As we are not likely, worthy sir, to correspond very often now — I will tell you something you should know, and may derive profit from. On the 17th of November next the Septenary term of trial given the Society at its foundation in which to discreetly "preach us" will expire. One or two of us hoped that the world had so far advanced intellectually, if not intuitionally, that the Occult doctrine might gain an intellectual acceptance, and the impulse given for a new cycle of occult research. Others — wiser as it would now seem — held differently, but consent was given for the trial. It was stipulated, however, that the experiment should be made independently of our personal management; that there should be no abnormal interference by ourselves. So casting about we found in America the man to stand as leader — a man of great moral courage, unselfish, and having other good qualities. He was far from being the best, but (as Mr. Hume speaks in H.P.B.'s case) — he was the best one available. With him we associated a woman of most exceptional and wonderful endowments. Combined with them she had strong personal defects, but just as she was, there was no second to her living fit for this work. We sent her to America, brought them together — and the trial began. From the first both she and he were given to clearly understand that the issue lay entirely with themselves. And both offered themselves for the trial for certain remuneration in the far distant future as — as K.H. Would say — soldiers volunteer for a Forlorn Hope. For the 6½ years they have been struggling against such odds as would have driven off any one who was not working with the desperation of one who stakes life and all the prizes on some desperate supreme effort. Their success has not equalled the hopes of their original backers, phenomenal as it has been in certain directions. In a few more months the term of probation will end. If by that time the status of the Society as regards ourselves — the question of the "Brothers" — be not definitely settled (either dropped out of the Society's programme or accepted on our own terms) that will be the last of the " — Brothers" of all shapes and colours, sizes or degrees. We will subside out of public view like a vapour into the ocean. Only those who have proved faithful to themselves and to Truth through everything, will be allowed further intercourse with us. And not even they, unless, from the President downward they bind themselves by the most solemn pledges of honour to keep an inviolable silence thenceforth about us, the Lodge, [and] Tibetan affairs, not even answering questions of their nearest friends, though silence might seem likely to throw the appearance of "humbug" upon all that has transpired. In such a case effort would be suspended until the beginning of another septenary cycle when, if circumstances should be more auspicious, another attempt might be made, under the same or another direction.
My own humble impression is that Hume Sahib's present pamphlet,107 highly intellectual as it is, might be improved so as to help enormously in giving the needed turn to Society affairs. And if he would trust more to his personal intuitions — which when he heeds them are strong — and less to the voice of one who neither represents entirely — as you seem to think — public opinion nor would he believe though he were to have a 1000 proofs — the pamphlet would be converted into one of the most powerful works that this modern movement has evolved.
Your cosmological questions will be attended to when I am not harassed with mightier business. Health and prosperity.
M.
Letter No. 46 (ML-12) Rec. February, 1882
In all probability, this letter grew out of Letter No. 44 (ML-13) which consisted of questions by Sinnett and answers by the Mahatma M, and is labeled by Sinnett "Cosmological Notes."
Your hypothesis is far nearer the truth than Mr. Hume's. Two factors must be kept in view — (a) a fixed period, and (b) a fixed rate of development nicely adjusted to it. Almost unthinkably long as is a Mahayug,108 it is still a definite term, and within it must be accomplished the whole order of development, or to state it in occult phraseology, the descent of Spirit into matter and its return to the re-emergence. A chain of beads, and each bead a world is an illustration already made familiar to you. You have already pondered over the life impulse beginning with each Manvantara to evolve the first of these worlds; to perfect it; to people it successively with all the aerial forms of life. And after completing on this first world seven cycles — or evolutions of development — in each kingdom, as you know — passing forward down the arc — to similarly evolve the next world in the chain, perfect it, and abandon it. Then to the next and next and next — until the seven-fold round of world-evolutions along the chain is run through and the Mahayug comes to its end. Then chaos again — the Pralaya. As this life-impulse (at the seventh and last round from planet to planet) moves on it leaves behind it dying and — very soon — "dead planets."
The last seventh round man having passed on to a subsequent world, the precedent one with all its mineral, vegetable and animal life (except man) begins to gradually die out, when with the exit of the last animalcula it is extinguished, or as H.P.B. has it — snuffed out (minor or partial pralaya). When the Spirit-man reaches the last bead of the chain and passes into final Nirvana, this last world also disappears or passes into subjectivity. Thus are there among the stellar galaxies births and deaths of worlds ever following each other in the orderly procession of natural Law. And — as said already — the last bead is strung upon the thread of the "Mahayuga."
When the last cycle of man-bearing has been completed by that last fecund earth; and humanity has reached in a mass the stage of Buddhahood and passed out of the objective existence into the mystery of Nirvana — then "strikes the hour;" the seen becomes the unseen, the concrete resumes its pre-cyclic state of atomic distribution.
But the dead worlds left behind [by] the on-sweeping impulse do not continue dead. Motion is the eternal order of things and affinity or attraction its handmaid of all works. The thrill of life will again re-unite the atoms, and it will stir again in the inert planet when the time comes. Though all its forces have remained in status quo and are now asleep, yet little by little it will — when the hour re-strikes — gather for a new cycle of man-bearing maternity, and give birth to something still higher as moral and physical types than during the preceding manvantara. And its "cosmic atoms already in a differentiated state" (differing — in the producing force, in the mechanical sense, of motions and effects) remains in statu quo as well as globes and everything else in the process of formation." Such is the "hypothesis fully in accordance with (your) (my) note." For, as planetary development is as progressive as human or race evolution, the hour of the Pralaya's coming catches the series of worlds at successive stages of evolution; (i.e.) each has attained to some one of the periods of evolutionary progress — each stops there, until the outward impulse of the next manvantara sets it going from that very point — like a stopped time-piece rewound. Therefore, have I used the word "differentiated."
At the coming of the Pralaya no human, animal, or even vegetable entity will be alive to see it, but there will be the earth or globes with their mineral kingdoms; and all these planets will be physically disintegrated in the pralaya, yet not destroyed; for they have their places in the sequence of evolution, and their "privations" coming again out of the subjective, they will find the exact point from which they have to move on around the chain of "manifested forms." This, as we know, is repeated endlessly throughout ETERNITY. Each man of us had gone this ceaseless round, and will repeat it for ever and ever. The deviation of each one's course, and his rate of progress from Nirvana to Nirvana is governed by causes which he himself creates out of the exigencies in which he finds himself entangled.