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The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett - 1923
By A. T. Barker
Letter No XV
From K.H. to A.O.H. Received July loth, 1882.
Does every mineral form, vegetable, plant, animal, alwayscontain within it that entity which involves the potentiality ofdevelopment into a planetary spirit? At this present day in thispresent earth is there such an essence or spirit or soul—the nameis immaterial in every mineral.
Invariably; only rather call it the germ of a future entity,which it has been for ages. Take the human foetus. Fromthe moment of its first planting until it completes its sevenmonths of gestation it repeats in miniature the mineral,vegetable, and animal cycles it passed through in its previous encasements, and only during the last two, develops its future human entity. It is completed but towards the child's seventh year. Yet it existed without any increase or decrease aeons on aeons before it worked its way onward, through and in the womb of mother nature as it works now in its earthly mother's bosom. Truly said a learned philosopher who trusts more to the intuition than to the dicta of modern science. ** The stages of man's intra-uterine existence embody the condensed record of some of the missing pages in Earth's history." Thus you must look back at the animal, mineral and vegetable entities. You must take each entity at its starting point in the manvantaric course as the primordial cosmic atom already differentiated by the first flutter of the manvantaric life breath. For the potentiality which develops finally in a perfected planetary spirit lurks in, is in fact that primordial cosmic atom. Drawn by its ** chemical affinity " to coalesce with other like atoms the aggregate sum of such united atoms will in time become a manbearing globe after the stages of the cloud, the spiral and sphere of fire-mist and of the condensation, consolidation, shrinkage and cooling of the planet have been successively passed through. But mind, not every globe becomes a ** man bearer.'* I simply state the fact without dwelling further upon it in this connection. The great difficulty in grasping the idea in the above process lies in the liability to form more or less incomplete mental conceptions of the working of the one element. Of its inevitable presence in every imponderable atom, and its subsequent ceaseless and almost illimitable multiplication of new centres of activity without affecting in the least its own original quantity. Let us take such an aggregation of atoms destined to form our globe and then follow, throwing a cursory look at the whole, the special work of such atoms. We will call the primordial atom A. This being not a circumscribed centre of activity but one initial point of a manwantaric whirl of evolution; gives birth to new centres which we may term B, C, D, etc., incomputably. Each of these capital points gives birth to minor centres, a, b, c, etc. And later in the course of evolution and involution in their development into A's, B's, C's, etc., and so form the roots or are the developing causes of new genera, species, classes, etc., ad infinitum. Now neither the primordial A and its companion atoms, nor their derived a's, b's, c's, have lost one tittle of their original force or life essence by the evolution of their derivatives. The force there, is not transformed into something else as I have already shown in my letter, but with each development of a new centre and acting from within itself multiplies ad infinitum without ever losing a particle of its nature in quantity or quality. Yet acquiring as it progresses something plus in its differentiation.This *' force " so-called, shows itself truly indestructible butdoes not correlate and is not convertible in the sense acceptedby the Fellows of the R.S. But rather may be said to growand expand into ** something else " while neither its ownpotentiality nor being are in the least affected by the trans-formation. Nor can it well be called force since the latter is butthe attribute of Yin Sin (Yin Sin or the one ** Form of exist-ence " also Adi-Buddhi or Dharmakaya the mystic, universallydiffused essence) when manifesting in the phenomenal worldof senses namely only your old acquaintance Fohat. Seeinthis connexion Subba Row's article ' Aryan Arhat EsotericDoctrines " on the seven-fold principles in man. His reviewof your Fragments, pp. 94 and 95. The initiated Brahminscall (the Yin Sin and Fohat) Brahman and Sakti when manifesting as that force. We will perhaps be nearer correct to callit infinite life and the source of all life visible and invisible anessence inexhaustible ever present in short Swabhavat (S. inits universal application Fohat when manifesting throughoutour phenomenal world or rather the visible universe henceinits limitations). It is pravritti when active, nirvitti when passive. Call it the Sakti of Parabrahma, if you like, and say withthe Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus Mayabecomes Iswar the creative principle—a power commonlycalled God which disappears and dies with the rest whenpralaya comes. Or you may hold with the northern Buddhistphilosophers and call it Adi-buddhi the all-pervading supremeand absolute intelligence with its periodically manifestingDivinity—** Avalokiteshvara " (a manwantaric intelligent naturecrowned with humanity)—the mystic name given by us to thehosts of the Dyan Chohans (N.B., the solar Dyan Chohansorthe host of only our solar system) taken collectively, which hostrepresents the mother source, the aggregate amount of all theintelligences that were or ever will be within our own string ofman-bearing planets or on any part or portion of our solarsystem. And this will bring you by analogy to see that in itsturn Adi-buddhi (as its very name translated literally implies)is the aggregate intelligence of the universal intelligences in-cluding that of the Dyan Chohans even of the highest order.That is all I dare now to tell you on this special subject, asIfear I have already transcended the limit. Therefore whenever I speak of humanity without specifying it you must understand that I mean not humanity of our fourth round as weseeit on this speck of mud in space but the whole host alreadyevoluted.
