written August 23rd, and 24th, 1896
first printed in
The Theosophist August, 1911, p724-737 and September,
1911 p871-889 --
In the year 1896, Mrs Annie Besant and Mr CW Leadbeater made certain researches into the evolutionary work done in early rounds, and the report of their investigations is now published for the first time. There was then much uncertainty among students as to what facts were really described by such terms as Solar and Lunar Pitrs, Mânasaputras, Chhâyyas, etc., and hence the two investigators determined, when an opportunity should occur, to "look up," by reading the record of events in the Memory of the Logos, what actually took place in early rounds.
When the opportunity occurred, a week-end visit to the country was arranged, and a party of four went to spend from Saturday to Tuesday at Lewes Park Farm, Surrey. The party consisted of Mrs Besant, Mr Leadbeater, Mr Bertram Keightley, and myself. There also accompanied me my faithful dependant, "Ji", in outward appearances a cat, who, however, it will be seen, has earned immortality for herself by having a humble part in the investigations. The farm was some three miles from the railway station, and about a mile and a half from the nearest village. In front of the farm was a wild common, a wide expanse of bracken and heather, and travellers were few and far between. Hence the locality was admirable, in that it gave peaceful surroundings.
It was planned that while Mrs Besant and Mr Leadbeater were looking at past events in the Memory of the Logos, they should describe and compare notes, by word of mouth, as to things seen and heard, in order that, so far as possible, some record might be taken down. This record might later be gone over by the investigators, to remind them of things observed, without actually reading the Memory of the Logos a second time. It was for the purpose of being recorders that Bertram Keightley and I were present. We were both to act as scribes, and to take down what was said, and our accounts were later to be used, after checking and corroborating each other, for articles.
The investigations began on Sunday morning, August 23rd, 1896. After breakfast, the party moved out with rugs and cushions to the common, and selecting a suitable place the rugs were spread. The two seers lay at full length on their backs, their heads propped up on cushions; the two scribes disposed themselves as best they could, ready with pencils and paper.
Neither of the scribes knew shorthand. Bertram Keightley mostly listened, and wrote little. On the other hand, the second scribe realised that every word would be of consequence for students of later generations, and though handicapped by not knowing shorthand, wrote as swiftly as he could, inventing signs and symbols for words and phrases, to keep up with the speed of utterance of the seers.
As the seers observed the events of the past, the comparison of notes by them was not unlike the investigations of two microscopists, each of whom, while looking through his instrument and observing, might at the same time be making remarks to his fellow-student, without taking his eyes from the microscope; or, better still, the seers might be likened to two people on a ship with two separate telescopes looking at one scene on land. But the difference lies in the fact that not only did both seers see the same scene - they were both in it, and of it; it was not a picture passing before their eyes, being reviewed as it passed - it was an event happening all round the observer, and described from that standpoint.
In comparing notes, the seers would often speak very briefly, sometimes disjointedly; articles, verbs, conjunctions, would often be omitted. Sometimes a minute or two might elapse between remarks; at other times the conversation would be at the normal speed, and too swift to be taken down fully by one who knew no shorthand. Sometimes a phrase would be begun and not completed.
After the investigations were complete the party returned to London. I had some thirty pages of pencil notes, full of contractions for words and phrases, and probably legible, some of it, only by myself. This is Report No. I, and it is still in my hands. Immediately on the return to London, lest I should forget, I at once wrote out this report more fully, so that it might be read by all; this is Report No. II, and it is in ink. A copy of it was made at the time for Mrs Besant's use. Of this also I have a copy with me, and Reports I and II will presently be deposited in the archives at Adyar. It is from Report No. II that the present transcription is made for publication.
The letter at the side, B., of course stands for Mrs Besant, and L. for Mr Leadbeater. Wherever appear dots ... there was an interval of time, perhaps a minute or more, before the investigator made the next remark; where the intervals were considerable I have put the word Silence in brackets. Words with round brackets ( ), are those not in Report No. II, but put in now by me to make the phrases clearer; words in square brackets [ ] are also my own, offered tentatively to replace words missed in the original reporting or as explanations. I have also supplied explanatory foot-notes, hoping they will help to make clear the remarks of the two seers. The headings, too, have been arranged by myself, for purposes of reference.
C. Jînarâjadâsa
Seattle, USA, April 16th, 1911
Sunday, August 23rd, 1896
L. I am going after (the) classes. (They are) very active little brutes. (They) hop about like fleas! Find yourself on the moon and get back to it. (What a) curious sensation! Well, if ever I was such a thing as that! ... This is purely out of order, but having got hold of ourselves (we) can follow ourselves (and see) what we did in this period ... Perhaps better not ... He1 is like a little ape; (he) can jump about a mile high; 2 quite an impossible kind of little beast! I seem to have liked it and taken a mad delight in jumping. Bother all that! Let's settle down to business. Find your first-class pitri. Why, they haven't any sex as far as I can see; all this is so hopelessly different!
