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    "name": "Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett"
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    "num": 6,
    "slug": "07-cosmological-notes",
    "title": "Cosmological Notes",
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    "words": 4347,
    "text": "## Cosmological Notes\n\n\n#### COSMOLOGICAL NOTES\n\n##### From A. P. Sinnett's MS. Book\n\n{Reproduced from* The Letters of H. P. Blavatsky to\nA. P. Sinnett*, Appendix II, and corrected against Sinnett’s transcriptions\nof M.’s notes to A. O. Hume.  Transliterations of technical terms have been\nstandardized. Sinnett's *Early Days of Theosophy in Europe *(pp. 33-5)\nand Blavatsky Letter 4 indicate these teachings were given from August to\nOctober 1881.} \n\nRegular type indicates *Questions* put by A. P.\nSinnett or A. O. Hume to their Teachers, and bold type the *Answers*\nreceived. Indented regular type has been used to indicate where the pupils have\nstated their own ideas in order to obtain comments upon them. —\nEd.\n\n———————\n\n(1) What are the different kinds of knowledge?\n\n**The real (Dzyu) and the unreal (Dzyu-mi).\nDzyu\nbecomes Fohat when in its activity — active agent of will — electricity —\nno other name.**\n\n(2) What is the difference between the two kinds of knowledge?\n\n**Real knowledge deals with eternal verities and\nprimal causes. The unreal only with illusory effects.\nDzyu stands independent\nof the belief or unbelief of man. Dzyu-mi requires faith: rests on authority.**\n\n(3) Who possesses the real knowledge?\n\n**The Lha or adept alone possesses the real, his\nmind being *en ******rapport***** with\nthe universal mind.\nThe Lha has made the perfect junction of his soul with\nthe Universal Mind in its fulness, which makes him for the time a divine being\nexisting in the region of absolute intelligence, knowledge of natural laws or\ndzyu. The profane cannot become a Dang-ma (purified soul), for he lacks means\nof perceiving Chhag, genesis or the beginning of things.**\n\n(4) Is there any difference between what produces primal causes and their ultimate\neffects?\n\n**None — Everything in the occult Universe which\nembraces all the primal causes is based upon two principles, Kosmic energy (Fohat\nor breath of wisdom) and Kosmic ideation.\nThyan Kam (= the knowledge of bringing\nabout) giving the impulse to Kosmic energy in the right direction.\nIn Fohat\nall that exists on Earth as ultimates exists as primates.**\n\n(5) What is the one eternal thing in the universe independent of every other\nthing?\n\n**Space.**\n\n(6) What things are coexistent with space?\n\n**(1) Duration.\n(2) Matter.\n(3) Motion, for\nthis is the imperishable life (conscious or unconscious as the case may be)\nof matter even during the pralaya, or night of mind. **\n\n**When Chyang, or omniscience, and Chyang-mi-shi-khon,\nignorance, both sleep, this latent unconscious life still maintains the matter\nit animates in sleepless unceasing motion. **\n\n**(4) The Akasa (Bar-nang) or Kosmic atmosphere,\nor Astral light, or celestial ether, which whether in its latent or active condition,\nsurrounds and interpenetrates all matter in motion of which it is at once a\nresult and the medium by which the Kosmic energy acts on its source.\n**\n\n**(5) The Purush or 7th principle of the universe.\n**\n\n**Linga sharir is composed of the ethereal elements\nof its (? body's) organism, never leaves body but at death and remains near.**\n\n(7) Are we to understand Purush as another name for space, or as a different\nthing occupying every part of space?\n\n**Same. Swayambu occupies every part of space which\nitself is boundless and eternal, hence must be space in one sense. Swayambu\nbecomes Purush when coming in contact with matter.**\n\n(8) The universal mind is the aggregate of all the minds of the Dyan-chohans\nor Planetaries, the result of the action of Purush on matter, just as the spiritual\nsoul in man is the action of spirit on matter?\n\n**Yes.**\n\n(9) Are we to look upon the seven principles as all matter and all spirit —\none thing, with spirit as it were at one pole, and matter at the other?\n\n**Yes, just so.**\n\n(10) If so, are we to view them as different states of matter or spirit, or how?\n\n**States, conditions, call it whatever you please.\nI call it Kyen — cause; itself a result of a previous or some primary\ncause.**\n\n(11) All matter consists of ultimate molecules. How may we conceive the different\nstates of matter?