Theos-Talk Archives (June 2004 Message tt00081)

PART I -- RE: brief conclusion on KARMA:    

CYCLIC IMPRESSIONS  

May 15 2004

Dear Friends and M W:

This too is an interesting aspect of Karma.

It has also occurred to me that every Manvantara ( after the vast
sleep of a Maha Pralaya even ) is evidence of the Karma of a whole
past manifestation being carried forward in all detail -- just as we
daily wake up from our sleep and resume our duties.

---------------------------------



CYCLIC IMPRESSION AND RETURN AND OUR EVOLUTION

Lecture, April 25, 1892, before the convention
By William Q. Judge


Mr. Chairman, Fellow Theosophists, Ladies and Gentlemen: 

The title of what I am about to say to you is CYCLIC IMPRESSION AND
RETURN AND OUR EVOLUTION. 

Now what is a cycle? It has nothing to do with the word psychic, and I
am sorry to have to say that, because I heard some people this morning
repeat the title as "psychic" instead of "cyclic," seeming to think
perhaps that that was the same thing, or had some relation to it. The
word cyclic is derived from the Greek word Kuklos, or a ring. It has
been turned in the English language into the word cycle, by the
process of saying Kykle, and then cycle. The corresponding word in the
Sanscrit is Kalpa, which has in fact a wider and a deeper meaning;
because cycle in English is a word which covers, is used for, and thus
somewhat confuses, many cycles. It is used for the small cycles, and
the larger cycles, the intermediate cycles and the great ones, whereas
the word Kalpa means and implies only one cycle of a large size, and
the smaller cycles within that are designated by other words.

What is a cycle? It is a circle, a ring. But not properly a ring like
a wedding ring, which runs into itself, but more properly like a screw
thread, which takes the form of a spiral, and thus beginning at the
bottom, turns on itself, and goes up. It is something like the great
Horseshoe Curve in the Pennsylvania Railroad. There you go around the
curve at the lower end; you go down into the horseshoe, and as you
turn the grade rises, so that when you arrive at the opposite side you
have gotten no further than the beginning, but you have risen just the
distance between the two ends of the grade.

But what do we mean by a cycle in Theosophy, in our own investigations
of nature, or man, or civilization, or our own development, our own
origin, our own destiny? We mean by cycles, just what the Egyptians,
the Hindoos and the philosophers of the Middle Ages meant by it; that
is, that there is a periodical return or cycling back, circling back
of something from some place once more. That is why it is called
cycle, inasmuch as it returns upon itself, seemingly; but in the
Theosophical doctrine, and in the ancient doctrines, it is always a
little higher in the sense of perfection or progress. That is to say,
as the Egyptians held, cycles prevail everywhere, things come back
again, events return, history comes back, and so in this century we
have the saying: "History repeats itself."

But where do Theosophists say that cyclic law prevails? We say that it
prevails everywhere. It prevails in every kingdom of nature, in the
animal kingdom, the mineral world, the human world; in history, in the
sky, on the earth. We say that not only do cycles pertain, and
appertain, and obtain in and to the earth and its inhabitants, but
also in what the Hindoos call the three kingdoms of the universe, the
three worlds; that is, that below us, ourselves, and that above.

Now, if you will turn to Buckle, a great writer of the English school,
you will find him saying in one of his standard books, a great book
often quoted, that there is no doubt cyclic law prevails in regard to
nations, that they have come back apparently the same, only slightly
improved or degraded, for there is also a downward cycle included
within those that rise; but Buckle did not discover a law. He simply
once more stated what the ancients had said over and over again. And
it has always seemed to me that if Buckle and other people of that
kind would pay a little more attention to the ancients, they would
save themselves a great deal of trouble, for he obtained his law by
much delving, much painstaking labor, whereas he might have gotten the
law if he had consulted the ancients, who always taught that there
were cycles, and that there always will be cycles.

