I.
The study of occult cosmogony, however infinite its changes, however varied in parts, can never be undertaken with success unless those variations and parts are viewed as a Universal Unity. A conception of unity must be the basis of all speculation, its starting point as well as its destiny. It was always so in the archaic systems that were founded on occult knowledge. Thus the Greek system agrees with the Phoenician cosmogony, and both agree with the Orphic Triad which shows Eros, Chaos and Chronos as the three co-operating principles emanating from the Concealed and Unknowable Point. There could be no philosophical conception of a logical, universal and Absolute Deity without the mathematical Point within the Circle upon which to base such speculations. The Point is the real Esoteric Logos, or Pythagorean Monad, and from this Point or Monad proceeds the triune co-equal nature of the first differentiated substance or the consubstantiality of the (manifested) Spirit, Matter and the Universe. For the Greek Monas signifies Unity in its primary sense.
This basic conception of Unity is further insisted upon in the definition of the Pythagorean triangle:
The Pythagorean Triangle … consists of Ten Points inscribed pyramid-like (from one to four) within its three sides, and it symbolizes the Universe in the famous Pythagorean Decad. The upper single point is a Monad, and represents a Unit-Point, which is the Unity whence all proceeds. All is of the same essence with it. While the ten points within the equilateral Triangle represent the phenomenal world, the three sides enclosing the pyramid of points are the barriers of noumenal matter, or Substance, that separate it from the world of thought. (Secret Doctrine 1, 675.)
The Pythagorean Monas is said to dwell in solitude and “darkness” like the “Germ,” but it is darkness only to our ignorance.
The super-cosmic Monad being the Unit Point whence all proceeds, the study of its “graduated” nature must be undertaken only from the emphasized standpoint of that Unity and of a return to Unity of all its graduations.
The author of the Secret Doctrine reverts again and again to the essential unity of all monads, gods and atoms, however convenient may be their separate study for the purposes of occult science:
The Gods and Monads of the ancients—from Pythagoras down to Leibnitz—and the atoms of the present materialistic schools (as borrowed by them from the theories of the old Greek Atomists) are only a compound unit, or a graduated unity like the human frame, which begins with body and ends with spirit. In the occult sciences they can be studied separately, but they can never be mastered unless they are viewed in their mutual correlations during their life cycle, and as a Universal Unity during Pralayas. (Secret Doctrine 1, 672.)
The difference between the Super-cosmic Monad and the Manifested Monads must be clearly understood. It is the Super-cosmic Monad which emanates the First Triangle and which then disappears in its own “realm of eternal light” after calling into existence its Divine Manifested Ideation which becomes the basis of manifestation:
Those unable to seize the difference between the Monad—the Universal Unit—and the Monads of the Manifested Unity, as also between the ever hidden and the revealed Logos, or the Word, ought never to meddle with philosophy, let alone with the esoteric Sciences. (Secret Doctrine 1, 673.)
Relating this to the explanation given of the Pythagorean triangle, the Monad, which is the Universal Unit, or the ever hidden Logos, corresponds with the upper single point of the triangle, while the points within the triangle correspond with the “manifested unity” or the revealed Logos.
This difference seems so important from the metaphysical viewpoint that it is necessary to seek for all the light available inasmuch as a confusion might be fatal to comprehension. We may therefore recapitulate by saying that the Super-cosmic Monad or Universal Unit is the absolutely ideal universe, which must be distinguished from the invisible but manifested Kosmos. The Universal Unit, the Point, retires into, and merges with, the Circle after having emanated the first three points and connected them with lines, thus forming the first noumenal basis of the Second Triangle in the Manifested World. It is the Super-cosmic Monad which disappears in its own realm of Eternal Light, leaving behind itself only its Divine Manifested Ideation and opening the understanding of the Creative Logoi (the Manus) so that they see in the Ideal World the archetypal forms of all and proceed to copy and build, or fashion, upon these models “forms evanescent and transcendent.”
Thus the Divine Thought personifies into the Manus, each of the Manus being the special god, the creator and fashioner of all that appears during his own respective cycle of being—or Manvantara. The Manu seems, then, to be the radiating point for the Monads or Progenitors of Solar Systems, Planetary Chains, “Kingdoms” of nature, and Humanity—“the term Monad being one which may apply equally to the vastest Solar System or the tiniest atom.” (Secret Doctrine 2, 196.)