\n\n**As the molecules go on rarifying, so in proportion\nthey become attenuated and the greater the distance between our globe and them —\nI do not mean here the region within the reach of your science — the greater\nthe change in their polarity, the negative pole acquiring a stronger property\nof repulsion, and the positive losing gradually its power of attraction. (And\nnow is the time for your men of dzyu to set me down as a Thibetan ass, and for\nme to return the compliment.)**\n\n(12)\n\n*MAN*\n\n*Thibetan*\n*Sanscrit*\n*English*\n\n1. A-ku\nRupa\nBody\n\n2. Zer (vital ray)\nPrana\nJivatma\nLife principle\n\n3. Chhu-lung (one of the 3 aims) \nLinga sharir\nAstral body\n\n4. Nga-zhi (essence of action)\nKama-rupa\nWill form\n\n5. Ngë (Physical ego)\nLinga deha Bhut\nAnimal soul\n\n6. Lana Sem-nyed (spiritual soul)\nAtmanMayava-rupa\nSpiritual soul\n\n7. Hlün-dhüb\nMahatma\nSpirit\n\n \n\n*UNIVERSE*\n\n*Thibetan*\n*Sanscrit*\n*English*\n\n1. Sem-chan (animated universe)      \nSsa — earth as an element\nBrahm — the universe\n     \nPrakrit = matter\n      Idam (Earth) \nOrganized matter\n\n2. Zhima  (vital soul)\nPurush\nVivifying, universal spirit\n\n3. Yor Wa  (Illusion)\n(Maya)\nAkasa\nAstral or cosmic\n   atmosphere\n\n4. Od (light, the shining\n   \n*  active* Astral light)\nVach (the Kam-akasa) \nCosmic will\n\n5. Nam Kha ({?}tur passive) \nYajna (latent form in\nBrahma-purush determined\nby activity of No. 4)\nViradji (?)\n   Universal illusion\n\n6. Kon-chhog\nNarayan — spirit brooding over the\nwaters and reflecting in itself the universe \nUniversal mind\n\n7. Nyug\n    (Duration in {?}ring,\nor space)\nSwayambuva\n   in {?} (space) \nLatent spirit\n   Ensoph\n\n(13) Sem-chan, animated universe: Ssa, earth as an element. Where then does cosmic\nor unorganised matter class?\n\n**Zhi gyu (cosmic matter), Thog (space), Nyug (duration),\nKhor wa (motion), all one.\nFire, as everything else, has seven principles.\nOd, one, but not the most material — sixth. **\n\n(14) All matter cosmic or organised has inherent motion. What then does Zhima,\nvital soul or vivifying principle, do to it?\n\n**There you see. As well ask what vital principle\ndoes for human body when it comes into it in conjunction with the other five.\nA dead body is composed of molecules full of life, is it? Yet when vital soul\nhas deserted the whole, what is it but a dead body. Give up your **\n***pansophy***** and come down to our Dgyu. We believe\nin spontaneous generation and you do not. We say that Zhima being positive,\nand Zhi-*****gyu***** [*gyu* (material)\nearth in this sense] negative, it is only when the two come in contact as the\nformer is brought to act upon the latter that organised, living, self-acting\nmatter is produced. Everything invisible, imponderable (the spirit of a thing)\nis positive, for it belongs to the world of reality; as everything solid, visible,\nis negative. Primate and ultimate, positive and negative. So much in our manifested\nworld. As the forces move on and the distance between organised and unorganised\nmatter becomes greater, a tendency towards the reverse begins to take place.\nThe powers of attraction and repulsion become gradually weaker. Then a complete\nexchange of properties takes place, and for a time equilibrium is restored in\nan opposite order. At every grade further onward, or away toward their primary\nchaotic state, shifts no more mutually its property, but weakens gradually until\nit reaches the world of non-being, where exists the eternal mechanical motion,\nthe uncreated cause from whence proceeds in a kind of incessant downward and\nupward rotation, the founts of being from non-being, the latter, the reality,\nthe former maya, the temporary from the everlasting, the effect from its cause,\nthe effect becoming in its turn cause *****ad infinitum*****.\nDuring the pralaya, that upward and downward motion ceases, inherent unconscious\nlife alone remaining — all creative forces paralysed, and everything resting\nin the night of mind. **\n\n(15) Are we to consider any of the principles as non-molecular?\n\n**There comes a time when polarity ceases to exist\n*****or act***** as everything else. In the\nnight of mind, all is equilibrised in the boundless cosmos in a state of non-action\nor non-being.**\n\n(16) And is cosmic matter non-molecular?