Among the ancients they had a great many large and important cycles.
In their classification they had a Saros and a Naros, which are not
understood today by us. They are known to some extent, but what
exactly they are, we do not know. The Egyptians taught that there was
a great sidereal cycle, and that is recognized today, at last; that is
the cycle of 25,000 years, the great one caused by the fact that the
sun went through the signs of the Zodiac in that length of time. Now,
I do not assume that you know nothing about astronomy, but in order to
make it clear, it will be better for me to state this over again, just
as it is. The sun goes through the signs of the Zodiac from day to day
and from year to year, but at the same time, in going through the
signs of the Zodiac, he goes back slowly, like the hands of a clock
ticking off the time. In going through that period he comes back to
the same point again, and retards himself, or goes back; that is
called the precession of the equinoxes, and it is so many seconds in
such a length of time. Those seconds in the sky turned into time show
you that the sun takes 25,000 and odd years to come back to the place
from which he started out at any particular time; that is to say, if
you imagine that on the first of April, this year, the sun was in such
a degree of Aries, one of the signs of the Zodiac, he will not get
back to that sign by the precession of the equinoxes until 25,000
years have passed away.


Now, the sun is the center of our solar system and the earth revolves
around it, and as the earth revolves she turns upon her axis. The sun,
it is known now by astronomers, as it was known by the ancients (who
were ourselves in fact), revolves around a center. That is, that while
we are going around the sun, he is going around some other center, so
that we describe in the sky not a circle around the sun, but a spiral,
as we move with the sun around his enormous orbit. Now do you grasp
that idea exactly? It is a very important one, for it opens up the
subject to a very large extent. 


There is a star somewhere in the sky, we do not know where--some think
it is Alcyone, or some other star, some think it may be a star in the
Pleiades, and some others think it is a star somewhere else--but they
know by deduction from the known to the unknown, as Brother Thomas
told you this morning, that the sun is attracted himself by some
unknown center, and that he turns around it in an enormous circle, and
as he turns, of course he draws the earth with him. In the course of
25,000 years in going around the signs of the Zodiac, he must take the
earth into spaces where it has never yet been, for when he reaches
this point in Aries, after 25,000 years, it is only apparently the
same point, just as when I came around the curve of the Horseshoe, I
started around the first point and went around the curve, came back to
the same point, but I was higher up; I was in another position. 


And so, when the sun gets back again to the point in Aries, where he
was on the first of April this year, he will not be in the exact
position in the universe of space, but he will be somewhere else, and
in his journey of 25,000 years through billions upon billions of
miles, he draws the earth into spaces where she never was before, and
never will be as that earth again. He must draw her into cosmic spaces
where things are different, and thus cause changes in the earth
itself, for changes in cosmic matter in the atmosphere, in the space
where the sun draws the earth, must affect the earth and all its
inhabitants. 

The ancients investigated this subject, and declared long ago this
25,000 years cycle, but it is only just lately, so to speak, that we
are beginning to say we have discovered this. We know, as Nineteenth
century astronomers, that it is a fact, or that it must be a fact,
from deduction, but they knew it was a fact because they had observed
it themselves and recorded the observations.

The Egyptians had also the cycle of the Moon, which we know, and they
had more cycles of the moon than we have, for the moon not only has
her cycle of twenty-eight days, when she changes from full to
disappearance, and then again to youth, but she also has a period of
return somewhere over fourteen years, which must itself have its
effect upon the earth.


Then they said, also, that the human soul had its cycle, it being
5,000 years. That is, the man died, or the king died, and his body was
turned into a mummy in the hope that when, after his five thousand
years cycle had elapsed and he came back once more to earth, he would
find his mummy there? No; but that no one else should have taken his
mummied atoms and made a bad use of them. Mummification is explained
by us in another way. Their knowledge of the law of cycles caused them
to make the first mummy. 


They held that a human soul returned; they also held that all atoms
are alive, just as we do; that they are sensitive points; that they
have intelligence belonging to the plane on which they are, and that
the man who misuses atoms of matter, such as you have in your bodies
and your brains, must stand the consequences. Consequently, saying
that to themselves, they said, "If I die, and leave those atoms, which
I have used so well, perhaps some other man will take them and use
them badly, so I will preserve them as far as possible until I return,
and then by a process destroy the combination of atoms, absorb them
into some place, or position, where they might be put to good use."
That may seem offensive to some today, but I am merely repeating the
theory. I am not saying whether I believe it or not.

The ancient Egyptians who held these theories have disappeared and
left nothing behind but the pyramids, the temples of Thebes, the
Sphinxes and all the great monuments which are slowly being discovered
by us. Where have they gone? Have they come back? Do the Copts now in
Egypt represent them? I think not, although heredity is the boasted
explanation of everything. The Copts are their descendants? They know
nothing, absolutely nothing but a simple language, and they live the
life of slaves, and yet they are the descendants of the ancient
Egyptians! What has become of them? 

