Globe

Generalities

As the work of each Round is said to be apportioned to a different group of so-called “Creators” or “Architects,” so is that of every globe; i.e., it is under the supervision and guidance of special “Builders” and “Watchers”—the various Dhyan-Chohans.

Worlds of Causes and of Effects

In the Mahatma Letters Master K. H. explains that there are two kinds of globes or "worlds" in a chain:

There are seven objective and seven subjective globes (I have been just permitted for the first time to give you the right figure), the worlds of causes and of effects. The former have our earth occupying the lower turning point where spirit-matter equilibrates.

Like a rosary composed of white and black beads alternating with each other, so that concatenation of worlds is made up of worlds of CAUSES and worlds of EFFECTS, the latter — the direct result produced by the former. Thus it becomes evident that every sphere of Causes — and our Earth is one — is not only inter-linked with, and surrounded by, but actually separated from its nearest neighbour — the higher sphere of Causality — by an impenetrable atmosphere (in its spiritual sense) of effects bordering on, and even interlinking, never mixing with — the next sphere: for one is active, the other — passive, the world of causes positive, that of effects — negative.

The intermediary spheres, being but the projected shadows of the Worlds of Causes — are negatived by [negatives of?] the last. They are the great halting places, the stations in which the new Self-Conscious Egos to be — the self-begotten progeny of the old and disembodied Egos of our planet — are gestated. Before the new phœnix, reborn of the ashes of its parents can soar higher, to a better, more spiritual, and perfect world — still a world of matter — it has to pass through the process of a new birth, so to say; and, as on our earth, where the two-thirds of infants are either still-born or die in infancy, so in our “world of effects.”

Regarding the time spent here, Master K.H. wrote: "The individual units of mankind remain 100 times longer in the transitory spheres of effects than on the globes".

World-Periods (Rings) and Root-Races

When the life impulse of any given kingdom reaches a globe it undergoes seven evolutionary cycles which are variously called "world periods", "rings" or, specifically in the case of the human kingdom, "Root-Races."

Globe A

Globe A (sometimes also referred as "world A" "sphere A", "sphere I", etc.) is the first globe in the planetary chain.

The world No. A is born; and with it, clinging like barnacles to the bottom of a ship in motion, evolute from its first breath of life the living beings of its atmosphere, from the germs hitherto inert, now awakening to life with the first motion of the sphere. With sphere A begins the mineral kingdom and runs the round of mineral evolution. By the time it is completed sphere B comes into objectivity and . . . then comes vegetable life on sphere A, and the same process takes place.

Globe B

By the time it is completed sphere B comes into objectivity and draws to itself the life which has completed its round on sphere A, and has become a surplus, (the fount of life being inexhaustible, for it is the true Arachne doomed to spin out its web eternally — save the periods of pralaya). Then comes vegetable life on sphere A, and the same process takes place.

Globe D

The Earth and mankind, like the Sun, Moon, and planets, have all their growth, changes, developments, and gradual evolution in their life-periods; they are born, become infants, then children, adolescents, grown-up bodies, grow old, and finally die.

Every life-cycle on Globe D (our Earth) is composed of seven root-races. They commence with the Ethereal and end with the spiritual on the double line of physical and moral evolution—from the beginning of the terrestrial round to its close. (One is a “planetary round” from Globe A to Globe G, the seventh; the other, the “globe round,” or the terrestrial).

The student hardly needs any further explanation on the part played by the fourth Globe and the fourth Round in the scheme of evolution. From the preceding diagrams, which are applicable, mutatis mutandis, to Rounds, Globes or Races, it will be seen that 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.

Our Earth, as the visible representative of its invisible superior fellow globes, its “lords” or “principles” (see diagram No. 1), has to live, as have the others, through seven Rounds. During the first three, it forms and consolidates; during the fourth it settles and hardens during the last three it gradually returns to its first ethereal form: it is spiritualised, so to say.

Current cycle

Its Humanity develops fully only in the Fourth—our present Round. Up to this fourth Life-Cycle, it is referred to as “humanity” only for lack of a more appropriate term. Like the grub which become chrysalis and butterfly, Man, or rather that which becomes man, passes through all the forms and kingdoms during the first Round and through all the human shapes during the two following Rounds. Arrived on our Earth at the commencement of the Fourth in the present series of life-cycles and races, MAN is the first form that appears thereon, being preceded only by the mineral and vegetable kingdoms—even the latter having to develop and continue its further evolution through man. This will be explained in Book II. During the three Rounds to come, Humanity, like the globe on which it lives, will be ever tending to reassume its primeval form, that of a Dhyan Chohanic Host. Man tends to become a God and then—GOD, like every other atom in the Universe.

Since the total period of the existence of our Planetary Chain (i.e., of the Seven Rounds) is—4,320,000,000—and we are now in the 4th Round; and since we have unto the present Terrene year period 1,955,884,685 years from the beginning of the Cosmic Evolution of Planet A; therefore, in point of time, we shall reach the middle point, or just 3½ Rounds in 204,115,315 years, although in point of space we have virtually reached it being on planet D and in our 5th race.

Further reading

• Planetary Chain at Theosopedia