\n\n**Cosmic matter can no more be non-molecular than\norganised matter. — 7th principle is molecular as well as the 1st one, but the\nformer differentiates from the latter not only by its molecules getting wider\napart and becoming more attenuated, but also by losing *****\nits polarity*****. Try to understand and realise this idea\nand the rest will become easy. **\n\n**The panspermic and theospermic conceptions will\nboth be in our way as taught by your schools. You will never be able to realise\nthe latter as an absurdity, so long as you comprehend but imperfectly the incessant\nwork of what is called by Occult Science the *****Central Point*****\nin both its active and passive states. As I said, we believe in spontaneous\ngeneration in the independent origin of matter whether living or dead, and we\nprove it, which is more than your Pasteurs and Wymans and Huxleys can say. Did\nthey but know that Zhima cannot be shut out or pumped out from a glass vessel\nlike air, and that hence, wherever there is purush there can be no thermal limit\nof organic life, they would have bak-baked less and told the world less absurdities\nthan they have. In short, motion, cosmic matter, duration, space, are everywhere\nand for perspicuity's sake, let us place or fancy this multiplicity in *or\nat* the top of a circle, (boundless). They are passive, negative, unconscious,\nyet ever propelled by their inherent latent life or force. During the day of\nactivity, that cyclic force ejecting from the causative latent principle, cosmic\nmatter, like the wheel of a water mill ejects showers of water dust around its\nrotating circle, put it in contact with the same principles (but whose condition\nowing to their finding themselves outside the state of primitive passivity of\nthe eternal immutability has already changed). Thus the same principles begin\nto acquire so to speak the germs of polarity. Then coming within the Universal\nmind Dyan Kam develops these germs, conceives, and giving the impulse communicates\nit to Fohat, who, vibrating along Akasa, Od (a state of cosmic matter, motion,\nforce, etc.) runs along the lines of cosmic manifestations and frames all and\neverything, blindly, agreed, yet as faithfully in accordance with the prototypes\nas conceived in the eternal mind as a good mirror reflects your face.\n**\n\n———————\n\n(17) On the hypothetical Absolute and infinite final cause.\n\n**The absolute and infinite is composed of the conditioned\nand finite. Causes are conditioned in their modes of existence and attributes,\nand as individual aggregates — unconditioned and eternal in their sum\nor as a collective aggregate. **\n\n(18) If the Absolute is a blind law, how can it give birth to intelligence?\n\n**But passive latent intelligence, or that principle\ndiffused throughout the universe which in its pure immateriality is non-intelligence\nand non-consciousness, and which as soon as it becomes imprisoned in matter\nis transformed into both — can. **\n\n(19) The Absolute, if intelligent, must be omnipotent, omniscient, and all-good?\n\n**Please give your reasons why! **\n\nIn the East the Absolute, itself non-conscious, is\nlinked to intelligence by emanations, supposed to be conditioned. \"How far this\nhypothesis satisfies the mind as to the possibility of intelligence evolving\nout of non-intelligence . . . ,\" depends on the mind addressed.\n\n**What do you know of the gradual development of\nbrain ever since the Silurian period? **\n\n(20) The origin of Evil difficulty, dealt with by means of the sugar refinery\nsimile.\n\n**And the more the sugar refined the greater the\nfermentation produced in the stomach and the more worms. **\n\nIt is useless . . .\n\n**Show me the philosopher who would prove it useless!\n**\n\n. . . to say that evil is as necessary to make good\napparent as darkness is to make light cognizable. To the conditioned it may\nbe — to the omnipotent nothing is necessary.\n\n**Prove him first.**\n\nBut clearly a conditioned agency is not the final\ncause. Above it is the law or principle that conditions it. . . .\n\n**How's this? Where? not unless you create something\noutside the absolute and limitless. **\n\nProblems lying behind the veil that separates the\nnon-manifested final cause from the manifested universe are beyond the grasp\nof minds conditioned in that universe.\n\n**Indeed they are not! **\n\n. . . The absolute infinite is unthinkable and we\ncan neither comprehend it nor justify its ways to man.\n\n**Then why lose time over it? Who commissioned you\nto do so?