Theos-Talk Archives (September 2003 Message tt00154)

Thursday, September 18, 2003

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CYCLES AND CYCLIC LAW


NOTE.--Final address by W.Q.J. at Parliament of Religions, 1893. 


LADIES and gentlemen: This is our last meeting; it is the last impulse
of the Cycle which we began when we opened our sessions at this
Parliament. All the other bodies which have met in this building have
been also starting cycles just as we have been. Now, a great many people
know what the word "cycle" means, and a great many do not. 

There are no doubt in Chicago many men who think that a cycle is a
machine to be ridden; but the word that I am dealing with is not that. I
am dealing with a word which means a return, a ring. It is a very old
term, used in the far past. In our civilization it is applied to a
doctrine which is not very well understood, but which is accepted by a
great many scientific men, a great many religious men, and by a great
many thinking men. 

The theory is, as held by the ancient Egyptians, that there is a cycle,
a law of cycles which governs humanity, governs the earth, governs all
that is in the universe. You may have heard Brother Chakravarti say the
Hindus are still teaching that there is a great cycle which begins when
the Unknown breathes forth the whole universe, and ends when it is
turned in again into itself. That is the great cycle.

In the Egyptian monuments, papyri, and other records the cycles are
spoken of. They held, and the ancient Chinese also held, that a great
cycle governs the earth, called the sidereal cycle because it related to
the stars. The work was so large that it had to be measured by the
stars, and that cycle is 25,800 and odd years long. They claim to have
measured this enormous cycle. The Egyptians gave evidence they had
measured it also and had measured many others, so that in these ancient
records, looking at the question of cycles, we have a hint that man has
been living on the earth, has been civilized and uncivilized for more
years than we have been taught to believe. 

The ancient Theosophists have always held that civilization with
humanity went around the earth in cycles, in rings, returning again and
again upon itself, but that at each turn of the cycle, on the point of
return it was higher than before. This law of cycles is held in
Theosophical doctrine to be the most important of all, because it is at
the bottom of all. It is a part of the law of that unknown being who is
the universe, that there shall be a periodical coming from and a
periodical returning again upon itself.

Now, that the law of cycles does prevail in the world must be very
evident if you will reflect for a few moments. The first cycle I would
draw your attention to is the daily cycle, when the sun rises in the
morning and sets at night, returning again next morning, you following
the sun, rising in the morning and at night going to sleep again, at
night almost appearing dead, but the next morning awaking to life once
more. 

That is the first cycle. You can see at once that there are therefore in
a mans life just as many cycles of that kind as there are days in his
life. The next is the monthly cycle, when the moon, changing every 28
days, marks the month. We have months running to more days, but that is
only for convenience, to avoid change in the year. The moon gives the
month and marks the monthly cycle.


The next is the yearly cycle. The great luminary, the great mover of
all, returns again to a point from whence he started. The next great
cycle to which I would draw your attention, now we have come to the
sun--it is held by science and is provable I think by other arguments
the next cycle is that the sun, while stationary to us, is in fact
moving through space in an enormous orbit which we can not measure. As
he moves he draws the earth and the planets as they wheel about him. We
may say, then, this is another great cycle. It appears reasonable that,
as the sun is moving through that great cycle, he must draw the earth
into spaces and places and points in space where the earth has never
been before, and that it must happen that the earth shall come now and
then into some place where the conditions are different and that it may
be changed in a moment, as it were, for to the eye of the soul a
thousand years are but a moment, when everything will be different. That
is one aspect of cyclic doctrine, that the sun is drawing the earth in a
great orbit of his own and is causing the earth to be changed in its
nature by reason of the new atomic spaces into which it is taken.


We also hold that the earth is governed by cyclic law throughout the
century as in a moment. The beings upon it are never in the same state.
So nations, races, civilizations, communities are all governed in the
same way and moved by the same law. 

This law of cycles is the law of reincarnation that we were speaking of
today: that is, that a man comes into the world and lives a day, his
life is as a day; he dies out of it and goes to sleep, elsewhere waking;
then he sleeps there to wake again the next great day; after a period of
rest, he again enters life; that is his cycle. 

We hold in Theosophical philosophy it has been proven by the Adepts by
experiment that men in general awake from this period of rest after
1,500 years. So we point in history to an historical cycle of 1,500
years, after which old ideas return. And if you will go back in the
history of the world you will find civilization repeating itself every
1,500 years, more or less like what it was before. That is to say, go
back 1,500 years from now and you will find coming out here now the
Theosophists, the philosophers, the various thinkers, the inventors of
1,500 years ago. And going further back still, we hold that those
ancient Egyptians who made such enormous pyramids and who had a
civilization we cannot understand, at that dim period when they burst on
the horizon of humanity to fall again, have had their cycle of rest and
are reincarnating again even in America. So we think, some of us, that
the American people of the new generation are a reincarnation of the
ancient Egyptians, who are coming back and bringing forth in this
civilization all the wonderful ideas which the Egyptians held. And that
is one reason why this country is destined to be a great one, because
the ancients are coming back, they are here, and you are very foolish if
you refuse to consider yourselves so great. We are willing you should
consider yourselves so great, and not think you are born mean, miserable
creatures.