As the Logos reflects the Universe of the Divine Mind, and the Manifested Universe reflects itself in each of its Monads, as Leibnitz put it repeating an Eastern teaching, so the Monad has, during the cycle of its incarnations, to reflect itself in every root-form of each kingdom. (Secret Doctrine 2, 196.)
The Manus, thus having their understanding opened by the Super-Cosmic Monad, having received, as it were, the initial impulse, are further described as “The Creators of the Creators of our First Race” (Secret Doctrine 2, 324). The Primeval Manu is the Unseen Logos who evolves all the other Logoi and who gives being to the other Manus who emanate the universes in its collectivity and who represent in their aggregate the Manifested Logos. But the student must be reminded that the name Svayambhuva is a generic as well as a specific name and is applied to all the lesser Manus who become the creators of their own humanities.
We learn in the commentaries that while no Dhyan Chohan, not even the highest, can realize completely “The condition of the preceding Cosmic Evolution * * * the Manus retain a knowledge of their experiences in all the Cosmic Evolutions throughout Eternity.” This is very plain; the first Manu is called Svayambhuva, the “Self-manifested,” the Son of the Unmanifested Father. The Manus are the Creators of the Creators of our First Race—the Spirit of Mankind—which does not prevent the seven Manus from having been the first “Pre-Adamic” Men on Earth. Manu declares himself created by Viraj, or Vaishvanara the Spirit of Humanity, which means that his Monad emanates from the never-resting Principle in the beginning of every new Cosmic Activity—that Logos or Universal Monad (collective Elohim) which radiates from within himself all those Cosmic Monads that become the centres of activity—Progenitors of the numberless Solar Systems as well as of the yet undifferentiated human Monads of Planetary Chains as well as every being thereon. Svayambhuva, or Self-born, is the name of every Cosmic Monad which becomes a center of force, from within which emerges a planetary chain (of which chains there are seven in our system). And the radiations of this Center become again so many Manus Svayambhuva (a mysterious generic name, meaning far more than appears), each of them becoming, as a Host, the Creator of his own Humanity. (Secret Doctrine 2, 324–325.)
Let the student therefore clearly discriminate between the super-cosmic Monad which belongs to Unmanifested Being and “those cosmic monads that become the centers of activity,” and that belong to the planes of manifestation. It is with the latter that the general course of evolution has to deal. At the same time he must preserve the idea of Unity as his mental background.
II. Vegetable, Mineral, and Animal Monads
The author of the Secret Doctrine makes it clear that the use of the plural form of the word Monad in connection with the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms is due to the exigencies of explanation and that the student must not allow the idea of unity to escape him. It is the one universal Monas “manifesting in that form of prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom” and that does not become individualized until the human kingdom is reached, although the process of individualization begins imperceptibly in the vegetable kingdom and almost reaches the point in the higher animals.
The monadic, or rather cosmic essence, if such a term be permitted, in the mineral, vegetable and animal, though the same throughout the series of cycles from the lowest elemental up to the deva kingdom, yet differs in the scale of progression. It would be very misleading to imagine a monad as a separate entity, trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower kingdoms, and after an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an atom of hornblende. Instead of saying a “Mineral Monad” the correct phraseology would, of course, have been to call it “the Monad manifesting in that form of Prakriti called the Mineral Kingdom.” The atom, as represented in the ordinary scientific hypothesis, is not a particle of something, animated by a psychic something, destined after aeons to blossom into a man. But it is a concrete manifestation of the Universal Energy, which itself has not yet become individualised; a sequential manifestation of the one Universal Monas. The ocean of matter does not divide into its potential and constituent drops until the sweep of the Life Impulse reaches the evolutionary stage of man-birth. The tendency towards segregation into individual Monads is gradual, and in the higher animals comes almost to the point. The Peripatetics applied the word Monas to the whole Kosmos, in the pantheistic sense; and the occultists, while accepting this thought for convenience sake, distinguish the progressive stages of the evolution of the concrete from the abstract, by terms of which the “Mineral, Vegetable, Animal Monad,” etc. are examples. The term merely means that the tidal wave of spiritual evolution is passing through that arc of its circuit. The “Monadic Essence” begins to imperceptibly differentiate towards individual consciousness in the vegetable kingdom. As the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad—not the atomic aggregation, which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence. (Secret Doctrine 1, 201.)