B. Rather like a ... (Silence).
L. You get a sort of cloud; yet they are separate things like individuals, aren't they?
B. They are more like individualised animals; they will get on in pralaya.
L. When you get behind the other classes, they are more like a mass of clouds broken into balloons and blocks; those distinctions seem clear enough. Do you see how ... (Silence). But who are these who have drawn us up, the greater beings? Our devotion to them has individualised us. They can't be Manus, et cetera; too many of them. They are like a humanity; where are they now? ... Do you know, this evolution is much bigger than we have been thinking. It seems they are connected with us, and we are ... There is not any beginning to this! The people who are humanity there are those who succeeded there, and we are those who didn't. They are the product of an evolution of seven chains3 which preceded our seven. There! its's no use! We shall go mad! (Silence). We are the rough material that was vegetable further back - wait a moment! (It is) all getting different; nothing you call vegetable ... Well, never mind! We must drop it. Let's get back to practicalities.
We are monkeyish in shape - like magnified fleas! What principles has he? 4 Let me see. He ...
B. Four.
L. Oh! this is where the first class differs from the second.
K. How many has the first class - four?5 L. No, no. Wait a moment! (I) was on the brink of understanding when that horrid fly brought me back!6 We shall understand it shortly ... There is one point that eludes me ... The first class pitri is the only creature who has a definite egg; he is the only one who has made the junction and (has) a proper causal body as yet. That is what takes the first class away from ... The moment he makes the junction by virtue of devotion to the [word missed] he disappears; he is not born on the moon.
B. He has (a) baby fifth principle. L. He has behind him âtma-buddhi. I suppose he is in the same position as an animal individualised.
B. Look at the second class.
L. First and third seem to show out clearly. The second class bother me. (The) second haven't the junction; they have an expansion above and an expansion below. The third class is a separate block; he is a creature; he will return, but (he) has no kârana sharîra.
B. I see what this thing is.
L. Please expound.
B. This second one has his buddhic thread, and he has a vortex at the end of it; and if you will look at the creature below he has (a) thread with vortex; and he has delicate threads from vortex to vortex - you (will) see them if you jump up and down quickly.7
L. They are not real.
B. But going to be.
L. They don't join if you are on the arûpa plane. That is âtma- buddhi; (it) is beginning to spray down upon him.8 But when you come to (the) third (the) vortex is there, but not (the) thread. They are ... in the same way that the second are on ... Oh! it is those vortices that have broken the thing up ... Four-five-six-seven haven't that. Lowest class is like a soupy mess, with no divisions or stratifications.
B. (In the) fourth, (an) incoherent third principle and fourth principle (are) beginning in (a) feeble way! what will in future time develop into kâma ... Oh! I see what the principle of it is!
L. That's a blessing!
B. Look! If you - I will tell you what I want you to look at; you will have to go up - you will see [word missed] threads of âtma-buddhi going all the way down - wait a minute before you go! - and these stimulate the unfolding of the matter which will become kâmic. They are the moving powers, as it were.
L. If you follow those threads down, why, they are here, in minerals! They are like jîva.
B. I suppose it is (the) monad of the Second Outpouring.
L. Co-ordinating force is a will, the life in everything; I mean jîva, not monad.9 Is not that monad (the expression of another will? These threads are intimately connected with jîva, (as if) jîva (were) a reflexion of them.
Look! there is jîva on all planes, and what we call jîva is the very same thing. See; for a moment I thought I (had) it! The universal Logos10 of all is the âtma of the sun, so to speak; the sun we see is His physical body. When He brings jîva down through His own principles and pours it from His physical body, it is jîva; and when from His astral body, it is something else. (Silence).
B. You have triple above with four to work with (below), while here we have seven to work with.
L. Taken through to what to us would be manas, it would make those threads you mean, wouldn't it? kind of jîva raised to the third power?
B. Yes, in a sense it would be.
L. Because there ... it is manas and it is not ... that when you have them ... is what we call it. Doesn't it strike you that the critical period in the fifth round is rather a farce? Wasn't it decided on the moon? Practically the division is made; if we are ahead, it is because we started earlier.
B. Now, I am going to Globe A; one needn't go out for it!
L. We'll get into our bodies. Wait a moment! Your Globe A isn't a globe; it is the end of a ray coming out.
B. (Like the Lotus floating on the water with its long stalk growing out of the navel of Vishnu11).
L. The whole thing is a kind of a dream. (I am) reminded of Lewis Carrol, that we are creatures in the Red King's dream!12 This globe is nothing but a collection of ideas, as it were. It is as though the whole thing were taking place in the body of the Logos. The things are forms in His mind, but His mental plane is not ours. But - Oh! bother these ghastly cross divisions! - our mental plane is the lowest subdivision of a big mental plane. The atomic part of arûpa devachan is the tail-end of a cosmic mental plane. The whole thing is like a chess-board in four dimensions. The atomic part of each of our planes is the lowest of a cross division of a cosmic plane.
B. Lowest sub-plane of the Logos' mental body without His mind going into it - that will go in on the way up.13
L. Our mental bodies are expressions in three dimensions of His mental body ... and here they are preparing matter for mental bodies into which ... They build up a mind body then as part of the lowest.
B. Are they not building the higher matter? ... it is topsy-turvy ... they are making it into finer matter first.
L. Yes, I see ... They make - Oh, dear me, they are making in this a seventh part of the matter of all sub-planes ... Oh, that's the meaning of the gaps ... What I mean is this ... Great Scott! one subdivision of each of the seven planes ... These things that appear to be planes are really forty-ninths.
