Theos-Talk Archives (October 2003 Message tt00401)

Oct 31 2003

Dear Fali:

The doctrine of the Monads and their incarnation on this earth is given
in the OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY in Chapter 3 -- as follows (some extracts) :

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THE EARTH CHAIN


Coming now to our Earth the view put forward by Theosophy regarding its
genesis, its evolution and the evolution of the Human, Animal and other
Monads, is quite different from modern ideas, and in some things
contrary to accepted theories. But the theories of today are not stable.
They change with each century, while the Theosophical one never alters
because, in the opinion of those Elder Brothers who have caused its
repromulgation and pointed to its confirmation in ancient books, it is
but a statement of facts in nature. The modern theory is, on the
contrary, always speculative, changeable, and continually altered. 

Following the general plan outlined in preceding pages, the Earth is
sevenfold. It is an entity and not a mere lump of gross matter. And
being thus an entity of a septenary nature there must be six other
globes which roll with it in space. This company of seven globes has
been called the "Earth Chain," the "Planetary Chain." ...

The earth is one of seven globes, in respect to man's consciousness
only, because when he functions on one of the seven he perceives it as a
distinct globe and does not see the other six. This is in perfect
correspondence with man himself who has six other constituents of which
only the gross body is visible to him because he is now functioning on
the Earth -- or the fourth globe -- and his body represents the Earth.
The whole seven "globes" constitute one single mass or great globe and
they all interpenetrate each other. ...



EGOS - MONADS

The stream or mass of Egos which evolves on the seven globes of our
chain is limited in number, yet the actual quantity is enormous. For
though the universe is limitless and infinite, yet in any particular
portion of Cosmos in which manifestation and evolution have begun there
is a limit to the extent of manifestation and to the number of Egos
engaged therein. And the whole number of Monads now going through
evolution on our Earth Chain came over from the old seven planets or
globes which I have described.... this mass of Egos [is called] a "life
wave," meaning the stream of Monads. 

It reached this planetary mass, represented to our consciousness by the
central point our Earth, and began on Globe A or No. I, coming like an
army or river. The first portion began on Globe A and went through a
long evolution there in bodies suited to such a state of matter, and
then passed on to B, and so on through the whole seven greater states of
consciousness which have been called globes. When the first portion left
A others streamed in and pursued the same course, the whole army
proceeding with regularity round the septenary route. 

This journey went on for four circlings round the whole, and then the
whole stream or army of Egos from the old Moon Chain had arrived, and
being complete, no more entered after the middle of the Fourth Round.
The same circling process of these differently arrived classes goes on
for seven complete Rounds of the whole seven planetary centers of
consciousness, and when the seven are ended as much perfection as is
possible in the immense period occupied will have been attained, and
then this chain or mass of "globes" will die in its turn to give birth
to still another series.
 
Each one of the globes is used by evolutionary law for the development
of seven races, and of senses, faculties and powers appropriate to that
state of matter: the experience of the whole seven globes being needed
to make a perfect development. Hence we have the Rounds and Races. 

The Round is a circling of the seven centers of planetary consciousness;
the Race the racial development on one of those seven. 

There are seven races for each globe, but the total of forty-nine races
only makes up seven great races, the special septennate of races on each
globe or planetary center composing in reality one race of seven
constituents or special peculiarities of function and power. 

And as no complete race could be evolved in a moment on any globe, the
slow, orderly processes of nature, which allow no jumps, must proceed by
appropriate means. Hence sub-races have to be evolved one after the
other before the perfect root race is formed, and then the root race
sends off its offshoots while it is declining and preparing for the
advent of the next great race. 

As illustrating this, it is distinctly taught that on the Americas is to
be evolved the new -- sixth -- race; and here all the races of the earth
are now engaged in a great amalgamation from which will result a very
highly developed sub-race, after which others will be evolved by similar
processes until the new one is completed. 