Yes as described in my letter—there is but one element and it is impossible to comprehend our system before correct conception of it is firmly fixed in one's mind. You must therefore pardon me if I dwell on the subject longer than really seems necessary. But unless this great primary fact is firmly grasped the rest will appear unintelligible. This element thus is the— to speak metaphysically—one sub-stratum or permanent cause of all manifestations in the phenomenal universe. The ancients speak of the five cognizable elements of ether, air, water, fire, earth, and of the one incognizable element (to the uninitiates) the 6th principle of the universe—call it Purush Sakti, while to speak of the seventh outside the sanctuary was punishable with death. But these five are but the differentiated aspect of the one. As man is a seven-fold being so is the universe—the septenary microcosm being to the septenary macrocosm but as the drop of rain water is to the cloud from whence it dropped and whither in the course of time it will return. In that one are embraced or included so many tendencies for the evolution of air, water, fire, etc. (from the purely abstract down to their concrete condition) and when those latter are called elements it is to indicate their productive potentialities for numberless form changes or evolution of being. Let us represent the un- known quantity as X; that quantity is the one eternal immutable principle—and A, B, C, D, E, five of the six minor principles or components of the same; viz., the principles of earth, water, air, fire and ether (akasa) following the order of their spirituality and beginning with the lowest. There is a sixth principle answering to the sixth principle Buddhi, in man (to avoid confusion remember that in viewing the question from the side of the descending scale the abstract All or eternal principle would be numerically designated as the first and the phenomenal universe as the seventh and whether belonging to man or to the universe—viewed from the other side the numerical order would be exactly reversed) but we are not permitted to name it except among the initiates. I may however hint that it is connected with the process of the highest intellection. Let us call it N and besides these, there is under all the activities of the phenomenal universe an energizing impulse from X, call this Y. Algebraically stated, our equation would therefore read A + B + C + D + E + N + Y=X. Each of these six letters represents, so to speak, the spirit or abstraction of what you call elements (your meagre English gives me no other word). This spirit controls the entire line of evolution, around the whole manwantaric cycle in its own department. The informing, vivifying, impelling, evolving cause, behind the countless phenomenal manifestations in that department of Nature. Let us work out the idea with a single example. Take fire. D—the primal igneous principle resident in X—is theultimate cause of every phenomenal manifestation of fire onall the globes of the chain. The proximate causes are theevoluted secondary igneous agencies which severally controlthe seven descents of fire on each planet. Every elementhaving its seven principles and every principle its seven subprinciples and these secondary agencies before doing so, havein turn become primary causes. D is a septenary compoundof which the highest fraction is pure spirit. As we see it onour globe it is in its coarsest, most material condition, as grossin its way as is man in his physical encasement. In the nextpreceding globe to ours fire was less gross than here : ontheone before that less still. And so the body of flame was moreand more pure and spiritual less and less gross and materialoneach antecedent planet. On the first of all in the manwantaricchain, it appeared as an almost pure objective shining—theMahabuddhi sixth principle of the eternal light. Our globebeing at the bottom of the arc where matter exhibits itself inits grossest form along with spirit—when the fire elementmanifests itself on the globe next succeeding ours in theascending arc it will be less dense than as we see it. Itsspiritual quality will be identical with that which fire hadonthe globe preceding ours in the descending scale; the secondglobe of the ascending scale will correspond in quality withthat of the second anterior globe to ours in the descendingscale, etc. On each globe of the chain there are seven manifestations of fire of which the first in order will compare astospiritual quality with the last manifestation on the next precedingplanet : the process being reversed, as you will infer, with theopposite arc. The myriad specific manifestations of these sixuniversal elements are in their turn but one offshoot, branchesor branchlets of the one single primordial *' Tree of Life."
