Page 8

 

Letter №44 p. 8

man [he] certainly enters No. 2 as an ape (the last word being used for your better comprehension). At this round or stage his individuality is as dormant in him as that of a foetus during his period of gestation. He has no consciousness, no sense, for he begins as a rudimentary astral man and lands on our planet as a primitive physical man. So far it is a mere passing on of mechanical motion. Volition and consciousness are at the same time self-determining and determined by causes, and the volition of man, his intelligence and consciousness will awake but when his fourth principle Kama is matured and completed by its (seriatim) contact with the Kamas or energizing forces of all the forms man has passed through in his previous three rounds. The present mankind is at its fourth round (mankind as a genus or a kind, not a RACE nota bene) of the post-pralayan cycle of evolution; and as its various races, so the individual entities in them are unconsciously to themselves performing their local earthly sevenfold cycles — hence the vast difference in the degrees of their intelligence, energy and so on. Now every individuality will be followed on its ascending arc by the Law of retribution — Karma and death accordingly. The perfect man or the entity which reached full perfection, (each of his seven principles being matured) will not be reborn here. His local terrestrial cycle is completed and he has to either proceed onward or — be annihilated as an individuality. (The incomplete entities have to be reborn or reincarnated)[*]. On their fifth round after a partial nirvana when the zenith of the grand cycle is reached, they will be held responsible

[*] By-the-bye, I’ll re-write for you pages 345 to 357, Vol. I., of Isis — much jumbled, and confused by Olcott, who thought he was improving it!


Notes: 

seriatim is Latin for sequential or "point by point."

nota bene is Latin for "take special notice."