CHAPTER III

EARLY TIMES ON THE MOON CHAIN
On the Moon Chain — the third in succession — there is a deeper plunge into matter, and the middle globe is on the physical plane ; A and G are on the higher mental, B and F on the lower mental, C and E on the emotional, and D on the physical. This middle globe, the scene of the greatest activ¬ ity in the Chain, is still surviving as the Moon, but the Moon is only what is left of it after much loss of material, its inner core, as it were, after the disintegration of the crust, a globe much diminished in size, on its way to total wreck — a corpse, in fact.
Following the evolving consciousnesses which we have seen as minerals on the first Chain, as vegetables on the second, we find the crest of the advancing wave which bears us within it entering the third Chain as mammals at its middle point, appearing on globe D, the Moon, in the fourth Round. These mammals are curious creatures, small but extraordinarily active ; the most advanced of them are monkey-like in form, making enormous leaps. The fourth Round creatures are as a rule
i
at first scaly in skin, and later the skin is frog¬ like ; then the more advanced types develop bristles,
32 MAN : WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
which form a very coarse harsh fur. The air is altogether different from our present atmosphere, heavy and stifling, reminding one of choke-damp, but it obviously suits the Moon inhabitants. The consciousnesses we are following take the bodies of small mammals, long in body and short in legs, a mixture of weasel, mongoose and prairie-dog, with a short scrubby tail, altogether clumsy and ill-finished ; they are red-eyed, and able to see in the darkness of their holes ; coming out of the holes, they raise themselves on their hind legs, which form a tripod with the short strong tail, and turn their heads from side to side, sniffing. These animals are fairly intelligent, and the relations between the lunar animals and men, in this district at least, seem more friendly than between wild animals and men on our earth ; these crea¬ tures are not domesticated, but do not scuttle away when men appear on the scene. In other parts, where men are mere savages, eating their enemies when they can get them, and animals when man-flesh is unobtainable, the wild creatures are timid, and fly from human neighbourhood.
After this first stage of animal life, comes a spell as creatures that live much in the trees, the limbs double-jointed, the feet padded ; the feet are curiously modified, with a thumb-like projection at right-angles to the limb, like the spur of a cock, armed with a curving claw; running rapidly along the underside of branches, the animal uses this to hold on by, the remaining part of the feet being useless ; but when moving on the ground it walks on the pads, and the spur sticks out
EARLY TIMES ON THE MOON CHAIN
33
behind, above the ground level, and does not impede movement.
Other animals, more highly developed than these and far more intelligent, monkey-like in form, live habitually in human settlements, and attach themselves strongly to the men of their time, serving them in various ways. These become in¬ dividualised on globe D of this fourth Round, and on globes E, F and G develop human, emotional and mental bodies, the causal, though fully formed, showing but little growth. These will leave the Moon Chain in the middle of the seventh Round, as we shall see, and thus go through, on the Moon Chain, three Rounds of development as men. Among these, individualised in a small community living in the country, are observed the present Masters, Mars and Mercury, who are now at the head of the Theosophical Society, and who are to be the Manu and Bodhisattva1 of the sixth Root Race on our earth, in the present fourth Round of the terrene Chain.
The consciousnesses of the animals we are following, after the death of their last bodies on globe D, practically slept through the remainder of the fourth Round and through the first three globes of the fifth ; losing their emotional and inchoate mental bodies very shortly after the death of the physical ones, and having no causal, they remained sleeping in a sort of heaven with pleas¬ ant dreams, without touch . with the manifested worlds, the gulf between them and those worlds
^he official titles of the Heads — the King and the Priest, the Ruler and the Teacher — of a Root Race.
6
34
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
unbridged. On globe D of the fifth Round, they
were again thrown down into bodies and ap¬
peared as large monkey-like creatures, leaping forty feet at a bound, and appearing to enjoy making tremendous springs high into the air. In the time of the fourth human race on this globe D they
became domesticated, acting as guardians of their
masters’ property and as playmates of the children of the household, much as faithful watch-dogs may be now, carrying the children on their backs and in their arms, and developing intense affection for their human masters ; the children nestled delighted¬ ly in their thick soft fur, and enjoyed the huge bounds of their faithful guardians. One scene may act as a type of the individualisation of such creatures.