Take Darwin's genealogical tree of life of the humanraceand others and bearing ever in mind the wise old adage, '* Asbelow so above "—that is the universal system of correspond-ences—try to understand by analogy. Thus will you see thatin this day on this present earth in every mineral, etc., thereis such a spirit. I will say more. Every grain of sand, everyboulder or crag of granite, is that spirit crystallized or petrified.You hesitate. Take a primer of geology and see what scienceaffirms there about the formation, and growth of minerals.What is the origin of all the rocks, whether sedimentaryorigneous. Take a piece of granite or sandstone and you findone composed of crystals, the other of grains of various stones(organic rocks or stones formed out of the remains of onceliving plants and animals, will not serve our present purpose: they are the relics of subsequent evolution while we are con- cerned but with the primordial ones). Now sedimentary and igneous rocks, are composed, the former of sand gravel and mud, the latter of lava. We have then but to trace the origin of the two. What do we find? We find that one was com- pounded of three elements or more accurately three several manifestations of one element,—earth, water and fire, and that the other was similarly compounded (though under different physical conditions) out of cosmic matter—the imaginary materia prima itself one of the manifestations (6th principle) of the one element. How then can we doubt that a mineral contains in it a spark of the One as everything else in this objective natures does?
(2) When the pralaya commences what becomes of the Spirit that has not worked its way up to man?
(2) The period necessary for the completion of the seven local or earthly—or shall we call it—globe-rings (not to speak of the seven Rounds in the minor manwantaras followed by their seven minor pralayas)—the completion of the so-called mineral C5^cle is immeasurably longer than that of any other kingdom. As you may infer by analogy every globe before it reaches its adult period, has to pass through a formation period—also septenary. Law in Nature is uniform and the conception, formation, birth, progress and development of the child differs from those of the globe only in magnitude. The globe has two periods of teeth and of capillature—its first rocks which it also sheds to make room for new—and its ferns and mosses before it gets forest. As the atoms in the body change every seven years so does the globe renew its strata every seven cycles. A section of a part of Cape Breton coalfields shows seven ancient soils with remains of as many forests, and could one dig as deep once more seven other sections would be found following.
There are three kinds of pralayas and manw^antara : —
1 . The universal or Maha pralaya and manwantara.
2. The solar pralaya and manw^antara.
3. TTie minor pralaya and manwantara.
When the pralaya No. 1 is finished the universal manwantara begins. Then the whole universe must be re-evoluted de novo. When the pralaya of a solar system comes it affects that solar system only. A solar prala3^a = 7 minor pralayas. The minor pralayas of No. 3 concern but our little string of globes whether man-bearing or not. To such a string our Earth belongs.
Besides this within a minor pralaya there is a condition of planetary rest or as the astronomers say '* death," Hke thatofour present moon—in which the rocky body of the planetsurvives but the life impulse has passed out. For example.Let us imagine that our earth is one of a group of seven planetsor man-bearing worlds more or less eliptically arranged. Ourearth being at the exact lower central point of the orbit ofevolution, viz., half way round—^we will call the first globeA,the last Z. After each solar pralaya there is a completedestruction of our system and after each solar p. begins theabsolute objective reformation of our system and each timeeverything is more perfect than before.
