the Dhyan-Chohans, and it is practically a divine kingdom, if we speak of the dhyan-chohanic threefold kingdom as being spiritual.
Now then, I return to my answer to the question: The door into the human kingdom means that after 3 rounds have taken place, and the Fourth Round which was the lowest and most material is over, ended, there comes a point in time and in natural functions where the descent on the downward arc stops, and from that moment begins the climb on the upward arc. The downward arc is the arc of shadows, so-called. The upward arc is the luminous arc. The reason for these names is the following: The downward arc is the evolution of matter. Matter comes forth in all its myriad multiform shapes, going with the corresponding involution or recession of spirit. The luminous arc is the reverse of this, the evolution of spirit corresponding to an involution of matter. Matter is ingathered. Spirit expands on the upward arc.
Now then, only those beings can climb the upward arc which have the germs of self-consciousness within them, because it is the arc of the opening of spirit. Do you catch that thought? Now on the downward arc, the law of acceleration came into operation for the lower kingdoms of nature. The law of retardation on the downward arc was in force where the spiritual monads were concerned, for they did not want to drop into matter, they ran down reluctantly and slowly; whereas the material entities, the lower beings expressing themselves in the lower kingdoms, had a tremendous pull down, and rushed down. So we see the lower kingdoms were under the law of acceleration on the downward arc. The spiritual kingdoms were under the law of retardation. On the upward arc that is reversed. The spiritual beings as they began to attain the luminous arc felt the attraction of spirit more and more, as their feet became freed from the mire of matter they began to feel the law of acceleration, they began to reach up.
But the creatures more heavy with matter, feeling the attraction of matter downwards, began to lag behind, the law of retardation began to work on them. They are less attracted to the spirit and they are pulled downwards by matter.
Now at this point, so far as the human kingdom is concerned, where the lowest of the downward arc is, is what we call the door into the human kingdom. All those entities whatsoever which have not reached self-consciousness, do not enter that door which will enable them to go upwards to the Seventh Round. I wonder if I have made my meaning clear. Such a simple thought and yet a subtil one. For instance, the door into the human kingdom does not concern the dhyan-chohanic kingdoms; they are above the human. It concerns the human kingdoms and the kingdoms below the humans. All the monads therefore which were human before reaching the midpoint of the Fourth Round passed as it were naturally and simply through the door into the human kingdom which was already open, and they kept right on their way; whereas the monads, like the monads of the animals, which had not achieved humanity yet during the previous three rounds, when they came to this lowest point were so to speak challenged by nature. The ancient religions such as the Egyptians expressed it by the Guardian at the Gate. Who comes here? Who art thou? as the Sanskritists had it. The Book of the Dead speaks of these challenges at the various gates. Now anyone who could give the passwords passed on through; and remember that giving the password was not any password, the door into the human kingdom is not any door. It merely means Nature’s laws beginning to operate at a certain evolutionary point. This point is the middle, the lowest point of all the seven rounds — the middle of the Fourth in the middle of the Atlantean race. All the monads therefore which have been rushing onwards in the downward arc through the three rounds had now come to the Fourth. Those who could pass on, passed naturally and began the upward arc: the Manava kingdom, the 3 dhyan-chohanic kingdoms, and the human kingdom. When it came to the animals, the door closed. They could not pass. In other words they could not enter the human kingdom because they were not yet human.
Now another question! Why are the beasts still with us? As I have already explained, they have not passed the human kingdom; they are feeling strongly the attraction of matter. As each million years goes by, as each thousand years goes by, their pace becomes slower and slower, they cannot make the grade. After a while they stop, die out, and enter into the Nirvana. This is the meaning of the statement you have heard in our books that with a very few exceptions the animal kingdom will not reach to the Seventh Round. Why? They cannot make the grade upwards. The attraction is below. They will enter into their Nirvana and wait till the next chain-imbodiment. Then they will attain humanity. That will be their reward in a chain somewhat superior to this.
