CHAPTER I

PRELIMINARIES
WHENCE comes man and whither goes he ? In the fullest answer we can only say : Man, as a spiritual Being, comes forth from God and returns to God ; but the Whence and Whither with which we deal here denote a far more modest sweep. It is but a single page of his life-story that is copied out herein, telling of the birth into dense matter of some of the Children of Man — What lies beyond that birthing, 0 still unpenetrated Night ? — and following on their growth from world to world to a point in the near future but some few centuries hence — What lies beyond that cloud-flush in the dawning, 0 still unrisen Day ?
And yet the title is not wholly wrong, for he who comes from God and goes to God is not precisely 4 Man \ That Ray of the divine Splendour which comes forth from Divinity at the beginning of a manifestation, that “ fragment of Mine own Self, transformed in the world of life into an immortal Spirit,”1 is far more than Man. Man is but one stage of his unfolding, and mineral, vegetable, animal, are but stages of his embryonic life in the womb of nature, ere he is born as Man. Man is the
1 Bhagavad-Gitd, xv. 7.
2
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
stage in which Spirit and Matter struggle for the mastery, and when the struggle is over and Spirit has become Lord of Matter, Master of life and death, then Spirit enters on his superhuman evolu¬ tion, and is no longer Man, but rather Superman.
Here then we deal with him only as Man : with Man in his embryonic stage, in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms ; with Man in his development in the human kingdom ; with Man and his worlds, the Thinker and his field of evolution.
In order to follow readily the story told in this book, it is necessary for The reader to pause for a few minutes on the general conception of a Solar System, as outlined in Theosophical literature,1 and on the broad principles of the evolution therein carried on. This is not more difficult to follow than the technical terminology of every science, or than other cosmic descriptions, as in astronomy, and a little attention will easily enable the student to master it. In all studies of deep content, there are ever dry preliminaries which have to be master¬ ed. The careless reader finds them dull, skips them, and is, throughout his subsequent reading, in a more or less bewildered and confused condition of mind ; he is building his house without a founda¬ tion, and must continually be shoring it up. The careful reader faces these difficulties bravely, masters
1 The student may find it in H. P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine , A. P. Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism, and Growth of the Soul, Annie Besant's The Ancient Wisdom, etc. There are minor differences — such as H. P. Blavatsky’s and A. P. Sinnett's naming of the globes of the earth-chain — but the main facts are identical.
PRELIMINARIES
3
them once for all, and with the knowledge thus gained he goes easily forward, and the details he meets with later fall readily into their places. Those who prefer the first plan, had better miss the present Chapter, and go on to Chapter II ; the wiser readers will give an hour to mastering what follows.
That great Sage, Plato, one of the world’s master-intellects, whose lofty ideas have dominated European thought, makes the pregnant statement : “ God geometrises.” The more we know of Nature, the more we realise this fact. The leaves of plants are set in a definite order of succession, J, f, f , fs9 and so on. The vibrations that make the successive notes of a scale may be correspondently figured in a regular series. Some diseases follow a definite cycle of days, and the 7th, the 14th, the 21st, mark the crises that result in continued physi¬ cal life or in death. It is useless to multiply instances.
There is, then, nothing surprising in the fact that we find, in the order of our Solar System, the continual recurrence of the number Seven. Because of this, it has been called a ‘ sacred number ’ ; a ‘ significant number ’ would be a better epithet. The moon’s life divides itself naturally into twice seven days of waxing and an equal number of waning, and its quarters give us our
i
week of seven days. And we find this seven as the root-number of our Solar System, dividing its departments into seven, and these again divided into subsidiary sevens, and these into other sevens, and so on. The religious student
4
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
will think of the seven Ameshaspentas of the Zoroastrian, of the seven Spirits before the throne of God of the Christian ; the Theosophist of the supreme Triple LOGOS of the system, with His Ministers, the “ Rulers of seven Chains,” 1 round Him, each ruling His own department of the system, as a Viceroy for an Emperor. We are concerned here with but one department in detail. The Solar System contains ten of these, for while rooted in the seven, it develops ten depart¬ ments, ten being, therefore, by Mystics, called the c perfect number \ Mr. A. P. Sinnett has well named these departments 4 Schemes of Evolution/ and within each of these Schemes humanities are evolv¬ ing or will evolve. We will now confine ourselves to our own, though never forgetting that the others exist, and that very highly evolved Intelligences may pass from one to another. In fact, such visi¬ tors came to our earth at one stage of its evolu¬ tion, to guide and help our newly-born humanity.
