THE SEVEN ROUNDS AND THE SEVEN RACES.
A STUDY FROM THE "SECRET DOCTRINE." (1)
(Continued.)
THE SIXTH AND SEVENTH ROUNDS.
All that can be said of periods so remote, and conditions of existence so utterly different from the present, is necessarily very general, and the last two Rounds are usually spoken of together. To begin with, we are told that the sixth and seventh Elements are, as yet, absolutely beyond the range of human perception. They will, however, appear as presentments (presentiments?) during the 6th and 7th Races (of this Round), and will become known in the 6th and 7th Rounds respectively. (2) The elements now known have arrived at their state of permanency in this 5th Race of the 4th Round. They have a short period of rest before they are propelled once more on their upward spiritual evolution; when the "living fire of Orcus" (Darkness) will dissociate the most irresolvable and scatter them into the primordial One again. (3) The Earth will reach her true ultimate form — inversely in this to man — her body shell, only after the 7th Round, toward the end of the Manvantara (or great cycle). (4) Before the Earth reaches her 7th Round her mother Moon will have dissolved into thin air." (5) And when the next great cycle, or Manvantara, begins, the Earth will become the "mother Moon" of a new world. On page 172 of Vol. I, there is a diagram of the Moon in her 7th Round, and the Earth-chain to be, which may be compared with the diagram on p. 200, same volume.
The "Lunar Ancestors" (or Pitris) have to become "Men" in order that their Monads may reach a higher plane of activity and self-consciousness, the plane of the "Sons of Mind," (or the Solar Ancestors). In the same way the human Monads (or Egos) of our 7th Round, will become the "Terrene Ancestors" of a new world (or "planetary chain"), and will create those who will become their superiors. (6) That is, each condition of matter and state of consciousness known as "one globe" of the seven-fold Earth-chain, has received its primitive impulse from a similar condition and state in the Moon. This impulse from the Moon-chain has started the corresponding centre of nascent force in the Earth-chain from the laya, or passive, into the active state, only upon a higher plane. So the Beings, our former selves, who built up the astral body of man from their own substance, "the subtler, finer form around which Nature builds physical man," have to go through all human physical experiences in order to develop self-conscious Mind, and become intellectual as well as spiritual entities. Now we can only see with our physical eyes that which is physical, so that all visible planets must exhibit to us only their physical form. We see the dead body of the Moon, for instance, which has not yet dissolved. When we reach the astral plane, in the 5th Round, we shall perceive her astral body with our astral eyes, but we cannot see it now with our physical eyes, even though it exists.
"Those Monads still occupying animal forms after the middle turning-point of the fourth Round, will not become men at all during this Manvantara. They will reach to the verge of humanity only at the close of the seventh Round, to be, in their turn, ushered into a new chain — after pralaya (7) — by older pioneers, the 'Seed-Humanity' for the next great cycle." (8) This corresponds with the statement that our "ancestors" reached the "human germ stage" only at the close of the minor cycle of the first Root-Race. And furthermore we are told that "the next great Manvantara will witness the men of our own life-cycle becoming the instructors and guides of a mankind whose Monads may be still imprisoned — semi-conscious, — in the most intellectual of the animal kingdom, while their lower principles will be animating, perhaps, the highest specimens of the vegetable world." (9)
This is why it is said that "the 'Door' into the human Kingdom closes at the middle of the fourth Round"; because "the Monads, which had not reached the human stage at this point, would find themselves so far behind humanity in general that they could reach the human stage only at the close of the seventh and last Round" (10) as before stated.
The only exceptions to this rule are "the dumb races," whose Monads are already within the human stage, as these half-animals are later than, and on one side descended from, man, their last descendants again, being the anthropoid and other apes. (11) These, the highest mammals after man, are destined to die out during our present (fifth) Race, when their Monads will be liberated, and pass into the astral human forms (or highest elementals) of the sixth and seventh Races, and then into the lowest human forms of the next (fifth) Round. (12) The apes generally will be extinct before the seventh Race develops. (13)
But man, as we have already said, tends first to become a god, that is a divine being, and then God; to be absorbed into the Infinite ocean of the Divine Consciousness, with which his spirit shall be identified. But it is said in the Sacred Slokas: "The thread of radiance which is imperishable, and dissolves only in Nirvana, re-emerges from it in its integrity on the day when the Great Law calls all things back into action." (14)
FOOTNOTES:
1. The Secret Doctrine, the Synthesis of Science, Religion and Philosophy. By H. P. Blavatsky. References are to the old edition. (return to text)
2. Idem I, 12. (return to text)
3. ldem I, 543. (return to text)
4. Idem I, 260. (return to text)
5. Idem I, 155. (return to text)
6. Idem, I, 180. (return to text)
7. Period of rest and inactivity between two cycles of activity. (return to text)
8. Idem, I, 182. (return to text)
9. Idem I, 267. (return to text)
10. Idem, I, 173. (return to text)
11. Idem I, 183. (return to text)
12. Idem I, 184. (return to text)
13. Idem II, 263. (return to text)
14. Idem II, 80. (return to text)