CHAPTER 7:
The Human Tide-Wave
A
GENERAL account has
already been given of the way in which the great evolutionary life-wave
sweeps round and round the seven worlds which compose the planetary
chain of which our earth is a part. Further assistance may now be
offered, with the view of expanding this general idea into a fuller
comprehension of the processes to which it relates. And no one
additional chapter of the great story will do more towards rendering its
character intelligible than an explanation of certain phenomena
connected with the progress of world, that may be conveniently called
obscurations.
Students of occult-philosophy who enter on that pursuit with minds
already abundantly furnished in other ways are very liable to
misinterpret its earlier statements. Everything cannot be said at once,
and the first broad explanations are apt to suggest conceptions in
regard to details which are most likely to be erroneous with the most
active-minded and intelligent thinkers. Such readers are not content
with shadowy outlines even for a moment. Imagination fills in the
picture, and if its work is undisturbed for any length of time, the
author of it will be surprised afterwards to find that later information
is incompatible with that which he had came to regard as having been
distinctly taught in the beginning. Now in this treatise the writer’s
effort is to convey the information in such a way that hasty
weed-growths of the mind may be prevented as far as possible; but in
this very effort it is necessary sometimes to run on quickly in advance,
leaving some details, even very important details, to be picked up
during a second journey over the old ground. So now the reader must be
good enough to go back to the explanation given in Chapter III. of the
evolutionary progress through the whole planetary chain.
Some few words were said then concerning the manner in which the
life impulse passed on from planet to planet in “rushes or gushes; not
by an even continuous, flow.” Now the course of evolution in its earlier
stages is so far continuous that the preparation of several planets for
the final tidal-wave of humanity may be going on simultaneously. Indeed,
the preparation of all the seven planets may, at one stage of the
proceedings, be going on simultaneously, but the important point to
remember is that the main wave of evolution — the foremost growing wave
— cannot be in more than one place at a time. The process goes on in the
way which may now be described, and which the reader may be the better
able to follow, if he constructs either on paper or in his own mind a
diagram consisting of seven circles (representing the worlds) arranged
in a ring. Calling them A, B, C, etc., it will be observed from what has
been already stated that circle (or globe) D stands for our earth. Now
the kingdoms of Nature as known to occultists, be it remembered, are
seven in number; three having to do with astral and elementary forces,
preceding the grosser material kingdoms in the order of their
development. Kingdom 1 evolves on globe A, and passes on to B, as
kingdom 2 begins to evolve on A. Carry out this system and of course it
will be seen that kingdom 1 is evolving on globe G, while kingdom
7, the Human kingdom, is evolving on globe A. But now what happens as
kingdom 7 passes on to globe B? There is no eighth kingdom to engage the
activities of globe A. The great processes of evolution have culminated
in the final tidal-wave of humanity, which, as it sweeps on, leaves a
temporary lethargy of Nature behind. When the life-wave goes on to B, in
fact, globe A passes for the time into a state of obscuration. This
state is not one of decay, dissolution, or anything that can be properly
called death. Decay itself, though its aspect is apt to mislead the
mind, is a condition of activity in a certain direction, this
consideration affording a clue to the meaning of a great deal which is
otherwise meaningless in that part of Hindu mythology which relates to
the deities presiding over destruction. The obscuration of a world is a
total suspension of its activity; this does not mean that the moment the
last human monad passes on from any given world that world is paralyzed
by any convulsion, or subsides into the enchanted trance of a sleeping
palace. The animal and vegetable life goes on as before, for a time, but
its character begins to recede instead of advancing. The great life-wave
has left it, and the animal and vegetable kingdoms gradually return to
the condition in which they were found when the great life-wave first
reached them. Enormous periods of time are available for this slow
process by which the obscured world settles into sleep, for it will be
seen that obscuration in each case lasts six times1
as long as the period of each world’s occupation by the human life-wave.
