[no subject]
Dec 30, 2005 06:39 AM
by W.Dallas TenBroeck
12/30/2005 6:26 AM
Dear Friends:
As we approach the calendar New Year the question of the influence of cycles
has arisen.
Here are some interesting views presented by THEOSOPHY .
Best wishes.
Dallas
--------------------------------------------
CYCLES - WHAT ARE THEY ?
The doctrine of Cycles is one of the most important in the whole
theosophical system, though the least known, and of all, the one most
infrequently referred to. This incompleteness and want of accurate knowledge
have been due to the lack of belief in spiritual things and the desire to
square everything with materialistic science.
A cycle is a ring or turning, as the derivation of the word indicates. By
analogy it is found that certain events recur which are similar to earlier
ones. The best terms in existence may be found in the Sanskrit
astronomical and astrological texts and are: Yuga, Kalpa, Manvantara, but of
these Yuga comes nearest to cycle, as it is lesser in duration than the
others.
The beginning of a cycle must be a moment, and that added to other moments
makes a day, and those added together constitute months, years, decades, and
centuries. Beyond this the West hardly goes.
It recognizes the moon cycle (monthly of 4 weeks, and that of Meton, the
ancient Greek of about 19 ¼ years), and the great sidereal one (the annual
Sun year, and, the Zodiacal Year of 25,868 solar years), but, it looks at
both and upon the others as mere periods of time.
If we are to consider them as but lengths of time there is no profit except
to the dry student or to the astronomer. And in this way today they are
regarded by some European and American thinkers, who say cycles exist but
have no very great bearing on human life and certainly no bearing on the
actual recurrence of events or the reappearance on the stage of life of
persons who once lived in the world.
The theosophical theory is distinctly otherwise.
Not only are the cycles named actual physical facts in respect to time, but
they and other periods have a very great effect on human life and the
evolution of the globe with all the forms of life thereon. Starting with the
moment and proceeding through a day, this theory erects the cycle into a
comprehensive ring which includes all in its limits.
The moment being the basis, the question to be settled in respect to the
great cycles is, When did the first moment come?
VIBRATION IS THE KEY
The ancient theosophists held the beginning of our World’s cycle to be that
of the first moment of the solidification of this globe. Then the mass of
matter involved attained a certain and definite rate of vibration. This
will hold through all variations in any part of it until its hour for
dissolution comes. These rates of vibration are what determine the different
cycles, and, contrary to the ideas of western science, the doctrine is that
the solar system and the globe we are now on, will come to an end when the
force behind the whole mass of seen and unseen matter has reached its limit
of duration under Cyclic Law.
REINCARNATION AND NATIONAL CYCLES
Reincarnation being the great law of life and progress, it is interwoven
with that of the cycles and karma. These three work together, and in
practice, it is almost impossible to disentangle reincarnation from cyclic
law.
Individuals and nations in definite streams return in regularly recurring
periods to the earth, and thus bring back to the globe the arts, the
civilization, the very persons who once were on it at work. And as the units
in nation and race are connected together by invisible strong threads, large
bodies of such units moving slowly but surely all together reunite at
different times and emerge again and again together into new race and new
civilization as the cycles roll their appointed rounds.
Therefore the souls who made the most ancient civilizations will come back
and bring the old civilization with them in idea and essence, which, being
added to what others have done for the development of the human race in its
character and knowledge, will produce a new and higher state of
civilization. This newer and better development will not be due to books, to
records, to arts or mechanics, because all those are periodically destroyed
so far as physical evidence goes. But the Soul, ever retaining in immortal
Manas the knowledge it once gained, and always pushing to completer
development the higher principles and powers, the essence of progress
remains, and will as surely come out as the sun shines.
Along this road are the points when the small and large cycles of “Avatars”
[divine incarnations] bring out for man's benefit the great characters who
mold the race from time to time.
Individual cycles are those of reincarnation, of moods and emotional
sensations, and of sensitivity to impression.
