Theos-Talk Archives (July 2003 Message tt00257)

CYCLES

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CHAPTER XIV	CYCLES


One of the most important doctrines.
Corresponding words in the Sanskrit.
Few cycles known to the West.
They cause the reappearance of former living personages.
They affect life and evolution.
When did the first moment come?
The first rate of vibration determines the subsequent ones.
When man leaves the globe the forces die.
Convulsions and cataclysms.
Reincarnation and karma intermixed with cyclic law.
Civilizations cycle back.
The cycle of Avatars. Krishna, Buddha, and others come under
cycles.
Minor personages and great leaders.
Intersection of cycles causes convulsions.
The Moon, Sun, and Sidereal cycles.
Individual cycles and that of reincarnation.
The motion through the constellations, and the meaning of the
story of Jonah.
The Zodiacal clock. How the ideas are impressed and preserved by
nations.
Cause for earthquakes, Cosmic Fire, Glaciation, and Floods.
The Brahmanical Cycles.

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Q. How are cycles instituted?

A. Cycles are not, of course, established by some great being for
human beings. Let us consider the cycles of the earth revolving
on its axis, of the moon revolving around the earth, of both
revolving around the sun, and of the sun revolving around a
central body, passing through the various constellations in the
course of 25,868 years. All these cycles were instituted by the
force and intelligence of those beings who were present at the
beginning of evolution of this universe and of this solar system
; it is the recurrence and reappearance of those beings from time
to time that establish the great cycles; cycles mean the return
of that which was before.


Q. How would you say that Karma is connected with the law of
cycles?

A. In the last analysis, cycles really mean Karma. We can see
that we have brought ourselves into our own relations with the
changes of the sun through the various constellations. The signs
of the Zodiac under which we come, when read aright, give us an
index as to what the state of civilization will be at any given
time, because the beings who established particular relations in
the immense past have merely returned again, and resumed those
previous relations and similar conditions.


Q. Then we are subject to cycles as we are to Karma?

A. And as we are to reincarnation. Again, rein carnation means
the same as cycles. Through incarnation we bring ourselves into
relation with all physical things-the earth upon which we are,
the conditions on that earth, the relation to other planets and
to other systems. All these are conditions we have brought about;
we experience these conditions in a body on earth, and are
subject to them because of our thinking and action,


Q. But are we compelled to let the cycles work upon us?

A. We certainly must experience them, as we are the cause of
them. We must operate under them, but we need not be subject to,
or controlled by the conditions presented. The real causes always
lie back of the physical effects. It is the spiritual nature of
man that is the driving force, the sustaining force -Life itself,
Consciousness itself-behind all that has been brought about. So
'whatever is on earth has been established on higher planes of
being
by the innumerable actions of various intelligences. We find
ourselves physically and exteriorly under the conditions, but
internally we have the power to rise above them.


Q. Can man come to a place where cycles will not work upon him or
interfere with him?

A. In only one sense. Man is always subject to cycles. When the
time for sleeping comes, for in stance, he can not help
retreating within. But the consciousness may be of such a state
of activity that no break or lack of memory exists between the
various states. Ordinarily, man does not know what his conscious
activity is while the body is asleep. Hence, he is subject to the
cycle of sleeping in a far greater degree than is an adept.


Q. If we fulfill cyclic law, then we may be said to be working
with the cycles?

A. Knowledge is acquired in just that way. Cycles will run their
rounds whether we are conscious of the fact or not, but, by being
conscious of cycles, we are able to take advantage of them. To
hold on strongly during a falling cycle is as necessary as to
make the proper advance during a rising cycle. The fact of the
return of impressions or the return of events of every kind is an
opportunity whereby we may reach a higher state with each
succeeding cycle.


Q. Please explain the following on page 122,- "It is not claimed
that the conjunction causes the effect, but that ages ago the
Masters of Wisdom worked out all the problems in respect," etc.

A. The conjunction of the planets does not produce the effect; it
merely marks the hour, as does the zodiacal clock, or as do our
ordinary clocks. It does not produce the effect, but indicates
when the effect of a certain cause will be.


