Where had we got to last time? Oh yes, we had a seed Manu whose job it is to gather up the fruits of an entire chain and hold it within its own envelope. There the Manu fires impulses of magnetic radiation into the monads that are organised according to their response to these impulses. After an exceedingly long period of time, called a pralaya, or inter-chain manvantara, the seed Manu hands the monads from the last chain to the Root Manu of the next chain.
The work of a Manu, the Manu is a generic term for a monad that is capable of bearing groups of entities from one Chain, Round, Globe, etc., to the succeeding Chain, Round, Globe, etc., reminds us of the stories in the Hindu Purânas. In these stories, the Manu crosses the ocean in a ship, bearing with Him the seeds of a new world, and of the Hebrew records of Noah, preserving in an ark all that was needed to repopulate the earth after a flood. The legends preserved in the Scriptures of religions are often based on true happenings in the esoteric world.
There was a transfer of human monads from the Moon Chain to the Earth Chain. Among these were a class of human monads with ”basket-work” causal bodies. A basket-work causal body is one, which is not fully formed but consists of lines of matter resembling a basket, hence the name. Using an analogy stated in the last presentation, the ”shelves” on which the ”bulbs” were stored were composed of causal matter. This however leads to a problem. There is no continuity of causal or higher mental matter, as it is also known, between Chains. The “bulbs” brought over in the Seed-Manu’s aura had to be brought through a higher plane. That plane is Plane-46, the Unity plane. Consequently, the basket-work of the Moon casual matter would have been disintegrated. It needed to be re-formed before the entities concerned could begin their career on the Earth Chain. Thus, having slept for ages in the Unity world, they would be reclothed in basketwork of the equivalent Earth Chain matter, before beginning their new adventure.
Another job of the Seed-Manu and here we are talking about the Manu of the Moon Chain, is to choose the Officials for the next, the Earth Chain. These monads were destined, in the long course of evolution, to pass ahead of their fellow monads to become Masters and Manus, etc., in the various Rounds and Races. The Seed-Manu deliberately selects many more monads for these various tasks than would be needed. By analogy, a gardener chooses a large number of varieties of plants to cultivate. This allows selections to be made at a later date, depending on how those varieties developed. On the Moon Chain, most of this choosing was done on Globe D, the Moon itself.
The time between chains is so vast that it is easy to ignore time and pretend that it does not exist at all. Of course, it does. It is simply beyond our comprehension to imagine. The relative speed of time depends on the capacity of the consciousness concerned to perceive it. So for a child time appears to go slowly, but for an adult, time seems to fly by. In the Inter-Chain Nirvana, the main working consciousnesses are those of the Seed-Manu of the Chain just completed and of the Root-Manu of the Chain, which is to follow.
The Great Plan for the coming chain is in the mind of the Seed-Manu. The Root-Manu receives it from the Seed Manu and implements it, over time, on the new Chain over which it presides. The Seed-Manu determines the selection of the monads in each group and decides when to dispatch each group to the new Chain. The Root-Manu distributes the groups, or ”ship-loads”, as they are sometimes called, as they successively arrive. The Seed-Manu of the Moon Chain is called Chakshushas. The Seed Manu is aided by other highly evolved monads, think of them as Officials, who report to it. This informs the Seed Manu of how the monads in any division of life have responded to the magnetic influences the Seed Manu had beamed upon them during the Inter-Chain Nirvana.
There is a pattern followed in the dispatch of monads to the new Chain. This pattern follows the rule that the least advanced in ”age,” or development, are sent out first, in order to inhabit the most primitive forms; the more advanced follow when the forms have evolved to a higher state. Examples of the working of this principle will be given in later presentations.
The Root-Manu of the Earth Chain is Vaivasvata. This august being must not be confused with the Manu of the same name who is in charge of the Fifth Root Race and the Âryan civilisation. The Root-Manu Vaivasvata directs the whole order of evolution in the Earth Chain. He is a being from the Fourth Chain of the Venus Scheme of Evolution. Two of Root Manu’s assistants came from the same Chain, and a third is a high Adept (45-self) who ”attained” that rank early in the Moon Chain. The Manu of the fourth Root Race, the Atlantean, was also an Adept from Venus. This manu is known as the Lord Chakshusha Manu. By appearance, this manu would look East Asian.
In the evolution of its consciousness and ability, a Root-Manu of a Chain must achieve the level fixed for the Chain or Chains on which they are human, and have become one of its ”Lords.” Then they become the Manu of a Race, going on to be a Pratyeka Buddha, like our very own Siddhartha. The next step is to become Lord of the World, like Sanat Kumara. The monad now goes on to be a Root-Manu and then the Seed-Manu of a Round. The final step is then to become the Root-Manu of a Chain. As already explained, this Root Manu directs the Manus of the Rounds of the chain, who distribute the work among the Manus of Races. You can see there is a definite chain of command and although Sanat Kumara is about as illustrious as it gets to the likes of you and me, he is but a small cog in a much bigger wheel.
Each Chain yields a number of successful human beings. They are called the ”Lords of the Chain,”. Some of these “lords” devote Themselves to the work of the new Chain, under its Root-Manu. Thus, for example, there are, in the case of the Earth Chain, seven classes of Lords of the Moon, i.e., ”successes”, from the planets of the Moon Chain, working under the Root-Manu of the Earth Chain. The term “successes” is used to denote a monad who completed what was set as the standard for that chain.
Before the Manu of a Chain or of a Round commences the task appointed for themselves, they examine the part of the thought form of the Logos, which refers to their work and brings it down to some level within easy reach for others to refer to. The same thing is done at a somewhat lower level by the Manu of each Globe and of each root race. I call this the “step-down transformer” effect. You can not waltz up and have a conversation with mightiest of these beings. You would be fried on the spot, not that you could reach the planes of existence where they dwell anyway.
Each Manu thus has before them the model towards which they have to build. They endeavour to make their World or their Race, as nearly as is possible, an exact copy of what the Logos intended it to be. In view of the fact that they have to build with existing materials, they can usually approach the required perfection only by degrees; hence the earlier efforts at the formation of a race, for example, are often only partially successful.
To take a specific example, in the first Round of the Earth Chain, the Manu in charge brought down all the archetypes for the whole of the Chain. Although many of these will not be fully perfected on Globe D until the seventh Round, the germs of all of them were already present in the first Round. For every kingdom in nature, they selected a certain set of forms, which they wished to have vivified during the first Round, with the view of developing from them, at later stages, everything which the Logos wished the Earth Chain to produce.
The scheme of these forms, for example for a proto-human, materialised down to a level where they could be used by monads. These forms were handed over to certain Lords of the Moon. It was their job to work with these forms, setting the activities of the first Round in motion. They made these forms in each of the seven Globes of that first Round and as they made them, the animal-men from the moon entered, solidifying them and using them. From these initial forms were generated others, which could be inhabited by the moon-animals, which occupied the stages below them. We shall deal with and explain ”animal-men,” ”moon-animals,” etc., at a later stage of our study of the Chains, Rounds and Globes of our scheme. For the moment it is worth noting that these are names used to designate classes of entities at certain levels of development, as they left the Moon Chain and entered into the Earth Chain. It should be noted that the Manu of the Root-Race starts and sets the type, not only of each Root-Race, but also of each sub-race, by incarnating in it themselves. They inject their DNA into the chain physically. Imagine having one of these monads as a boyfriend!
Well, that is everything you ever wanted to know about a manu but were afraid to ask. In the next presentation, we will look at the Buddhas, Mahachohans and Bodhisattvas.