Life and its Spirals – History in the Light of Theosophy

By E.W. Preston.

167 Pages | Softcover | Published in 1962, first reprint 1990 | Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar | ISBN: 8170591376.

This companion Volume to The Earth And Its Cycles deals with history in the Light of Theosophy and is based on lectures delivered at the School of the Wisdom, Adyar, Madras. The general principles of evolutionary psychology were first expounded by Professor J.E. Marcault in The Evolution Of Man and were illustrated from the history of science in Studies In Evolutionary Psychology by E.W. Preston. and C.G. Trew. Both these books are now out of print. The present writer, convinced of the validity of these principles has, with permission, selected and expanded the material so that the theory may again be available to students.

1.  PART I - Introduces the concept of life as an expanding spiral in Nature and man.
2.  PART II - Deals with modern races and their psychology.
3.  PART III - Is an attempt to see the working-out of these ideas in the present and future.

From Chapter IX - 'The Fifth Root Race, Aryan or Indo-European' (p. 70):

" The races of men are not end-on, but overlap in time as do the members of a family. Each has it own cycle and reaches the various levels of consciousness successively. Each is influenced by the other and, in the later stages, tends toward similarity of level. Before the Fifth Race was founded the Fourth Race had spread throughout the world and the majority of peoples of the world today are its descendants. […] In The Secret Doctrine Madame Blavatsky discusses this subject of the overlapping of the races. She points out that there is 'an enormous overlapping of one Race over the Race that succeeds it, though in characters and external type the elder loses its characteristics, and assumes the new features of the younger Race'. Further, she adds that 'even now (1888) the new Race and races are preparing to be formed', and that it is in America that the transformation will take place, and has already silently commenced. The Americans of the United States have already become a nation apart. They are, in short, the germs of the sixth sub-race, and in some few hundred years more, will become the pioneers of that race, which must succeed to the present European or fifth sub-race. After this, in about 25.000 years, they will launch into preparations for the seventh sub-race. "