volution make 1 Our Solar System

It is clear that the fourth root-race of the fourth globe of the fourth
round of a fourth chain-period would be the central point of a whole scheme
of evolution, and we find ourselves at the present moment only a little
past that point. The Aryan race, to which we belong, is the fifth root-race
of the fourth globe, so that the actual middle point fell in the time of
the last great root-race, the Atlantean. Consequently the human race as a
whole is very little more than half-way through its evolution, and those
few souls who are already nearing Adeptship, which is the end and crown of
this evolution, are very far in advance of their fellows.

How do they come to be so far in advance? Partly and in some cases because
they have worked harder, but usually because they are older egos--because
they were individualized out of the animal kingdom at an earlier date, and
so have had more time for the human part of their evolution.

Any given wave of life sent forth from the Deity usually spends a
chain-period in each of the great kingdoms of Nature. That which in our
first chain was ensouling the first elemental kingdom must have ensouled
the second of those kingdoms in the second chain, in the third of them in
the Moon-chain, and is now in the mineral kingdom in the fourth chain. In
the future fifth chain it will ensoul the vegetable kingdom, in the sixth
the animal, and in the seventh it will attain humanity.

From this it follows that we ourselves represented the mineral kingdom on
the first chain, the vegetable on the second, and the animal on the lunar
chain. There some of us attained our individualization, and so we were
enabled to enter this Earth-chain as men. Others who were a little more
backward did not succeed in attaining it, and so had to be born into this
chain as animals for a while before they could reach humanity.

Not all of mankind, however, entered this chain together. When the lunar
chain came to its end the humanity upon it stood at various levels. Not
Adeptship, but what is now for us the fourth step on the Path, was the goal
appointed for that chain. Those who had attained it (commonly called in
Theosophical literature the Lords of the Moon) had, as is usual, seven
choices before them as to the way in which they would serve. Only one of
those choices brought them, or rather a few of them, over into this
Earth-chain to act as guides and teachers to the earlier races.