It is to be understood that the Monad in whatever form it finds itself is always potentially a Human Monad and can never be other than divine in its nature. Therefore, it has to pass through its mineral, vegetable and animal forms before the light of the Logos is awakened in the animal man. Until then the latter cannot properly be referred to as “man,” but has to be regarded as a Monad imprisoned in ever-changing forms.
The “human” Monad, whether “inmetalized” in the stone atom, or “invegetalized” in the plant, or “inanimalized” in the animal, is still ever a divine, hence also a human Monad. It ceases to be human only when it becomes absolutely divine. The term “mineral,” “vegetable,” and “animal” Monad are intended to create a superficial distinction; there is no such thing as a Monad (Jiva) other than divine, and consequently having once been, or having to become, in the future, human. The latter term has to remain meaningless unless this difference is well understood. The Monad is a drop cut out of the Shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be correct, within, the plane of primeval differentiation. It is divine in its higher and human in its lower condition—the adjectives “higher” and “lower” being used for lack of better words—but a Monad it remains all the time, save in the Nirvanic state, under whatever conditions or whatever external forms. (Secret Doctrine 2, 196.)
Elsewhere the author of The Secret Doctrine reverts to the difficulty of language that is met with in describing the stages through which the Monad passes. Metaphysically speaking, she says, it is, of course, an absurdity to speak of the “development” of a Monad or to say that it becomes “man.” It stands to reason that a Monad cannot either progress or develop, or even be affected by, the changes of state through which it passes. It is not of this world or plane, and can only be compared with an indestructible star of divine light and fire thrown down on to our earth as a plank of salvation for the personalities in which it indwells. Throughout the whole course of its “changes” it is still one and the same Monad, differing only in its incarnations, throughout its ever-succeeding cycles of partial or total obscuration of spirit, or total or partial obscuration of matter.
Every atom, says H. P. Blavatsky, becomes a visible complex unit (a molecule) and once attracted into the sphere of terrestrial activity the Monadic essence, passing through the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, becomes man.
This relates to cosmic and sub-planetary Monads, not to the super-cosmic Monas, the Pythagorean Monad, as it is called, in its synthetic character, by the Pantheistical Peripatetics. The Monads of the present dissertation are treated, from the standpoint of their individuality, as Atomic Souls, before these Atoms descend into pure terrestrial form. For their descent into concrete matter marks the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Here, losing in the mineral kingdom their individuality, they begin to ascend through the seven states of terrestrial evolution to that point where a correspondence is firmly established between the human and Deva (divine) consciousness. At present, however, we are not concerned with their terrestrial metamorphoses and tribulations, but with their life and behavior in space on planes wherein the eye of the most intuitional chemist and physicist cannot reach them—unless, indeed, he develops within himself highly clairvoyant faculties. (Secret Doctrine 1, 667–669.)
Let the student note carefully that the descent of the Monads into concrete matter is not the beginning of their own progress, as it might seem, but is the medial point of their own individual pilgrimage. Let him note, too, that at this point they lose their individuality to regain it later on. This is more fully explained in the article entitled “The Mineral Monad” in Five Years of Theosophy.
There are seven kingdoms. The first group comprises three degrees of elementaries, or nascent centers of force—from the first stage of differentiation of (from) Mulaprakriti (or rather Pradhana, Primordial Homogeneous Matter) to its third degree, i.e., from full unconsciousness to semi-perception; the second or higher group embraces the kingdoms from vegetable to man; the mineral kingdom thus forming the central or turning point in the degrees of the “Monadic Essence,” considered as an evolving energy. Three stages (sub-physical) on the elemental side; the mineral kingdom; three stages on the objective physical side—these are the (first or preliminary) seven links of the evolutionary chain.
It is necessary to assume at this point that the student is somewhat familiar with the teaching of the septenary chains of globes first outlined in Esoteric Buddhism and elaborated in the first volume of The Secret Doctrine. It will be remembered that the Monads, in forming the earth chain of seven globes, reach the earth chain—in fact, call it into existence—from the lunar chain of seven globes, and that they proceed from the lunar to the earth chains in successive waves or classes. It will be remembered also that the seven globes of both the lunar and the earth chains are made up of three globes on the descending arc, one globe constituting the turning or medial point, and three globes on the ascending arc. These globes are distinguished by the letters A to G, Globes A, B and C being on the descending arc, Globe D at the turning point, and Globes E, F and G on the ascending arc. The process of the transfer of the successive life-waves from the Lunar to the Earth Chains is described as follows:
Now, it must be remembered that the Monads cycling round any septenary chain are divided into seven classes or hierarchies, according to their respective stages of evolution, consciousness and merit. Let us follow, then, the order of their appearance on Globe A, in the first round. The time spaces between the appearances of these hierarchies on any one globe are so adjusted that when Class 7, the last, appears on Globe A, Class 1, the first, has just passed on to Globe B, and so on, step by step, all round the Chain.