A Scheme of Evolution passes through seven great evolutionary stages, each of which is called a Chain. This name is derived from the fact that a Chain consists of seven Globes, mutually inter¬ related ; it is a chain of seven links, each link a globe. The seven Schemes are shown in Diagram I, around the central sun, and at any one period of time only one of the rings in each Scheme will be active ; each ring of each of these seven Schemes is composed of seven globes; these
1 These have been called Planetary Logoi, but the name often causes confusion, and is therefore here dropped.
PRELIMINARIES
0
are not figured separately but form what we here have drawn as a ring, in order to save space. The globes are shown in the next Diagram.
In Diagram II we have a single Scheme, figur¬ ed in the seven stages of its evolution, i.e., in its seven successive Chains ; it is now shown in relation to five of the seven spheres, or types, of matter existing in the Solar System ; matter of each type is composed of atoms of a definite kind, all the solids, liquids, gases, and ethers of one type of matter being aggregations of atoms of a single kind ; 1 this matter is named according to the mood of consciousness to which it responds : physical, emotional, mental, intuitional, spiritual.2 In the first Chain, its seven Worlds, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, are seen arranged : 3 A and G, the root- world and the seed-world, are on the spiritual plane, for all descends from the higher to the lower, from the subtle to the dense, and climbs again to the higher, enriched with the gains of the journey, the gains serving as seed for the next Chain ; B and F are on the intuitional plane, one gathering and the
1 See Occult Chemistry , Annie Besant and C. W. Lead- beater, pp. 5 — 11.
3 Physical matter is the matter with which we are daily dealing in our waking life. Emotional matter is that which is set vibrating by desires and emotions, and is called astral in our older books, a name we retain to some extent. Mental matter is that which similarly answers to thoughts. Intuitional matter (buddhic, in Samskrt) is that which serves as medium for the highest intuition and all-embracing love. Spiritual matter (atmic) is that in which the creative Will is potent.
3 The top left-hand globe is A ; the next lower is B ; and so on up to G, the top right-hand globe.
6 MAN : WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
other assimilating ; C and F are on the higher mental, in similar relationship ; D, the turning point, the point of balance between the ascending and descending arcs, is in the lower part of the mental plane. These pairs of globes in every Chain are ever closely allied, but the one is the rough sketch, the other the finished picture. In the second Chain, the globes have all sunk one stage lower into matter, and D is on the emotional plane. In the third Chain, they have sunk yet one stage further, and D reaches the physical plane. In the fourth Chain, and on the fourth only, the midmost Chain of the seven, the most deeply involved in densest matter, the turning point of the Chains as is D of the globes, there are three of the globes — C, D, and E — on the physical plane. On the return journey, as it were, the ascent resembles the descent : in the fifth Chain, as in the third, there is one physi¬ cal globe ; in the sixth, as in the second, globe D is emotional ; in the seventh, as in the first, globe D is mental. With the ending of the seventh Chain the Scheme has worked itself out, and its fruitage is harvested.
The seven Schemes of our Solar System may, for convenience sake, be named after the globe D of each, this being the globe best known to us ; these are : Vulcan, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune (see Diagram I). In the Scheme to which our Earth belongs, the Chain which preceded our terrene Chain was the third of its series, and its one physical globe, globe D, was the globe which is now our Moon ; hence the third Chain is called the lunar, while the second
THE SUCCESSIVE LIFE-WAVES
DIAGRAM III.
