Cosmological Notes

[ARTICLE UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

[ARTICLE UNDER CONSTRUCTION]

Quick Facts
People involved
Written by:	Morya
Received by:	A. O. Hume
Sent via:	unknown
Dates
Written on:	unknown
Received on:	Fall 1881???
Other dates:	none
Places
Sent from:	unknown
Received at:	???
Via:	none

History

The Cosmological notes were written by Master M. in answer to questions put by A. O. Hume. They must have been received before September 1881 because they are mentioned by HPB in a letter to A. P. Sinnett written on that date (see LBS No. 4). In the chronology of Mahatma Letters, one could tentatively place these notes between letters No. 21 and 22. However, since letter No. 44 is the first one to deal exclusively with metaphysics, being actually a second set of cosmological teachings.

Fritz Kunz asked Boris de Zirkoff in a letter on the origin of the cosmological notes:

I know that you have a set of the microfilmed copy of the material in the British Museum catalogued under the heading of the "Mahatma Letters."
I wonder whether you would be so good as to advise me whether the pages entitled "Cosmological Notes" which are published near the very end of H.P.B.'s letter to A. P. Sinnett, are included therein, and if so, in whose handwriting, and whether you could kindly supply me with a sufficiently enlarged print of this so that I might have it at hand for my personal use?

Boris de Zirkoff responded:

Re the "Mahatma Papers", Additional MS.45284, in the British Museum. Now the actual Letters, both those from the Masters and those from H.P.B. to Sinnett, have been bound up in separate volumes, seven in all. The originals of some of the Letters from the Masters, as transcribed in the published volume of Mahatma Letters, were not among the material bequeathed by Sinnett to Miss Maud Hoffman. They exist only as copies made by Sinnett in a separate leather-bound notebook. This notebook has been filmed also, when microfilm was prepared of the entire material. It is in this notebook that the "Cosmological Notes" are to be found; they are therefore in Sinnett's handwriting. There are 24 pages of this material.

The text

The questions were put by Sinnett or Hume to their Teachers, and the bold type are the answers received.

Cosmological Notes from A.P. Sinnett's MS. Book.

Page 1

(1) What are the different kinds of knowledge?

The real (Dgyu) and the unreal (Dgyu-mi). Dgyu becomes Fohat when in its activity — active agent of will — electricity — no other name.

(2) What is the difference between the two kinds of knowledge?

Real knowledge deals with eternal verities and primal causes. The unreal only with illusory effects.

Dgyu stands independent of the belief or unbelief of man. Dgyu-mi requires faith — rests on authority.

(3) Who possesses the real knowledge?

The Lhas or adept alone possesses the real, his mind being en rapport

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Page 2

with the Universal Mind.

The Lhas has made the perfect junction of his soul with the Universal Mind in its fulness, which makes him for the time a divine being existing in the region of absolute intelligence, knowledge of natural laws or Dgyu. The profane cannot become a Dang-ma (purified soul), for he lacks means of perceiving Chhag, Genesis or the beginning of things.

(4) Is there any difference between what produces primal causes and their ultimate effects?

None. Everything in the occult universe, which embraces all the primal causes, is based upon two principles — Kosmic energy (Fohat or

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Page 3

breath of wisdom), and Kosmic ideation. Thyan Kam (= the knowledge of bringing about) giving the impulse to Kosmic energy in the right direction.

In Fohat all that exists on earth as ultimates exists as primates.

(5) What is the one eternal thing in the universe independent of every other thing?

Space.

(6) What things are co-existent with space?

(i) Duration.

(ii) Matter.

(iii) Motion, for this is the imperishable life (conscious or unconscious as the case may be) of matter, even during the pralaya, or night of mind.

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Page 4

When Chyang or omniscience, and Chyang-mi-shi-khon — ignorance, both sleep, this latent unconscious life still maintains the matter it animates in sleepless unceasing motion.

(iv) The Akasa (Bar-nang) or Kosmic atmosphere, or Astral light or celestial ether, which whether in its latent or active condition, surrounds and interpenetrates all matter in motion of which it is at once a result and the medium by which the Kosmic energy acts on its source.

(v) The Purush or 7th principle of the universe.

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Page 5

Ling Sharir is composed of the ethereal elements of its (? Body's) organism, never leaves body but at death and remains near.

(7) Are we to understand Purush as another name for space, or as a different thing occupying every part of space?

Same. Swayambu occupies every part of space which itself is boundless and eternal, hence must be space in one sense. Swayambu becomes Purush when coming in contact with matter.

(8) The universal mind is the aggregate of all the minds of the Dyan Chohans or Planetaries, the result of the

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action of Purush on matter, just as the spiritual soul in man is the action of spirit on matter?

Yes.

(9) Are we to look upon the seven principles as all matter and all spirit — one thing, with spirit as it were at one pole, and matter at the other?

Yes, just so.

(10) If so, are we to view them as different states of matter or spirit, or how?

States, conditions, call it whatever you please. I call it Kyen — cause; itself a result of a previous or some primary cause.

(11) All matter consists of ultimate molecules. How may we conceive the different states of matter?

As the molecules go on

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Page 7

rarifying, so in proportion they become attenuated and the greater the distance between our globe and them — I do not mean here the region within the reach of your science — the greater the change in their polarity, the negative pole acquiring a stronger property of repulsion, and the positive losing gradually its power of attraction. (And now is the time for your men of Dgyu to set me down as a Thibetan ass, and for me to return the compliment.)

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Page 8

(12)

(13) Sem chan, animated universe: S.Sa, earth as an element. Where then does cosmic or unorganised matter class?

Zhi gyu (cosmic matter), Thog (space), Nyng (duration), Khor wa (motion), all one.

Fire, as everything else, has seven principles. Od, one, but not the most material --- sixth.

(14) All matter cosmic or organised has inherent motion. What then does Zhihna, vital soul or vivifying principle, do to it?

There you see. As well ask what vital principle does for human body when it comes into it in conjunction with the other five. A dead body is composed of molecules full of life, is it? Yet when vital soul has deserted the whole, what is it but a dead body. Give up your pansophy and come down to our Dgyu. We believe in spontaneous generation and you do not. We say that Zhima being positive, and Zhi-gyu [gyu (material) earth in this sense] negative, it is only when the two come in contact as the former is brought to act upon the latter, that organised, living, self-acting matter is produced. Everything invisible, imponderable (the spirit of a thing) is positive, for it belongs to the world of reality; as everything solid, visible, is negative. Primate and ultimate, positive and negative. So much in our manifested world. As the forces move on and the distance between organised and unorganised matter becomes greater, a tendency towards the reverse begins to take place. The powers of attraction and repulsion become gradually weaker. Then a complete exchange of properties takes place, and for a time equilibrium is restored in an opposite order. At every grade further onward, or away toward their primary chaotic state, shifts no more mutually its property, but weakens gradually until it reaches the world of non-being, where exists the eternal mechanical motion, the uncreated cause from whence proceeds in a kind of incessant downward and upward rotation, the founts of being from non-being, the latter, the reality, the former maya, the temporary from the everlasting, the effect from its cause, the effect becoming in its turn cause ad infinitum. During the pralaya, that upward and downward motion ceases, inherent unconscious life alone remaining --- all creative forces paralysed, and everything resting in the night of mind.

Online resources

Articles

• Cosmological Notes from A. P. Sinnett's MS. Book by Blavatsky Study Center.
• The Orthography of Dgyu or Dzyu by Ingmar de Boer

Notes