Should you indulge in any calculations do not forget that we have computed above only full average lives of consciousness and responsibility. Nothing has been said as to the failures of Nature in abortions, congenital idiots, death of children in their first septenary cycles, nor of the exceptions of which I cannot speak. No less have you to remember that average human life varies greatly according to the Rounds. Though I am obliged to withhold information about many points yet if you should work out any of the problems by yourself it will be my duty to tell you so. Try to solve the problem of the 777 incarnations.
(8) "M" said all mankind is in the fourth round, the fifth has not yet commenced but soon will. Was this a slip? If not, then collating this with your present remarks we gather that all mankind is one on the fourth round (though in another place you seemed to say we are on the fifth round). That the highest people now on earth belong to the first sub-race of the fifth race, the majority to the seventh sub-race of the fourth race but with remnants of the other sub-races of the fourth race and the seventh sub-race of the third race. Pray set us quite right on this.
(8) "M" knows very little English and hates writing. But even I might have used very well the same expression. A few drops of rain do not make a monsoon though they presage it. The fifth round has not commenced on our earth and the races and sub-races of one round must not be confounded with those of another round. The fifth round mankind may be said to have "commenced" when there shall not be left on the planet which precedes ours a single man of that round and on our earth not one of the fourth round. You should know also that the casual fifth round men (and very few and scarce they are) who come in upon us as avant couriers do not beget on earth fifth round progeny. Plato and Confucius were fifth round men and our Lord a sixth round man (the mystery of his avatar is spoken of in my forthcoming letter) and not even Gautama Buddha's son was anything but a fourth round man.
Our mystic terms in their clumsy re-translation from the Sanskrit into English are as confusing to us as they are to you — especially to "M". Unless in writing to you one of us takes his pen as an adept and uses it from the first word to the last, in this capacity he is quite as liable to "slips" as any other man. No, we are not in the fifth round, but fifth round men have been coming in for the last few thousand years. But what is such a petty stretch of time in comparison with even one million of the several millions of years embraced in man's occupancy of earth in a single round?
K. H.
Please examine carefully the few additional things I give you on the fly-leaves. Damodar has received orders to send you No. 3 of Terry's146 letters — a good material for pamphlet No. 3 of Fragments of Occult Truth.
MAN ON A PLANET147
This figure roughly represents the development of humanity on a planet — say our earth. Man evolves in seven major or root-races; 49 minor races; and the subordinate races or offshoots, the branchlet races coming from the latter are not shown.
The arrow indicates the direction taken by the evolutionary impulse.
I, II, III, IV, etc., are the seven major or root-races.
1, 2, 3, etc., are the minor races.
a, a, a, are the subordinate or offshoot races.
N, the initial and terminal point of evolution on the planet.
S, the axial point where the development equilibrates or adjusts itself in each race evolution.
E, the equatorial points where in the descending arc intellect overcomes spirituality and in the ascending arc spirituality outstrips intellect.
(N.B. — The above in D.K.'s hand — the rest in K.H.'s. — A.P.S.)
P.S. — In his hurry D.J.K. has made his figure incline somewhat out of the perpendicular but it will serve as a rough memorandum. He drew it to represent development on a single planet; but I have added a word or two to make it apply as well (which it does) to a whole manwantaric chain of worlds.
K. H.
Supplementary Notes
Whenever any question of evolution or development in any Kingdom presents itself to you bear constantly in mind that everything comes under the Septenary rule of series in their correspondences and mutual relation throughout nature.
In the evolution of man there is a topmost point, a bottom point, a descending arc, and an ascending arc. As it is "Spirit" which transforms itself into "matter" and (not "matter" which ascends — but) matter which resolves once more into spirit, of course the first race evolution and the last on a planet (as in each round) must be more etherial, more spiritual, the fourth or lowermost one most physical (progressively of course in each round) and at the same time — as physical intelligence is the masked manifestation of spiritual intelligence — each evoluted race in the downward arc must be more physically intelligent than its predecessor, and each in the upward arc have a more refined form of mentality commingled with spiritual intuitiveness.
The first race (or stock) of the first round after a solar manwantara (kindly wait for my forthcoming letter before you allow yourself to be repuzzled or remuddled — it will explain a good deal), would then be a god-man race of an almost impalpable shape, and so it is; but then comes the difficulty to the student to reconcile this fact with the evolution of man from the animal — however high his form among the anthropoids. And yet it is reconcilable, for whomsoever will hold religiously to a strict analogy between the works of the two worlds, the visible and the invisible — one world, in fact, as one is working within itself so to say. Now there are — there must be "failures" in the etherial races of the many classes of Dhyan Chohans or Devas as well as among men. But still as these failures are too far progressed and spiritualized to be thrown back forcibly from their Dhyan Chohanship into the vortex of a new primordial evolution through the lower kingdoms — this then happens. When a new solar system is to be evolved these Dhyan Chohans are (remember the Hindu allegory of the Fallen Devas hurled by Siva into Andarah148 who are allowed by Parabrahm to consider it as an intermediate state where they may prepare themselves by a series of rebirths in that sphere for a higher state — a new regeneration) borne in by the influx "ahead" of the elementals and remain as a latent or inactive spiritual force in the aura of the nascent world of a new system until the stage of human evolution is reached. Then Karma has reached them and they will have to accept to the last drop in the bitter cup of retribution. Then they become an active Force, and commingle with the Elementals, or progressed entities of the pure animal kingdom to develop little by little the full type of humanity. In this commingling they lose their high intelligence and spirituality of Devaship to regain them in the end of the seventh ring in the seventh round.