We started our sojourn into the fourth, the Earth Chain by looking at the first round and we were at pains to point out that this initial round differed from the subsequent three rounds. Why only three rounds and not the usual seven? Simply because we are still working our way through this chain and happen to be in the fourth round and a little over halfway through it.
What was the most salient difference between the first and second rounds? It was the fact that to affect a transfer of monads from the Moon to the Earth chain, Globe A of the Earth chain had to be at the same material level as Globe G of the Moon chain. This carried on throughout this first round, although the foundations were laid for the resumption of normal service, where each chain descends further into matter, at least until you get as far as our chain and the fourth round. After that, we will begin to ascend again, chain by chain.
So our current state of play, beginning in the second rounds, is that we have two Mental Globes, two Emotional Globes, Two etheric Globes and one Physical globe. In Round 2, the temperature of Globe D (the Earth) had dropped considerably, so that copper had become liquid, and in some places solid. There was some land near the Poles, but flames burst out if a hole was made in the crust of our planet.
The laborious building process that occurred in the first round, where the Moon Animal-Men had to recapitulate all the stages of evolution of a monad, from Elemental to Human, was not necessary as the forms were already there. In this round, Humanity was working at the first and second subdivisions of matter of each sub-plane, so that, while the human monad had in it envelopes of all the subplanes; it was only the two lower subdivisions of each envelope that were active.
The races were much more definite, and were clearly distinguishable one from another, though what quite a race meant I can not, personally, picture. Humanity was no longer mere drifting clouds of etheric or gaseous matter but had succeeded in developing a certain amount of solidity though they were still unpleasantly jelly-like in consistency and were indeterminate in shape. H. P. Blavatsky called them ”pudding-bags,” because of the curious shapeless projections, which they had instead of arms and legs. At the beginning of the round they put out these projections temporarily, just as an amoeba does; but constant repetition of the process at last made the projections permanent and moulded them into some approximation to the form into which they were destined finally to settle. One way of envisioning this would be to think of the metamorphosis a tadpole goes through in becoming a frog.
Many of these creatures were so light and tenuous that they were able to drift about in the heavy atmosphere of the time. Do not assume a gravity of 1G, as we experience on Earth today. Others rolled along, rather than crept, but none of them were able to maintain themselves in an upright position without assistance.
A blow on their bodies made an indentation, which slowly filled up again, rather like playing with gelatinous putty much favoured by children. The fore part of the body had a kind of sucking mouth, through which it drew in food, and it would fasten on another organism and draw it in, as though sucking an egg through a hole, whereupon the unfortunate sucked proto-human grew flabby and died. We see this today in the way some sea slugs devour their prey.
They had a kind of flap-hand, like the flap of a seal, and they made a cheerful kind of chirruping, trumpeting noise, expressing pleasure; such pleasure was a sort of general sense of well-being, and pain was a massive discomfort, nothing acute, but only faint likes and dislikes. If you are sitting there thinking, yee gods, this was us? It most probably was not, as we teleported onto Earth in the middle of the fourth round in the Atlantian Root Race. Nevertheless, for those monads, the early animal-humans and Moon animals that migrated from the Animal to the Human kingdom, they had to start somewhere and this is how they were able to build out their bodies. Painstakingly, globe by globe, round by round.
The skin, in these early humans, was sometimes serrated, giving shades of colour. Later on, they became a little less shapeless and more human and crawled on the ground like caterpillars. Later still, near the North Pole, on the cap of land that existed there, the creatures were developing hands and feet, though unable to stand up, and more intelligence was noticeable.
A Barhishad, from Globe F of the Moon Chain, was observed by Leadbeater, to have magnetised an island and shepherded onto it a flock of the creatures. Picture them as looking like sea cows or porpoises, though with no formed heads. They were taught to browse, instead of sucking each other, and when they did eat each other they chose some parts in preference to others, as though developing taste. This sounds ghastly when we think of it as human development, however, looking at nature, you can see examples of all these behaviours in the flora and fauna around us. It is almost as if, in our development, we wrote the manual for the rest of Nature to follow.
As time passed, the depression, which served as a mouth, grew deeper into a kind of funnel, and a stomach began to develop, which was promptly turned inside out if any alien matter, which was disapproved of, found its way in. Early Humanity seemed to be able to turn themselves entirely inside out and seemed none the worse for it. Some people still do this today when they drink too much and then empty the contents of their stomachs. I was thinking; look at the development of a human embryo in its very early developmental stages. The first thing that forms is a tube and this becomes the brain and spinal chord. Find a video of this and follow it and you probably will get a good idea of how we developed our form throughout the first three rounds of our Earth chain.
The surface of the Earth was still very unstable and human monadic life occasionally got burnt or partially cooked. This apparently did not suit their constitution and if it was severe, could lead to a total collapse.
Reproduction was by budding: a protuberance appeared, and after a while broke off and led an independent existence. You see this today in certain fungi.
Humanity was still lamentably incomplete as regards their higher envelopes. They had what could be considered a mind or mental envelope, and something else that might stand for a feeble emotional body, but their consciousness was still dim and vague and they had little thinking power. They essentially only expressed instincts and almost no reason. So not a lot has changed from the second to the fourth Round.
After a time, the end of the body, which contained the funnel, tapered off somewhat and a small centre appeared in it, which, in far future ages, slowly became a brain. A small protuberance appeared and there was formed the habit of drifting forward, with this proto-head in front. This structure impacted its environment and in some nebulous way development was promoted; rather like banging your head against a brink wall today! Again, you can see exactly this type of motile behaviour in unicellular organisms currently.
In this round, the animal-men, those with line causal bodies, maintained and improved their nascent development and by the end of the second round, the first class of the animals had also definitely attained humanity.
Just as all the archetypes of the mineral kingdom had been fully brought down in the first round, though not yet fully worked out, so were all the vegetable archetypes brought down in the second round. It would take a long time before they were all realised as a distinct kingdom.
Vegetable life was aided by the heavy choking atmosphere; there were forest-like growths that resembled grass, but forty feet high and proportionately thick. They grew in the warm mud and flourished. Mercifully, lawns had not been invented yet and no one had to mow the grass. Leadbeater postulates that these grass-like structures were probably chiefly to the vegetation of this period and that we owed our coal deposits to them. In hindsight, we know this is not completely true but it does raise a very interesting point. How much of what we see today in the strata of our planet, is the result of what was laid down in these earlier rounds? Keep this at the back of your minds, as I will return to this in later presentations, as I pull the threads of Leadbeater’s research into a coherent summary if one is possible.
Towards the end of the second round, some of the Earth was quite solid and only just warm, rather than hot or boiling. There was still tumultuous cracking, apparently due to shrinkage and every hill was an active volcano, which must have done wonders for real estate values.
Globe C became more solid, cooling rapidly and life on it was much like that on Earth. The building of the forms in this, the second round, was presided over by the Barhishads from Globe F of the Moon Chain.
To recap; the Moon Chain animal-men, who had rapidly run through all the kingdoms in the first round, entered the first globe in the second round at the level of primitive humanity and continued their evolution. In the full course of the second round, the first class of the moon-animals reached the human level.
We have made it safely out of the second round of the fourth, the Earth chain. We are getting ever closer to our round but we still have one round to consider before then. See you in the next presentation.