The ancient Egyptians we think were co-laborers with the ancient
Hindoos, whose cycle remains; that is to say, whose descendants
remain, holding the knowledge, in part, of their forefathers, and we
find that the Hindoos have held always the same theories as to cycles
as the Egyptians held. They divided the ages of the world. They say
manifestation begins, and then it lasts for a period called a Kalpa,
an enormous number of years; that Kalpa is divided into ages. The
small cycle is composed of a large number of years; one will be four
thousand, another four hundred thousand, another will be a million,
and so on, making a total which we cannot grasp with the mind but
which we can write upon the paper.

Now, the idea of cycles came from the Hindoos, through the nations who
spread out from there, for it is admitted that the land of Hindustan
is the cradle of the race. The Aryan race came down into Christendom,
so that we find the Christians, the Romans, the Greeks and all people
around that time holding the same theories as to cycles; that is, that
cyclic law prevails everywhere. We find it in the ancient mystics, the
Christian mystics, the middle age mystics and the mystics of times
nearer to ours.

If you will read the works of Higgins, who wrote the Anacalypsis, you
will find there laborious compilations and investigations on the
subject of the cycles. Do they obtain? Is there such a thing as a
cycle which affects human destiny?

Coming closer to our own personal life, we can see that cycles do and
must prevail, for the sun rises in the morning and goes to the center
of the sky, descends in the west; the next day he does the same thing,
and following him, you rise. You come to the highest point of your
activity, and you go to sleep. 

So day follows night and night follows day. Those are cycles, small
cycles, but they go to make the greater ones. You were born, at about
seven years of age you began to get discretion to some extent. A
little longer and you reach manhood, then you begin to fall, and at
last you finish the great day of your life when body dies.

In looking at nature we also find that there are summer and winter,
spring and autumn. These are cycles, and every one of them affects the
earth, with the human beings upon it.

The esoteric doctrine that Brother Mead has been talking about, the
inner doctrine of the old theosophists and the present day
theosophists, to be found in every old literature and religious book,
is that cyclic law is the supreme law governing our evolution; that
reincarnation, which we talk so much about, is cyclic law in operation
and is supreme. 

For what is reincarnation but a coming back again to life, just what
the ancient Egyptians taught and which we are finding out to be
probably true, for in no other way than by this cyclic law of
reincarnation can we account for the problems of life that beset us;
with this we account for our own character, each one different from
the other, and with a force peculiar to each person.

This being the supreme law, we have to consider another one, which is
related to it and contained in the title I have adopted. That is the
law of the return of impressions. What do we mean by that? I mean,
those acts and thoughts performed by a nation--not speaking about the
things that affect nature, although it is governed by the same
law--constitute an impression. 

That is to say, your coming to this convention creates in your nature
an impression. Your going into the street and seeing a street brawl
creates an impression. Your having a quarrel last week and denouncing
a man, or with a woman and getting very angry, creates an impression
in you, and that impression is as much subject to cyclic law as the
moon, and the stars, and the world, and is far more important in
respect to your development--your personal development or
evolution--than all these other great things, for they affect you in
the mass, whereas these little ones affect you in detail.

This Theosophical doctrine in respect to cycles, and the evolution of
the human race, I think is known to you all, for I am assuming that
you are all theosophists.
It is to be described somewhat in this way: Imagine that before this
earth came out of the gaseous condition there existed an earth
somewhere in space, let us call it the moon, for that is the exact
theory. 


The moon was once a large and vital body full of beings. It lived its
life, went through its cycles, and at last having lived its life,
after vast ages had passed away, came to the moment when it had to
die; that is, the moment came when the beings on that earth had to
leave it, because its period had elapsed, and then began from that
earth the exodus. You can imagine it as a flight of birds migrating. 

Did you ever see birds migrate? I have seen them migrate in a manner
that perhaps not many of you have. In Ireland, and perhaps in England,
the swallows migrate in a manner very peculiar. When I was a boy, I
used to go to my uncle's place where there was an old mass of stone
ruins at the end of the garden, and by some peculiar combination of
circumstances the swallows of the whole neighboring counties collected
there. The way they gathered there was this: When the period arrived,
you could see them coming in all parts of the sky, and they would
settle down and twitter on this pile of stone all day, and fly about.
When the evening came--twilight--they raised in a body and formed an
enormous circle. It must have been over forty feet in diameter, and
that circle of swallows flew around in the sky, around this tower,
around and around for an hour or two, making a loud twittering noise,
and that attracted from other places swallows who had probably
forgotten the occasion. They kept that up for several days, until one
day the period arrived when they must go, and they went away--some
were left behind, some came a little early, and some came too late.
Other birds migrate in other ways. 