\nYour all-pervading supreme power exists, but it is exactly matter,\nwhose life is motion, will, and nerve power, electricity. Purush can think but\nthrough Prakriti. **\n\n———————\n\n(21) What you would say would be: —\n\n\"Whether this be so or not (as regards the hypothesis\nof an Absolute beyond the conditioned) it is and must ever remain a pure hypothesis.\nThe highest intelligences *in* the universe know nothing of it —\nso far as they can explore, the manifested universe is boundless and infinite.\nOur philosophy admits only of what is known and knowable — This is admittedly\nunknowable even to Planetaries, and it is ex-hypothese non-existent —\nwhy then consider it. . . .\n\n\"Even were this conception correct, how does it concern\nus? For thousands of years the highest planetaries have explored the universe\n— they have found no limits to it, and nothing in it guided or governed by any\nexternal impulse, everything on the contrary proceeding from internal impulses\nwhich they understand and which suffice to explain everything they have ever\nhad cognizance of. *A quoi bon* {to what good] then to introduce this\nunnecessary conception of a something (which as non-existent for us is a nothing)\noutside and beyond what for us is limitless and eternal, when whether it exists\nor not it plays no discoverable part in anything that concerns us.\n\n\"The fact is your western philosophical conceptions\nare monarchical; ours democratic. You are only able to think of the universe\nas governed by a king, while we know it to be a republic in which the aggregate\nindwelling intelligence rules.\"\n\n**We might say more — never better. That is\njust what we would say. **\n\n———————\n\n(22) Who are the artificers of the world?\n\n**Dyan Chohans — Planetaries. **\n\n———————\n\n(*Pinned to next essay*)\n\n**Gyu-thog — Phenomenal or Material Universe\n(secret name) Aja-sakti. Viswarn Zigten-jas — cosmogony, from Zigten =\nliving world, and jas, to make. Chh-rab — genesis. **\n\nThe universe may primarily be conceived as space pervaded by an infinite and\neternal and homogeneous congery of molecules, in which motion, their latent\nunconscious life, is inherent.\n     In this its passive\nunmanifested state it may be regarded as chaos?\n\n**Yes; if only people were capable of conceiving\nwhat real chaos is, which they are not. **\n\nThough truly an unity it may be conceived in its various\naspects as (Thog) space, in regard to its boundless extension coexisting with\n(Nyng) eternity, in regard to its endless duration (Zhi-gyu), cosmic matter\nin regard to its molecules, and Khori wa, — cosmic force in regard to\nits all pervading motion.\n\nBut these four conceptions must be held to indicate\nnot four elements composing a compound, but rather four properties or attributes\nof one single thing, just as on earth one thing may be hot, luminous, heavy,\nand in motion. This universe one and indivisible in its passive unmanifested\nform, this chaos is for us non-existent —\n\n**For you, but why speak for others? **\n\nbut throughout it are scattered centres of activity\nor evolution, and wherever and whenever activity prevails, there portions of\nthe whole differentiate, and where this occurs, homogeneity ceases. Thus differentiation\nis due\n\n(1) To the greater or less proximity of the molecules.\n\n(2) To their greater or less attenuation.\n\nWhat does (2) mean? How can the primal molecules grow thinner or fatter —\n*ex-nihil*, etc.?\n\n**I was not aware that atoms were considered by you\nas something *****nihil*****. Are not the molecules\nconsidered in science as compound atoms? Your science knows only of such compound\nmolecules, and a primal atom is and will remain for ever as a hypothetical abstraction\nfor it. Science can know nothing of the nature of atoms outside the region of\neffects on her globe and even that atom she calls indivisible, which we do not,\nfor we know of the existence and properties of the universal solvent —\nthe essence of the Panchamahabutam — the five elements. Even the existence\nof the atoms which compose the unseen medium through which the power which magnetises\ninstantly a short iron rod placed across the centre of a hoop two yards in diameter\naround which a wire thickly covered with india rubber is coiled — even\nthe existence of such atoms I say, remains an open question and science remains\npuzzled and embarrassed to decide whether it is an action at a distance without,\nor with some mysterious medium — or what? **\n\n(3) To changes in their polarity.