There is a hut in which dwells a Moon-man, his wife and children ; these we know in later times under the names of Mars and Mercury, the Mahaguru and Surya.1 A number of these monkey- creatures live round the hut, and give to their owners the devotion of faithful dogs ; among them we notice the future Sirius, Herakles, Alcyone and Mizar, to whom we may give their future names for the purpose of recognition, though they are still
1 See ‘Rents in the Veil of Time* in The Theosophist of 1910, 1911. The Mahaguru is the Lord Gautama, Surya is the Lord Maitreya. Why did these animals come into this close connection with those who were to be their Masters on the then far-off Earth? Had they been plants tended by them, as we tend our plants now, in the higher cases — for the Lords Gautama and Maitreya were men on the second Chain — or in the lower cases animals and plants that had an affinity for each other?
EARLY TIMES ON THE MOON CHAIN
35
non-human. Their astral and mental bodies have grown under the play of their owners’ human in¬ telligence, as those of domesticated animals now develop under our own ; Sirius is devoted chiefly to Mercury, Herakles to Mars ; Alcyone and Mizar are passionately attached servants of the Mahaguru and Surya.
One night there is an alarm ; the hut is surrounded by savages, supported by their domes¬ ticated animals, fierce and strong, resembling furry lizards and crocodiles. The faithful guardians spring up around their masters’ hut and fight desperately in its defence ; Mars comes out and drives back the assailants, using some weapon they do not possess ; but, while he drives them backward, a lizard-like creature darts behind him into the hut, and catching up the child Surya, begins to carry him away. Sirius springs at him, bears him down, and throws the child to Alcyone, who carries him back into the hut, while Sirius grapples with the lizard, and, after a desperate struggle, kills it, falling senseless, badly mangled, over its body. Meanwhile a savage slips behind Mars and stabs at his back, but Herakles, with one leap, flings himself between his master and the weapon, and receives the blow full on his breast, and falls, dying. The savages are now flying in all directions, and Mars, feeling the fall of some creature against his back, staggers, and, recovering himself, turns. He recognises his faithful animal defender, bends over his dying ser¬ vant, and places his head in his lap.
The poor monkey lifts his eyes, full of intense devotion, to his master’s face, and the act of
1
36 MAN : WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
service done, with passionate desire to save, calls down a stream of response from the Will aspect of the Monad in a fiery rush of power, and in the very moment of dying the monkey individual¬ ises, and thus he dies — a man.
Our damaged monkey, Sirius, has been very much chewed up by his lizard-enemy, but is still living, and is carried within the hut ; he lives for a considerable time, a crippled wreck, and can only drag himself about with difficulty. It is touch¬ ing to see his dumb fidelity to his mistress ; his eyes follow her everywhere as she moves about ; the child Surya nurses him tenderly, and his monkey comrades, Alcyone and Mizar, hang round him ; gradually his intelligence, fed by love, grows stronger, until the lower mind, reaching up, draws down response from the higher, and the causal body flashes into being, shortly before his death. Alcyone and Mizar live on after his death for some time, one-pointed devotion to the Mahaguru and Surya their most marked characteristic, until the emotional body, instinct with this pure fire, calls down an answer from the intuitional plane, and they also reach individualisation, and pass away.
These cases are good instances of the three great types of methods of individualisation,1 in each of which the downflow of the higher life is through one aspect of the Triple Spirit, through Will, through Wisdom, through active Intellect. Action reaches up and calls down Will ; Love reaches up and calls down Wisdom ; Mind reaches up and
1 See on this C. W. Leadbeater’s e Modes of Individ¬ ualisation/ in The Inner Life , vol. ii, § 6.
I
EARLY TIMES ON THE MOON CHAIN 37
calls down Intellect. These are the three 6 Right Ways’ of Individualisation. Others there are, that we shall turn to in a moment, reflexions of these in denser matter, but these are ‘Wrong Ways’ and lead to much sorrow.