That is to say, the process which is accomplished as above described in
connection with the passage of the life-wave from globe A to globe B is
repeated all along the chain. When the wave passes to C, B is left in
obscuration as well as A. Then D receives the life-wave, and A, B, C are
in obscuration. When the wave reaches G, all the preceding six worlds
are in obscuration. Meanwhile the life-wave passes on in a certain
regular progression, the symmetrical character of which is very
satisfactory to scientific instincts. The reader will be prepared to
pick up the idea at once, in view of the explanations already given of
the way in which humanity evolves through seven great races, during each
round period on a planet; that is to say, during the occupation of such
planet by the tidal wave of life. The fourth race is obviously the
middle race of the series. As soon as this middle point is turned, and
the evolution of the fifth race on any given planet begins, the
preparation for humanity begins on the next. The evolution of the fifth
race on E, for example, is commensurate with the evolution, or rather
with the revival, of the mineral kingdom on D, and so on. That is to
say, the evolution of the sixth race on D coincides with the revival of
the vegetable kingdom on E; the seventh race on D with the revival of
the animal kingdom on E; and then when the last monads of the seventh
race on D have passed into the subjective state or world of effects, the
human period on B begins, and the first race begins its development
there. Meanwhile the twilight period on the world preceding D has been
deepening into the night of obscuration in the same progressive way, and
obscuration there definitely sets in when the human period on D passes
its half-way point. But just as the heart of a man beats and respiration
continues, no matter how profound his sleep, there are processes of
vital action which go on in the resting world even during the most
profound depths of its repose. And these preserve, in view of the next
return of the human wave, the results of the evolution that preceded its
first arrival. Recovery for the re-awaking planet is a larger process
than its subsidence into rest, for it has to attain a higher degree of
perfection against the return of the human life- wave than that at which
it was left when the wave last went onward from its shore. But with
every new beginning, Nature is infused with a vigor of its own, — the
freshness of a morning, — and the later obscuration period, which is a
time of preparation and hopefulness as it were, invests evolution itself
with a new momentum. By the time the great life-wave returns, all is
ready for its reception.
In the first essay on this subject it was roughly indicated that the
various worlds making up our planetary chain were not all of the same
materiality. Putting the conception of spirit at the north pole of the
circle and that of matter at the south pole, the worlds of the
descending arc vary in materiality, and spirituality, like those of the
ascending arc. This variation must now be considered more attentively if
the reader wishes to realize the whole processes of evolution more fully
than heretofore.
Besides the earth, which is at the lowest material point, there are
only two other worlds of our chain which are visible to physical eyes, —
the one behind and the one in advance of it. These two worlds, as a
matter of fact, are Mars and Mercury, — Mars being behind and Mercury in
advance of us: Mars in a state of entire obscuration now as regards the
human life-wave, Mercury just beginning to prepare for its next human
period.2
The two
planets of our chain that are behind Mars, and the two that are in
advance of Mercury, are not composed of an order of matter which
telescopes can take cognizance of. Four out of the seven are thus of an
ethereal nature, which people who can only conceive matter in its
earthly form will be inclined to call immaterial But they are not really
immaterial at all. They are simply in a finer state of materiality than
the earth, but their finer state does not in any way defeat the
uniformity of Nature’s design in regard to the methods and stages of
their evolution. Within the scale of their subtle “invisibility,” the
successive rounds and races of mankind pass through their stages of
greater and less materiality just as on this earth; but whoever would
comprehend them must comprehend this earth first, and work out their
delicate phenomena by correspondential inferences. Let us return,
therefore, to the consideration of the great life-wave in its aspects on
this planet.
Just as the chain of worlds treated as a unity has its north and
south, its spiritual and material, pole, working from spirituality down
through materiality up to spirituality again, so the rounds of mankind
constitute a similar series which the chain of globes itself might be
taken to symbolize. In the evolution of man in fact, on any one plane as
on all, there is a descending and an ascending arc; spirit, so to speak,
involving itself into matter, and matter evolving itself into spirit.