B. Take a bit of devachanic matter now.
L. 'Three marked and four latent'.14 We shall know seven divisions clearly down here.
B. If we took a solid we should have four of its possibilities when this round is done with.
L. Yes - yes.
B. And each round brings out one of those ... one of the seven aspects of each kind of matter of each of the great planes.
[At this juncture rain began to fall, and the party moved into the house, and there the investigations were resumed.]
L. Globe A - include arûpa, but seventh part of each; which seventh - lowest, highest, or middle? ...
B. Oh, that's awfully queer! Look here; take any atom of matter you like and expand it so that you make a round.
L. A what?
B. A round.
L. Don't grasp the idea.
B. I will make you see it ... Do you see, the evolution of it is a kind of miniature of the evolution of a round ... Its evolution as an atom isn't, as it were, complete until the whole round is done. One of these subdivisions, one side of it, is developed going down and the other going up. Then it is a complete atom of one of these planes.
L. Brings out half the subdivisions going down and the other going up.
B. Atomic matter at the beginning doesn't seem like atomic matter now.
L. That's why past, present and future are all the same.
B. Because all the thing is taking place ...
L. But they are queer sort of creatures when this globe is finished.
B. Could we think of an atom as cut into seven planes, all on one subdivision, I mean?
L. As having its seven principles on its own subdivisions.
L. It is the elemental essence part of these things that is developed ... First they developed ... "Darkness alone filled the Boundless All" 15 ... It's bringing down the mind-images from the Logos, from His mental astral to His mental physical ... and this mental physical 16 is our mental plane ... It's only the idea of the mineral come down to a cosmic astral, materialised as low down as our thought of a mineral.
B. Our thought of the etheric body of the mineral.
L. So that, when the whole thing is done, an etheric body will be formed.17
B. But even at that it won't be a hole etheric body.
L. It will be whole for some of them, won't it? (Silence).
B. Man here is no sort of a creature ... he is a thought ... he has what will be a mind body ... he has a kind of thing you might call the germ of a mind body.
L. But marvellously little consciousness in this early stage!
B. Mind body is too advanced a word for it; (it is) no more like a real body than the embryonic form after the first month is a body.
L. (The Logos) brings the whole down on to the astral plane.
B. That is really what it comes to.
L. You see, you have two kinds of elemental essence ... then you begin to get an astralisation of a kind of perspective of the whole business.
L . When you get him18 to Mars you have him etherically; what was only an idea comes down to fact ... the lowest subdivision of each etheric division (is developed) ... Incidently it appears that we shall have to develop physical and astral bodies right up to the seventh round ... (There are) only three ethers on Mars.
L . On the Earth ... four ethers, gas, solid, and liquid ... "Dhritarâshtra, Virûpaksha!"19 Oh! dear me, what an object! It's exciting! It's volcanic - all but nebulous! It's a fiery mass! ... But what is the evolution of the physical in this state of affairs? They are like nebulous forms, the third class pitrs.
B. They have four-sevenths of etheric forms.
L. They have some cosmic dust, I think! ... kind of aggregation of dust particles - a cloud of hydrogen gas of no shape with some dust ... The earth is in the state that Jupiter is now in, raining molten metal ... All the things are more or less essences stewing up in it ... I say, world- periods are much longer than they are now, enormously longer ... But you know, there's something wrong about this! ... In the first round it's cooling down and hardening ... I'll tell you what you are doing - you are building the basis of the mineral kingdom pretty definitely ... Chemists' elements begin to combine ... By the end of the time there's water - it may be boiling.
B. Besides, there are filmy creatures.
L. (They) don't seem to mind the temperature ... (It) gets down to a temperature somewhere under 1,000 degrees (Fahrenheit) by the end of the time.
B. It's the "first-round water".
L. You have oxygen and hydrogen combining in the form of water. If you had the "water" now, to what would it correspond? Etheric?
...B. These creatures absorb from the surrounding atmosphere and materials.
L. What are they? Going to be prototypes?
B. Third-class pitrs - going to be men.
L. Temperature must vary at different parts ... This is what we should call copper.20
B. It would probably fly up into ethers or the astral ... Fire is the dominant principle in this round.
L. It21 acts as a liquid, by reason of its proportion to other things; it pours.
B. It only means that attraction and repulsion are balanced.
B. He22 has consciousness of a very poor kind.
L. (They've) brought up into it something from what they have done on the earth ... I think they've only the three higher ethers ... yet there is much more to it. (They are) more alive than they were - as much alive as the average amoeba ... Look here! Do you see, it's like this: he begins developing ... Oh! but this is complicated! he's developing, - [yawn, getting tired] he's developing the matter of the rûpa levels of devachan in himself and corresponding astral and corresponding etheric and physical, and now he has to work the matter of the arûpa levels backwards - working downwards - to make a vehicle, and upwards to make the vehicle conscious, and in doing that there is a sort of possibility for preparation for making an ego ... He is beginning to have to himself that kind of matter, and corresponding matters on the other planes.
