English
A large portion of the present human family has actually lived on Mars—where, if we could but visit the planet now, as, indeed, some of our more advanced companions can and do, in the appropriate vehicle of consciousness while out of the physical body, we should still find archeological traces of our passage. As we know a little more about the planets of our own chain than of the others, I will return to this branch of the subject later on. Within the orbits of the three planets belonging to the earthly scheme we come to that which is at present called Mercury and ought to be called Venus. Of all the seven schemes of the system, that which Venus at present represents on the physical plane is the farthest advanced in evolution, not necessarily the oldest as judged by the period at which it began, but the quickest of the series as regards the rate of its progress or the duration of its Manvantaras. Our own scheme is now going through its fourth Manvantara, but that to which Venus belongs is far advanced through the fifth. It is already in the seventh round of that Manvantara, the family it is evolving being at present established like ourselves on the physical planet of its chain, although at such an immensely more forward stage of its progress, that the foremost of its beings, in great numbers represent, as compared with our humanity, a fairly god-like degree of exaltation. From Venus, as all students of esoteric THE SYSTEM TO WHICH WE BELONG. 285 teaching will be aware, the guardians of our infant humanity in the later third and early fourth race of this world period descended to stimulate in our family the growth of the manasic principle, and to them we owe the fact that as we stand at present we are in truth somewhat further advanced in evolution than our actual place in our own scheme strictly entitles us to be. We have been helped onward by some of those who are in the loftiest sense of the term our Eider Brethren in the whole system, and among us there have been found some, at all events, who have proved apt pupils, and are already on levels of spiritual dignity commen- surate with those previously attained by their sublime instructors. Within the orbit of Venus (conventionally known as Mercury), another planet is to be found, and probably will be found some day or other by ordinary astronomers, who already suspect its existence, and have been keenly on the look out for it when solar eclipses give them a chance of seeing it. Merged as it is in the blind- ing glare of the sun at other times, it is hopeless to seek for it in the unshielded sky. A name has been given in advance by some astronomers to the undis- covered planet, and it is sometimes referred to as Vulcan. It must certainly be a very hot little world, although Bode’s law should give it a distance from the central orb of something like thirty millions of miles. However, it belongs to an independent scheme of evolu- tion not destined to bring forward life to the high levels to be ultimately attained in connexion with our own and the Venus scheme. It completes the series 286 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. of seven schemes. Enumerating them once more as under we have :— 1. The Neptune scheme. 2 , Uranus i 3 , saturn - 4. ,, Jupiter - 5 , arth sé 6 Venus be 7, ,, Vulcan - The first and fifth of this series have each three physical planets, the others one each. Of the three schemes which have no touch with the physical plane there is very little to be said at present. They are concerned with high orders of evolution and in some way with the ultimate perfection of the life of the system at large when all the septenary schemes shall have completed their cycles. It must not be supposed, however, that they are awaiting development till such time as the other schemes have completed their cycles. They are already in activity, and the globes of which they consist occupy definite places in space, though composed of higher orders of matter than those which our physical senses can cognise. On the other hand we need not think of them as dealing with phases of existence entirely beyond the reach of our imagination. The highest plane of Nature to which they are directly related is the Rupa plane of Devachan. From the general idea of the structure and design of the system that has already been given, and particu- THE SYSTEM TO WHICH WE BELONG. 287 larly from many passages in Theosophical literature, it will be apparent that the configuration of the solar system is no more unchangeable throughout the life of that system than the configuration of land and water on the earth’s surface is unchangeable during the progress of a world period. In every scheme the chain of planets on which its evolution has been carried on, during any given Manvantara, is disintegrated at its close (subject to a qualification to be noticed directly) and a new chain of worlds is called into being. This does not mean that new matter is created out of non- manifested substance, but that planets, when their life cycle is completed, are broken up or resolved into dust which is dispersed through the solar system at large and is available to be drawn together into new forms, just as the elements of a dead human body, dissolved in the earth or air and absorbed in process of time into vegetable tissue, become in due season the nutriment of new animal or human forms. Thus it will be seen that our earth, for instance, with its companion planets, is not alone a new creation as compared with the state of things that existed when the nebula was first condensed, but is in the fourth generation of such new creations having regard to our own scheme alone. I have no information as to the manner in which the planetary matter of the system was first distributed, but it is a matter of obvious certainty that from Uranus inwards not one of the existing planets belongs to the first-born series of the nebula. It hardly concerns us to make close inquiry as to the actual course of events in this respect. Our 288 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. appreciation of Nature’s design and of our own place therein would not be materially assisted by knowing for instance what planets existed in connexion with the Uranus evolution before Uranus came into being. Nor in regard to the other chains would it profit us much to know by how many predecessors each of the now known planets have been heralded in past ages. But there are some aspects of the problem which do present features of peculiar interest as applied to our own chain, and without making any conjectures as to the extent to which the analogies of our own scheme apply to others, attention may usefully be turned at this stage of the inquiry to the plan on which our own planetary habitations are from time to time remodelled. As the tide wave of life leaves each planet (in our scheme) during the seventh round of any Manvantara, each planet in turn is disintegrated, and the matter of which it is composed returns to the general ocean of such matter within the solar system. Corresponding planets are evolved afresh for the next Manvantara, becoming as it were Re-incarnations of the higher principles inherent in the old planets. This arrange- ment, however, does not apply to the fourth planet of each chain—the most physical in its constitution. That loses a good deal of the matter forming it in a way that will be appreciated directly, and in its shrunken condition becomes the moon of its successor. Each new physical planet so called into being may be created as new solar systems themselves are created in the first instance—according to different methods: but our earth appears to have been engendered on a plan THE SYSTEM TO WHICH WE BELONG. 289 closely resembling that by which our whole system was developed. Within the appropriate area of space, a planetary nebula was evolved, the matter of which it was composed being drawn in from surrounding space, itself no doubt the disintegrated material of former planets that had been broken up, or to some extent no doubt meteoric matter belonging to the system at large that may not have been previously utilised in that way. The new earth nebula was developed round a centre bearing pretty much the same relation to the dying planet that the centres of the earth and moon bear to one another at present. But in the nebulous condition this aggregation of matter occupied an enormously greater volume than the solid matter of the earth now occupies. It stretched out in all directions so as to include the old planet in its fiery embrace. The temperature of a new nebula appears to be considerably higher than any temperatures we are acquainted with, and by this means the old planet was superficially heated afresh in such a manner that all atmosphere, water, and volatilisable matter upon it was brought into the gaseous condition, and so became amenable to the new centre of attraction, set up at the centre of the new nebula. In this way the air and seas of the old planet were drawn ever into the constitution of the new one, and thus it is that the moon in its present state is an arid, glaring mass, dry and cloudless, no longer habitable, and no longer required for the habitation of any physical beings. When the present Manvantara is nearly over, during the seventh round, its disintegration will be completed, 290 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. and the matter which it still holds together will resolve into meteoric dust, to be made use of, mixed with the ocean of all such matter, in the formation of new planetary nebule hereafter.