Thus we have:
1st Round. — An ethereal being — non-intelligent, but super-spiritual. In each of the subsequent races and sub-races and minor races of evolution he grows more and more into an encased or incarnate being, but still preponderatingly etherial. And like the animal and vegetable he develops monstrous bodies correspondential with his coarse surroundings.
2nd Round. — He is still gigantic and ethereal, but growing firmer and more condensed in body — a more physical man, yet still less intelligent than spiritual; for mind is a slower and more difficult evolution than the physical frame, and the mind would not develop as rapidly as the body.
3rd Round. — He has now a perfectly concrete or compacted body; at first the form of a giant ape, and more intelligent (or rather cunning) than spiritual.
For in the downward arc he has now reached the point where his primordial spirituality is eclipsed or over-shadowed by nascent mentality. In the last half of this third round his gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in texture (perhaps the microscope might help to demonstrate this) and he becomes a more rational being — though still more an ape than a Deva man.
4th Round. — Intellect has an enormous development in this round. The dumb races will acquire our human speech, on our globe, on which from the 4th race language is perfected and knowledge in physical things increases. At this half-way point of the fourth round, Humanity passes the axial point of the minor manwantaric circle. (Moreover, at the middle point of every major or root race evolution of each round, man passes the equator of his course on that planet, the same rule applying to the whole evolution or the seven rounds of the minor Manwantara — 7 rounds / 2 = 3 1/2 rounds). At this point then the world teems with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decrease. In the first half of the fourth race, sciences, arts, literature and philosophy were born, eclipsed in one nation, reborn in another, civilization and intellectual development whirling in septenary cycles as the rest; while it is but in the latter half that the spiritual Ego will begin its real struggle with body and mind to manifest its transcendental powers. Who will help in the forthcoming gigantic struggle?
Who? Happy the man who helps a helping hand.
5th Round. — The same relative development, and the same struggle continues.
6th Round.
7th Round.
Of these we need not speak.
Letter No. 67149 (ML-15) Rec. July 10, 1882
From K.H. to A.O.H. Received July 10th, 1882
(1) Does every mineral form, vegetable, plant, animal, always contain within it that entity which involves the potentiality of development into a planetary spirit? At this present day in this present earth is there such an essence or spirit or soul — the name is immaterial — in every mineral, etc.
(1) Invariably; only rather call it the germ of a future entity, which it has been for ages. Take the human foetus. From the moment of its first planting until it completes its seventh month 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 his intuitions than the dicta of modern science, "The stages of man's intra-uterine existence embody a condensed record of some of the missing pages in Earth's history." Thus you must look back at the animal, vegetable and mineral entities. You must take each entity at its starting point in the manwantaric course as the primordial cosmic atom already differentiated by the first flutter of the manwantaric 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 man-bearing 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 the 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 the latter in the course of evolution and involution in time develop 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 of activity 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 but does not correlate and is not convertible in the sense accepted by the Fellows of the R.S., but rather may be said to grow and expand into "something else" while neither its own potentiality nor being are in the least affected by the transformation. Nor can it well be called force since the latter is but the attribute of Yin-sin (Yin-sin or the one "Form of existence," also Adi-Buddhi or Dharmakaya, the mystic, universally diffused essence) when manifesting in the phenomenal world of senses, namely, only your old acquaintance Fohat. See in this connexion Subba Row's article "Aryan Arhat Esoteric Doctrines" on the seven-fold principles in man; his review of your Fragments, pp. 94 and 95. The initiated Brahmin calls it (Yin-sin and Fohat) Brahman and Sakti when manifesting as the force. We will perhaps be near correct to call it infinite life and the source of all life visible and invisible, an essence inexhaustible, ever present, in short Swabhavat. (S. in its universal application, Fohat when manifesting throughout our phenomenal world, or rather the visible universe, hence in its limitations). It is pravritti when active, nirvritti when passive. Call it the Sakti or Parabrahma, if you like, and say with the Adwaitees (Subba Row is one) that Parabrahm plus Maya becomes Iswar the creative principle — a power commonly called God which disappears and dies with the rest when pralaya comes. Or you may hold with the northern Buddhist philosophers and call it Adi-Buddhi, the all-pervading supreme and absolute intelligence with its periodically manifesting Divinity — "Avalokiteshvara" (a manwantaric intelligent nature crowned with humanity) — the mystic name given by us to the hosts of the Dhyan Chohans (N.B., the solar Dhyan Chohans or the host of only our solar system) taken collectively, which host represents the mother source, the aggregate amount of all the intelligences that were, are or ever will be, whether on our string of man-bearing planets or on any part or portion of our solar system. And this will bring you by analogy to see that in its turn Adi-Buddhi (as its very name translated literally implies) is the aggregate intelligence of the universal intelligences including that of the Dhyan Chohans even of the highest order. That is all I dare now to tell you on this special subject, as I fear 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 we see it on this speck of mud in space but the whole host already evoluted.