And now comes a paradox, a very strange paradox. Some of the monads which have reached in their unwrapping evolution as far as the animal kingdom, will even make it up to the Seventh Round where they will become men. In other words they will then have reached self-consciousness, and then they will be the lower humans of the next chain-round. The animal monad in us at the end of the Seventh Round will be the human monad and will be the higher humans in the next chain-imbodiment.
You may wonder about the apes. Where do they come in the scale of things? Have they entered the human kingdom? No. They are more animal than human. They still belong to the animal kingdom. But there is a touch in the apes — mind you, I am not speaking of the monkeys, I mean the apes — there is in the apes just enough human blood, through us, to enable them in the next chain to be the spiritual and intellectual leaders of the animals who will then form in the next chain-imbodiment the lower and lowest men. The beast will be the highest of this branch of the then human kingdom.
So then we really have the human kingdom, the apes an intermediate stage, the beasts; and the beasts themselves are in many sub-branches — the highest, the intermediate, and the lowest. There is an enormous difference among the beasts, between the ape and the insect, or between a horse and any other creature, a squirrel, a raccoon, or what not. Such distances are enormous even among men.
With all that I have said, I have been talking of monads, and in this connection you may ask yourselves: Doesn’t evolution affect bodies also? The answer is yes. But you see, scientists do not know anything about spiritual evolution except in a very small way. Their idea of evolution is a betterment of the physical body through the slow ages. True, the physical body has progressed through ages; we do not deny it, but it is the forces working from within upon the body, refining it, refining its organs, refining its flesh that brings about this physical evolution. But among the scientists evolution is chance, haphazard, Darwinism. To us the door into the human kingdom has nothing to do with the shape of bodies, of beings, it has solely to do with the inner parts, monadic parts, spiritual, intellectual, psychical, and astral, and when these change, the bodies change. So that I can tell you, even in a small degree the flesh of the truly good man is finer than the flesh of a man who leads a gross life. And that is why it is a true statement when the Buddhists say that the Buddha was a marvel of manly beauty, that even his body seemed to be translucent with spiritual life, something about him was not like the ordinary. It is true. There was a fire of the spirit within him working through his blood and his nerves and the very tissues of his flesh and his bones, making the vehicle more refined in every way. Actually there is a difference between the flesh of a man and the flesh of beasts. I do not say chemists can find it — they may some day. But there is; even the very smell shows it.
I have found that some themes we have been studying are still somewhat obscure in the minds of many here, and elsewhere I doubt not. The particular themes I have in mind are evolution, the imbodying of the monads, and what we humans were on the moon-chain, what the animals were, etc. In the first place I am sure that many students of Theosophy have often asked themselves the following question: Given Nature and her laws and the different classes of the families of monads, could these monads by passing through the lower kingdoms of Nature, unaided, without help from above, gradually through learning, through experience, through evolution, rise higher from kingdom to kingdom, so that the mineral would become the vegetable, and later a beast, the beast a man, the man a god?
Now without mincing words my answer is Yes. It is possible, and in fact would happen if that were the way Nature worked. But she does not work that way, and I will explain why. Furthermore, such slow, slow, slow evolution through the kingdoms of Nature of the monads upwards would take an incredibly long time. Instead of, for instance, the monad of an elemental becoming a man in six or seven imbodiments of our chain, which is something like 60 billions of years, the monads unaided would take six or seven solar manvantaras merely to pass from one kingdom to the next higher. In other words, theoretically the monads can rise without help from the kingdom above into those higher kingdoms if they take time enough for the process. But it would take a quasi-eternity to do it; but the important thing is that Nature is not working that way. Her law is that all lives for all, which means that every entity, wittingly or unwittingly, helps every other entity. It means that every superior kingdom is not only a guide to the kingdom next below itself, but an enormous attraction upwards to itself upon the lower kingdom.