Q. What is meant in the last clause of that same sentence-" by
imprinting in the minds of older nations the symbology of the
Zodiac"?

A. In the beginning of the earth there are present, first the
older or the more advanced Egos from the past earth. There also
come in, following the advanced Egos, those who are less
advanced, until all who are self-conscious are occupied, let us
say, in the earlier state of the globe. In addition come those
Egos who represent incipient humanity-a humanity analogous to
such as the present higher animals of this round will evolve into
in our seventh round. The higher Egos, then, having worked in the
first globe and established it, pass on to the second, while the
later stream of Egos is coming into the first state. It is the
higher or more advanced Egos who imprint on the subsequent or
less developed Egos the knowledge in regard to these laws; it is
a passing on of what has been known before.


Q. On the basis that man is a spiritual being and can always
change his course, I do not see how Masters could work out cycles
unless people necessarily act very much alike.

A. They figure out cycles according to the average of the mass of
mankind, not on the basis of the individual's position in regard
to the cycle. An individual may take a very different position
from that of the mass toward some cycle, but none the less he
moves with it and is bound to that cycle; he has to move with
that race, either above it or below
it. No one can escape from the race to 'which he belongs. The
effect of cycles upon us, however, or the use of the cyclic
return, depends upon the individual. Should there be, let us say,
a revolution all over the world, all forms upset, all ideas of
valuation and property destroyed, how would men be affected? Some
would be affected terribly; others, very little. It would depend
altogether on the individuals-on the measure of their attachment
to the results brought about by such a course of events. Freedom
comes from lack of self interest in the results of anything we
do. If we work with things ,not for things, for the best of all,
without being attached to either success or failure, then we are
not struck by such catastrophes They cannot touch us. We are
interested in their effects upon others and not upon ourselves.


Q. Then masses of people must learn as the individual must, to
act regardless of self-interest?

A. That is the position. If every man did all that he could for
every other man, then no one would suffer. There would he no
poverty of any kind.


Q. Might we expect a cyclic return of the Reign of Terror?

A. Undoubtedly. The same conditions that brought it about in
France might bring the same upheaval in any other country. It is
significant to note that many years before the Revolution, a
certain great personage known as Count St. Germain was on the
scene in France. He performed many diplomatic missions for the
potentates of the time, and warned them over and over again of
what would come, as soon as certain changes were made and certain
safeguards put up. There, an attempt was made by One who knew to
hold back that Karma. His effort all the time was in the line of
truth-of true fraternity in its highest sense.


Q. But the watchword of the French Revolution was "Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity".

A. Yes; that very watchword was taken to help bring about
revolution and bloodshed-used for destructive purposes, rather
than in line with the spiritual constructive basis which the
words truly represent. An interesting parallel might be
observable in this country. As early as 1886 Mr. Judge said that
this great and glorious country will not long be at rest, that
the people will rise-for what, who can tell? He said that if our
legislators knew what was coming about and could bring about
contravening effects, they would do so; but that no legislation
and no efforts of any patriots would avail when the hour strikes,
when Karmic readjustments among the people have to take place.


Q. Why do men not listen to warnings of this kind?

A. Many take the position that, of course, no such thing could
occur here. They are obsessed with the idea that we are
spiritually far advanced beyond the times when those conditions
were possible. But are we so far advanced, as a whole? Are we
not, as a whole, seeking self-interest, personal greed, personal
fame, and possessions of every kind? There is no real
understanding among men in general, particularly among our
politicians and so-called "men of intelligence", as to what the
purpose of life is; consequently, there is no application of the
only knowledge which would help. What is behind the league of
nations now in process of establishment? Self-interest on the
part of each nation. It is absolutely useless to dodge the is
sue. We have got to see what is the real trouble with mankind.
The fact is, we have no real ideals; it is every man for
himself-individualism, self-interest, selfish ness. Yet we are
connected with other individuals, and with other nations. What
comes upon them we are bound to feel in a greater or less
measure.


Q. If all men held the ideal of Brotherhood, as Theosophy
presents it, should we see any marked difference in conditions?