B. If you imagine that he brings on consciousness, such as it is, as he goes up, but drops vehicle after vehicle ... but takes on (with him the) essence (of that consciousness). carries on the consciousness he had on it, and starts with it on getting the next vehicle ... consciousness working in the second sub-plane of astral matter on (planet) F, and on the first sub-plane on G, but always on the seventh sub-division of it ... He isn't developing his things in a coherent order, but like this: He begins, he runs down and up again somehow, and the lowest densest point is the middle, I think.23
(End of the investigations on the first day.)
(Notes)
1. The first-class pitri.
2. In comparison to his size speaking graphically.
3, Thus in the report. But probably L. meant "rounds".
4. To question from B. Keightley.
5. Question by B. Keightley.
6. A fly had settled on L.'s nose, and he had to brush it aside.
7. If L. were to transfer his consciousness from arûpa mental to
buddhic, and back again.
8. The second-class pitri, presumably.
9. CWL at this period used to employ the word "monad" for the
group-soul; as, mineral monad, vegetable monad, etc. Presumably it
is so used here.
10. By "the universal Logos" evidently the Solar Logos is
intended.
11. AB here spoke too rapidly to be taken down, but alluded to the
picture of Vishnu sleeping under the waters, with the Lotus rising
from his navel.
12. "It's only the Red King snoring," said Tweedledee. "Come and
look at him!" the brothers cried, and they each took one of Alice's
hands, and led her up to where the King was sleeping. "Isn't he a
lovely sight?" said Tweedledum. Alice couldn't say honestly that
he was. He had a tall red night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was
lying crumpled up into a sort of untidy heap, and snoring loud -
"fit to snore his head off!" as Tweedledum remarked. "I'm afraid
he'll catch cold with lying on the damp grass," said Alice, who was
a very thoughtful little girl. "He's dreaming now," said
Tweedledee: "and what do you think he's dreaming about?" Alice
said "Nobody can guess that." "Why, about you!"
Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. "And if he
left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?"
"Where I am now, of course," said Alice. "Not You!" Tweedledee
retorted contemptuously. "You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a
sort of thing in his dream!" "If that there King was to wake,"
added Tweedledum, "you'd go out - bang! - just like a candle!" "I
shouldn't!" Alice exclaimed indignantly. "Besides, if
I'm only a sort of thing in his dream, what are
you, I should like to know?" "Ditto," said Tweedledum.
"Ditto, ditto!" cried Tweedledee. He shouted this so loud that
Alice couldn't help saying "Hush! You'll be waking him, I'm
afraid, if you make so much noise." "Well, it's no use
your talking about waking him," said Tweedledum, "when
you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well
you're not real." "I am real!" said Alice, and began to
cry. "You won't make yourself a bit realler by crying," Tweedledee
remarked; "there's nothing to cry about." "If I wasn't real!"
Alice said, half-laughing through her tears, it all seemed so
ridiculous, "I shouldn't be able to cry." "I hope you don't
suppose those are real tears?" Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of
great contempt. "I know they're talking nonsense," Alice thought
to herself: "and it's foolish to cry about it." So she brushed
away her tears, and went on, as cheerfully as she could ... -
Through the Looking Glass
13. In the latter half of the cycle when consciousness is developed
in the form already made.
14. AB asks CWL to examine matter of the higher mental plane
to-day. He does so, and finds that in its atoms three out of the
seven spirillae are in activity.
15. "Darkness alone filled the Boundless All; for Father, Mother,
Son were once more One, and the Son had not yet awakened for the new
Wheel and his pilgrimage thereon." (Stanza I, Book of
Dzyan.)
16. i.e., the lowest sub-plane of the cosmic mental plane.
17. When the work of the first round is over.
18. Man.
19. The names of two of the four "Devarâjas" the chiefs of
the kingdom of nature-spirits and Devas, the four "Regents of the
Earth."
They who write men's deeds
On brazen plates - the Angel of the East,
Whose hosts are clad in silver robes, and bear
Targets of pearl; the Angel of the South,
Whose horsemen, the Kumbhandas, ride blue steeds,
With sapphire shields; the Angel of the West,
By Nâgas followed, riding steeds blood-red,
With coral shields; the Angel of the North,
Environed by his Yakshas, all in gold,
On yellow horses, bearing shields of gold.
Light of Asia
Air-spirits, silver robes and targets of pearl, sea-spirits, blue
steeds and sapphire shields; fire-spirits, steeds blood-red with
coral shields; earth-spirits, in gold, bearing shields of gold.
20. Examining an object before him.
21. Copper.
22. The third-class pitr.
23. If the investigators examined Globes F and G, they said nothing
that could be taken down.
L. The third class pitr has been all the way round making forms on each (globe) on the first round. Is anything left on all those globes, anything like the "Inner round" beginning? ... Does the life-wave of all sorts go round, or do the animal and vegetable, once set going, go on1 but not travel?
B. The pitrs go on, but leave behind them the empty shells of the things they have been inhabiting.
L. In Globe A2 they have certainly materialised the ideas ... (I) don't know whether now at the beginning of the second round there is exactly any life ...
B. (The) pitrs all seem to go on, but seem to leave moulds into which the life-wave (flows) ...
L. Does no elemental life remain? Does the whole thing go on?
B. (The) elemental life-wave goes on to B, because it is wanted there.
L. There seems to me to be such an indefinite amount behind ... What is the state of this world3 after the essences had left it; it surely leaves the mineral life going on, because the thing 4 does hold together?