Thus to illustrate: Take the human kingdom: It is the goal of the beast-kingdom; and mark you, in Theosophy we place humans in a kingdom separate from the animals. In the same way the vegetables aspire upwards towards the animal kingdom, and the animal kingdom draws them up. So it is with all kingdoms. But in addition to these things, there is an interchange of — how may I phrase it? — an interchange of help between every two contingent kingdoms: as for instance between the human and the animal, between the dhyan-chohanic and the human, between the second and first dhyan-chohanic, and between the third and the second. In other words what we call in our own human case the descent of the manasaputras and their lighting of the fires of mind in the then mindless humanity, takes place mutatis mutandis, which means with the necessary changes of circumstances and kingdom, between every two adjacent kingdoms. So just as the lower dhyan-chohanic kingdom, the lower manasaputras, inflamed our own minds to become awakened unto thinking for themselves — what we call the descent of the manasaputras — so does the human kingdom inflame the very latent intelligence of the animals. And the animals in their turn are, as it were, manasaputric beings to the kingdom below, by an interchange of life-atoms and by the conjoining bonds of the two kingdoms, where there are creatures who may at one time be called low animals or very high plants.
Now with those points established, let us examine two questions. 1. What were we humans now in this Earth-chain, what were we on the Moon-chain, the parent of this Earth-chain? Remember the moon is just a dead chain, from which all life has fled, except what we may call the life of a corpse, a chemical and quasi-physiological activity of the molecules. What were we present humans on the Moon-chain? We were the animal monads in the moon-men, in the humanity of the moon, or what, if you wish, we could call the animal moon-men, just as here on earth we speak of ourselves as thinking humans and animal humans, referring to different parts of our constitution — facts which you all know. When I say we, I mean we of the higher class of human beings.
Question 2. What were the low class of human beings on earth today, and the lowest class of human beings, the savages today — who according to the anthropologists can scarcely count to more than 10, that is can scarcely have a clear idea of what more than 10 things means, such as the Veddahs of Ceylon and the Andaman Islanders and some peoples in the South Seas and some of the tribes in Africa, etc., etc. — what were these lower men on the Moon-chain? They were the moon-animals. Then you will immediately say: “Then we are a whole kingdom higher than these others of the human family.” No. You have the explanation at the ends of your fingers. The animals of the Moon-chain before the moon’s Seventh or last Round took place, according to the process which I have just tried to illustrate a few moments ago, so to speak were manasaputrized by the moon-men, the moon-humanity. So that before those animals reached the moon’s Seventh Round, they had thus been enlightened and raised to the human status, but a low human status.
So these lower human beings among us today, those in whom the spark of mind now burns not too brightly, were once animals on the moon, then were manasaputrized into humanity before the moon’s Seventh Round ended. Thus then, when these monads at the end of the Seventh moon-round, after the long pralaya, came to our earth, they came already as humanized entities, as humans.
Now what on the Moon-chain were our present animals? They were the lowest animals on the moon, the very lowest, those which had not emanated from out of themselves the powers to allow themselves to be manasaputrized; just as on earth we have insects and flying things and creeping things and the lower forms of life of various kinds; because the animal kingdom contains many classes, from its highest representatives the apes, running through all the grades of the quadrupeds, through the birds and fishes down to the insects, etc.
Similarly now, instead of looking backwards let us look forwards. We humans, that is we higher humans, in the next chain-imbodiment will be the lowest dhyan-chohanic kingdom there. The animal human parts of us, what we call the animal man or the animal monad, will at the end of the Seventh Round on our present chain have become fully humanized or man. And we, what we call ourselves now, will then have become dhyan-chohanized or the lowest class of Dhyan-Chohans. We shall then have Dhyan-Chohans working through humans who themselves again have animal monads. The lower humans on our earth today, at the end of the Seventh Round will form the average or higher men on the next chain. And our present animal monads will then have become humanized and will form the highest type. In other words, no animal can become a man until it has been manasaputrized.
