A Record of Meetings held by P.D. Ouspensky - HolyBooks.com

I wish to remind you what I said last time. I said that you haveprobably heard the expressions macrocosmos and microcosmos—universeand man. This is only a fragment of the ancient teaching thatregards seven cosmoses ending with man—protocosmos, megalocosmos,macrocosmos, deuterocosmos, mesocosmos, tritocosmos, microcosmos.About names we will speak later. The strange thing is thatbetween the first, the second and the third, there are different names.Taking them from the top, they correspond to the Ray of Creation.Protocosmos—Absolute. Megalocosmos—all worlds. Macrocosmos—all suns. Deuterocosmos—Solar System. Mesocosmos—all planets.Tritocosmos—organic life. Microcosmos—man. But the relations ofcosmoses to each other are different to the Ray of Creation. Incosmoses there is always the same relation of one to another—as zeroto infinity. It is the same as the geometrical relation of a point to a line,a line to a plane, a plane to a cube. It means that each time onedimension is added. The idea of infinity must be much readjusted. Itdoes not mean mathematical infinity, although mathematical infinity isonly a symbol and means a limit of possible calculation. Physically thislimit comes much sooner.MR. L. What names can you give to dimensions in tritocosmos? Youhave added one for it. Yet you say each cosmos has three. How manyof them are new? I don't see.MR. O. We have also four dimensions. The fourth is our life. But wedon't take ourselves in this way. We take ourselves as section. In thesame way each planet has an orbit. We don't take the orbit. Dimensionsare not always the same, they pass into one another.MISS T . Does a cosmos die? Then what renews it?MR. O. Why this presupposed idea of renewing? In one phrase wecannot speak about renewal before we see that it is limited. We speakonly about one life of each cosmos. We must try to be exact. In ourstate we have no possibility to know more than about one life. Wemust try to use only such words that can be verified by analogy.MR. J. What means dying?MR. O. It disappears, like a fly that is dead.MR. D. What would tritocosmos sleeping mean?MR. O. Each cosmos has a period of sleep and waking.MR. D. When does it sleep?MR. O. Our thought is not long enough to know that. We can only