Again, in the Seventh Round of the Lunar Chain, when Class 7, the last, quits Globe A, that Globe, instead of falling asleep, as it had done in previous rounds, begins to die (to go into its planetary pralaya) and in dying it transfers successively, as just said, its principles, or life elements and energy, etc., one after the other, to a new laya center, which commences the formation of Globe A of the earth chain. A similar process takes place for each of the Globes of the Lunar Chain, one after the other, each forming a fresh globe of the Earth Chain. Our Moon was the fourth Globe of the series, and was on the same plane of perception as our Earth. But Globe A of the Lunar Chain is not fully dead, till the first Monads of the first Class have passed from Globe G or Z, the last of the Lunar Chain, into the Nirvana, which awaits them between the two Chains; and similarly for all the other Globes as stated, each giving birth to the corresponding Globe of the Earth Chain.
Further, when Globe A of the new chain is ready, the first class or Hierarchy of Monads from the Lunar Chain incarnate upon it in the lowest kingdom, and so on successively. The result of this is that it is only the first class of Monads which attains the human state of development during the first Round, since the second class, on each globe, arriving later, has not time to reach that stage. Thus the Monads of Class 2 reach the incipient human stage only in the second Round, and so on up to the middle of the Fourth Round.
But at this point—and on this Fourth Round in which the human stage will be fully developed—the door into the human kingdom closes; and henceforth the number of human Monads, i.e., Monads in the human stage of development, is complete. For the Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point, will, owing to the evolution of humanity itself, find themselves so far behind that they will reach the human stage only at the close of the Seventh and last Round. They will, therefore, not be men on this Chain, but will form the humanity of a future Manvantara, and will be rewarded by becoming men on a higher Chain altogether, thus receiving their compensation. To this there is but one solitary exception, and for very good reasons, of which we shall speak farther on. But this accounts for the difference in the races. (Secret Doctrine 1, 195.)
The student will find himself involved in endless confusion unless he realizes that the Monads reaching the earth chain from the lunar chain are not all at the same point of their progress, and that the differences in the lives around us are the result of similar differences that existed during the periods of lunar evolution. Thus we find some of the Lunar Monads reaching the human form immediately on their appearance on Globe A of the earth chain, while others will not reach the human stage at all during this Round. This is partially explained in the following passage:
The Monadic Host may be roughly divided into three great classes:
1. The most developed Monads—the Lunar Gods or “Spirits,” called in India, the Pitris—whose function it is to pass in the First Round through the whole triple cycle of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, in their most etherial, filmy and rudimentary forms, in order to clothe themselves in, and assimilate, the nature of the newly formed Chain. They are those who first reach the human form—if there can be any form in the realm of the almost subjective—on Globe A in the First Round. It is they, therefore, who lead and represent the human element during the Second and Third Rounds, and finally evolve their shadows at the beginning of the Fourth Round for the Second Class, or those who come behind them.
2. Those Monads that are the first to reach the human stage during the three and a half rounds, and to become men.
3. The laggards, the Monads which are retarded, and which will not reach, by reason of Karmic impediments, the human stage at all during this cycle or round, save one exception which will be spoken of elsewhere, as already promised.
We are forced to use above the misleading word “men,” and this is a clear proof how little any European language is adapted to express these subtle distinctions.
That the number of Monads is limited and finite is stated very explicitly by the author of the Secret Doctrine (2, 317). The number of incarnating Monads may be countless, but there must be a limit even though we allow for many births and deaths for every second of time in the aeons already passed. The arrival of fresh Monads ceased as soon as humanity had reached its full physical development and no fresh Monads have incarnated since the middle point of the Atlanteans. We are reminded that, save in the case of young children and of individuals whose lives have been violently cut short by some accident, no Spiritual Entity can reincarnate before a period of many centuries has elapsed, and that such gaps alone must show that the number of Monads is finite and limited.