Remember I am not talking of bodies now. I am talking of true evolution, the inner forces and powers which distinguish a thinking man from the relatively unthinking animal. That has not anything to do with bodies. I am talking of monads, of the real man, of the real beasts, of the inner being. And our highest animals at the end of our Seventh Round, provided that they make the grade upward by the last three Rounds, will be humans when this Earth-chain comes to its end and dies. Similarly for other kingdoms in nature at the end of the Seventh Round, if its representatives have succeeded in making the grade upwards, each such kingdom will have gone up a step higher. Those that make the grade among the animals will have become men. The men who make the grade amongst us will become Dhyan-Chohans.
Now then, who were the Dhyan-Chohans who manasaputrized the moon-beings of the Third Root-Race? Our own human ancestors. They were the average or higher men of the moon, moon-men, now to become Dhyan-Chohans, called manasaputras, sons of mind, i.e., Dhyanins, because their function is, so far as we are concerned, to awaken thought, to awaken mind in us. The beast, for instance, has as much latent mind as any man has, but it has not been manasaputrized, awakened, stimulated, lifted, brought into self-conscious activity.
Take the case of a little child, a human child. Why doesn’t it think as we do? Why doesn’t it write books, why doesn’t it speak on Theosophy? Why doesn’t it study science? Because it is too young. Of course. But the real answer is because its mind has not yet been emanated from within itself. The parents of the child act as the manasaputras to a certain extent. They teach it, they watch. Little by little the child begins to observe, to take note of things, begins to think, its faculties develop, and before you realize it, the child begins to say nice things, and you are proud of your offspring. What has happened? Simply that its mind has begun to open, to function. But if that child in childhood were carried to a desert island and lived there alone, provided it could live, provided it survived, it would not learn speech. Its mind moves very slowly; it would take note of what is going on around, but it would be in a worse state than a grown savage like the Andaman Islander. It would be little more than a semi-thinking human animal, because its mind would not yet have awakened, opened, developed, emanated, evolved.
For instance, when we see a child grown into a thinking man, we don’t say that is a haphazard work of thinking Nature, fortuitous, chance. We say: there is law behind there, something called mind has evolved out of that entity. Something already in there has simply flowered out. In other words evolution or emanation is simply growth. Those three words are practically interchangeable: growth, emanation, evolution: because growth, as a plant from a seed, consists in the unfolding or flowing forth of what that seed contained.
Now H. P. B. in her wonderful work, The Secret Doctrine, divides the monads into 7, and I think even 10 classes. As a matter of fact there are 12. These 7 or 10 or 12 monadic classes in another place she divides into 3 families, 3 divisions. The first and highest are all those monads above the human. An intermediate family or division is the human and all connected with the human — and remember how many varieties of human and sub-human beings there are. The third and lowest class are all the entities below the very lowest entity which by any stretch of fact could be called human, such as the beasts and the vegetables and the minerals and the elementals. She points out that of these 3 divisions the highest are not only the forerunners in coming over from the moon who guided the elementals in the building of our new Earth-chain, but also were the instructors and guides of the next class, or division rather, which came following after. We were this next class which came following after; and they and we thereupon became the guides, the helpers, the instructors, of the lowest class which followed after us, just exactly as we see in Nature among us today.
