Evolution –our place in it.

Theosophy’s version of evolution is entirely unique and has to be understood elsewhere. There are plenty of websites dedicated to it. This article is my reflections of this knowledge.

In theosophy we study that we are in the 4^th round out of 7 rounds which will end when our solar system itself ends, ie a solar pralaya. Each round develops a faculty or body in us and in the 4^th round we develop our fourth body or the Kamarupa body (our bodies according to theosophy is septinary-seven fold). This is the body we build of our emotions which we feed into it. The good emotions or the healthy emotions like love, compassion, joy will be in their best form at the end of the round. In this, our fourth round, we are in the fifth root race, and we also develop our 5^th body which is our mind or manas. Though overall we are still working to develop our kama rupa body. The two bodies overlap and are called kama-manasic too.

We hear of people trying different means to achieve higher levels of being, some even working towards that moment of enlightenment which I think for many, means the moment where they will never have to face pain again. But barring a few, no one appears to understand that there is nothing instantaneous about nature and it will take tremendous effort on our part to develop the faculties or develop the planes to their highest qualities and that only through living and facing each problem that life throws at us, do we build these qualities. If a person wanted to develop a high level of mathematics, can he do that without going through the baby steps, one milestone at a time?  Then why do we expect that spirituality will be sudden? Also I see a lot of people wanting to feel they have already achieved some high level of spirituality if they can quote some scripture or are following some daily regimen. Their self-belief is so strong, that they aren’t even willing to explore new ideas. Rigidity of ideas is itself stagnation.

In theosophy we study how the two Mahatmas and their chelas reach out, through letters,  to Englishmen who were really from an entirely different stream of thought. Their attempt at trying something unusual shows us how, we, at our level should also be open to new knowledge, and ways of thought. There is no end to this inner development and any new way of thinking or activity merits our meditative thought.

There is so little that we understand about evolution. Theosophy points that by the time this wave of humanity reaches the 7^th root race in a couple of million years, man will be androgenous -that is neither male nor female, having both qualities in him. Theosophy teaches that Buddha was a sixth round man and there are many 5^th round men amongst us.

All this indicates that we have a lot of work left to do. That it will take much effort on our part to remove all the natural automatic negative thoughts and feelings that we are plagued with, to develop new neural pathways. Much of our thinking is repetitive and on familiar lines. This leads us to do the same mistakes over and over again, which creates the same type of karma and eventually equally difficult future lives. To put an end to this vicious circle, we need to start at the thought level. Examine our approaches to various situations and issues and develop a higher or better way of thinking about the same.

Today at a meeting, one of the senior theosophists commented, that we have a wealth of information about the evolution of man, but this knowledge has to change us. Instead of changing ourselves, we look at others and criticize them. Not realizing that our present actions and thoughts sow the seeds for future troubles in other incarnations and that unless we focus on doing the right thing, thinking the right thought, today, all will be lost.  We use our past and present to change our future and that is evolution.