Q. I have heard from various sources that the “souls” of animals are frequently reaching the human stage and passing from the animal kingdom into the human kingdom all the time and also that souls from other planets are coming and taking incarnation on this Earth. What does the genuine Theosophy of H. P. Blavatsky and the Masters have to say about this?

A. Although Theosophy most definitely teaches the doctrine of evolution through the various kingdoms of nature, it does not agree with the idea that you have specifically expressed here. It also expressly denies that souls from other planets are coming and joining our human kingdom, although several so-called Theosophists have taught this idea, which is now very popular in the New Age Movement. HPB and the Masters are very clear on these issues and leave no room for confusion or misunderstanding.

Now, we would all like to believe that our beloved dog, cat, or other pet, will be reborn into the human kingdom sometime soon, maybe even after the close of its current lifetime, and that we may meet it as a human being in one of our next few incarnations. As nice as these ideas might be, they are not the case according to the Esoteric Philosophy.

Let us look at these statements from HPB in “The Secret Doctrine” . . .

* “On this Fourth Round in which the human stage will be fully developed – the “Door” into the human kingdom closes; and henceforward the number of “human” Monads, i.e., Monads in the human stage of development, is complete. For the Monads which had not reached the human stage by this point will, owing to the evolution of humanity itself, find themselves so far behind that they will reach the human stage only at the close of the seventh and last Round. They will, therefore, not be men on this chain, but will form the humanity of a future Manvantara and be rewarded by becoming “Men” on a higher chain altogether, thus receiving their Karmic compensation. To this there is but one solitary exception, for very good reasons, of which we shall speak farther on.” (Vol. 1, p. 173)

* “After the middle point of the Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globe – no more Monads can enter the human kingdom.” (Vol. 1, p. 182)

* “Karma . . ., whose bond-maid is Nature, adjusted everything in the most harmonious manner; and that, therefore, the fresh pouring-in, or arrival of new Monads, had ceased as soon as Humanity had reached its full physical development. No fresh Monads have incarnated since the middle-point of the Atlanteans.” (Vol. 2, p. 303)

* “The fourth member of a series occupies a unique position. Unlike the others, the fourth has no “sister” Globe on the same plane as itself, and it thus forms the fulcrum of the “balance” represented by the whole chain. It is the sphere of final evolutionary adjustments, the world of Karmic scales, the Hall of Justice, where the balance is struck which determines the future course of the Monad during the remainder of its incarnations in the cycle. And therefore it is, that, after this central turning point has been passed in the Great Cycle, – i.e. after the middle point of the Fourth Race in the Fourth Round on our Globe – no more Monads can enter the human kingdom. The door is closed for this Cycle and the balance struck.” (Vol. 1, p. 182)

* “The last human Monad incarnated before the beginning of the 5th Root-Race.” (Vol. 1, p. 184-185)

* “In the middle of the fourth revolution, which is our present “Round”: “Evolution has reached its acme of physical development, crowned its work with the perfect physical man, and from this point, begins its work spirit-ward.”” (Vol. 1, p. 232)

* “Those still occupying animal forms after the middle turning-point of the Fourth Round – will not become men at all during this Manvantara. They will reach to the verge of humanity only at the close of the Seventh Round to be, in their turn, ushered into a new chain after pralaya.” (Vol. 1, p. 182)

It would take too long and also be out of place here to launch into an explanation of what the Theosophical teachings mean by rounds, chains, and globes, but those who would like to understand this in proper detail are invited to read the article on this site titled Chains, Globes, Rounds and Root Races.

It will suffice for now to summarise the above excerpts by explaining that the “door” into the human kingdom most definitely closed during the fourth sub-race of the Fourth Root Race, i.e. during the middle period of the Atlantean epoch. This was the exact mid-point of human evolution and so the numbers and balance had to be settled. That was millions of years ago and there have been no “new” human beings since then. Any human being on this Earth today has been a part of the human kingdom on this planet since at least the middle of the Root Race or epoch of Atlantis. Many of us were members of the human kingdom before then and since the Lemurian Root Race, which preceded the Atlantean.