Henceforth these consciousnesses that we have been specially following are definitely human, and have the same causal bodies which they still use ; they are in globe E as human beings, but are not taking any definite part in its ordinary life. They float about in its atmosphere like fishes in water, but are not sufficiently advanced to share in its normal activities. The new emotional body on globe E is produced by a kind of protuberance formed round the emotional permanent atom ; the newly individualised are not born as children of its inhabitants, who, it may be said in passing, are not prepossessing in appearance ; their real progress as human beings cannot be said to begin until they land again on globe D in the sixth Round. Some consolidation and improvement there certainly is — in the emotional body floating in the atmosphere of globe E, in the mental similarly floating in that of globe F, and in the causal likewise in that of globe G. This improvement is shown in the descent through the atmospheres of globes A, B and C of the sixth Round, wherein the matter drawn into each body is better of its kind, and is more coher¬ ent. But, as said, the effective progress is on globe D, whereon physical matter is once more donned.
Among the advanced animals in this fifth Round, living in contact with primitive human beings, there are some who are of interest because
38
MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
they later drift together into a type founded on a similarity of the method of individualisation. They individualise in one of the ‘Wrong Ways’ afore¬ said. They try to imitate the human beings among whom they are, in order to gain credit for superior¬ ity with their fellow-animals, strutting about, full of vanity, and constantly 6 showing off ’. They are monkey-like creatures, much like those previously observed, but distinctly cleverer and with more imaginative, or, at least, imitative faculty, and they play at being human beings, as children play at being grown up. They individualise by this intense vanity, which stimulates the imitative faculty to an abnormal degree, and causes a strong feeling of separation, an emphasising of the dawning ‘1 5 of the animal, until the effort to be distinguished from others calls down an answer from the higher levels, and the ego is formed. But the effort to rise above their fellows, without either admiration or love for any one above them, to rise only in order that they may look down, does nothing to change animal passions into human emotions, and lays no founda¬ tion for future harmonious growth of the emotional and intellectual natures. They are independent, self- centred, self-sufficient, each thinking of himself only, with no thought of co-operation, or union for a common purpose. When they die, after becom¬ ing individualised, they dream away the interval between death and re-birth on globe D in the sixth Round, much in the same way as did the other individualised animals described, but with one difference — a difference of enormous import to the lines of growth — that in the previous cases the
EARLY TIMES ON THE MOON CHAIN
39
new human beings had their minds fixed lovingly on their adored owners of globe D, and their emo¬ tions were thus strengthened and improved, where¬ as those individualised by vanity fixed their minds only on themselves and their own excellences, and hence had no emotional growth of love.
Another set of animals is individualised by admira¬ tion of the human beings with whom they come into contact, and they also seek to imitate them, not because they wish to outstrip their fellows, but because they regard the human beings as superior and wish to be like them. There is no strong love of them or wish to serve them, but there is much desire to be taught and great readiness to obey, growing out of the admiration felt for them as superior beings. They are trained by their owners, first to perform tricks and then to do tri¬ fling services, and in this way they grow into a certain sense of co-operation with their owners ; they try to please them and to win their approval, not because they care specially for them, but be¬ cause the permitted co-operation, resulting from the approval won, brings them nearer to the greater beings with whom they work. When they individ¬ ualise through the growth of intelligence, the intellect is ready to submit to discipline, to co¬ operate, to see the advantages of united effort, and the necessity for obedience. They carry into their intermediate existence this sense of united work and willingness to submit to direction, to their own great advantage in the future.