Between the end of any great race and the beginning of another there is
a period of rest, so far as the globe is concerned, for then the stream
of human Egos leaves it for another one of the chain in order to go on
with further evolution of powers and faculties there. But when the last,
the seventh, race has appeared and fully perfected itself, a great
dissolution comes on, similar to that which I briefly described as
preceding the birth of the earth's chain, and then the world disappears
as a tangible thing, and so far as the human ear is concerned there is
silence. This, it is said, is the root of the belief so general that the
world will come to an end, that there will be a judgment-day, or that
there have been universal floods or fires. 


MONADS - EGOS evolving on Earth


Taking up evolution on the Earth, it is stated that the stream of Monads
begins first to work up the mass of matter in what are called elemental
conditions when all is gaseous or fiery. For the ancient and true theory
is that no evolution is possible without the Monad as vivifying agent.
In this first stage there is no animal or vegetable. Next comes the
mineral when the whole mass hardens, the Monads being all imprisoned
within. Then the first Monads emerge into vegetable forms which they
construct themselves, and no animals yet appear. Next the first class of
Monads emerges from the vegetable and produces the animal, then the
human astral and shadowy model, and we have minerals, vegetables,
animals and future men, for the second and later classes are still
evolving in the lower kingdoms. 


MIDDLE OF 4th ROUND


When the middle of the Fourth Round is reached no more Monads emerge
into the human stage and will not until a new planetary mass,
reincarnated from ours, is made. This is the whole process roughly
given, but with many details left out, for in one of the rounds man
appears before the animals. But this detail need lead to no confusion. 

And to state it in another way. The plan comes first in the universal
mind, after which the astral model or basis is made, and when that
astral model is completed, the whole process is gone over so as to
condense the matter, up to the middle of the Fourth Round. Subsequent to
that, which is our future, the whole mass is spiritualized with full
consciousness and the entire body of globes raised up to a higher plane
of development. 

In the process of condensing above referred to there is an alteration in
respect to the time of the appearance of man on the planet. But as to
these details the teachers have only said, "that at the Second Round the
plan varies, but the variation will not be given to this generation."
Hence it is impossible for me to give it. But there is no vagueness on
the point that seven great races have to evolve here on this planet, and
that the entire collection of races has to go seven times round the
whole series of seven globes. 

Human beings did not appear here in two sexes first. The first were of
no sex, then they altered into hermaphrodite, and lastly separated into
male and female. And this separation into male and female for human
beings was over 18,000,000 years ago. For that reason is it said, in
these ancient schools, that our humanity is 18,000,000 years old and a
little over. ( see S D I 150fn )


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You will note that many details (such as the numbers you ask) are
omitted, but in studying Theosophical literature some references emerge
such as:

S D I pp. 173, 178-82, 184, 187, 
ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS -- Ocean Class pp. 32, 37,   

Q. What sets limits to the number of Monads that enter the human
kingdom?

A. Simply the number of monads that have progressed far enough to enter
it. The middle point of this stream of evolution being passed, and
incipient humans having to begin as such on the highest plane of
substance, and human evolution having reached its Fourth stage in this
Round, and also the middle point of the Seven Rounds, monads from the
animal kingdom cannot-in the nature of time and opportunity-reach the
incipient human stage until the Seventh Round. This is no detriment to
them, for their intelligence has not reached that point where they are
sensible of the difference, and their progress towards the human point
of entrance is not barred in the meantime.

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M o n a d

Monad (Gr.) The Unity, the one.; but in Occultism it often means
the unified triad, Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or the duad, Atma-Buddhi, that
immortal part of man which reincarnates in the lower kingdoms, and
gradually progresses through them to Man and then to the final
goal-Nirvana."	T. Glossary p. 216