\n\nThis differentiation in activity is manifestation,\nand everything so differentiated comes into existence or becomes conceivable\nfor us. Each centre of activity (and these centres are countless) marks a solar\nsystem, but these are still *rari nantes in gurgite vasto* {few swimmers\nin a vast sea}, hanging in the all-pervading ocean of the unmanifested universe,\nout of which new manifestations are perpetually evolving, and into the oblivion\nof which others whose cycle has been completed are ever returning.\n\nAlternations of activity and passivity constitute\nthe cyclic law of the universe. As the microcosm man has his days and nights,\nhis waking and his sleeping hours, so has the earth, which, a macrocosm to him\nis a microcosm to the solar system, and so has this latter, which, a macrocosm\nto a single globe, is itself a microcosm to the universe.\n\nThat the universe itself must similarly have its days\nand nights of activity and passivity, is probable by analogy, but if so these\ncover periods unthinkable, and the fact remains unknowable by the highest intelligences\nconditioned in the universe.\n\nIs this correct? If not when the entire universe goes into pralaya (what is your\nTibetan word?) how can anyone know anything about it!\n\n**Maha-bar-do — the period between death and\nregeneration of man is so called — also Chhe-bar-do.\nThey can know\nfor this is but *****our scan*****, or as you\nsay by analogy. **\n\nThe night of the solar system, the pralaya of the\nHindus, the Maha-bar-do or great night of mind of the Thibetans, involves the\ndisintegration of all form and the return of that portion of the universe occupied\nby that system, to its passive unmanifested condition, space pervaded by atoms\nin motion. Everything else passes away for the time, but matter which these\nultimate atoms represent (though at times objective, at times potential or subjective,\nnow organised, now unorganised) is eternal and indestructible, and motion is\nthe imperishable life (conscious or unconscious as the case may be) of matter.\nEven therefore during the night of mind, when all other forces are paralysed,\nwhen Chyang, omniscience, and Chyang mi shi kon, ignorance, both sleep, and\neverything else rests, this latent unconscious life unceasingly maintains the\nmolecules in which it is inherent in blind resultless and purposeless motion\n*inter se*.\n\n**Why should it be more purposeless and resultless\nthan the unconscious blind motion of the atoms in any foetus preparing for rebirth?\n**\n\nThe solar system has disappeared even to the highest\nintelligences in other solar systems.\n\nIs this correct? Can the planetaries in any way cognise the passive non-being\nportions of the universe?\n\n**They can. **\n\nAdepts can at will I know create forms out of cosmic\nmatter, but probably this cosmic matter is many degrees from matter as it exists\nin the passive latent universe, which perhaps should rather be called potential\nrather than cosmic matter.\n\n**Potentiality is a possibility not an actuality.\nFind a better word. **\n\nbut nothing has been annihilated any more than anything\nhas been ever created; only, this recently active, organised, manifested and\nexisting portion of the universe losing all differentiation of its parts, has\npassed into its primordial passive homogeneous unmanifested, and *quoad*\n{with respect to] all *intelligences*, non-existent or inconceivable\nstate. It has resettled into chaos.\n\nIf it is asked whence these alternations of activity\nand passivity the reply is that they [are] the law inherent in the universe.\n\nHere as a footnote would come the purport of the argument approved by you against\nthe unnecessary creation of an intelligence outside the self-governed universe.\n\n**If you can show me one being or object in the universe\nwhich does not originate and develop through, and in accordance with blind law,\nthen only will your argument hold good and footnote be necessary. The doctrine\nof evolution is an eternal protest. Evolution means unfolding of the evolute\nfrom the involute, a process of gradual growth. The only thing that could have\npossibly been spontaneously created is cosmic matter, and primordium with us\nmeans not only primogenitureship but eternalism, for matter is eternal and one\nof the *****Hlun dhub***** not a **\n***Kyen***** — a cause, itself the result of\nsome primary cause. Were it so, at the end of every Maha pralaya when the whole\ncosmos moves into collective perfection and every atom (that you call primordial,\nand we eternal) emanates from itself a still finer atom — every individual\natom containing in