Another type is developed along a most unfor¬ tunate line, that of mind rendered keen and alert
40 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
by fear ; animals hunted for food or owned by savage types of men, and often cruelly treated, may reach individualisation by efforts to escape cruelty, by planning how to escape when chased ; they develop craft and cunning and similar faculties, showing a distorted ingenuity bred of fear, with much suspicion, distrust and revengefulness. When the mind has been thus strengthened to a certain point in contact with man, albeit along most un¬ desirable lines, individualisation results ; in one case we observed that a creature’s mate was killed, and there was a great rush of hatred and passionate revenge, causing individualisation ; in another a lynx-like animal individualised by an intense desire to inflict pain, as yielding a sense of power over others; but here again the stimulus was a malign human influence and example. The long interval between individualisation and re-birth is in these cases filled with dreams of successful escapes, of treacherous revenges, and of cruelties inflicted on those who misused them during their last animal lives. The unfortunate result throws responsibility on the man who caused it, and makes a link in future lives ; it would perhaps be not unreasonable to regard all such individualisations as premature — “ taking the human shape too soon”. We shall find these types again in the sixth Round, working out their new humanity along the lines determined by their respective methods of individualisation. It would seem as though only the three kinds of in¬ dividualisations caused by a downflow from above were in the Plan, and that the forcing upward from below was brought about by the wrong-doing of man.
EARLY TIMES ON THE MOON CHAIN
41
Ere following both these and our friends of other types into their lives on globe Don the sixth Round, we may glance at the higher civilisation of the cities of the Moon Chain in this, its fifth, Round. There were many communities scattered over the globe leading distinctly primitive lives; some, like those in the hut already mentioned, who were kindly, although little developed, fighting vigorously when attacked, while others were savage, quarrelsome and continually at war, apparently for the mere lust of blood-shedding and cruelty. In addition to these various communities, some large, some small, some nomad, some pastoral, there were more highly civilised people, living in cities, carrying on trades, ruled by settled governments. There did not appear to be much in the way of what we should call a nation ; a city and a considerable — sometimes a very extensive — area around it, with scattered villages, formed a separate State, and these States entered into fluctuating agreements with each other as to trade, mutual defence, etc.
One sample may serve as illustration. Near what corresponds to the Equator is a great city — but it looks more like a cemetery — with a large extent of cultivated land round it. The city is built in separate quarters, according to the class of inhabitants. The poorer people live out of doors during the day, and at night, or when it rains, crawl under flat roofs, reminding one of dolmens, which lead into oblong holes, or chambers, cut out of the rocks. These are like underground burrows going a long way and communicating with each
other, a regular labyrinth ; the entrance-door is 7
42 MAN: WHENCE, HOW AND WHITHER
made of a huge slab of stone, resting on upright smaller stones as pillars. These rooms are massed together — thousands of them — lining the two sides of one long circular street, and forming the outside ring of the city.
The higher classes live in the domed houses within this ring, built on a higher level, with a wide terrace in front, forming a ring right round like the road below; the domes are supported on short strong pillars, carved all over, the carving showing a fairly well-advanced civilisation. An immense number of these domes are joined together at the lower edge, and make a kind of community city, a belt, with again a circular terrace above its inner edge. The centre of the city is its highest part, and there the houses themselves are taller, with three domes, rising one above another; the central one has five domes, one on the top of the other, each successive dome being smaller than the one below it. The upper ones are reached by steps inside one of the pillars on the ground floor, and winding round the central pillar above. It seems as though these had been hewn out of a pinnacle of living rock. In the higher domes no provision seems to be made for light and air. The highest dome has a kind of hammock hanging from the centre, and this is the prayer room ; it appears that any one who is praying must not touch the ground during his prayer.
This is evidently the highest humanity of the Moon, who will later become the Lords of the Moon, reaching the Arhaf level, the goal set for the lunar evolution. They are already civilised, and
EARLY TIMES ON THE MOON CHAIN
43
in one room a boy is writing, in a script which is wholly unintelligible to us.
Those of the lunar humanity who in this Round were entering on the Path were in touch with a loftier band of Beings, the Hierarchy of the time, who had come over from the second Chain to help evolution on the third. These lived on a lofty and practically inaccessible mountain, but Their presence was realised by those on the Path, and was generally accepted as a fact by the in¬ telligent humanity of the time. Their disciples reached Them when out of the body, and occa¬ sionally one of Them descended into the plains, and lived for a while among men. The dwellers in the central house of the city just described were in touch with These, and were influenced by Them in matters of serious concern.