One thing more about the manasaputras, and it will explain what may seem like a contradiction to you if you have read The Secret Doctrine without care. The manasaputras who as a body were the particular awakeners of us from non-thinking human bodies or quasi-animal bodies into thinking human beings, were the lowest class of the Dhyan-Chohans who were average or higher men on the moon, who had attained dhyan-chohanship at the end of the Seventh Round of the moon. But these, while they enlightened us, speaking now in classes, were themselves guided and helped by the two higher dhyan-chohanic classes, a few representatives of which during the early races of this Fourth Round of our globe came amongst men as gods and demi-gods, and guided them; and these are they who are referred to in the exoteric religions of antiquity under such names as Osiris, Isis, Ahura-Mazda, in other words the gods and god-men of the ancient peoples. They were the Dhyan-Chohans, some of them I should say, of the highest and second classes, who even before the manasaputras came and awakened our mind, were already at their work of teaching. Because mark you: even in the first race of Globe A, the first globe of our chain, beginning with the Second Round, there were already men, that is to say thinking, self-conscious, cogitating, feeling, loving human beings. Those were they who have now become what we now call the Mahatmans, the Masters, their highest chelas, lower chelas, and the leaders of men, simply because they are more highly evolved than the rest of us men. They were men. And these few men, relatively speaking, (by few I don’t mean 3 or 4; perhaps a million or two, it is just guess-work) even in the first race on Globe A, were taught by the Dhyan-Chohans of the highest and second classes. The latter helped to awaken those earliest men, awaken them as a parent will awaken the mind of her child, helping to do so, teaching and guiding and instructing and lifting up and showing the path, giving ideals, sounding keynotes of truth.
For instance, we humans, looking before us into the future, shall reach the end of the Seventh Round of our chain. We humans then, those of us who shall have made the grade, will develop into Dhyan-Chohans of the third class, the lowest, the kingdom above the human kingdom — call them the angels if you like — angels of the third or lowest grade. The better name is Dhyan-Chohans, because angel in the Christian teachings is a vague term. The Masters and their highest chelas will then have become Dhyan-Chohans of the second or next to the highest dhyan-chohanic class; and every one of the dhyan-chohanic kingdoms will, each in its turn, have moved up a step, a kingdom. Our animals, those who make the grade, will become men of a low type at the end of the Seventh Round. Which animals will these be? The apes, the monkeys, possibly some of the quadrupeds. The beasts below these — I doubt if any of them will reach to the human stage even at the end of the Seventh Round. They are still too crude, too low, unprepared. But they will become men during the next chain, except the very lowest of our animals who will be the higher animals on the next chain.
Another thought in connection with these ideas. I stated that I was not speaking of bodies when mentioning evolution, and I have not been. I have been speaking of monads, egos, souls, call them what you will, in other words the consciousness-center within an entity, that which makes him what he is as a conscious being, a thinker, a feeler, one with judgment and discrimination, one who feels love, compassion, pity, sympathy, all these lovely human qualities which are truly human as well as humane.
But now, to speak for a moment about bodies: you will find in my book Theosophy and Modern Science [Man in Evolution ] how hard I tried to show that all evolution is from within outwards, that nothing can evolve or unfold into something greater unless it had not only the power and capacity inside to do so, but had already within itself what is going to come forth. If you turn the spigot, the faucet, the water won’t run out of it unless there is water there to run out of it; and no man will manifest or bring forth into his life, into his actions, into his thoughts, what he has not awakened within himself. But, while all evolution is therefore from within, while all growth is from within, yet, as the ages slowly go by, even the physical bodies feel the vibration, the impetus, continually impinging upon them, and feel also the quality of those impulses as unfolding or evolution becomes constantly greater; so that even the physical bodies become more refined and slowly change. Yet there seems to be a law in Nature that no strain of physical bodies can endure after a certain period. For some reason, interesting, fascinating, Nature seems to call forth, as it were, and say to any physical body-strain — thus far and no farther. It would seem as if that type of structure could not evolve properly, efficiently. Then those bodies slowly die out, and the monads which gave them life, after their rest in the Devachan or Nirvana come back and find new robes or bodies waiting for them of quite another kind.
I have been asked to speak again on the subject of how the monads pass from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom. The question is in general: Please again state just exactly the difference between the animal monads in the animals, and the animal monads in men.