The length of the individual reincarnation cycle for the general mass of men
is fifteen hundred years, and this in its turn gives us a large historical
cycle related closely to the progress of civilization. For as the masses of
persons return from Devachan, it must follow that the Roman, the Greek, the
old Aryan, and other Ages will be seen again and can to a very great extent
be plainly traced.
The CYCLE OF AVATARS [PROPHETS, GREAT TEACHERS]
The Cycle of Avatars includes several smaller ones. The greater are those
marked by the appearance of Rama and Krishna among the Hindus, of Menes
among the Egyptians, of Zoroaster among the Persians, and of Gautama Buddha
to the Hindus and other nations of the East.
Gautama Buddha is the last of the great Avatars, and is in a larger cycle
than is Jesus of the Jews, for the teachings of the latter are the same as
those of Buddha and tinctured with what Buddha had taught to those who
instructed Jesus. [ISIS UNVEILED II 123-4, 290]
Another great Avatar is yet to come, corresponding to Buddha and Krishna
combined. Krishna and Rama were of the military, civil, religious, and
occult order; Buddha of the ethical, religious, and mystical, in which be
was followed by Jesus; Mohammed was a minor intermediate one for a certain
part of the race, and was civil, military, and religious.
In these cycles we can include mixed characters who have had great influence
on nations, such as King Arthur, Pharaoh, Moses, Charlemagne reincarnated as
Napoleon Bonaparte, Clovis of France reborn as Emperor Frederic III of
Germany, and Washington the first President of the United States of America
where the root for the new race is being formed.
WHEN CYCLES INTERSECT
Man is a great dynamo, making, storing, and throwing out energy, and when
masses of men composing a race thus make and distribute energy, there is a
resulting dynamic effect on the material of the globe which will be powerful
enough to be distinct and cataclysmic.
Man is especially affected by invisible cycles which are spiritual, psychic,
and moral. Out of these, grow national, racial, and individual cycles. Race
and national cycles are historical.
WHY CYCLES END
We do not admit that the ending of the force is the withdrawal of the force
at work which is that of man himself, considered as a spiritual being. When
he is done using the globe, he leaves it, and then with him goes out the
force holding all together; the consequence is dissolution by fire or water
or what not, these phenomena being simply effects and not causes.
CATACLYSMS, DELUGES SHIFTING OF CONTINENTS
At the intersection of the great cycles, dynamic effects follow and alter
the surface of the planet by reason of the shifting of the poles of the
globe or other convulsion. This is not a theory generally acceptable, but we
hold it to be true.
That there have been vast and awful disturbances in the strata of the world
is admitted on every hand and now needs no proof; these have been due to
earthquakes and ice formation so far as concerns geology; but in respect to
animal forms the cyclic law is that certain animal forms now extinct and
also certain human ones not known, but sometimes suspected, will return
again in their own cycle; and certain human languages now known as dead will
be in use once more at their appointed cyclic hour.
In regard to great cataclysms occurring at the beginning and ending of large
and important cycles, the main laws governing the effects are those of Karma
and Reembodiment, or Reincarnation, proceeding under cyclic rule. Not only
is man ruled by these laws, but every atom of matter as well, and the mass
of matter is constantly undergoing a change at the same time as does man. It
must therefore exhibit alterations corresponding to those through which the
thinker is going.
On the physical plane effects are brought out through the electrical and
other fluids acting with the gases on the solids of the globe. At the change
of a great cycle they reach what may be termed the exploding point and cause
violent convulsions of the following classes: (a) Earthquakes, (b) Floods,
(c) Fire, (d) Ice.
Earthquakes may be brought on according to this philosophy by two general
causes; first, subsidence or elevation under the earth-crust due to heat and
steam, second, electrical and magnetic changes which affect water and earth
at the same time. These last have the power to instantaneously make the
earth fluidic without melting it, thus causing immense and violent
displacements in large or small waves. And this effect is sometimes seen now
in earthquake districts when similar electrical causes are at work in a
smaller measure.
