PRALAYA is a period of observation or repose -- planetary, cosmic, or universal -- the opposite of Manvantara, a period of manifestation. Pralaya is the night after the Manvantaric day. As Manvantara or manifestation is divided into seven periods, so is Pralaya or rest. Our globe is subject to seven periodical entire changes which go pari passu with the races. For the Secret Doctrine teaches that, during this present Round, there must be seven terrestrial pralayas -- three of these occasioned by the changes in the inclination of the earth's axis. In Occultism this inexorable law is referred to as "the great ADJUSTER." Planetary chains, it is said, have their "Days" and their "Nights" -- periods of activity or life, and of inertia or death -- and behave in heaven as men do on Earth. They generate their likes, get old, and become personally extinct, their spiritual principles only living in their progeny as a survival of themselves. Pralaya is thus a term applying also to each "obscuration," and even to every cataclysm that puts an end, by fire or by water in turn, to each root-race.