III. The Evolution of Human Form
It is necessary now to consider the process by which the Lunar Monads became human beings in the full sense of that term upon the earth chain. To that end the author of the Secret Doctrine reminds us that the Lunar Monads reach the Earth Chain in successive waves and that these successive waves are therefore at different stages of their development. The first monads to arrive on the Earth Chain are naturally the first to arrive at the human stage, while the later arrivals, the “laggards,” will not arrive at the human stage at all during this cycle.
It must be borne in mind that the Monads which enter upon the evolutionary cycle upon Globe A, in the First Round, are in very different stages of development. Hence the matter becomes somewhat complicated. Let us recapitulate.
The most developed, the Lunar Monads, reach the human germ-stage in the First Round; become terrestrial, though very ethereal, human beings towards the end of the Third Round, remaining on the Globe through the “obscuration” period, as the seed for future mankind in the Fourth Round, and thus become the pioneers for Humanity at the beginning of this, the present Fourth Round. Others reach the human stage only during later rounds, i.e., in the second, third or first half of the Fourth Round. And finally the most retarded of all—i.e., those 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, by older pioneers, the progenitors of humanity, or the Seed-Humanity (Shishta), viz., the men who will be at the head of all at the end of these Rounds. (Secret Doctrine 1, 204.)
But at this stage the process becomes more complicated since man is the meeting point of three different schemes of evolution, interwoven and interblended at every point. These are the Monadic or Spiritual, the Intellectual, and the Physical Evolution, but the student must remember that these are not to be looked upon as essentially separate or independent, but rather as aspects of the One Reality, the reflections of Atma on the field of Cosmic Illusion. These three schemes of evolution are enumerated as follows:
1. The Monadic, as the name implies, is concerned with the growth and development into still higher phases of activity of the Monads, in conjunction with:
2. The Intellectual, represented by the Manasa-Dhyanis (the Solar Devas) or the Agnishwatta Pitris—the “givers of intelligence and consciousness” to man, and
3. The Physical, represented by the Chhayas of the Lunar Pitris, round which nature has concreted the present physical body. This body serves as the vehicle for the “growth,” to use a misleading word, and the transformations—through Manas and owing to the accumulation of experience—of the Finite into the Infinite, of the Transient into the Eternal and Absolute.
Each of these three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of the highest Dhyanis or Logoi. Each is represented in the constitution of man, the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm: and it is the union of these three streams in him, which makes him the complex being he now is. (Secret Doctrine 1, 203.)
Let it be remembered that these schemes of evolution are differing states of consciousness of the One Reality. Confusion must inevitably follow if the all-pervading principle of Unity is overlooked.
Let us now see what the teaching has to say as to the evolution of the physical body which is to be the human home of the ascending Monad which has reached the Earth Chain from the Lunar Chain. In The Secret Doctrine (1, 197) we find an enumeration of the three divisions of the Monadic Host, the first of these divisions being the most developed Monads—the Lunar Gods or “Spirits,” called in India the Pitris—whose function it is to pass in the First Round through the whole triple cycle of the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms, in their most etherial, filmy and rudimentary forms, in order to clothe themselves in, and assimilate, the nature of the newly formed chain. It is they who lead and represent the human element during the Second and Third Rounds, and finally evolve their shadows at the beginning of the Fourth Round for the Second Class, or those who come behind them.
This is still more succinctly shown in the following quotation: from which we see the most developed Lunar Monads or Pitris passing the First Round through the lower kingdoms and finally evolving their shadows at the beginning of the Fourth Round, as already said, for the Second Class or those who come behind them. It is these shadows that become the human form, and it is worth noting here that the whole scheme of evolution is based upon the service rendered by the more advanced to the less advanced, the self-sacrifice of the pioneers to those that follow.
It is then the Moon that plays the largest and the most important part, as well in the formation of the earth itself, as in the peopling thereof with human beings. The Lunar Monads, or Pitris, the ancestors of man, become in reality man himself. They are the Monads who enter on the cycle of evolution on Globe A, and who, passing round the Chain of Globes, evolve the human form, as has just been shown. At the beginning of the human stage of the Fourth Round on this Globe, they “ooze out” their astral doubles, from the “ape-like” forms which they had evolved in the Third Round. And it is this subtle, finer form, which serves as the model round which Nature builds physical man. These Monads, or Divine Sparks, are thus the Lunar Ancestors, the Pitris themselves; for these Lunar Spirits have to become “men,” in order that their monads may reach a higher plane of activity and self consciousness, i.e., the plane of the Manasa Putras, those who endow the “senseless” shells, created and informed by the Pitris, with “mind,” in the latter part of the third root race.