B. Yes ... Doesn't it give the impression of a thing frozen?
L. Yet surely the motion produced by the heat is going on, boiling and so on? ... The globe is gradually contracting.
B. Curious change comes over it when the attention of the Logos is turned away - not dead, of course, but more sleepy.
L. Do you see, the life of the planet itself is a manifestation of the life of the Spirit of the Earth itself; but that is also a manifestation of the Logos, an earlier stage as it were, because it is in that body of the Spirit of the Earth that the moulds are made. Isn't it upon him that the impression is made which causes the moulds to form? ... Still he plays his part also in each world; he is the ensoulment of the matter somehow ... (We) needn't go into that now ... On the whole, things go on from world to world, and most of the life passes with them?
B. Yes.
L. But is the mineral monad of the occasion part of the First Outpouring? (It) seems to me as though (it was) not, as though the seventh class of pitrs all theoretically ought to attain humanity at the end of this chain ... and still as it [is now] mineral and vegetable and so on [this can hardly come about in the time]5 ... There must be a definite outpouring coming to take their place.
B. They are more playing the part of ensouling intelligence when the moulds are made ... They inhabit the forms, I mean.
L. (A) block of essence is intended to be animal essence on the Moon chain and human life on this chain; those who were meant to be no class of pitrs were ensouling themselves in vegetables at the end of the Moon chain.
[Here ensued a long conversation between B. and L. about the pitrs, but it was too rapid to be taken down by the reporter.]
B. Do you regard the Second Outpouring as blending (with) it!
L. Which! Pitrs themselves! Oh, surely as Second Outpouring.
B. I think they are (the) Second Outpouring.
L. In the case of (the) first-class pitrs they have (the) Third Outpouring, which constitutes (the) first class ... But here 6 your third class pitrs come in as human beings. Hold on! The whole thing is in the mind, on the mental plane ... (It) seems as though the whole thing came into existence together.
B. Isn't it that the third class pitr rushes round and vivifies all, but does not stay in there ... (it) almost seems as though they came together - waked up.
L. Yes ...
B. That is a rather curious effect. It seems as if these revived things don't last very long; (they) seem to go into (a) kind of ... It seems as though the pitrs made higher forms, and that there was a contest between them, and that the lower ones go down.
L. That which comes [in]7 is not high enough to keep up the position.
B. I wonder whether some of these things left behind in one round give rise to those creatures we disliked. (There) seems a sort of survival which is below the life of this time. When things were vivified (it is) as though for the moment they got crushed out, and only some low down remnants remained, I wonder whether (these are what) HPB meant by "by-products"? ... I suppose the fourth class pitrs, some of them, will get a shade of humanity here ... What is our third class pitr doing - he is human all this time - what is he doing?
L. Well, undoubtedly he is evolving himself; you see more of his mind than you saw before. He's made himself denser than before.
B. Has he tried to get a physical body? You see, he is still Devachanic, but he is pressing downwards, isn't he?
L. Yes.
K. What kind of matter is he working in?8
B. He is bringing out the second subdivision of it. [Here ensued a long silence.]
B. He's getting more compact than he was, isn't he?
L. There's more of him ... still lamentably incomplete even for a mind body. He has so very little thinking power.
B. He's dimly conscious, poor creature.
L. But these things don't so much begin at the beginning as much as that ... The second round man is a more coherent creature than the first race on this planet,9 don't you think so? He is more approximating to the second race people - not so much a rolling pillar ... Well, you want to go to the end of the second round, do you?10
L. Do you see him emphasising any part? The principle seems (to be) as though (he is) building all ... He has what he considers a mind body, and he has another thing which may feebly stand to him as an astral body. B. It doesn't seem as though he was evolving a particular principle in a round, but a little bit of each; building the lower quaternary gradually and adding to each bit by bit.
L. He appears to have races even at this early stage of the proceedings. But (I) can't understand it on the first globe;11 he doesn't seem to take a number of lives and go up; (it) seems like coming into one race, and next into another race - his personality ensouling a race. 12
B. Then at the end of the second round the fourth class pitr is distinctly a human creature.
L. Most of him.
B. Something like (an) animal at the end of the first round.
L. Yes. (Long silence) ... You see, it's rather complicated ... But what are you hunting?
B. The appearance of things in general ...
L. Well, let me see, what can we best do? We have still a good deal of evolution to go over, so far as we've seen ... It doesn't appear as though a principle in each round or race or globe is evolved ... He doesn't seem to be evolving Prâna, but evolving the power to specialise jîva all the while ... Doesn't it seem as though that is the special work he is doing on Mars; does that seem to you?
B. Hadn't been looking at that, but was trying to see what gave the impression of more being left behind - as though some of the pitr stuff doesn't go over.
L. It seems after leaving Mars as though at any rate animal and vegetable life remain, and possibly human.
B. As though some couldn't get on - were failures.
L. Oh, yes; yes. There is ... Don't you see a possibility in it? that that which has fallen behind in the second round and is found there when the third round comes may be taken up, and may regain its position by means of the "Inner Round"? That may be one of the uses of the "Inner Round".
