1. Alfred Sinnett held the mistaken belief that Mars and Mercury are part of the Earth's planetary chain.
This led Sinnett to conclude that the humanity currently developing on Earth had previously done so on Mars and would do so in the future on Mercury — all in a physical sense.
In other words: terrestrial humans used to reincarnate on Mars, but those who had evolved sufficiently were now reincarnating on Earth, and in the future, the most advanced among them would begin to reincarnate on Mercury.
That is why Sinnett wrote in his book "Esoteric Buddhism" (1883):
« Mars in a state of entire obscuration now as regards the human life-wave. »
(Chapter 7)
This means there is no human life on Mars, though Sinnett implied that animal and plant life do exist there.
2. However, in his book "The Growth of the Soul" (1896), Sinnett changed his claim, stating that humans do live on Mars, but they are the most despicable ones who could not continue their evolution on Earth:
« A large portion of the present human family has actually lived on Mars — where, if we could but visit the planet now, as, indeed, some of our more advanced companions can and do, in the appropriate vehicle of consciousness while out of the physical body, we should still find the least advanced, — the dregs of the family, — still hanging on there. »
(Chapter 10)
3. Sinnett had been using mediums to obtain further "occult information," and starting in 1909, he began utilizing the services of the medium Robert King (who was a charlatan) and who told him lies.
In his "Autobiography," Sinnett recounted:
« One November night [1909], King heard a new voice claiming to be that of Laplace — the astronomer who had given me information about Mars, its inhabitants, and its canals. Up to that point, King did not go into a trance with me, but rather repeated what he heard being said. »
(p. 57)
This led Sinnett to further expand upon his "discoveries" regarding life on Mars, which he set forth in a pamphlet titled "Expanded Theosophical Knowledge" (1919), which later was incorporated into his book "Collected Fruits of Occult Teaching" (1919) where he once again altered his claim, stating that the humans living on Mars were not the most despicable, but rather the most primitive:
« At present we shall find it impossible to understand the conditions of life on the super-physical planets, and we may leave them out of account for the moment; but on the three physical, including Mars behind us and Mercury in advance of us, the human family is now distributed, part of it already established on Mercury, part left behind on Mars.
The explanation is simple. While the great majority swept forward to this earth, the laggard remnant not yet qualified for incarnation here remains on the planet Mars, a superior vanguard already getting forward to the planet in advance.
The retarded condition of the Martian remnant—counted, of course, by a fairly large number of millions—consists of those who have (reverting to my former explanation about consciousness) failed to make the exertions required for the acquisition of superior vehicles.
There is no vehicle of human consciousness on this earth amongst even the lowest savages that is not definitely superior in some important ways to the vehicles of consciousness now inhabiting Mars.
Strange to say, as often happens on the downward arc, some capacities are still active amongst them, which enable them to do things that we ourselves, in spite of our superior development, are unable to accomplish.
The Martian people can handle matter by arts that we, to a certain extent, have lost, though the use of such arts does not represent superior intelligence any more than a spider’s capacity to make a web that no human art could imitate, represents intellectual superiority on the part of the spider.
Morally, the condition of the Martian people is below any level that we can easily comprehend.Their forms are to our more cultivated taste grotesquely ugly, and they practically exemplify a saying applied with less appropriateness to some savage races of our own globe: “manners they have none, and their customs are beastly.”
The animal life on Mars is at a low level, corresponding to that of the people. It is purely reptilian in its character, and the development of taste amongst the people may be imagined from the fact that their food consists of the blood of the reptiles swarming in the vast inland lakes commonly called canals, with which the habitable portions of the planet are covered.
Even amongst the Martians the evolutionary law which presses gradually on the multitude is slowly working. Some Egos —for already the Martians must be thought of as human— gradually establish claims on a better vehicle of consciousness than those around them, and then they become qualified for incarnation on this earth, and are brought over under the guidance of appropriate emissaries from the White Lodge in batches sometimes of fairly considerable number.
I have heard of a recent case in which within the last year or two, a batch of about a hundred thousand Martian Egos were imported into this world, finding incarnation, some of them, in the aborigines, as they are called, of Australia, some in the lowest types of Central Africa, the best of them amongst the populations of Central Asia. »
(p.167-68)
4. Charles Leadbeater was a friend of Sinnett, he claimed to have traveled to Mars via clairvoyance and recorded his discoveries in his book "The Inner Life II" (1912), stating, among other things:
« Signs of a very ancient civilization are visible everywhere, for the inhabitants have preserved the tradition of all that was known when the great life-wave of terrestrial humanity occupied the planet, and since then, they have added many other discoveries.
. . .
The Martians have brought their medical and scientific studies to such a state of perfection that diseases have been eliminated, and even the common signs of old age have largely disappeared. Practically no one looks old, and it seems they hardly feel old; yet, after a life somewhat longer than our own, the desire to live gradually fades, and the Martian comes to desire death. »
(Sixth section)
This contradicted Sinnett’s own assertions; while Sinnett maintained that the Martians were very primitive, Leadbeater claimed they were highly evolved.
To address this dichotomy, Sinnett continued to consult mediums and presented his conclusions in his book "Supra-Physical Science" (1919):
« Misled by the fact, discovered by ordinary astronomy, that that planet [Mars] is remarkable for artificial irrigation works on a colossal scale, hasty thinkers have jumped to the conclusion that the race is more advanced than ourselves, and to make the matter more bewildering some clairvoyant observation of Mars resulted in discovering that it is partly occupied by a highly advanced variety of humanity representing a civilisation in some respects in advance of our own.
How is this view compatible with what I thought I had definitely learned, that the population of Mars were the laggards of the earth’s humanity and at a very ignoble state of development, in a condition which we can only think of as one of profound degradation as compared with our own; though the word degradation is not exactly applicable because the Martian condition merely represents one from which early humanity has not yet emerged?