A. Everything depends upon the ideals that men hold. If people as
a whole could be brought into the position of listening to the
message of Theosophy, and applying it, the misery and suffering
and hardship that now exist in the world would practically cease
to exist. But it is beyond the reach of any power whatever to get
men to listen and to apply. They must first desire and choose to
listen.


Q. Then we are very much limited in our power to help?

A. Being "limited" does not give us any excuse for not doing all
that we can, and that is all that any body can do. If there are
among a large class of beings those who hold a certain ideal and
make the necessary effort for it, they are not really of the same
class as the others, and (10 not operate under the same
conditions. But if they remain constant in helping others, the
greatest help accrues to the rest in time. Such we might call a
league of individuals which would grow in knowledge and in power
and become all the time better able to help all the rest.


Q. You say that the only hope of any nation is to listen to right
ideas? Then how about Russia? (1916-8).

A. In Russia they have listened to leaders. That is what is the
matter there. Some leader has promised them the property of those
who have it, no work, and plenty to eat. That is what they
wanted. So they listened to his promise and as they listened he
managed to get them under such discipline that no one of them
dare say nay.. They need a leader who knows the right and who
will rule with an iron hand in the cause of right. Then all would
be made to do right for the sake of the rest. That is the only
way it can be done in Russia.


Q. Generally speaking, high ideals would develop a true line of
energy?

A. Every human being is a ceaseless dynamo of continually
produced energy which will finally affect the very earth on which
we live. The brain is a dispenser; none of the energy we put in
any kind of thought is lost, but becomes a part of the energy of
the earth. If that energy is devoted more to disintegration than
to good and constructive ideals, then destruction will be brought
about not only of the civilization but of the very earth itself.
There is no separateness between us and the other kingdoms. We
are all bound to each other. We live upon the lower kingdoms; we
gain our instruments from them, and we affect them either
beneficently or maleficently. In the energy we put into self-
interest we are generating maleficent influence, which finally,
in cyclic course, will culminate in some disaster. The energy
generated by high ideals will likewise culminate, but in some
great benefit. We have to learn Theosophy, but more, we have to
make it a living power in our lives, in order to have it of
beneficent effect and spread beyond our own narrow horizon of
thought and feeling. We have to supply that dynamic power, not
for any one channel, but for all. It is the power of Conscious
ness when freed from self-interest; it is Spirit, freed from
self-interest.


Q. On page 125, "These Four Yugas are: Krita, or Satya, the
golden; Treta; Dvapara; and Kali or the black." The nature of the
two middle ones is not explained. What would be the nature of
those two cycles?

A. The cycles are called the Golden, the Silver, the Bronze, and
the Iron. The nature of each cycle would correspond somewhat to
the nature of the metals, their values, and their constituents.
The first Age corresponds to childhood-a cycle of innocence and
purity. Then comes youth with its exuberance of life; then
manhood, when all the forces are in action,-the intellect tending
to outrun the spiritual nature. The Iron Age always comes as a
result of the whole force of the intellect being expended in the
trend of material things, rather than along the line of spiritual
perception.


Q. What follows the Iron Age?

A. When the Iron Age has run to the completion of its cycle, then
follows in regular succession the Golden Age. But that is yet a
long time off. We have finished only the first five thousand
years of Kali Yuga, which leaves us something over four hundred
thousand years yet to run. Let us say that in fifty thou sand
years all the civilizations of the earth outrun their
possibilities as such. Then comes a great disturbance, such as
the geological changes apparent on any planet show have taken
place. These disturbances are the re-actions of the forces that
man has restrained so long, and cause a re-distribution of
continents. Sup pose for a moment that a great catastrophe over
whelmed the earth; that the land went down, as it does in such
periods, and lands came up where the sea was before; that a
remnant of the people escaped and settled on those lands. Those
who survived would be concerned with the first necessities of
existence-food, clothing and shelter. The arts and sciences that
had existed would have no place, but would become merely a
tradition to the children born tinder those conditions. Their
children would have a tradition still further removed from the
ancient arts. Thus an entirely new phase of existence would be
established. The in coming generations, heavy with the burden of
sustenance, would learn only those arts and sciences applicable
to their surroundings, and the cycle of the return of the ancient
arts would be long in coming. Such would he the story of our
present Western civilization. All our landmarks would he gone in
two hundred years or more. Then perhaps in some other life, on
some other continent risen from the sea, we should he wondering
what people left this or that small relic of civilization. This
civilization will go through the same phases as any other; it
merely presents the embodiments of souls who have come through
past civilizations. For we are the second race, the third, and
the fourth race; the second blended into the third, the third
into the fourth, the fourth into the fifth, and so the blending
into future races must go on. In all those races has been the
living of life in an age of innocence and purity, followed by an
age when purity and innocence decreased through the growth of the
intellect along physical lines, and then the physical rush of
civilization went on in all its complexity until extinction.