B. Sort of trailing off?
L. Yes, that's it exactly.
B. Part goes on.
L. It seems as though in the first round a little of the mineral life is left behind imprisoned in the mineral, while the other went on; and on this round, some of the vegetable life is left behind and the other went on13 ... Are there not living creatures? (A) quantity (of them has) got down quite to viscous stage - kind of boiling down kind of affair.
B. If you jump to the earth of the third round, (the) animal (life) is left behind.
L. But what is this loathsome kind of life that is not life, but yet is life? Yet there are horrid little things moving.
B. Yes, but if you look at our earth when the second round is nearly over, you will see no animal moulds are moving at all.
L. No, but these little things hopping about in this sort of boiling, slimy mess ... What are those things? ... However, go on, he doesn't matter. We'll ignore him!
B. What comes out at the end of the second round?
L. Third class Pitr (is) more advanced, fourth class pitr is human ... Fourth class pitr would not be quite up to the level of Ji,14 would he?
B. No.
L. He is a feeble kind of thing ... The third class pitr (is) approaching the level of the kitten.15 He hasn't much in way of brains, poor thing; he's all instincts and no reason in particular. He hasn't got far, you know. However, he has evolved two-sevenths of astral body, two- sevenths of everything.
B. He is here getting two-sevenths of the lower quaternary.
L. He isn't joined up yet, you see.
B. Oh, no.
L. He has not got up ... (The) Third Outpouring (has) touched him, but (he is) not (yet a) separate ego. It doesn't seem as though I had seen definitely what he has done; yet I don't see how to get further.
B. It made a difference in the vegetable which gets left behind and in the fourth class pitr ... It has brought on lower things certainly. There is now vegetable life on all globes going on at the same time.16
B. (The) third class creature on the first globe is more of a creature now; he is beginning to take a more human shape.
L. Yes - though cloudy and gigantic ... This is all on the Devachanic plane ... I wonder how he manages ... he is a little confusing, is this creature.
B. You can see now that on the four levels he is getting more into a shape, and on the three higher he has got ... 17 threads. Fifth class pitr seems to start getting the human thing now, doesn't he?
L. Some of them have it at the end of Globe A on the third round.
B. The animal ideas are more various, you notice.
L. More types have been called down, you mean? Is the whole animal type down yet? Perhaps hardly.
B. See, one thing is characteristic of this round. All the archetypes are brought down of the mineral in the first, vegetable in the second, animal in the third, and human in the fourth - they are not worked out - so that there is in each one the chance of perfecting its form in the round.
L. I suppose that is why some pitrs are left behind.
B. Those who have quite failed have to stay in it longer.
L. But surely theirs already pressing in behind a mass of other matter?
B. Yes, matter of the second thing ... Just look at Mars, though.
L. Yes, Mars is interesting. He has lots more water than he has now - not reduced to canals. There is certainly physical life, as emphasised by specialisation of prâna.
B. (The) human being is like a very great monkey now.
L. But is a loose reptilely kind of thing - that kind of consistency. He would go in as when you touch a cuttle-fish; his jelly is in a bag; if you pressed him the hole would remain long.
B. He is like a big monkey not still enough to stand; he lies about - (does) not float - he crawls, he wallows.
L. Has he any bones? ... The country is getting rather nice; (the) air (is) still unbreathable, frightfully thick ... This thing has a most diabolical taste;18 it's poisonous; probably (has) lots of chlorine. How has all that since been absorbed - by chemical combination? ... Anyhow, that's Mars.
L. Shall we try this world?19 ... Here you have a more approximate kind of thing. He is still wobbly, beginning to stand; (he) has some hair or bristly something, like third race man,20 much looser, more flabby and crossed with a reptile ... Oh! but he has among him a smaller and better type; there are second class pitrs (who have) turned up; they are more definite - like gorillas.
B. He is very ugly.
L. The other doesn't do it. (He) has a horrid throat, and it all comes out when he does this thing. 21 He does it in a vague kind of way, like a caterpillar ... Does he see?
B. Don't think he does.
L. The second class pitrs see. I think they don't seem to get on with them; 22 seem to be at war with them. The second class looks down upon them, is afraid of them at times if it can't get out of their way.
B. They seem so big to it.
L. It has more brains - more water-gruel of some sort ... There are surely races here; there are quite distinct types; there are incarnations, The second class pits (incarnates) as we do, only at enormously longer intervals. (They live, long lives also ...The world has in a way settled down ... still very earthquaky, still many things different) ... I don't know that intervals (are) longer in proportion.23 I was thinking of the state of the earth. Most astounding mountains ... about fifty miles high 24 - never saw anything like them!
B. And enormous waterfall ...
L. It's fairly solid; you've a kind of crust on your earth ... Big avalanches occur; tops of mountains fall off; (I) never saw such tempests! How you have reached the present condition 25 I don't know; I suppose we shall see. Now (you have) much higher conditions of life. Fourth (class) and fifth pretty much human, and second thrown in; third of course is; second ahead of him now ... Animals (are) big, loose and ungainly, like rough copies of antediluvian creatures. (There's a) deficiency of hair, (they are) all scales or pachydermatous. (The) best (are) like (the) hippopotamus, but more unwieldy and not so definite. (There are lots of) volcanoes; (there's a) speciality in whirlpools - (the) maelstrom is nothing compared to them. Life (is) very precarious. (They)26 eat, (they) tear off tops of trees - not trees, they are ferns; they are eating the seeds of them; tree ferns to the nth, but not so regular and respectable. Some of them dig, grab up (what is a) primitive truffle perhaps. (They have) no particular objection to smells.