The difficulty in understanding this thing, which is not difficult at all, but extremely simple, has been the fact, the common human failing (I have it, we all have it), that we have persistently confused monads with rupas, forms, bodies, so that when we speak of animals we immediately figurate sheep, elephants, horses, cats, dogs, or what not, forgetting that the real animal is the monad. But which animal monads? The animal monads in the moon-men, or the animal monads of the animals on the moon?
Now for instance, we on this earth, each one of us, has an animal monad as part of his constitution. What difference is there between this human animal monad, and the animal monad of an elephant or a dog? What is the difference, the distinction, between the two? In the first place, one kingdom does not turn into the next higher kingdom through evolution. When we speak of kingdoms, we mean kingdoms; and in Theosophy we have 10 kingdoms of beings, otherwise 10 classes of monads, otherwise again 10 life-waves. What are they? We count them in this manner: 3 of the Elementals, the Mineral, Vegetable, Animal, the Human — seven; and the three dhyan-chohanic kingdoms — making 10 classes of monads in all, 10 kingdoms, 10 different life-waves.
Not one of these kingdoms ever passes, through evolution or development or unfolding, into the next higher kingdom, never, because these kingdoms refer to the rupas which shelter the monads, imbody them, enclose them, are the vehicles of the monads. For instance, the animal kingdom never becomes a human kingdom. The vegetable kingdom never becomes an animal kingdom. The mineral kingdom never becomes a plant kingdom. The human kingdom never becomes the lowest of the three dhyan-chohanic kingdoms. When as an individual monad it has become animalized or humanized or dhyan-chohanized to the next higher, then at its next incarnation or imbodiment it enters into the very lowest realm of the next higher kingdom as an individual monad. But the kingdoms never as kingdoms become higher kingdoms.
Every kingdom below the human is striving to become — no, pardon me, every monad in every kingdom below the human kingdom is striving upwards towards the human kingdom. The human kingdom is its objective or goal, their objective, their goal; just as our goal as humans is to strive to become a member of the lowest of the three dhyan-chohanic kingdoms just above the human. But the human kingdom as such never becomes that lowest dhyan-chohanic kingdom. Why? Because Nature needs these kingdoms where she has them. They are as it were houses of life for the peregrinating, evolving monads to live in, to pass through, to graduate from and enter the next house of life or kingdom. Nature needs these through eternity. That is why long after we human monads shall have left the human kingdom and evolved up to become Dhyan-Chohans of the lowest dhyan-chohanic kingdom, the human kingdom will still remain containing monads or individuals then using the bodies kept alive by those new incoming individuals from what is now the animal kingdom. If the human kingdom all evolved to become Dhyan-Chohans, there would be a gap between the Dhyan-Chohans and the beast. The monads go up step by step, kingdom after kingdom.
What makes these kingdoms in nature? The records in the astral light. There is a very important contributory thought, and it explains a lot of questions I am going to discuss here. From immemorial eternity, as far as I know, there have always been, at least in our solar system and probably in our galaxy, 7 or 10 or 12 classes of monads or kingdoms or life-waves for our chain; and they have been kept going as these kingdoms because of new monads coming in from the lower kingdom, graduating into our kingdom, and human monads graduating out from our human kingdom into the dhyan-chohanic kingdom. So the kingdoms remain because the 10 classes of monads remain through eternity. It is the monads which evolve.
The question comes in — and this is incidental — don’t the bodies of the monads in which the monads live when they imbody in the bodies also improve? They do but with almost excessive slowness. Why? Because the astral molds in the astral light have been improved from aeons and aeons in the past. I have no idea how far past — you might say from eternity. With each cosmic manvantara those astral molds in the astral light are slowly changing and improving. So that the kingdoms themselves, although remaining always the same kingdoms, are through the eternities themselves slowly rising, but with immense slowness; whereas the monads evolve much faster.