The lowest or most material point in the cycle thus becomes the inverted
apex of physical intelligence, which is the masked manifestation of
spiritual intelligence. Each round of mankind evolved on the downward
arc (as each race of each round if we descend to the smaller mirror of
the cosmos) must thus be more physically intelligent than its
predecessor, and each in the upward arc must be invested with a more
refined form of mentality commingled with greater spiritual
intuitiveness. In the first round, therefore, we find man a relatively
ethereal being compared even on earth with the state he has now attained
here, not intellectual, but super-spiritual. Like the animal and
vegetable shapes around him, he inhabits an immense but loosely
organized body. In the second round he is still gigantic and ethereal,
but growing firmer and more condensed in body, — a more physical man,
but still less intelligent than spiritual. In the third round he has
developed a perfectly concrete and compacted body, at first the forth
rather of a giant ape than of a true man, but with intelligence coming
more and more into the ascendant. In the last half of the third round
his gigantic stature decreases, his body improves in texture, and he
begins to be a rational man. In the fourth round intellect, now fully
developed, achieves enormous progress. The direct races with which the
round begins acquire human speech as we understand it. The world teems
with the results of intellectual activity and spiritual decline. At the
half-way point of the fourth round here the polar point of the whole
seven-world period is passed. From this point outwards the spiritual Ego
begins its real struggle with body and mind to manifest its
transcendental powers. In the fifth round the struggle continues, but
the transcendental faculties are largely developed, though the struggle
between these on the one hand with physical intellect and propensity is
fiercer than ever, for the intellect of the fifth round as well as its
spirituality is an advance on that of the fourth. In the sixth round
humanity attains a degree of perfection both of body and soul, of
intellect and spirituality, which ordinary mortals of the present epoch
will not readily realize in their imaginations. The most supreme
combinations of wisdom, goodness, and transcendental enlightenment which
the world has ever seen or thought of will represent the ordinary type
of manhood. Those faculties which now, in the rare efflorescence of a
generation, enable some extraordinarily gifted persons to explore the
mysteries of Nature and gather the knowledge of which some crumbs are
now being offered (through these writings and in other ways) to the
ordinary world, will then be the common appanage of all. As to what the
seventh round will be like, the most communicative occult teachers are
solemnly silent Mankind in the seventh round will be something
altogether too. Godlike for mankind in the fourth round to forecast its
attributes.
During the occupation of any planet by the human life-wave, each
individual monad is inevitably incarnated many times. This has been
partly explained. If one existence only be passed by the monad in each
of the branch races through which it must pass at least once, the total
number accomplished during a round period on one planet would be 343, —
the third power of seven. But as a matter of fact each monad is
incarnated twice in each of the branch races, and also comes in,
necessarily, for some few extra incarnations as well. For reasons which
are not easy for the outsider to divine, the possessors of occult
knowledge are especially reluctant to give out numerical facts relating
to cosmogony, though it is hard for the uninitiated to understand why
these should be withheld. At present, for example, we shall not be able
to state what is the actual duration in years of the round period. But a
concession, which only those who have long been students of occultism by
the old method will fully appreciate, has been made about the numbers
with which we are immediately concerned; and this concession is valuable
at all events, as it helps to elucidate an interesting fact connected
with evolution, on the threshold of which we have now arrived. This fact
is that while the earth, for example, is inhabited, as at present, by
fourth-round humanity, by the wave of human life, that is to say, on its
fourth journey round the circle of the worlds, there may be present
among us some few persons, few in relation to the total number, who,
properly speaking, belong to the fifth round. Now, in the sense of the
term at present employed, it must not be supposed that by any miraculous
process any individual unit has actually traveled round the whole chain
of worlds once more often than his compeers. Under the explanations just
given as to the way the tide-wave of humanity progresses, it will be
seen that this is impossible. Humanity has not yet paid its fifth visit
even to the planet next in advance of our own.. But individual monads
may outstrip their companions as regards their individual development,
and so become exactly as mankind generally will be when the fifth round
has been fully evolved. And this may be accomplished in two ways: A man
born as an ordinary fourth-round man may, by processes of occult
training, convert himself into a man having all the attributes of a
fifth-round man, and so become what we may call an artificial fifth
rounder. But independently of all exertions made by man in his present
incarnation, a man may also be born a fifth rounder, though in the midst
of fourth-round humanity by virtue of the total number of his previous
incarnations.
If x
stands for the normal number of incarnations which in the course of
Nature a monad must go through during a round period on one planet, and
y for the margin of extra incarnations into which by a strong
desire for physical life he may force himself during such a period,
then, as a matter of fact, 24½ (z + y) may exceed 28 x; that is to say,
in 3 rounds a monad may have accomplished as many incarnations as an
ordinary monad would have accomplished in four complete rounds. In less
than 3 rounds the result could not have been attained, so that it is
only now that we have passed the half-way point of evolution on this
half-way planet that the fifth rounders are beginning to drop in.
It is not possible in the nature of things that a monad can do more
than outstrip his companions by more than one round. This consideration,
notwithstanding Buddha was a sixth-round man; but this fact has to do
with a great mystery outside the limits of the present calculation.