PRELIMINARIES
7
and first Chains are designated only by numbers ; our Earth Chain, or terrene Chain, is the fourth in suc¬ cession, and has therefore three of its seven globes in physical manifestation, its third globe, C, being what is called the planet Mars, and its fifth globe, E, what is called the planet Mercury. The Neptunian Scheme also, with Neptune as its globe D, has three globes of its Chain in physical manifestation — C and E being the two physical planets con¬ nected with it, the existence of which was mentioned in Theosophical literature before they were recognised by Science — and hence has reached the fourth Chain of its series. The Venusian Scheme is reaching the end of its fifth Chain, and Venus has consequently lately lost her Moon, the globe D of the preceding Chain.1 It is possible that Vulcan, which Herschel saw, but which, it is said, has now disappeared, is in its sixth Chain, but on that we have no information, either direct or mediate. Jupiter is not yet inhabited, but its moons are, by beings with dense physical bodies.
Diagrams III and IV represent the relationships between the seven Chains within a Scheme, show¬ ing the evolutionary progress from Chain to Chain. Diagram III should be first studied ; it is merely a simplification of Diagram IV, which is a copy of one drawn by a Master ; this — though at first sight somewhat bewildering — will be found very illuminative when understood.
Diagram III places the seven Chains in a Scheme as columns standing side by side, in order that
1 It may be remembered that the Moon of Venus was seen by Herschel.
8
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
the divine Life-Streams, figured by the arrows, may be traced from kingdom to kingdom in their ascent. Each section in a column represents one of the seven kingdoms of nature — three elemental, mineral, vegetable, animal, human.1 Follow Life- Stream 7, the only one which goes through the seven kingdoms within the Scheme ; it enters the first Chain at the first Elemental Kingdom, and there develops during the life-period of the Chain ; it passes into the second Elemental Kingdom on the second Chain, and develops therein during its life- period ; it appears in the third Elemental Kingdom on the third Chain, and enters the Mineral on the fourth ; it then successively develops through the
Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms on the fifth and sixth Chains, and attains the Human in the seventh. The whole Scheme thus provides a field of evolution for a stream of the divine Life from its ensouling of matter up to man. a The remain¬ ing streams have either commenced in another
The ‘ elemental * kingdoms are the three stages of life on its descent into matter — involution — and the seven kingdoms might be figured on a descending and ascending arc, like Chains and globes :
1st Elemental Human
2nd Elemental Animal
3rd Elemental Vegetable
Mineral
2 These seven Life-Streams and the six additional ingresses for the lowest Elemental Kingdom in the remain¬ ing six Chains, thirteen in all, are the successive impulses which make up, for this Scheme, what Theosophists call the ‘ second Life- wave,’ i.e., the form-evolving current of Life from the second LOGOS, the Vishnu of the HindQ, the Son of the Christian, Trinities.
PRELIMINARIES
9
Scheme and enter this at the point of evolution therein reached, or enter this too late to reach the human kingdom herein.
The study of Diagram IV must be begun by
realising that the coloured circles are not seven
Chains of globes, as might be expected, but the seven Kingdoms of Nature in each successive Chain, and therefore correspond with the sections of columns in Diagram III. We have here a whole Scheme of Evo¬ lution, with the place of each Kingdom shown in each Chain. The student should select a line of any colour in the first circle and trace it carefully onwards.
