Cosmological Notes
[ARTICLE UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
[ARTICLE UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
Fritz Kunz asked Boris de Zirkoff in a letter 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? [1]
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.[2]
The text
The questions were put by A.P.S. or A.O.H. to their Teachers, and the bold type are the answers received.
Cosmological Notes from A.P. Sinnett's MS. Book.
(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 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 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?
(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.
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.
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 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 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.)
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