Now the life impulse reaches *' A ** or rather that whichisdestined to become *' A " and which so far is but cosmic dust.A centre is formed in the nebulous matter of the condensationof the solar dust decimated through space and a series of threeevolutions invisible to the eye of flesh occur in succession, viz.,three kingdoms of elementals or nature forces are evoluted: inother words the animal soul of the future globe is formed;oras a Kabalist will express it, the gnomes, the salamanders, andthe undines are created. The correspondence betweenamother-globe and her child-man may be thus worked out.Both have their seven principles. In the Globe, the elementals(of which there are in all seven species) form (a) a gross body,(b) her fluidic double (linga sariram), (c) the life principle (jiva);(d) her fourth principle kama rupa is formed by her creativeimpulse working from centre to circumference; (e) her fifthprinciple (animal soul or Manas, physical intelligence) is embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal kingdoms; (f) hersixth principle (or spiritual soul buddhi) is man (g) andherseventh principle (atma) is in a film of spiritualized akasa thatsurrounds her. The three evolutions completed : the palpableglobe begins to form. TTie mineral kingdom fourth in the wholeseries, but first in this stage heads the way. Its deposits areat first vaporous soft and plastic, only becoming hard and concrete in the seventh ring. When this ring is completeditprojects its essence to globe B—which is already passingthrough the preliminary stages of formation and mineralevolution begins on that globe. At this juncture the evolutionof the vegetable kingdom commences on globe A. Whenthelatter has made its seventh ring its essence passes on to globeB. At that time the mineral essence moves to globe C andthegerms of the animal kingdom enter A. When the animalhasseven rings there, its life principle goes to globe B, andtheessence of vegetable and mineral move on. Then comes manon A, an ethereal foreshadowing of the compact being heisdestined to become on our earth. Evolving seven parent races with many offshoots of sub-races, he, like the preceding kingdoms completes his seven rings and is then transferred successively to each of the globes onward to Z. From the first man has all the seven principles included in him in germ but none are developed. If we compare him to a baby we will be right; no one has ever, in the thousands of ghost stories current, seen the ghost of an infant, though the imagination of a loving mother may have suggested to her the picture of her lost babe in dreams. And this is very suggestive. In each of the rounds he makes one of the principles develop fully. In the first round his consciousness of our earth is dull and but feeble and shadowy, something like that of an infant. When he reaches our earth in the second round he has become re- sponsible in a degree, in the third he becomes so entirely. At every stage and every round his development keeps pace, with the globe on which he is. The descending arc from A to our earth is called the shadowy, the ascending to Z the "luminous." We men of the fourth round are already reaching the latter half of the fifth race of our fourth round humanity, while the men (the few earlier comers) of the fifth round, though only in their first race (or rather class), are yet immeasurably higher than we are—spiritually if not intellectually; since with the completion or full development of this fifth principle (intellectual soul) they have come nearer than we have, are closer in contact with their sixth principle Buddhi. Of course many are the differen- tiated individuals even in the fourth race as germs of principles are not equally developed in all, but such is the rule.