In the same way, the Monads, or Egos, of the men of the seventh round of our earth, after our own globes A, B, C, D, etc., parting with their life energy, will have informed, and thereby called to life, other laya centres, destined to live and act on a still higher plane of being—in the same way will the Terrene Ancestors create those who will become their superiors. (Secret Doctrine 1, 203.)
We find this same scheme of physical evolution referred to again and again throughout the Secret Doctrine. Thus in Volume 2, page 697, there is a brief recapitulation of the process in the following terms:
Archaic Science allows the human physical frame to have passed through every form, from the lowest to the very highest, its present one, or from the simple to the complex—to use the accepted terms. But it claims that in this Cycle, the Fourth, the frame having already existed among the types and models of Nature from the preceding Rounds—it was quite ready for man from the beginning of this Round. The Monad had but to step into the Astral Body of the Progenitors, in order that the work of physical consolidation should begin around the shadowy prototype. (Secret Doctrine 2, 697.)
Again in Volume 2, page 92, we are reminded that “The Progenitors of Man, called in India Fathers, Pitaras, or Pitris, are the ‘Creators’ of our bodies and lower principles. They are ourselves as the first personalities and we are they. Primeval man would be ‘bone of their bone and the flesh of their flesh’ if they had bone and flesh. As stated, they are ‘Lunar Beings.’”
The Lunar Pitris who thus evolved their shadows around which physical man was to be built are sometimes referred to as the Lower Angels who gave to man what they could, but who were unable to give him the spark of spiritual mind inasmuch as they had not developed it for themselves. The endowment of man with a spiritual mind by another order of beings will be referred to subsequently. In the meantime the following illuminating reference may be quoted:
Thus the Monads destined to animate future Races . . . had passed their phases of “inmetalization,” of plant and animal life, from the lowest to the highest, and were waiting for their human, more intelligent form. Yet what could the Plastic Modellers do but follow the laws of evolutionary Nature? Could they, as claimed by the biblical dead-letter, form, “Lord-God” like, or as Pygmalion in the Greek allegory, Adam–Galatea out of volcanic dust, and breathe a “Living Soul” into man? No, because the Soul was already there, latent in its Monad, and needed but a “coating.” Esoteric philosophy . . . shows the ethereal form out of themselves, and leaving the physical form to evolve gradually from its ethereal, or what would now be called, protoplasmic model. (Secret Doctrine 2, 159.)
The difference between those already touched by the divine intellectual fire and those who “were not ready” for it is made additionally plain in the following extract:
Even in the coming Seventh Race, at the close of this Fourth Round, while our four lower principles will be fully developed, that of Manas will be only proportionately so. This limitation, however, refers solely to the spiritual development. The intellectual, on the physical plane, was reached during the Fourth Root Race. Thus, those who were “half ready,” who received “but a spark,” constitute the average humanity which have to acquire their intellectuality during the present Manvantaric evolution, after which they will be ready in the next for the full reception of the “Sons of Wisdom.” While those which “were not ready” at all, the latest Monads, which had hardly evolved from their last transitional and lower animal forms at the close of the Third Round remained the “narrow-brained” of the stanza. This explains the otherwise unaccountable degrees of intellectuality among the various races of men—the savage Bushman and the European—even now. Those tribes of savages, whose reasoning powers are very little above the level of the animals, are not the unjustly disinherited, or the “unfavored,” as some may think,—nothing of the kind. They are simply those latest arrivals among the human Monads, which “were not ready;” which have to evolve during the present round, as also on the three remaining globes—hence on four different planes of being—so as to arrive at the level of the average class when they reach the fifth round. One remark may prove useful, as food for thought to the student in this connection. The Monads of the lowest specimens of humanity—the “narrow-brained” savage South Sea islander, the African, the Australian—had no Karma to work out when first born as men, as their more favored brethren in intelligence had. The former are spinning out Karma only now; the latter are burdened with past, present and future Karma. In this respect the poor savage is more fortunate than the greatest genius of civilized countries. (Secret Doctrine 2, 177.)
Thus we have an explanation of the existence of savage races and of those whose reasoning powers “are very little above the level of the animals.”
(To be continued)
[Note: it appears that this series was discontinued.—Ed. UT]