Enough for the moment to say that the evolution of a Buddha has to do
with something more than mere incarnations within the limits of one
planetary chain.
Since large numbers of lives have been recognized in the above
calculations as following one another in the successive incarnations of
an individual monad, it is important here, with the view of averting
misconceptions, to point out that the periods of time over which these
incarnations range are so great that vast intervals separate them,
numerous as they are. As stated above, we cannot just now give the
actual duration of the round periods. Nor, indeed, could any figures be
quoted as indicating the duration of all round periods equally, for
these vary in length within very wide limits. But here is a simple fact
which has been definitely stated on the highest occult authority we are
concerned with. The present race of humanity, the present fifth
race of the fourth-round period, began to evolve about one
million of years ago. Now it is not yet finished; but supposing that a
million years had constituted the complete life of the race,3
how would it have been divided up for each individual monad? In a race
there mast be rather more than 100, and there can hardly be 120,
incarnations for an individual monad. But say even there have been
already 120 incarnation for monads in the present race already, and say
that the average life of each incarnation was a century; even then we
should only have 12,000 years out of the million spent in physical
existence against 988,000 years spent in the subjective sphere, or there
would be an average of more than 8,000 years between each incarnation.
Certainly these intervening periods are of very variable length, but
they can hardly even contract to anything less than 1,500 years, —
leaving out of account, of course, the case of adepts who have placed
themselves quite outside the operation of the ordinary law, — and 1,500
years, if not an impossibly short, would be a very brief, interval
between two rebirths.
These calculations must be qualified by one or two considerations,
however. The cases of children dying in infancy are quite unlike those
of persons who attain full maturity, and for obvious reasons, that the
explanations now already given will suggest. A child dying before it has
lived long enough to begin to be responsible for its actions has
generated no fresh Karma. The spiritual monad leaves that child’s body
in just the same state in which it entered it after its last death in
Devachan. It has had no opportunity of playing on its new instrument,
which has been broken before even it was tuned. A re-incarnation of the
monad, therefore, may take place immediately, on the line of its old
attraction. But the monad so re-incarnated is not to be spiritually
identified in any way with the dead child. So, in the same way, with a
monad getting into the body of a born idiot. The instrument cannot be
tuned, so it cannot play on that any more than on the child’s body in
the first few years of childhood. But both these cases are manifest
exceptions that do not alter the broad rule above laid down for all
persons attaining maturity, and living their earth lives for good or
evil.
_______________
Notes:
1 Or
we may say five times, allowing for the half period of morning which
precedes and the half period of evening which follows the day of full
activity.
2
It may be worth while here to remark for the benefit
of people who may be disposed, from physical science reading, to object
that Mercury is too near the Sun, and consequently too hot to be a
suitable place of habitation for man, that in the official report of the
Astronomical Department of the United States on the recent “Mount
Whitney observations” statements will be found that may check too
confident criticisms of occult science along that line. The results of
the Mount Whitney observations on selective absorption, of solar rays
showed, according to the official reporter, that it would no longer be
impossible to suggest the conditions of an atmosphere which should
render Mercury habitable at the one extreme of the scale, and Saturn at
the other. We have no concern with Saturn at present, nor, if it were
necessary to explain on occult principles the habitability of Mercury,
should the task be attempted with calculations about selective
absorption. The fact is that ordinary science makes at once too much and
too little of the Sun, as the storehouse of force for the solar
system,—too much in so far as the heat of planets has a great deal to do
with another influence quite distinct from the Sun, an influence which
will not be thoroughly understood till more is known than at present
about the correlations of heat and magnetism, and of the magnetic,
meteoric dust, with which inter-planetary space is pervaded. However, it
is enough — to rebut any objection that might be raised against the
explanations now in progress, from the point of view of loyal devotees
of last year’s science — to point out that such objections would be
already out of date. Modern science is very progressive,—this is one of
its greatest merits,—but it is not a meritorious habit with modern
scientists to think, at each stage of its progress that all conceptions
incompatible with that stage most necessarily be absurd.
3
The complete life of a race is certainly much
longer than this; but when we get to figures of this kind we are on very
delicate ground, for precise periods are very profound secrets, for
reasons uninitiated students (“lay chelas,” as the adepts now say,
coining a new designation to meet a new condition of things) can only
imperfectly divine. Calculations like those given above may be trusted
literally as far as they go, but must not rashly be made the basis of
others.
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