The lower kingdoms of nature, like all kingdoms of nature, are still constantly evolving but those evolving now in the animal kingdom will not become human beings until the time of what Theosophy calls “the next Planetary Chain.” This next chain of globes will be the reincarnation – for want of a better word – of this presently existing chain of globes to which our planet Earth belongs. This is explained in depth in the article referred to above. Needless to say, this will be an extremely long time from now. We are literally talking millions upon millions of years.

The “one solitary exception” to this rule refers to the apes. In our article Human Evolution in The Secret Doctrine we said:

“The “separation of the sexes” occurred first in the Animal Kingdom and afterwards in the Human Kingdom. Observing the new sexual method of reproduction amongst the animals, man now began to do the same. But the “sin of the mindless” occurred. Some of the Lemurians – still without mental consciousness and proper intelligence as yet – procreated with some of what are described as “the huge she-animals.” The progeny of this unholy union was “a race of crooked red-hair-covered monsters going on all fours” – “a dumb race to keep the shame untold.” These creatures were the ancestors of our modern day apes. Man is not evolved from the apes but the apes are evolved from man, hence the similarity between the two. All human beings on Earth did pass through the Animal Kingdom in order to reach the Human Kingdom but they did so aeons ago on the Moon Chain and not on our Earth. On this Earth, man preceded all the mammals . . . and as for the apes, they never had any existence whatsoever until primitive mindless man bred with some of the animals during Lemurian times.”

As William Q. Judge puts it in his book “The Ocean of Theosophy”: “In one of the early periods of the globe the men of that time begot from large females of the animal kingdom the anthropoids, and in anthropoid bodies were caught a certain number of Egos destined one day to be men. The remainder of the descendants of the true anthropoid are the descendants of those illegitimate children of men, and will die away gradually, their Egos entering human bodies. Those half-ape and half-man bodies could not be ensouled by strictly animal Egos, and for that reason they are known to the Secret Doctrine as the “Delayed Race,” the only one not included in the fiat of Nature that no more Egos from the lower kingdoms will come into the human kingdom until the next Manvantara. But to all kingdoms below man except the anthropoids, the door is now closed for entry into the human stage, and the Egos in the subordinate forms must all wait their turn in the succeeding great Cycle. And as the delayed Egos of the Anthropoid family will emerge into the man stage later on, they will thus be rewarded for the long wait in that degraded race. All the other monkeys are products in the ordinary manner of the evolutionary processes.” (p. 129)

We are told in “The Secret Doctrine” that the apes are all “destined to die out” and become extinct during this present Fifth Root Race and that this will actually be a fortunate thing for them as it will mean that finally “their monads will be liberated and pass into the astral human forms (or the highest elementals) of the Sixth and the Seventh Races, and then into lowest human forms in the fifth Round.” There were no apes before man and there will be no apes by the time of the start of the Seventh Root Race.

The apes “are truly “speechless men,”” writes HPB, “and will become speaking animals (or men of a lower order) in the Fifth Round, while the adepts of a certain school hope that some of the Egos of the apes of a higher intelligence will reappear at the close of the Sixth Root-race. What their form will be is of secondary consideration.” (“The Secret Doctrine” Vol. 2, p. 262)

As we can see, human evolution is an exquisitely adjusted and harmonious thing. We who are evolving on this Earth have no reason whatsoever to fly off to other planets or solar systems for purposes of “gaining experience” or further evolution and nor do the souls evolving on other planets or in other solar systems have any reason or need to come to ours. We are here and we will remain here. The New Age notions of “intergalactic soul evolution” and “starseeds” are sheer nonsense and are the product of brains fed on fantasy and science fiction as opposed to solid esoteric philosophy and the genuine Gupta Vidya or Sacred Science of the real Masters of Wisdom.

We can but repeat what the Master K.H. said in one of his Letters: “Cross over from your land of dream and fiction to our Truth land of stern reality and fact.”

~ BlavatskyTheosophy.com ~

You may also like to read 12 Things Theosophy Teaches. You can find other articles expanding on the points covered in this one by using the search function (the magnifying glass symbol) at the top of the page or visiting the Articles page.