itself the actual potentiality of evoluting milliards of\nworlds each more perfect and more ethereal — how is it that there is no\nsign of such an intelligence outside the self-governed universe? You take a\nlast hypothesis — a portion of your god sits in every atom. He is divided\n*****ad*** ***infinitum*****,\nhe remains concealed *****in*** ***abscondito*****\nand the logical conclusion we arrive at is that as the Infinite mind of the\nDyan chohans knows that the newly emanated atoms are incapable of any conscious\nor unconscious action unless they receive the intellectual impulse **\n***from them*****. Ergo your god is no better than\nblind matter's ever propelled by as blind eternal force or law, which is that\nmatter god — Perchance. Well, well we shall not lose time over such talk.\n**\n\nThe period of passivity ends, the night of mind ceases,\nthe solar system awakes and reemerges into manifestation and existence, and\neverything throughout it is once more as it was when the night set in. Though\na period inconceivable to human minds has passed, it has passed but as a sound\nand dreamless sleep. The law of activity comes again into operation, the centre\nof evolution resumes its work, the fount of being commences to flow again.\n\nI conclude this must be so or otherwise the matter ejected from the vortex or\ncentral point would find none in a differentiated state from which to acquire\nits own impulse of differentiation.\n\n**When the hour strikes, the cosmic atoms already\nin a differentiated state remain statu quo, as well as globes and everything\nelse in the process of formation. Therefore you have seized the idea.\n**\n\nIn the still passive portion of the universe in which,\nand interpenetrated by which, hangs the remanifested solar system; in the non-being\nwhere subsists the eternal mechanical motion, its uncreated cause, a vortex\nis formed which in its ceaseless rotation perpetually ejects into the polarised\nactive manifested conscious universe, the unpolarised passive unmanifested and\nunconscious universal element.\n\nCall it motion, cosmic matter, duration, or space,\nfor it is all these and yet one, this the Universe manifested and unmanifested\nand there is nothing else in the Universe. But the moment it passes out of passivity\n(or non-being) into activity (or being), it begins to change its state and differentiate,\nfrom contact with what had formerly changed, and so the eternal wheel rolls\non, the effect of to-day becoming the cause of tomorrow for ever and ever. But\nit must ever be remembered that the non-being, the passive, is the eternal,\nthe real; the being, the active, the transitory and the unreal. For longer or\nshorter as its career may be according to the impulses it receives, sooner or\nlater the manifested disintegrates into the unmanifested, and being fades into\nnon-being.\n\nBut how about the highest Planetaries? They surely do not return into non-being,\nbut pass on to higher or at any rate different solar systems.\n\n**The highest state of Nirvana is the highest state\nof non-being. There comes a time when the whole infinitude sleeps or rests,\nwhen All is reimmersed in the one eternal and uncreated sum of all. The sum\nof the latent unconscious potentiality. **\n\nIt has been stated that a differentiation of the primordial\nelement is the basis of the manifested universe, and we must now consider the\nseven different principles that constitute and govern that Universe or in other\nwords the seven different states or conditions in which this element exists\nin it.\n\n**There is no finite or primordial design but in\nconjunction with organised matter. Design is Kyen, a cause arising from a primary\none. The latent design exists from the eternity in the one unborn eternal atom\nor the central point which is everywhere and nowhere, called —-—\n(our most secret incommunicable name given at the initiation to the highest\nadepts). So I can give you the six names of the principles of our solar system,\nbut have to withhold the rest and even the name of the seventh. Call it the\nunknown and explain why. A Dam-ze (Brahman) will not give you the name of even\nthe crown of the Akasa, but will speak of the six primary forces in nature represented\nby the Astral light. I'll give you the principles by and bye. Study this well\nfirst. **\n\n---\n\nThe Writing of the Mahatma Letters\n\nChronological Order\n\n49 \n\n---\n\n####### Theosophical University Press Online Edition",
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