And so these human birds migrated from the moon to this spot where the
earth began (I don't know where it is--a spot in space--) and settled
down as living beings, entities, not with bodies, but beings, in that
mass of matter, at that point in space, informed it with life, and at
last caused this earth to become a ball with beings upon it. And then
cycles began to prevail, for the impressions made upon these fathers
when they lived in the ancient--mind fails to think how
ancient--civilization of the moon, came back again when they got to
this earth, and so we find the races of the earth rising up and
falling, rising again and falling, rising and falling, and at last
coming to what they are now, which is nothing to what they will be,
for they go ever higher and higher. 

That is the theory, broadly, and in that is included the theory of the
races, the great seven races who inhabited the earth successively, the
great seven Adams who peopled the earth; and at last when this earth
shall come to its time of life, its period, all the beings on it will
fly away from it to some other spot in space to evolve new worlds as
elder brothers who have done the same thing before in other spaces in
nature. We are not doing this blindly. It has been done before by
others--no one knows when it began. 

It had nothing in the way of a beginning, it will have no end, but
there are always elder brothers of the race, who live on. As some have
written, we cannot turn back the cycles in their course. The fire of
patriotism cannot prevail against the higher destiny which will plunge
a nation into darkness. All we can do is to change it here and there a
little. 

The elder brothers are subject to law, but they have confidence and
hope, because that law merely means that they appear to go down, in
order to rise again at a greater height. So that we have come up
through the cyclic law from the lowest kingdoms of nature. 


That is, we are connected in an enormous brotherhood, which includes
not only the white people of the earth and the black people of the
earth, and the yellow people, but the animal kingdom, the vegetable
kingdom, the mineral kingdom and the unseen elemental kingdom. 


You must not be so selfish as to suppose that it includes only men and
women. It includes everything, every atom in this solar system. And we
come up from lower forms, and are learning how to so mould and
fashion, use and abuse, or impress the matter that comes into our
charge, into our bodies, our brains and our psychical nature, so that
that matter shall be an improvement to be used by the younger brothers
who are still below us, perhaps in the stone beneath our feet. I do
not mean by that that there is a human being in that stone. I mean
that every atom in the stone is not dead matter. 

There is no dead matter anywhere, but every atom in that stone
contains a life, unintelligent, formless, but potential, and at some
period in time far beyond our comprehension, all of those atoms in
that stone will have been released. The matter itself will have been
refined, and at last all in this great cycle of progress will have
been brought up the steps of the ladder, in order to let some others
lower still in a state we cannot understand come up to them.

That is the real theory. Is that superstition? If you believe the
newspapers that is superstition, for they will twist and turn
everything you say. Your enemies will say you said there was a man in
that stone, and that you have been a stone. You have not been a stone,
but the great monad, the pilgrim who came from other worlds has been
in every stone, has been in every kingdom, and now has reached the
state of man, to show whether he is able to continue being a man, or
whether he will once more fall back, like the boy at school who will
not learn, into the lowest class.

Now then, this law of impressions I have been talking about can be
illustrated in this way: If you look at one of these electric
lights--take away all the rest, leaving one only, so as to have a
better impression--you will find the light makes an image on the
retina, and when you shut your eye, this bright filament of light made
by a carbon in an incandescent lamp will be seen by you in your eye.
You can try it, and see for yourselves. If you keep your eye closed
and watch intently, you will see the image come back a certain number
of counts, it will stay a certain number of counts, it will go away in
the same length of time and come back again, always changing in some
respect but always the image of the filament, until at last the time
comes when it disappears apparently because other impressions have
rubbed it out or covered it over. 

That means that there is a return even in the retina of the impression
of this filament. After the first time, the color changes each time,
and so it keeps coming back at regular intervals, showing that there
is a cyclic return of impression in the retina, and as Brother Thomas
said this morning, if that applies in one place, it applies in every
place. And when we look into our moral character we find the same
thing, for as we have the tides in the ocean, explained as they say by
the moon-- which in my opinion does not explain it, but of course,
being no scientist, my view is not worth much so in man we have tides,
which are called return of these impressions; that is to say, you do a
thing once, there will be a tendency to repeat itself; you do it
twice, and it doubles its influence, a greater tendency to do that
same thing again. And so on all through our character shows this
constant return of cyclic impression. 