The next cycle I would draw your attention to is that of civilizations.
We know that civilizations have been here, and they are gone. There is
no bridge between many of these. If heredity, as some people claim,
explains everything, how is it not explained why the Egyptians left no
string to connect them with the present? There is nothing left of them
but the Copts, who are poor miserable slaves. The Egyptians, as a
material race, are wiped out, and it is so because it is according to
the law of cycles and according to the law of nature that the physical
embodiment of the Egyptians had to be wiped out. But their souls could
not go out of existence, and so we find their civilization and other
civilizations disappearing, civilizations such as the ancient
civilization of Babylon, and all those old civilizations in that part of
the East which were just as strange and wonderful as any other. And this
civilization of ours has come up instead of going down, but it is simply
repeating the experience of the past on a higher level. It is better in
potentiality than that which has been before. Under the cyclic law it
will rise higher and higher, and when its time comes it will die out
like the rest.

Also religions have had their cycles. The Christian religion has had its
cycle. It began in the first year of the Christian era and was a very
different thing then from what it is now. If you examine the records of
Christianity itself you will see that the early fathers and teachers
taught differently in the beginning from that which the priests of today
are teaching now. Similarly you will find that Brahminism has had its
cycle. Every religion rises and falls with the progress of human
thought, because cyclic law governs every man, and thus every religion
which man has.

So it is also with diseases. Is it not true that fevers are governed by
a law of recurrence in time; some have three days, some four days, nine
days, fifteen days, three years and so on? No physician can say why it
is so; they only know that it is a fact. So in every direction the law
of cycles is found to govern. It is all according to the great inherent
law of the periodical ebb and flow, the Great Day and Night of Nature. 

The tides in Ocean rise and fall; similarly in the great Ocean of Nature
there is a constant ebb and flow, a mightier tide which carries all with
it. The only thing that remains unshaken, immovable, never turning is
the Spirit itself. That, as St. James said--and he doubtless was himself
a wise Theosophist--is without variableness and hath no shadow of
turning.

Now, this great law of periodical return pertains also to every
individual man in his daily life and thought. Every idea that you have,
every thought, affects your brain and mind by its impression. That
begins the cycle. It may seem to leave your mind, apparently it goes
out, but it returns again under the same cyclic law in some form either
better or worse, and wakes up once more the old impression.

Even the very feelings that you have of sorrow or gladness will return
in time, more or less according to your disposition, but inevitably in
their cycle. This is a law it would do good for every one to remember,
especially those who have variations of joy and sorrow, of exaltation
and depression. If when depressed you would recollect the law and act
upon it by voluntarily creating another cycle of exaltation, on its
returning again with the companion cycle of lower feeling it would in no
long time destroy the depressing cycle and raise you to higher places of
happiness and peace. 

It applies again in matters of study where we use the intellectual
organs only. When a person begins the study of a difficult subject or
one more grave than usual, there is a difficulty in keeping the mind
upon it; the mind wanders; it is disturbed by other and older ideas and
impressions. But by persistency a new cycle is established, which, being
kept rolling, at last obtains the mastery.


We hold further--and I can only go over this briefly-- that in evolution
itself, considered as a vast inclusive whole, there are cycles, and that
unless there were these turnings and returnings no evolution would be
possible, for evolution is but another word for cyclic law.
Reincarnation, or re-embodiment over and over again, is an expression of
this great law and a necessary part of evolution.


Evolution means a coming forth from something. From out of what does the
evolving universe come? It comes out from what we call the unknown, and
we call it "unknown" simply because we do not know what it is. The
unknown does not mean the non-existent; it simply means that which we do
not perceive in its essence or fullness. It goes forth again and again,
always higher and better; but while it is rolling around at its lower
arc it seems to those down there that it is lower than ever; but it is
bound to come up again. 

And that is the answer we give to those who ask, What of all those
civilizations that have disappeared, what of all the years that I have
forgotten? What have I been in other lives, I have forgotten them? We
simply say, you are going through your cycle. Some day all these years
and experiences will return to your recollection as so much gained. And
all the nations of the earth should know this law, remember it and act
upon it, knowing that they will come back and that others also will come
back. Thus they should leave behind something that will raise the cycle
higher and higher, thus they should ever work toward the perfection
which mankind as a whole is striving in fact to procure for itself.
 
=================================

Best wishes,

Dallas



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-----Original Message-----
From: Philotes
Thursday, September 18, 2003 10:22 AM
To: 
Subject: Re:: Re: time to review (Worthwhile Wisdom and Knowledge)

In a message dated 17-Sep-03 20:39:38 PM GMT Daylight Time, 
leonmaurer@aol.com writes:

> I hope this may help,
> 
> Best wishes,
> 
> Dallas
> 

It most certainly does help. Many thanks indeed for a clear easy to
follow 
summary ...