There are certain rapid variations in the kingdoms themselves which are not permanent however. As for instance, take a human frame today. It is a far cry in its present relative grace and symmetry and dignified carriage to the first human beings of the Third Round or even the human beings of the Third Root-Race in this Round. If you saw them today you would say: Well, what ape-like bodies those are, they are positively ape-like. But there is not a drop of ape-blood in them. Don’t get that idea. We use the term ape-like because the apes have a certain amount of human blood in them from that time; and evolving very slowly, not as fast as we humans have in shape and symmetry and beauty of form, they still contain what we call, just to give it a word, an ape-like picture of their human part-parents.
But mark you, the humans on the Moon-chain at about the same period where we are now, looked pretty much like what we now look like, and they had a time when they were rather ape-like in appearance, but with not a particle of ape-blood in them.
Now what does this mean? It means that because the rupa-kingdoms evolve to betterment with such exceeding slowness, they nevertheless have spurts, upshootings, of great improvement which cannot hold. They drop back, they degenerate and go back. I am talking of kingdoms now, not the monads which incarnate in those a certain line of development partly from inherent svabhava, but partly because of the mold in the astral light.
Now then, what possibility is there of reconciling what I just told you with the statement I made, and which you will find in H. P. B., that the animals on the moon became the humans on this chain? That our animals with us now will be the humans in the next Earth-chain, the child of this chain? The human constitution — and indeed the constitution of an entity imbodied in any kingdom, the animal kingdom let us say, or in the dhyan-chohanic kingdom above ours, every such entity — is sevenfold. But of the seven principles or monads from any such constitution like our human, some are expressed with relative fulness and others are as yet largely unexpressed; and it is this difference which makes the kingdoms. Thus the animals have everything in them that a man has. They have a divine monad, a spiritual monad, and a human monad and an animal monad and an astral-vital monad and even what I have called the physical monad; but the monads in the animal kingdom have thus far evolved only up to the animal monad. That is why they are in the animal kingdom; they are at home there. When in the future the monads in the animal kingdom, the highest amongst them, shall have begun to yearn upwards towards the human monad, in other words begun to be humanized, the human capacities, elements, qualities, svabhava, in the animal, will have begun slowly to show themselves. The animals will begin to feel no longer at home in the animal kingdom, in these lower rupas; and as the process of slow humanizing continues, as the animal monads rise through experience; they will leave the animal kingdom and be attracted, psycho-magnetically, to the very lowest bodies in the human kingdom just above on the scale of life.
What happens? These monads formerly manifesting in the animal kingdom, in animal bodies, are now sufficiently humanized to enter into the lowest human bodies of savage barbarians, or, especially in the beginning of this Round on this Globe D, of beings who are far lower than the lowest savage we have today — but human nevertheless. What happens? They enter these human bodies as the animal monads there. There is the key. Similarly when a human being aspiring up to the dhyan-chohanic monad, to the spiritual monad, has reached a point where he is almost above humanity, growing out of it, when his yearnings are of spirit, higher, higher, there comes a time when incarnation among humans no longer is adequate. He is dhyanizing himself, this monad, and the attraction to the human kingdom will some day stop. There will be no further pull of incarnation in bodies of human beings. The next will be in the lowest of the dhyan-chohanic kingdoms.
So then, what is the difference or distinction between the animal monads in animals and the animal monads in men? When the animal monad in the animal kingdom has humanized itself through evolution sufficiently no longer to feel attracted in incarnation to the animal kingdom, it will seek imbodiment psycho-magnetically in the very lowest specimens of men, and become the animal monad in men. Thus you see the unity of universal nature and her marvelous variety.
Now we will take the specific aspect of the moon-men and the moon-animals. You have been told many times that all kingdoms lower than the human will show a tendency to die out as Round the 4th becomes Round the 5th; still more tendency to die out as Round the 5th becomes Round the 6th; so that by the time the 7th and highest and last Round is reached, the animals will have practically died out, the reason being that they cannot make the grade up the ascending arc. Their monads gradually die out and go into Nirvana, where they will wait until the next chain-imbodiment, and during Rounds 1, 2, and 3 of that next chain-imbodiment. Thus the animals who could not make the grade up the Sixth and Seventh Rounds will have a chance again. Then they will come in as animals again. Nature will prepare the way through the elementals and the architects. Bodies will be there for them. They themselves will help to form the bodies in the animal kingdom. These are the animals who could not make the grade.