Q. Did the Golden Age begin after we had acquired the present
bodies?

A. No: our bodies were not then so concrete; they were more
plastic, of a finer state of matter. There were giants in those
days, that is. forms very large compared with the present forms.
Those forms have become more and more concrete.


Q. What class of Egos would bring in the Golden Age .

A. The class we now represent, for we must have lived in the
Golden Age. It is just the cycle of the re birth of nations,
analogous to our rebirth into another body: first comes
childhood, then youth, manhood, de cay, and death. At the present
time, we are in our "manhood" as a race, in our Kali-Yuga.


Q. Are all nations now passing through Kali Yuga?

A. Not necessarily. Other nations might now be in their age of
innocence and purity, but, of course, Kali-Yuga tends to become
more and more general. As long as nations are unknown to each
other, separated by land and sea, and consequently in
intelligence, the various cycles may run their rounds quite
independently, but as soon as intelligence begins to spread all
over the globe and there is almost instant connection, the
Kali-Yuga begins to become uniform.


Q. Then cycles overlap and do not end abruptly?

A. Cycles always overlap. There is no direct breaking off point.
There could not be a short stop page, and then an immediate
beginning again. There is always a merging from one thing into
another, just as night merges gradually into day. The cycles have
their morning, noon, their twilight, and their definite darkness,
each period merging imperceptibly into another.


Q. What establishes the twenty-four hour cycle including day and
night?

A. So far as the earth is concerned, the twenty- four hour cycle
is governed by the revolution of the earth on its own axis, which
in its moving around the sun presents to us the appearance of day
and night. But so far as we are concerned, this cycle, as all
others, is established by, and in exact accordance with the needs
of, the beings who fall within the influence of this cycle. We
should remember that in the beginning, the sun, and all the
planets belonging to this solar system, established, through
their relations and inter relations, an order of motion, or a
certain rate of vibration, which is the key governing all
motions. Take the nineteen year cycle of the moon, spoken of by
Mr. Judge, for illustration, remembering that all occult cycles
affecting the earth are reckoned by the moon. There are four
weeks and thirteen lunar months. Now multiplying the thirteen by
four, and the result by nineteen, we shall get a number that will
add up to seven. So with the sun cycle of twenty-eight years.
Multiplying the 4 x l3 and then by 28, we get an answer in which
the total of the numerals also comes to seven. That same seven
repeats itself in almost all of the cycles.


Q. Is that due to the fact of our seven-fold nature?

A. It is clue to the fact that everything is seven fold; that is
why there are seven rounds, seven races, seven sub-races, seven
clays of the week, seven colors. seven sheaths of the soul, etc.


Q. Does the seven-year period in man's life have any particular
significance?

A. Yes. The first seven years will give a determining inclination
to the next seven ; the next seven years have a determining
influence on the seven ahead, and so on. Then there is another
significant cycle-the 9 cycle. Whenever we have passed the five,
and have certain things in motion, the next four will follow the
same lines, because the five is the balance. So nine makes the
perfect number, and as well as being the number of perfection, it
is also the number of death,- that is, when there is perfection
in one direction, comes a destruction of that perfection and the
beginning of a new nine. The number ten is called the completion
of perfection, because seven and three make the ten. The seven is
the manifesting side of nature- the visible; the three are
hidden-the Atma-Buddhi Manes cycle.-the Spirit, the Self, and the
acquired wisdom, and the active creative potency of that wisdom.
The three hidden and the seven manifest applies in every
direction, as with numbers, colors and sounds, which have their
correspondential meanings in all of life and manifestation.