Let us take the blue circle at the top left-
hand, pointed out by the arrow ; it represents the first Elemental Kingdom on the first Chain. Leaving the first Chain for the second — the next ring of coloured circles — this blue stream divides on arriving there ; its least advanced part, which is not ready to go on into the second Elemental Kingdom, breaks off from the main stream and goes again into the first Elemental Kingdom of this second Chain, joining the new Life-stream — coloured yellow and marked with an arrow — which enters on its evolu¬ tion in that Chain, and being merged in it ; the main blue stream goes on into the second Elemental Kingdom of this second Chain, receiving into itself some laggards from the second Elemental Kingdom of the first Chain, assimilating them, and carrying them on with itself ; it will be noticed that only a blue stream leaves this Kingdom, the foreign elements having been completely assimilat¬ ed. The blue stream flows on into the third Chain, divides, leaves its laggards to continue in the
3
10 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
second Elemental Kingdom in the third Chain, while the bulk goes on to form the third Ele¬ mental Kingdom of this third Chain ; again it receives some laggards from the third Elemental Kingdom of the second Chain, assimilates them, and carries them on with itself, an undiluted blue stream, into the Mineral Kingdom of the fourth Chain ; as before, it leaves some laggards to evolve themselves in the third Elemental King¬ dom of the fourth Chain, and receives some from the Mineral Kingdom of the third Chain, assimilating them as before. It has now reached its densest point in evolution, the Mineral Kingdom. Leaving this — we still follow the blue line — it climbs into the Vegetable Kingdom of the fifth Chain, sending off its laggards to the Mineral Kingdom of this Chain, and taking up the laggards of the Vegetable Kingdom of the fourth Chain. Again it climbs upwards, now into the Animal Kingdom of the sixth Chain, leaving its insufficient¬ ly developed vegetables to complete that stage of their evolution in the Vegetable Kingdom of the sixth Chain, and receiving undeveloped animals from the fifth Chain into its own Kingdom. Lastly, it completes its long evolution by entering the Human Kingdom on the seventh Chain, dropping its too undeveloped animals into the Animal Kingdom of the seventh Chain, receiving some human beings from the Human Kingdom of the sixth Chain, carrying them on with itself to its triumphant conclusion, where human evolution is perfected and the superhuman begins, along one or another of the seven paths, indicated in the blue plume at the end. In another
PRELIMINARIES
11
Scheme, those we left as laggards in the Animal Kingdom of the seventh Chain will appear in the Human Kingdom of the first Chain of that new Scheme, and therein reach perfection as men. They will be in the circle corresponding to the grey- brown circle with its plume in the first Chain of the present Diagram.
Each line can be followed in this way from Kingdom to Kingdom in successive Chains. The life in the second, the orange, circle, representing the second Elemental Kingdom in the first Chain — and having therefore, one stage of life in a Chain behind it, or, in other words, having entered the stream of evolution as the first Elemental Kingdom in the seventh Chain of a previous Scheme (see the top left-hand circle with arrow in the seventh Chain in our Diagram) — reaches the Human King¬ dom in the sixth Chain and passes on. That in the third circle, purple, with two Kingdoms behind it in a previous Scheme, reaches the Human Kingdom in the fifth Chain and passes on. That in the fourth, the Mineral Kingdom, passes out in the fourth Chain. That in the Vegetable Kingdom passes out in the third Chain ; that in the Animal in the second ; that in the Human in the first.
The student who will thoroughly master this diagram will find himself in possession of a plan into the compartments of which he can pack any number of details without, in the midst of their complexity, losing sight of the general principles of aeonian evolution.
Two points remain : the sub-elemental and the superhuman. The Life-Stream from the LOGOS ensouls
12 MAN : WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
matter first in the first, or lowest, Elemental King¬ dom ; hence when that same stream from the first Chain enters the second Elemental Kingdom on the second Chain, the matter which is to be that of the first Elemental Kingdom on that second Chain has to be ensouled by a new Life-Stream from the LOGOS, and so on with each of the remaining Chains. 1
When the Human Kingdom is traversed, and man stands on the threshold of His superhuman life, a liberated Spirit, seven paths open before Him for His choosing : He may enter into the blissful omniscience and omnipotence of Nirvapa, with activities far beyond our knowing, to become, perchance, in some future world an Avafara, or divine Incarnation : this is sometimes called, ‘ taking the Dharmakaya vesture \ He may enter on ‘ the Spiritual Period ’ — a phrase covering unknown mean¬ ings, among them probably that of 4 taking the Sambhogakaya vesture \ He may become part of that treasure-house of spiritual forces on which the Agents of the Logos draw for Their work, ‘taking the Nirmanakaya vesture’. He may remain a member of the Occult Hierarchy which rules and guards the world in which He has reached perfection. He may pass on to the next Chain, to aid in building up its forms. He may enter the splendid Angel — Deva — Evolution. He may give Him¬ self to the immediate service of the LOGOS, to be used by Him in any part of the Solar System, His
1 “ My Father worketh hitherto and I work.” S. John v. 17. See in Chapter v. the description of this on our Earth, when the Spirit of the Moon incarnates therein.