Man comes on globe " A " after the other kingdoms have gone on. (Dividing our kingdoms into seven, the last four are what exoteric science divides into three. To this we add the kingdom of man or the Deva kingdom. The respective entities of these we divide into germinal, instinctive, semi-conscious, and fully conscious). When all kingdoms have reached globe Z they will not move forward but re-enter A in precedence of man, but under a law of retardation operative from the central point—or earth—to Z and which equilibrates a principle of acceleration in the descending arc—they will have just finished their respective evolution of genera and species, when man reaches his highest development on globe Z on this or any round. The reason for it is found in the enormously greater time required by them to develop their infinite varieties as compared with man; the relative speed of development in the rings therefore naturally increases as we go up the scale from the mineral. But these different rates are so adjusted by man stopping longer in the inter-planetary spheres of rest, for weal or woe—that all kingdoms finish their work simultaneously on the planet Z. For example, on our globe we see theequilibrating law manifesting. From the first appearanceofman whether speechless or not to his present one as a fourthand the coming fifth round being the structural intention ofhisorganization has not radically changed. Ethnological characteristics however varied, affecting in no w^ay man as a humanbeing. The fossil of man or his skeleton whether of the periodof that mammalian branch of which he forms the crown, whethercyclop or dwarf can be still recognised at a glance as a relicof man. Plants and animals meanwhile have become moreandmore unlike what they were. The scheme with its septenarydetails would be incomprehensible to man had he not the poweras the higher Adepts have proved of prematurely developinghis 6th and 7th senses—those which v/ill be the natural endowment of all in the corresponding rounds. Our Lord Buddha—a 6th race man—would not have appeared in our epoch, greatas were his accumulated merits in previous rebirths but foramystery.
Individuals cannot outstrip the humanity of their roundanyfurther than by one remove, for it is mathematically impossible—you say (in effect) : if the fountain of life flows ceaselesslythere should be men of all rounds on the earth at all times, etc.The hint about planetary rest may dispel the misconceptiononthis head.
When man is perfected qua a given round on Globe Ahedisappears thence (as had certain vegetables and animals). Bydegrees this Globe loses its vitality and finally reaches the moonstage, i.e., death, and so remains while man is making his sevenrings on Z and passing his inter-cyclic period before startingon his next round. So with each Globe in turn.
And now as man when completing his seventh ring uponAhas but begun his first on Z and as A dies when he leavesitfor B, etc., and as he must also remain in the inter-cyclic sphereafter Z, as he has between every two planets, until the impulseagain thrills the chain, clearly no one can be more than oneround ahead of his kind. And Buddha only forms an exceptionby virtue of the mystery. We have fifth round men amongusbecause we are in the latter half of our septenary earth ring.In the first half this could not have happened. TTie countlessmyriads of our fourth round humanity who have outrun us andcompleted their seven rings on Z, have had time to pass theirinter-cyclic periods begin their new^ round and work on to globeD (ours). But how can there be men of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6thand 7th rounds? We represent the first three and the sixthcan only come at rare intervals and prematurely like Buddhas(only under prepared conditions) and that the last-namedthe seventh are not yet evolved I We have traced man out of a round into the Nirvanic state between Z and A. A was left in the last round dead. As the new round begins it catches the new influx of Hfe, reawakens to vitality and begets all its kingdoms of a superior order to the last. After this has been repeated seven times comes a minor pralaya; the chain of globes are not destroyed by disintegration and dispersion of their particles but pass in abscondito. From this they will re-emerge in their turn during the next septenary period. Within one solar period (of a p. and m.) occur seven such minor periods, in an ascending scale of progressive development. To re- capitulate there are in the round seven planetary or earth rings for each kingdom and one obscuration of each planet. The minor manwantara is composed of seven rounds, 49 rings and 7 obscurations, one solar period of 49 rounds, etc.
The periods with pralaya and manwantara are called by Dikshita '* Surya manwantaras and pralayas." Thought is baffled in speculating how many of our solar pralayas must come before the great Cosmic night. But that will come.
In the minor pralayas there is no starting de novo—only re- sumption of arrested activity. The vegetable and animal kingdoms which at the end of the minor manwantara had reached only a partial development are not destroyed. Their life or vital entities, call some of them nati if you will—find also their corresponding night and rest—they also have a Nirvana of their own. And why should they not, these foetal and infant entities. They are all like ourselves begotten of the one element. As we have our Dyan Chohans so have they in their several kingdoms elemental guardians and are as well taken care of in the mass as is humanity in the mass. The one ele- ment not only fills space and is space, but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic matter.