Q. Arc there any hundred-year cycles?

A. There are. In every one hundred years an attempt has been made
by the Masters of Wisdom to bring about something better in the
way of ideals such as the men of the time can take, with their
then existing ideas. Such an attempt may be seen in the formation
of this Republic. There were several per sons living at that
time, some of whom we know in history, and others of whom we know
nothing, who had the idea of a Republic of Brotherhood and
carried it forward. The one who did more than any other person
for the ideas that were to prevail was Tom Paine; yet no man was
more excoriated by the early theologians. Then there was George
Washington. What was it that sustained him during that almost
impossible fight against one of the most war like and strongest
of people; against the dissensions, ignorance, and selfishness of
the people for whom he fought and who supported him so meagerly?
Well, he had support. There is a greater significance than
appears in the fact that Lafayette came from France and brought
him a sword. Many records, besides the higher Masonic records,
show that this Republic was intended to be a Republic based on
Brotherhood. But we have fallen away from that ideal and drifted
into individualism.


Q. May not an individual have his own Golden Cycle in Kali-Yuga?

A. Certainly, yes, in this sense: All the good Karma of the past
of various lives might come to fruition in one. Then he would
have a Golden Cycle for that life, but a vast amount of less
fortunate Karma would remain unexpended, and the next life might
bring a cleaning up of all that had not been cleaned. What is
seeming good is not always good, but very often bad. If a man of
possessions, riches, culture and everything that seems desirable
in the world, should use these advantages to the detriment of his
fellow-men, he would only increase the misery he has to undo. In
reality, we need not envy those men who are in high place and
getting much reward from the systems they run. They are in the
worst position imaginable, and their turn must come. None can get
away from the Law, without serving the rest with his earnings. In
this age there is a mixing of the castes, for we must remember
that castes do exist everywhere-the Brahmins, the Warriors, the
Merchants, and the Servants,-when many Sudras at heart are in
high places, and the Brahmins in lowly places.


Q. Will there be a cyclic adjustment of the castes?

A. There is always such adjustment; that is, persons are
continually being brought into different positions, high and low,
but, in any cycle, all the collectivity of men contacting one
another in the different kinds of experience has to be reckoned
with. If the Sudras, when in power, use that power beneficently,
they keep their high place; if they use their power against the
welfare of all the rest, they must inevitably resume their places
as Sudras.

Q. Is there any possibility of shortening the Iron Age ?

A. None whatever. The question was once asked of Mr. Judge, "Can
we do anything against Kali yuga?" He said, "No, but you can do a
whole lot in it." For in a time like Kali yuga the energy
expended has four times as much power as in any other age. The
very rapidity of movement in Kali yuga makes it possible to do
much more than in any other age.


Q. Most of us are under the necessity of reincarnating, but the
Great Beings who come to us incarnate of their own choice. What
determines the cycle of their appearance?

A. If the spiritually perfected men who come as divine
incarnations at different periods of the world's history do not
have to come, yet there must be conditions on earth that draw
them here. The nature of the Egos on the earth at any given time
is what brings about the appearance of a Great Being. Then, too,
such Beings appear at the intersections of great cycles, as
occurred between 1875 and 1898 when three great cycles
intersected. The first five thousand year period of Kali yuga,
which began at the death of Krishna, the Teacher of the
"Bhagavad-Gita," was completed in this time. The hundred year
cycle, when in the last twenty-five years of every century an
effort is made by the Great Lodge, through Teachers or their
disciples, to place better ideas before mankind was also in
operation. The sun, during this period, passed from Pisces into
Aquarius, and there, too, was a sign. The intersection of these
three cycles, then, meant several things, but one signification
was that in or about that period a Great Personage would appear
on the earth, with such knowledge as the civilization and the
mind of the time would allow. If we want to know who that Being
was, we have only to think along the lines of our studies. The
being known to the world as H. P. Blavatsky was known to the
Masters by quite another

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