B. Sweet creature! killed some animal, and tastes the blood with its finger!
L. (They) seem very fond of slimy things; also en passant the slimy things are very fond of them! Here's a curious brute like a gigantic frog ...
B. They take them raw ...
L. They know nothing about fire; (there is) no trace of civilisation.
B. The human race (is) very much at the experimental stage, apparently; (they) roam about trying things.
L. I don't like the state of affairs. Count?27 Good Lord, no! No idea of it. Can a crocodile count?
B. They haven't any reason, (they have) passions and instincts.
L. The human race is getting much larger. I wonder what they do on the upper arc - on Mercury say?
L. Well, the life is more definite here, and gives the idea of being less coarse. We are approaching to rather nicer looking creatures now. I notice animals like rabbits without any hair.
B. The humans have hair on them.
L. To some extent they have - rather of the pig bristle kind! ... (They are) getting less loathsome; life (is) beginning to stir in the less ignoble sides of them. (They) might even be capable of affection, don't you think so?
B. Well, of a rough kind.
L. Oh, yes, (a) very rudimentary kind of thing - such as a whale might feel! a something that wasn't quite brutal!
B. They share food, instead of snarling, as on earth28 ... The second class pitr is a comparatively respectable being at the end.
L. (They) would be at about the stage that an average chimpanzee would be.
B. Perhaps a little higher. I don't know ... perhaps that.
L. Few up to Sally's29 level! Third class pitr (is) lower down and fourth lower still. (The Investigations into the Third Round here close.
L. Now, this fellow has thickened up his mind, his devachanic matter, so that when he comes (down) into the next plane he well be able to come into touch definitely with the astral plane ... In the third, second and first rounds there was always a blank between the mind, the astral and the physical. Now there will be a more definite connexion ... There are a quantity of more types of humanity - some very fine types.
B. I was looking at those,
L. Types which haven't come into existence yet,30 must belong to the future.
B. A few have come into existence.
L. Yes, but not a race of them; they are roughly speaking types of races and sub-races, aren't they? You see that luminous dove-colored thing, so lovely? That must be the type for a race.
B. Yes, quite unknown to us.
L. That must be a race in the future; and that greater, dreamy, colored-star thing, must be the expression of him ... Is this a man of the future? ... Not connected, I think, with this earth.
B. We have here the types of the remaining rounds.
L. That partly accounts for things.
B. They are showing what men are in future rounds on the mânasic plane.
L. Do you see, these creatures ... However, these sort of archetypes are brought down as possibilities.
B. Yes, not understandable, unless we go into the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds ...
L. Well, this is becoming a more practical kind of creature; (the) connexion can be made.31 Some are doing more evolution in the time. (They are) beginning to have more individual push in them - not so much sweeping on in batches ... It does seem to be the fact that they don't come down again and again, on Globe A, as they do now; (they) seem to live once in a race ...
B. Slide on to the next.
L. Withdrawing into the self - but no self to withdraw into ... Now they don't seem to have any period in devachan after incarnation.
B. I suppose nowhere for them to go into, (they are) not high enough to go on to the arûpa plane.
L. But still they are beginning to think.
B. Yes, a little.
L. You can see the effect on the elemental essence by them; it is being painfully affected by them. Before (it was affected) only by Devas; he is slipping in to spoil things.
B. I did not notice. It32 did not affect it at all before on this plane.
L. (It is) beginning to get quite unpleasant shapes ... Are you sure they began with the densest sub-division? (It seems) almost as though they began in the middle and (are) working down ... They have quite a great deal of coarsish astral matter ... However, run it on to Mars.
L. Oh! I say, there are people in possession already when we get there! Creatures - not exactly people ...
B. I say, these are the creatures which were "watermen, terrible and bad." They ought to have been human, (but they) got delayed. They are rather non-descripts.
L. Is this the kind of thing in connexion with whom, on our earth, the "sin of the mindless" business arose?
B. Yes.
L. They've a loathsome feeling, like (a) tarantula in its mesmeric feeling about the eyes. (They) take a fiendish delight in evil ... Well, this is a long occupation. Humanity is beginning to be civilised. They are building cities, some (of them). (There are) some millions and millions of humanity. (They) might fairly be called humanity, not hairy wild beasts. (They are) much better than some of the Lemurians were. But (it is) still a very selfish kind of life ... They can build; their cities are mainly wood and mud. They are such at the period I am looking at ... They get to stone further on ... Where are we? ... Let's try to identify ... this must be the fourth race ... Wood and mud mainly ... but (there) begin to be great differences in other ways, too ... There are greater powers of some sort manifestly guiding; They are teaching them33 things ... Here you find among them some Beings with all the principles, yet who to them look like themselves ... They have incarnated among them; They teach the use of fire. They34 don't know how to make it. The Being who gives it calls the flame into existence, and all the flames in the world are (lit) from it ... Occasionally whole parts are deprived of fire, (and) then they have to get it from other people in neighboring districts ... The idea of getting fire from volcanoes strikes some bold one; and a good many lose their lives in it ... This is a good while away - there are no volcanoes now.