PRELIMINARIES
13
Servant and Messenger, who lives but to carry out His will and do His work over the whole of the system which He rules. As a General has his Staff, the members of which carry his messages to any part of the field, so are These the Staff of Him who commands all, “ Ministers of His that do His pleasure ’V This seems to be considered a very hard Path, perhaps the greatest sacrifice open to the Adept, and is therefore regarded as carrying with it great distinction. A member of the General Staff has no physical body, but makes one for Himself by Kriyashakfi — the 4 power to make ’ — of the matter of the globe to which He is sent. The Staff contains Beings at very different levels, from that of Arhafship 2 upwards. There are some who dedicated themselves to it on reaching Arhatship in the Moon-Chain ; others who are Adepts ; * others who have passed far beyond this stage in Mft' human evolution.
The need for the provision of such a Staff arises probably, among many other reasons un¬ known to us, from the fact that in the very early stages of the evolution of a Chain — especially of one on the downward arc — or even of a globe, more help from outside is needed than is required later. On the first Chain of our Scheme, for in¬ stance, the attainment of the first of the Great Initiations was the appointed level of achievement, and none of its humanity attained Adeptship, which is itself nowhere near Buddhahood ; it would therefore
1 Psalms, ciii. 21.
2 Those who have passed the fourth Great Initiation.
3 Those who have passed the fifth Great Initiation.
14 MAN : WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
be necessary to supply the higher offices from outside. So again later Chains were helped, and our Earth will have to provide high Officials for the earlier Chains of other Schemes, as well as yielding the normal supply for the later globes and Rounds of our own Chain. Already from our own Occult Hierarchy two Members, within our own knowledge, have left our Earth, either to join the General Staff, or lent by the Head of our Hierarchy to the Head of the Hierarchy of some other globe outside our Scheme.
The human beings who, in any Chain, do not reach by a certain time the level appointed for the Humanity of the Chain, are its 4 failures the 4 failure ’ may be due to youth and consequent lack of time, or to lack of due exertion, and so on ; but, what¬ ever the cause, those who fail to reach a point from which they can progress sufficiently, during the remaining life of a Chain, to attain the required level by its end, drop out of its evolution before that evolution is completed, and are obliged to enter the succeeding Chain at a point determined by the stage already reached, that they may complete their human course. There are others who succeed in passing this crucial point, the 4 Day of Judgment 9 for the Chain, but who yet do not progress with sufficient rapidity to reach the level from which the seven Paths open out. These, though not 4 failures/ have not wholly succeeded, and they therefore also pass on into the next Chain and lead its humanity, when that humanity has reached a stage at which the bodies are sufficiently evolved to serve as vehicles for their further progress. We
PRELIMINARIES
15
shall find these various classes in our study, and this is but a bird’s-eye view of them ; the details will make them come out more clearly. Only in the first Chain we noticed no failures dropping out of its evolution. There were some there who did not succeed, but if that Chain had its Day of Judgment, we failed to observe it.
In a single Chain the evolutionary wave sweeps from A to G, using each globe in turn as the field of growth ; this circling round the Chain is appropriately named a Round, and seven times the wave sweeps round, ere the life of the Chain is over, its work complete. Then the results are gathered up and garnered, and all form the seed for the suc¬ ceeding Chain, save Those who, having finished Their course as men, and become Super-men, elect to serve in other ways than in guiding that coming Chain upon its way, and who enter on another of the seven Paths.
To conclude these preliminaries. In the Mon¬ adic Sphere, on the super-spiritual level, dwell the Divine Emanations, the Sons of God, who are to take flesh and become Sons of Man in the coming universe. They ever behold the Face of the Father, and are the Angel-Counterparts of men. This divine Son in his own world is technically called a 4 Monad,’ a Oneness. He it is that, as said on p. 1, is “ transformed in the world of life into an immortal Spirit ”. The Spirit is the Monad veiled in matter, triple therefore in his aspects of Will, Wisdom, and Activity, being the very Monad himself, after he has appropriated the atoms of matter of the spiritual, intuitional and
16 MAN : WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
mental sphere, round which his future bodies will be formed. In the Monad wells up the intarissable fount of life ; the Spirit, or himself veiled, is his manifestation in a universe. As he gains mastery over matter in the lower sphere, he takes more and more control of the evolutionary work, and all the great choices which decide a man’s destiny are made by his Will, guided by his Wisdom, and achieved by his Activity.