When strikes the hour of the solar paralaya—though the process of man's advance on his last seventh round is precisely the same, each planet instead of merely passing out of the visible into the invisible as he quits it in turn is annihilated. With the beginning of the seventh Round of the seventh minor manwantara, every kingdom having now reached its last cycle, there remains on each planet after the exit of man but the maya of once living and existing forms. With every step he takes on the descending and ascending arcs as he moves on from Globe to Globe the planet left behind becomes an empty chrysaloidal case. At his departure there is an outflow from every kingdom of its entities. Waiting to pass into higher forms in due time they are nevertheless liberated : for to the day of that evolution they will rest in their lethargic sleep in space until again energized into life in the new solar manwantara. The old elementals—will rest until they are calledto become in their turn the bodies of mineral, vegetable andanimal entities (on another and a higher string of globes) ontheir way to become human entities (see Isis) while thegerminal entities of the lowest forms, and in that time ofgeneral perfection there will remain but few of such—^will hangin space like drops of water suddenly turned to icicles. Theywill thaw at the first hot breath of a solar manwantara and formthe soul of the future globes. . . . The slow developmentof the vegetable kingdom provided for by the longer inter-planetary rest of man. . . . When the solar pralaya comesthe whole purified humanity merges into Nirvana and from thatinter-solar Nirvana will be reborn in higher systems. Thestring of worlds is destroyed and vanishes like a shadow fromthe wall in the extinguishment of light. We have every in-dication that at this very moment such a solar pralaya is takingplace while there are two minor ones ending somewhere.
At the beginning of the solar manwantara the hitherto subjective elements of the material world now scattered in cosmicdust—receiving their impulse from the new Dyan Chohansofthe new solar system (the highest of the old ones having gonehigher)—will form into primordial ripples of life and separatinginto differentiating centres of activity combine in a graduatedscale of seven stages of evolution. Like every other orb ofspace our Earth has before obtaining its ultimate materiality—and nothing now in this world can give you an idea of whatthis state of matter is—to pass through a gamut of seven stagesof density. 1 say gamut advisedly since the diatonic scale bestaffords an illustration of the perpetual rythmic motion of thedescending and ascending cycle of Swabhavat—graduated asit is by tones and semi-tones.
You have among the learned members of your society oneTheosophist who without familiarity with our occult doctrinehas yet intuitively grasped from scientific data the idea of asolar pralaya and its manwantara in their beginnings. I meanthe celebrated French astronomer Flammarion—** Le Resurrection et le Fin des Mondes " (Chapter 4 res.). He speakslike a true seer. The facts are as he surmises with slightmodifications. In consequence of the secular refrigeration (oldage rather and loss of vital power), solidification and desiccation of the globes, the earth arrives at a point when it beginsto be a relaxed conglomerate. The period of child-bearing isgone by. The progeny are all nurtured, its term of life isfinished. Hence " its constituent masses cease to obey thoselaws of cohesion and aggregation which held them together.**
And becoming like a cadaver which abandoned to the work of destruction would leave each molecule composing it free to separate itself from the body for ever to obey in future the sway of new influences. The attraction of the moon (would that he could know the full extent of its pernicious influence) would itself undertake the task of demolition by producing a tidal wave of earth particles instead of an aqueous tide.
His mistake is that he believes a long time must be devoted to the ruin of the solar system : we are told that it occurs in the twinkling of an eye but not without many preliminary warnings. Another error is the supposition that the earth will fall into the sun. The sun itself is first to distintegrate in the solar pralaya. . . . Fathom the nature and essence of the sixth principle of the universe and man and you will have fathomed the greatest mystery in this our world—and why not— are you not surrounded by it? What are its familiar manifestations, mesmerism, Odic force, etc.—all different aspects of one force capable of good and evil applications.
The degrees of an Adept's initiation mark the seven stages at which he discovers the secret of the sevenfold principles in nature and man and awakens his dormant powers.