  
"The breath ( human Monad) needed a form; the Fathers gave it, The
breath needed a gross body; the Earth moulded it. The Breath needed
the Spirit of Life; the Solar Lhas breathed it into its form . The
breath needed a mirror of its body (astral shadow ); "We gave it our
own, " said the Dhyanis. The breath needed a vehicle of desires
(Kama-rupa) ; "It has it, said the Drainer of Waters (Sushi, the fire
of passion and animal instinct) . The breath needed a mind to embrace
the Universe; "We cannot give that," said the Fathers. "I never had
it.," said the Spirit of the Earth. "The form would be consumed were I
to give it mine," said the Great (solar) Fire . . . (nascent) Man
remained an empty, senseless Bhuta . . . Thus have the boneless given
life to those who became (later) men with bones in the third (race . . .
"	Stanza IV (17) of Dzyan, S D II 105


"Pilgrim" is the appellation given our Monad (the two in one [
Atma-Buddhi ] ) during its cycle of incarnation. It is the only
immortal and eternal principle in us, being an indivisible part of the
integral whole-the Universal Spirit, from which it emanates, and into
which it is absorbed at the end of the cycle. When it is said to
emanate from the one spirit, an awkward and incorrect expression has to
be used, for lack of appropriate words in English.. The Vedantins call
it Sutratma (Thread Soul) . . ."	SD II 16-17fn


".Buddhi is the faculty of cognizing the channel through which divine
knowledge reaches the "Ego," the discernment of good and evil, "divine
conscience" also; and "Spiritual Soul," which is the vehicle of Atma.
"When Buddhi absorbs our Ego-tism (destroys it) with all its Vikaras,
Avalokiteshvara becomes manifested to us, and Nirvana, or Mukti, is
reached, "Mukti" being the same as Nirvana, i.e., freedom from the
trammels of "maya" or illusion."	S D I p. xix


"Starting upon the long journey immaculate; descending more and more
into sinful matter, and having connected himself with every atom in
manifested Space-the Pilgrim, having struggled through and suffered in
every form of life and being, is only at the bottom of matter, and half
through his cycle, when he has identified himself with collective
Humanity. This, he has made in his own image.  

In order to progress upwards and homewards, the "God" has now to ascend
the weary uphill path of the Golgotha of Life. It is the martyrdom of
self-conscious existence. Like Visvakarman he has to sacrifice himself
to himself in order to redeem all creatures, to resurrect from the many
into the One Life. Then he ascends into heaven indeed; where, plunged
into the incomprehensible absolute Being and Bliss of Paranirvana, he
reigns unconditionally, and whence he will re-descend again at the next
"coming," which one portion of humanity expects in its dead-letter sense
as the second advent, and the other as the last "Kalki Avatar."
S D I p. 268


"Man is certainly no special creation, and he is the product of Nature's
gradual perfective work, like any other living unit on this Earth. But
this is only with regard to the human tabernacle. That which lives and
thinks in man and survives that frame, the masterpiece of evolution-is
the "Eternal Pilgrim," the Protean differentiation in space and time of
the One Absolute "unknowable." . . . For we, too, claim that it is
the "Soul," or the inner man, that descends on Earth first, the psychic
astral, the mould 0n which the physical man is gradually built-his
Spirit, intellectual and moral faculties awakening later on as that
physical stature grows and develops. "Thus incorporeal Spirits to
smaller forms reduced their shapes immense ,". . . and became the men of
the Third and Fourth Races. Still later, ages after, appeared the men
of our Fifth Race, reduced from the still gigantic (in our modern sense)
stature of their primeval ancestors, to about half of that size at
present."	S D II p. 728


"Sattva is the name given among Occult students of the Aryasangha School
to the dual Monad or Atma-buddhi, and Atma-buddhi on this plane
corresponds to Parabrahm and Mulaprakriti on the higher plane."
S D I p. 69fn


"The Sixth principle in Man (Buddhi, the Divine Soul) though a mere
breath, in our conceptions, is still something material when compared
with divine "Spirit" (Atma) of which it is the carrier or vehicle..
Fohat, in his capacity of Divine Love (Eros), the electric Power of
affinity and sympathy, is shown allegorically as trying to bring the
pure Spirit, the Ray inseparable from the One absolute, into union with
the Soul, the two constituting ion Man the Monad, and in Nature the
first link between the ever unconditioned and the manifested."
S D I p. 119