Let us go on to a later sub-race on Mars. It's rather comic!35 The fifth race is white, like ours! ... (They are) building with large rough unhewn stone; they are war-like, prouder people ... Sexes? surely yes. Wait one moment! Don't let us be rash! There is difference between them, but whether - Yes, we have the sex idea haven't we? ... They know things in a way.
B. They've no initiative. (They) do what they are told to do.
L. Don't you think that individuals are trying to develop it? It is considered eminently improper! - (because) the crowd follows ,,, They have had Divine Rulers ... not now though. But (they) have some savages of a state of degradation unknown to us now ... Some of these are beginning to get real individualities, apparently chiefly in connexion with the Divine Rulers. Some are springing up like Ji. 36 and making the connexion, but only very few as yet; though oddly enough, I think some among them have been third class pitrs and some second ...
B. I wonder why coming on here37 the first and second races should be so little developed?
L. I suppose it's to get physical matter into touch; I don't know why it is done, but (that) seems to be the fact. Even the first, second and third races are worse than this race on Mars. They 38 knew more; I mean, they would compare not unfavorably with some races now; (they are) decidedly ahead of the average Red Indian of to-day ... Wait one moment; I want to look at the sixth root race on Mars ... They are a powerful set of people; know how ... They appear to begin by being less civilised than the fifth; (they) come in upon Mars, and take up such evidences of civilisation as there are, and carry them further and gradually improve them ... Its subjects are all fifth, nearly ... They cultivate quite a large number of plants ... Psychism generally in some ways (is) more developed than here, (though) not under control ... They give one the impression of not having got hold of anything; (they have) got nothing under control, even physical and mental powers. They have capabilities, and they can do things by fits and starts - I mean, they can; thing occur to them, (but) they can't take a thing and work it out. Of course they have plenty of mind - manas - and some are making the connexion.
(The) seventh race at its culmination ... Well, material strength and prosperity (are) still in the hands of the sixth; the supremacy of the seventh is not in force, (they are) not so warlike. Let's see how this is ... They know more ... (they are) smaller in number. It would be a kind of intellectual supremacy; (they are) getting nearer to modern ideas, more definite ideas of right and wrong. (They are) less fierce and more law abiding; (they have) a more definite polity, and live according to it. ... They've one or two things curiously like us - in roads; (they) make statues and paintings, but (they are) all different ... The seventh race is the first which had definite writing; I didn't notice it before, did you! ...
B. They've developed a polity like the social animals - like the ants.
L. They would be a very good race in thee world now - quite a conquering race if you planted them among the Danubian principalities.
L. (A) good many of them don't come on to the earth ... The world looks very different ... No, no, 39 the first race doesn't contain any advanced people at all; (they are) comparatively speaking small in number ... Why, they don't reincarnate! They revert back to former habits! These ball people live through a subrace ... No, the foremost of them are people who have left off in the fourth subrace in Mars, I think - is that so? ... (It is) perfectly clear the higher people don't come on at all yet, more the fourth and fifth.
B. Those seventh race on Mars are third class pitrs, some of them.
L. They are better than some third class pitrs now! ... Well, (I) don't think much of the first race ... (it) improves slightly; more drift in ... In the second race more drift in.
B. What I am trying is to get (a) clue, (that) that seventh race on Mars may be those people who throw out shadows40 and go to Mahâloka to help.
L. Wouldn't those be those who had individualised?
B. And come back in the middle of the show ...
L. The forms of the seven great Rays are given each on a different place ... No, but look here! Who are these like stars appearing? Why are there human beings who are not globular along with this first race? ... They are new importations ... Wait a minute ... Oh, I don't know ... What is this? They are more like some of us! - Like a small eruption of first class pitrs! Can you explain? Why is this? (Here ensued a long silence.)
B. I am inclined to think the Chhâyyâs are (a) kind of models, and the first and the second race spend the time in trying to build after them.
L. Trying to assimilate them ... But who are these who move about them? (They are) not Manus - too many of them: Surely (they are) first class pitrs? - not from Mars? - not Mânasaputras?
B. (They) may be first class pitrs looking about and seeing when they will be able to incarnate.
L. The projection of the seven Chhâyyâs was done by very big People indeed; but these are ingrained into them ... I have an idea as to what they are to do ... No! ... they grow bodies ... No! it's the etheric double that they leave for the other fellows.
B. That is the Chhâyyâ.
L. Anything may be called a Chhâyyâ! ... It seems to me that they try to get some of these football fellows into their etheric doubles, and the foot-ball fellows are proud of it, and can't keep in it long.
B. Do you know, I am inclined to think that "Mânasaputras" in the Stanzas covers many of these first class pitrs; and I expect these are some looking about seeing how things are getting on - looking about for a chance for reincarnation.
L. Apparently they were to do this ... this was the thing to do ... By the way, the human form is not exactly what it is now. It's (a) little loose still ... I think some of these first class have made tentative shots several times, (and) turned up later on to see how things have progressed ... (I) was looking on down to the third race period.
B. Then they thought they weren't good enough!
C. Jînarâjadâsa
Notes
END
This file was located in the:
HTML validation by:
spell-checked, reset in HTML v4.0 during November 1999.