We have these impressions from every point in space, every experience
we have been through, everything that we can possibly go through at
any time, even those things which our forefathers went through. And
that is not unjust for this reason, that our forefathers furnished the
line of bodily encasement, and we cannot enter that line of bodily
encasement unless we are like unto it, and for that reason we must
have been at some point in that cycle in that same line or family in
the past, so that I must have had a hand in the past in constructing
the particular family line in which I now exist, and am myself once
more taking up the cyclic impression returning upon me.

Now this has the greatest possible bearing upon our evolution as
particular individuals, and that is the only way in which I wish to
consider the question of evolution here; not the broad question of the
evolution of the universe, but our own evolution, which means our
bodily life, as Madame Blavatsky, repeating the ancients, said to us
so often, and as we found said by so many of the same school. 

An opportunity will arise for you to do something; you do not do it;
you may not have it again for one hundred years. It is the return
before you of some old thing that was good, if it is a good one, along
the line of the cycles. You neglect it, as you may, and the same
opportunity will return, mind you, but it may not return for many
hundred years. It may not return until another life, but it will
return under the same law.
Now take another case. I have a friend who is trying to find out all
about theosophy, and about a psychic nature, but I have discovered
that he is not paying the slightest attention to this subject of the
inevitable return upon himself of these impressions which he creates.
I discovered he had periods of depression (and this will answer for
everybody), when he had a despondency that he could not explain. I
said to him, you have had the same despondency maybe seven weeks ago,
maybe eight weeks ago, maybe five weeks ago. He examined his diary and
his recollection, and he found that he had actual recurrences of
despondency about the same distance apart. Well, I said, that explains
to me how it is coming back. But what am I to do? Do what the old
theosophists taught us; that is, we can only have these good results
by producing opposite impressions to bad ones. So, take this occasion
of despondency. What he should have done was, that being the return of
an old impression, to have compelled himself to feel joyous, even
against his will, and if he could not have done that, then to have
tried to feel the joy of others. By doing that, he would have
implanted in himself another impression, that is of joy, so that when
this thing returned once more, instead of being of the same quality
and extension, it would have been changed by the impression of joy or
elation and the two things coming together would have counteracted
each other, just as two billiard balls coming together tend to
counteract each others movements. This applies to every person who has
the blues. This does not apply to me, and I think it must be due to
the fact that in some other life I have had the blues. I have other
things, but the blues never.


I have friends and acquaintances who have these desponding spells. It
is the return of old cyclic impressions, or the cyclic return of
impressions. What are you to do? Some people say, I just sit down and
let it go; that is to say, you sit there and create it once more. You
cannot rub it out if it has been coming, but when it comes start up
something else, start up cheerfulness, be good to some one, then try
to relieve some other person who is despondent, and you will have
started another impression, which will return at the same time. It
does not make any difference if you wait a day or two to do this. The
next day, or a few days after will do, for when the old cyclic
impression returns, it will have dragged up the new one, because it is
related to it by association.
This has a bearing also on the question of the civilization in which
we are a point ourselves.

Who are we? Where are we going? Where have we come from? I told you
that the old Egyptians disappeared. If you inquire into Egyptian
history, the most interesting because the most obscure, you will find,
as the writers say, that the civilization seems to rise to the zenith
at once. We do not see when it began. The civilization was so great it
must have existed an enormous length of time to get to that height, so
that we cannot trace it from its beginning, and it disappears suddenly
from the sky; there is nothing of it left but the enormous remains
which testify to these great things, for the ancient Egyptians not
only made mummies in which they displayed the art of bandaging that we
cannot better, but they had put everything to such a degree of
specialization that we must conclude they had many centuries of
civilization. There was a specialist for one eye and a specialist for
the other, a specialist for the eyebrow, and so on. In my poor and
humble opinion, we are the Egyptians.

We have come back again, after our five thousand or whatever years
cycle it is, and we have dragged back with us some one called the
Semitic race, with which we are connected by some old impression that
we cannot get rid of, and so upon us is impinged that very Semitic
image. We have drawn back with us, by the inevitable law of
association in cyclic return, some race, some personages connected
with us by some acts of ours in that great old civilization now
disappeared, and we cannot get rid of it; we must raise them up to
some other plane as we raise ourselves.

End of Part I