" The fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal Over Soul,
the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root; and the
obligatory pilgrimage for every Soul-a spark of the former-through the
Cycle of Incarnation (or "Necessity") in accordance with Cyclic and
Karmic law, during the whole term. . . . no purely spiritual Buddhi
(divine Soul) can have an independent (conscious) existence before the
spark which issued from the pure Essence of the Universal Sixth
principle,--or the over soul,--has passed through every elemental form
of the phenomenal world of that Manvantara, and acquired individuality,
first by natural impulse, and then by self-induced and self-devised
efforts (checked by its Karma), thus ascending through all the degrees
of intelligence, from the lowest to the highest Manas, from mineral and
plant, up to the holiest archangel (Dhyani Buddha), 

The pivotal doctrine of the Esoteric philosophy admits no privileges or
special gifts in man, save those won by his own Ego through personal
effort and merit throughout a long series of metempsychoses and
reincarnations."	S D I p. 17


"Man tends to become a God and then-God, like every other atom in the
Universe."	S D I p. 159


"The same difficulty of language is met with in describing the "stages"
through which the Monad passes. Metaphysically speaking, it is of
course an absurdity to talk of the "development" of a Monad, or to say
that it becomes "Man." . . . It stands to reason that Monad cannot
either progress or develop, or even be affected by the changes of states
it passes through. It is not of this world or plane, and may be
compared only to an indestructible star of divine light and fire, thrown
down on our Earth as a plank of salvation for the personalities in which
it indwells. It is for the latter to cling to it; and thus partaking
of its divine nature, obtain immortality. Left to itself the Monad will
cling to no one; but, like the "plank," be drifted away to another
incarnation by the unresisting current of evolution."	S D I p.
174-5fn


". . . the Monad or Jiva per se cannot be even called spirit; it is a
ray, a breath of the Absolute, or the Absoluteness rather, and the
Absolute Homogeneity, having no relations with the conditioned and
relative finiteness, is unconscious on our plane. Therefore, besides
the material which will be needed for its future human form, the monad
requires a spiritual model, or prototype, for that material to shape
itself into; and, an intelligent consciousness to guide its evolution
and progress, neither of which is possessed by the homogeneous monad, or
by the senseless though living matter,. The Adam of dust requires the
Soul of Life to be breathed into him: the two middle principles, which
are the sentient life of the irrational animal and the Human Soul, for
the former is irrational without the latter. [ Kama and Manas or
Kama-Manas ] It is only when . . . man has become separated into male
and female, that he will be endowed with this conscious, rational,
individual Soul, (Manas) "the principle, or the intelligence of the
Elohim," to receive which, he has to eat of the fruit of Knowledge from
the Tree of Good and Evil. . . . after having reached a certain point,
they [ the "Elohim," or Pitris, lower Dhyan Chohans ] will meet the
incarnating senseless monads, encased in the lowest matter, and blending
the two potencies, Spirit and Matter, the union will produce that
terrestrial symbol of the "Heavenly Man" in space-perfect man, In
Sankhya philosophy Purusha (spirit) is spoken of as something impotent
unless he mounts on the shoulders of a Prakriti (matter), which, left
alone, is-senseless. But in the secret philosophy they are viewed as
graduated. . . Both are inseparable, yet ever separated. . . . the two
poles of the same homogeneous substance, the root-principle of the
universe."	S D I p. 247


". . . to complete the septenary man, to add to his three lower
principles and cement them with the spiritual Monad-which could never
dwell in such a form otherwise than in an absolutely latent state-two
connecting principles are needed: Manas and Kama. This requires a
Spiritual Fire of the middle principle from the fifth and third states
of Pleroma. But this fire is the possession of the Triangles, not of
the (perfect) Cubes, which symbolize Angelic Beings: [ Footnote : The
triangle becomes a Pentagon (five-fold) on Earth. ] . . . The human Ego
is neither Atman nor Buddhi, but the higher Manas: the intellectual
fruition and the efflorescence of the intellectual self-consciousness
Egotism-in the higher spiritual sense. The ancient works refer to it as
Karna Sarira on the plane of the Sutratma, which is the golden thread on
which, like beads, the various personalities of this higher Ego are
strung.. . . these Beings were returning Nirvanees, from preceeding
Maha-Manvantaras-ages of incalculable duration which have rolled away in
the Eternal. . . The thread of radiance which is imperishable and
dissolves only in Nirvana, re-emerges from it in its integrity on the
day when the Great Law calls all things back into action. . . "	S D II
p. 80