From our point of view it is really a very ignoble and disgusting stage. At that stage the human form has a gorilla-like aspect, short legs, bulky body, long and powerful arms; and the habits of life prevailing are loathsome to our imagination.
There is but little animal life on Mars resembling our own. All that is not quasi-human is still of the reptilian order, and huge creatures of that kind, inhabiting the enormous “canals” (more properly to be thought of as elongated seas, for they are miles in breadth and in some places a mile deep), provide the human population with the food on which they live.
By slow degrees, as even the laggard Martians become fit for something a shade better than the lives they are leading, they are brought over in great groups to the earth and incarnated in the lowest savage types to be found in Central Africa or the interior of Australia. From those conditions, as time goes on, they may gradually ascend to superior races.
How are we to reconcile the view of the Martian population just given with the results of the clairvoyant research?
The explanation of this apparent confusion is to the effect that both stories are true.The bulk of the Martian population does consist of the laggards already described, and when I was getting information concerning them I was simply endeavouring to get a comprehensive view of the way in which humanity was distributed around the septenary chain.
So it was not necessary to inform me, or at all events I was not informed, that over and above the laggard multitude, Mars was actually the scene of incarnation for a considerable body of egos belonging to the “Inner Round.”
This phrase relates to a department of occult teaching of which very little has hitherto been said in any theosophical writings, although the central idea is referred to in some of my own.
In thinking of human evolution we have, first of all, to contemplate its main stream including the sixty thousand million entities constituting the human family; also that wonderful stream of rapid evolution (rapid relatively to the main stream) described as the Path of Initiation.
But we also have to think of a third stream, intermediate, as it were, between the other two, consisting of egos who, by reason of some special karmic qualifications, become, without treading the Path of Initiation, drifted along the normal path of evolution in advance of the great majority.
These egos constituting what has been called the “inner round” people, flit on from planet to planet of the whole chain and get right round it in periods lying within the whole world period (for the majority) of the world from which they started. That is an abstract statement of the principle.
More definitely, it relates to a possibility of evolution that has never arisen in the earlier history of the planetary chain. Inner Rounds can only be thought of as beginning at the period of this world’s current activity. But anyhow, it seems to be the fact that some qualified egos emerging from the variegated civilisation of the Atlantean period, have actually accomplished an Inner Round progress so nearly complete that they are already incarnate on the planet Mars only just behind our own. There, of course, they are enormously superior to the bulk of the laggard population, thus naturally assuming control of the inferior multitude.
But the complications of the story do not end here.The few who actually accomplished the Inner Round progress were reinforced by a considerable number of Atlantean egos (willingly, of course, accepting the task) who were moved backward against the normal stream of evolution, and incarnated on Mars.
One naturally asks: How did their incarnation begin? What parents, among the laggard population, could possibly have been fit to give them birth?
The answer unveils another interesting chapter in the whole intricate story. A Being of exalted dignity, undertaking a task resembling that performed by the “Manu” of a new race on Earth, made a selection amongst the best of the laggard population, and segregating them from the rest, through a long series of generations, brought them up to a relatively superior condition.They became the parents of the incoming Atlantean egos, whose advent, again of course, gave an enormous impulse to the progress of the improving forms.
Obviously, all this work was done a long while ago, but two or three million years have elapsed since the middle period of the Atlantean race, so there has been time available for many things to happen.
Thus, although it is not true that all of the superior race now dominating Mars are strictly speaking Inner Round people, they may all be conveniently thought of as such.
The few who actually were able to hurry round the whole chain of planets, probably came into incarnation on Mars, after the larger number who came back from Earth, and found bodies available of an already improved type.
It would seem that Mr. Leadbeater’s clairvoyant observations were entirely concerned with some of the Inner Round people whom he was enabled to observe.
And the impression he got that they constituted the main body of the Martian population seems, as I understand the matter now, the only mistake embodied in a description he gives, which, while I merely knew that the main body of the Martian population was certainly of the laggard order, appeared to me bewildering in the most distressful fashion.
The Inner Round people are a small minority compared to the multitude below them, but owing to their superiority in other ways they completely dominate the laggards. Whether, in the progress of time, it may be possible that somehow, independently. of super-physical faculties we shall come to know something concerning the Martian people, is a question I will not venture to deal with confidently; but I do understand that some of the Inner Round Martians are keenly interested in the idea of establishing physical plane relations with the Earth, by utilising the finer forces of nature to serve a telegraphic purpose.
When, hitherto, people have vaguely talked about the possibility of getting communications from Mars, every intelligent thinker must have been struck with the absurdity of supposing that the Martians could make themselves intelligible to us without any common language to work with. But all I have now been explaining really dissipates this difficulty.
The Inner Round Martians are sufficiently advanced in evolution, especially those who have actually made an extra circuit of the planetary chain, to have developed amongst them what may be thought of as a Martian White Lodge, a Martian body of adepts capable, as adepts, of communicating with other worlds.
And the communication on that level is already freely established. That state of things accounts for the fact that such information as I have just been putting forward has filtered through to me.We are within sight of very wonderful changes in the human life of this planet, social and spiritual changes of immense importance. And amongst them it seems more than possible that interplanetary communications may be one of the dazzling achievements of science in the future. »
(Ed. 1924, p.103-108)
In summary, Sinnett stated that although the majority of Martians were very primitive, there were also some who were highly evolved.
OBSERVATION
We now know that what Sinnett and Leadbeater said is false and that there is no physical life on Mars; in fact, there is no subtle life either, since Master Kuthumi revealed that "Mars is in a state of obscuration" (SD I, p. 165).
