Round

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.

Thus, in the first Round, the globe, having been built by the primitive fire-lives, i.e., formed into a sphere—had no solidity, nor qualifications, save a cold brightness, nor form nor colour; it is only towards the end of the First Round that it developed one Element which from its inorganic, so to say, or simple Essence became now in our Round the fire we know throughout the system. The Earth was in her first rupa, the essence of which is the Akâsic principle, that which is now known as, and very erroneously termed, Astral Light.

The Second Round brings into manifestation the second element—AIR, that element, the purity of which would ensure continuous life to him who would use it. “From the second Round, Earth—hitherto a fœtus in the matrix of Space—began its real existence: it had developed individual sentient life, its second principle. The second corresponds to the sixth (principle); the second is life continuous, the other, temporary.”

The Third Round developed the third Principle—WATER; while the Fourth transformed the gaseous fluids and plastic form of our globe into the hard, crusted, grossly material sphere we are living on. “Bhumi” [the Earth] has reached her fourth principle. Earth will reach her true ultimate form—(inversely in this to man)—her body shell—only toward the end of the manvantara after the Seventh Round. Our globe is, so far, in its Kamarupic state—the astral body of desires of Ahamkara, dark Egotism, the progeny of Mahat, on the lower plane. . . .

There is not much information about the future Rounds. In one of their letters, Mahatma M. says:

Then it is but at his fourth round, when arrived at the full possession of his Kama-energy and completely matured, that man becomes fully responsible, as at the sixth he may become a Buddha and at the seventh before the Pralaya — a “Dhyan Chohan.”

Further reading

• Human Evolution Through the Rounds at Theosopedia