"Kwan-Shi-Yin . . . means "the Lord that is seen," and in one sense,
"the divine self perceived by Self " (the human)-the Atman or seventh
principle merged in the Universal, perceived by, or the object of
perception to, Buddhi, the sixth principle or divine Soul in man. In a
still higher sense, Avalokiteshvara-Kwan-Shi-Yin, referred to as the
seventh Universal principle, is the Logos perceived by the Universal
Buddhi-or Soul, as the synthetic aggregate of the Dhyani Buddhas. . .
the omnipresent universal Spirit manifested in the temple of Kosmos or
Nature."	S D I p. 471-2


"The monad-a truly "indivisible thing," . . . is here rendered as the
Atma in conjunction with Buddhi and the higher Manas. This trinity is
one and eternal, the latter being absorbed in the former at the
termination of all conditioned and illusive life. The monad, then, can
be traced through the course of its pilgrimage and its changes of
transitory vehicles only from the incipient stage of the manifested
Universe. . . . Atma alone is the one real and eternal substratum of
all-the essence and absolute knowledge-the kshetragna. { Footnote:
.atma (spirit) alone is what remains after the subtraction of the
sheaths and that it is the only witness, or synthesized unity." )
S D I p. 570-1

:Atma (our seventh principle) being identical with the universal Spirit,
and man being one with it in his essence, what it then the Monad proper
? It is that homogeneous spark which radiates in millions of rays from
the primeval "Seven;" . . . It is the emanating spark from the uncreated
ray-a mystery. . . . Adi-Buddha. . . the One unknown, without beginning
or end, identical with Parabrahm and Ain-Soph, emits a bright ray from
its darkness.. This is the Logos (the first), or Vajradhara, the
Supreme Buddha . . . As the Lord of all Mysteries he cannot manifest,
but sends into the world of manifestation his heart-the "diamond heart,"
Vajrasattva . . . This is the second logos of creation, from whom
emanate the seven . . . Dhyani Buddhas, called Anupadaka, "the
parentless."  

These Buddhas are the primeval monads from the world of incorporeal
being, the Arupa world, wherein the Intelligences (on that plane only)
have neither shape nor name, in the exoteric system, but have their
distinct seven names in esoteric philosophy. These Dhyani Buddhas
emanate, or create from themselves, by virtue of Dhyana, celestial
Selves-the super-human Bodhisattvas. These incarnating at the beginning
of every human cycle on earth as mortal men, become occasionally, owing
to their personal merit, Bodhisattvas among the Sons of Humanity, after
which they may re-appear as Manushi (human) Buddhas.  

The Anupadaka (or Dhyani Buddhas) are thus identical with the
Brahmanical Manasaputra, "mind-born sons"-whether of Brahma or either of
the other two Trimurtian Hypostases, hence identical also with the
Rishis and Prajapatis.."	S D I p. 571


"Plato . . . the great Initiate Philosopher said: for the ego (the
"Higher Self" when merged with and in the divine Monad) is Man, and yet
the same as the "other," the Angel in him incarnated, as the same with
the universal Mahat."	S D II p 88





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Best wishes,

Dallas

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-----Original Message-----
From: Fali
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 9:36 PM
To: study@blavatsky.net
Subject: [bn-study] Human Monads

We are told that after the half way mark of three and
a half rounds, the door is closed on the entry of new
human monads. 

I am keen to know the total number of such monads,
both in and out of physical incarnation that are at
present evolving in the present fourth round.


Fali