Now the same thing happened on the moon. Yet during the Seventh Round, whether on the moon in the past or in our own Seventh Round in the future, there will be exceptions in the animal kingdom. What are these exceptions? The apes, possibly the very highest of some of the monkeys too. The apes at the end of the Seventh Round will just have touched the human stage. The same thing happened on the moon. There the animals died out before the lunar Seventh Round was reached, except a few who just reached the human stage, just ready to enter the human kingdom when the Seventh Round was closing. There were millions of them, but compared with the billions and billions of the life-wave for the kingdom, it is a mere handful. Yes, these animals on the moon could make the grade and did. They just reached the lowest bottom of the next kingdom when the Seventh Round was reached, and became the lowest human beings on this new chain. How about the human animal monads in the Moon-chain? These were growing all the time more and more humanized and at the end of the Seventh Round on the Moon-chain they had become men; and the lunar men, the Moon-men at the end of the Seventh Round, had become Dhyan-Chohans of the lowest dhyan-chohanic kingdom. Who were these moon animal monads? We were they. And that is what I meant when I said the animal monads which reached the tip of the human kingdom on the Moon-chain became the humans on this chain. The kingdoms do not rise. Nature keeps them there, each on its own level, for the monads coming up from below, as monads, reaching up to the spirit lunar chain as it were. Spirit yearns to help earth, earth yearns upward to spirit.
So you see, marvelous picture, although the kingdoms remain the same, as it were retain the same place on nature’s Ladder of Life, the monads come down through them and then on the upward arc sweep up through the kingdoms. Thus with us. Our animal monads are the monads from the animal kingdom which had become sufficiently humanized no longer to be animal animal monads but human animal monads. So when our Seventh Round shall have come, the animal monads in us will be the humans of the next imbodiment of the chain. We humans by the end of the Seventh Round, those of us who make the grade, will have become dhyanized, chohanized if you wish, and shall have become Dhyan-Chohans at the end of the Seventh Round.
Now then, next thought. What were the manasaputras in this our present chain-imbodiment who incarnated in us human beings in the Third Root-Race on this Globe during this Fourth Round and made us thinking men? We were in the human kingdom as bodies, but I am now talking of monads. Who were the manasaputras who awaked us intellectually? They were those who had attained Dhyan-Chohanship on the moon at the end of the Seventh Round, and we were then their animal monads. They found us out again, they sought us out again, our higher selves as it were waiting for them, waiting until our bodies were ready, until the human rupas were sufficiently subtil, flexible, to receive the intellectual fire. Then they incarnated in us. If you have read H. P. B.’s Secret Doctrine, you will now see why these manasaputras could not incarnate before that time. No fit bodies for us. They were ready. The bodies were not ready. No fit rupas, no fit bodies, for us, they said. Those bodies had to become more subtil, more delicate, refined, more proper to receive the holy intellect of the manasaputras enlightening the latent mind of these humans, of us. Then when the time came, there came the ‘descent’ as we call it, the descent of the manasaputras. Men began to think. And just let me add here, there was another class of manasaputras far higher than anything we as individuals have been connected with, who started this wonderful work of putting the flame of mind in those early human races. They were even Dhyan-Chohans on the Moon-chain. Marvelous picture!
So when the manasaputras gave us mind, it was merely our own Dhyan-Chohans, the moon-men become Dhyan-Chohans, and we their animal monads now become humans. It was their duty to enlighten us again, to give us back our mind, to awaken it. So shall we at the end of our Seventh Round become Dhyan-Chohans and be the manasaputras to the humanity of the next round who are now our human animal monads.