When man is perfected qua a given round on Globe A he disappears thence (as had certain vegetables and animals). By degrees this Globe loses its vitality and finally reaches the moon stage, i.e., death, and so remains while man is making his seven rings on Z and passing his inter-cyclic period before starting on his next round. So with each Globe in turn.
And now as man when completing his seventh ring upon A has but begun his first on Z and as A dies when he leaves it for B, etc., and as he must also remain in the inter-cyclic sphere after Z, as he has between every two planets, until the impulse again thrills the chain, clearly no one can be more than one round ahead of his kind. And Buddha only forms an exception by virtue of the mystery. We have fifth round men among us because we are in the latter half of our septenary earth ring. In the first half this could not have happened. The countless myriads of our fourth round humanity who have outrun us and completed their seven rings on Z, have had time to pass their inter-cyclic period [and] begin their new round and work on to globe D (ours). But how can there be men of the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th rounds? We represent the first three, and the sixth can only come at rare intervals and prematurely like Buddhas (only under prepared conditions) and the last-named the seventh are not yet evolved! 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 life, 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 recapitulate, 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, the 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 resumption 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 Dhyan 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 element not only fills space and is space, but interpenetrates every atom of cosmic matter.
When strikes the hour of the solar pralaya — 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 called to become in their turn the bodies of mineral, vegetable and animal entities (on another and a higher string of globes) on their way to become human entities (see Isis) while the germinal entities of the lowest forms — and in that time of general perfection there will remain but few of such — will hang in space like drops of water suddenly turned to icicles. They will thaw at the first hot breath of a solar manwantara and form the soul of the future globes. . . . The slow development of the vegetable kingdom provided for by the longer inter-planetary rest of man. . . . When the solar pralaya comes the whole purified humanity merges into Nirvana and from that inter-solar Nirvana will be reborn in higher systems. The string of worlds is destroyed and vanishes like a shadow from the wall in the extinguishment of light. We have every indication that at this very moment such a solar pralaya is taking place 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 cosmic dust — receiving their impulse from the new Dhyan Chohans of the new solar system (the highest of the old ones having gone higher) — will form into primordial ripples of life, and separating into differentiating centres of activity combine in a graduated scale of seven stages of evolution. Like every other orb of space our Earth has, before obtaining its ultimate materiality — and nothing now in this world can give you an idea of what this state of matter is — to pass through a gamut of seven stages of density. I say gamut advisedly since the diatonic scale best affords an illustration of the perpetual rhythmic motion of the descending and ascending cycle of Swabhavat — graduated as it is by tones and semi-tones.
You have among the learned members of your society one Theosophist who, without familiarity with our occult doctrine, has yet intuitively grasped from scientific data the idea of a solar pralaya and its manwantara in their beginnings. I mean the celebrated French astronomer Flammarion — "La Résurrection et la Fin des Mondes" (Chapter 4. res.). He speaks like a true seer. The facts are as he surmises with slight modifications. In consequence of the secular refrigeration (old age rather and loss of vital power), solidification and desiccation of the globes, the earth arrives at a point when it begins to be a relaxed conglomerate. The period of child-bearing is gone by. The progeny are all nurtured, its term of life is finished. Hence "its constituent masses cease to obey those laws 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.