Is this correct? If not when the entire universe goes into pralaya (what is your Tibetan word?) how can anyone know anything about it?
Maha bar do — the period between death and regeneration of man is so called — also Chhe bar do.
They can know for this is but our scan, or as you say by analogy.
The night of the solar system, the pralaya of the Hindus, the Maha bar do or great night of mind of the Tibetans, involves the disintegration of all form and the return of that portion of the universe occupied by that system, to its passive unmanifested condition, space pervaded by atoms in motion. Everything else passes away for the time, but matter which these ultimate atoms represent (though at times objective, at times potential or subjective, now organised, now unorganized) is eternal and indestructible, and motion is the imperishable life (conscious or unconscious as the case may be) of matter. Even therefore during the night of mind, when all other forces are paralysed, when Chyang — omniscience, and Chyang mi shi kon — ignorance, both sleep, and everything else rests, this latent unconscious life unceasingly maintains the molecules in which it is inherent in blind resultless and purposeless motion inter se.
Why should it be more purposeless and resultless than the unconcious blind motion of the atoms in any fætus preparing for rebirth?
The solar system has disappeared even to the highest intelligences in other solar systems.
Is this correct? Can the planetaries in any way cognise the passive non-being portions of the universe?
They can.
Adepts can at will I know create forms out of cosmic matter, but probably this cosmic matter is many degrees from matter as it exists in the passive latent universe, which perhaps should rather be called potential rather than cosmic matter.
Potentiality is a possibility not an actuality. Find a better word.
But nothing has been annihilated any more than anything has been ever created; only, this recently active, organised, manifested and existing portion of the universe losing all differentiation of its parts, has passed into its primordial passive homogeneous unmanifested, and quoad all intelligences, non-existent or inconceivable state. It has resettled into chaos.
If it is asked whence these alterations of activity and passivity, the reply is that they are the law inherent in the universe.
(Here as a footnote would come the purport of the argument approved by you against the unnecessary creation of an intelligence outside the self-governed universe.)
If you can show me one being or object in the universe which does not originate and develop through, and in accordance with blind law, then only will your argument hold good and footnote be necessary. The doctrine of evolution is an eternal protest. Evolution means unfolding of the evolute from the involute, a process of gradual growth. The only thing that could have possibly been spontaneously created is cosmic matter, and primordium with us means not only primogenitureship but eternalism, for matter is eternal and one of the Hlün dhub not a Kyen — a cause, itself the result of some primary cause. Were it so, at the end of every Maha pralaya when the whole cosmos moves into collective perfection and every atom (that you call primordial, and we eternal) emanates from itself a still finer atom — every individual atom containing in itself the actual potentiality of evoluting milliards of worlds each more perfect and more ethereal, — how is it that there is no sign of such an intelligence outside the self-governed universe? You take a last hypothesis — a portion of your god sits in every atom. He is divided ad infinitum, he remains concealed in abscondito and the logical conclusion we arrive at is, that [as] the Infinite mind of the Dyan Chohans knows that the newly emanated atoms are incapable of any conscious or unconscious action, unless they receive the intellectual impulse from them. Ergo your god is no better than blind matter's ever propelled by as blind eternal force or law, which is that matter, god — Perchance. Well, well we shall not lose time over such talk.
The period of passivity ends, the night of mind ceases, the solar system awakes and re-emerges into manifestation and existence, and everything throughout it is once more as it was when the night set in. Though a period inconceivable to human minds has passed, it has passed but as a sound and dreamless sleep. The law of activity comes again into operation, the centre of evolution resumes its work, the fount of being commences to flow again.
I conclude this must be so or otherwise the matter ejected from the vortex or central point would find none in a differentiated state from which to acquire its own impulse or differentiation.
When the hour strikes the cosmic atoms already in a differentiated state remain statu quo, as well as globes and everything else in the process of formation. Therefore you have seized the idea.
In the still passive portion of the Universe in which, and interpenetrated by which, hangs the remanifested solar system, in the non-being where subsists the eternal mechanical motion, its uncreated cause, a vortex is formed which in its ceaseless rotation perpetually ejects into the polarised active manifested conscious Universe, the unpolarised passive unmanifested and unconscious Universal element.
Call it motion, cosmic matter, duration or space, for it is all these and yet one, this the Universe manifested and unmanifested and there is nothing else in the Universe. But the moment it passes out of passivity (or non-being) into activity (or being), it begins to change its state and differentiate, from contact with what had formerly changed, and so the eternal wheel rolls on, the effect of to-day becoming the cause of tomorrow for ever and ever. But it must ever be remembered that the non-being — the passive, is the eternal, the real, the being — the active, the transitory and the unreal. For longer or shorter as its career may be according to the impulses it receives. sooner or later the manifested disintegrates into the unmanifested, and being fades into non-being.
But how about the highest Planetaries? They surely do not return into non-being, but pass on to higher or at any rate different solar systems.
The highest state of Nirvana is the highest state of non-being. There comes a time when the whole infinitude sleeps or rests, when All is reimmersed in the one eternal and uncreated sum of all. The sum of the latent unconscious potentiality.
It has been stated that a differentiation of the primordial element is the basis of the manifested Universe, and we must now consider the seven different principles that constitute and govern that Universe or in other words the seven different states or conditions in which this element exists in it.
There is no finite or primordial design but in conjunction with organised matter. Design is Kyen, a cause arising from a primary one. The latent design exists from the eternity in the one unborn eternal atom or the central point which is everywhere and nowhere, called — (our most secret incommunicable name given at the initiation to the highest adepts). So I can give you the six names of the principles of our solar system, but have to withhold the rest and even the name of the seventh. Call it the unknown and explain why. A Dam-ze (Brahman) will not give you the name of even the crown of the Akasa, but will speak of the six primary forces in nature represented by the Astral light. I'll give you the principles by and bye. Study this well first.