Floods of general extent are caused by displacement of water from the
subsidence or elevation of land, and, by those combined with electrical
changes which induces a copious discharge of moisture. The latter is not a
mere emptying of a cloud, but a sudden turning of vast bodies of fluids and
solids into water.
Universal fires come on from electrical and magnetic changes in the
atmosphere by which the moisture is withdrawn from the air and the latter
turned into a fiery mass; and, secondly, by the sudden expansion of the
solar magnetic center into seven such centers, thus burning the globe. This
latter phenomenon, it is prophecized will bring our Earth to its end. [S D
I 371-3]
Ice cataclysms come on not only from the sudden alteration of the poles but
also from lowered temperature due to the alteration of the warm fluid
currents in the sea and the hot magnetic currents in the earth, the first
being known to science, the latter not. The lower stratum of moisture is
suddenly frozen, and vast tracts of land covered in a night with many feet
of ice. This can easily happen to the British Isles if the warm currents of
the ocean are diverted from its shores.
ASTRONOMICAL AND SOLAR CYCLES
The great Sidereal year is the period taken by the equinoctial points to
make in their precession a complete revolution of the heavens. It is
composed of 25,868 solar years almost. It is said that the last sidereal
year ended about 9,868 years ago, at which time there must have been on this
earth a violent convulsion or series of such, as well as a redistribution of
nations.
The completion of this grand period brings the earth into newer spaces of
the cosmos, not in respect to its own orbit, but by reason of the actual
progress of the sun in an orbit of its own that cannot be measured by any
observer of the present day, but which is guessed at by some and the center
of which is located in one of the constellations.
But man is also affected by astronomical cycles because he is an integral
part of the whole, and these cycles mark the periods when mankind as a whole
will undergo a change.
THE GREAT ZODIACAL CLOCK
In the sacred books of all nations these are often mentioned, and are in the
Bible of the Christians, as, for instance, in the story of Jonah in the
belly of the whale. This is an absurdity when read as history, but not so as
an astronomical cycle. "Jonah" is in the constellations, and when that
astronomical point which represents man reaches a point in the Zodiac which
is directly opposite the belly of Cetus or the whale on the other side of
the circle, by what is known as the process of opposition, then Jonah is
said to be in the center of the fish and is "thrown out" at the expiration
of the period when that man-point has passed so far along in the Zodiac as
to be out of opposition to the whale.
Similarly as the same point moves thus through the Zodiac it is brought by
opposition into the different constellations that are exactly opposite from
century to century while it moves along. During these progresses, changes
take place among men and on earth, and those are exactly marked by the
constellations when those are read according to the right rules of
symbology.
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 to man and
found in the heavens the means for knowing the exact dates when certain
cyclic events are sure to recur. Then, by imprinting in the minds of older
nations the symbology of the Zodiac, they were able to preserve both the
record and the prophecy.
In the same way that a watchmaker can tell the hour by the arrival of the
hands or the works of the watch at certain fixed points, the Sages can tell
the hour for events by the Zodiacal clock.
This may not be admitted, or believed today, but it will be well understood
in future centuries, and as the nations of the earth have similar symbols
for the Zodiac in general, and as the records of races long dead have the
same, it is not likely that the vandal-spirit of fanatics and dogmatists
will be able to completely efface this valuable heritage of our evolution.
In Egypt, for example, the Denderah Temple has an ancient Zodiac [S D II
431-3] that tells the same tale as that one left to us by the old
civilization of the American continent, and all of these are from the same
source, they are the work of the Sages who come at the beginning of the
great human cycle and give to man when he begins his toilsome ascent up the
road of development, those great symbols and ideas of an astronomical
character which will last through all the cycles.
Both Egyptians and Greeks had their cycles, but, Theosophy states they
derived them from the Indian Sages. The Chinese always were a nation of
astronomers, and have recorded observations reaching far back, but as they
belong to an old race which is doomed to extinction -- strange as the
assertion may appear -- their conclusions will not be correct for the Aryan
races.
On the coming of the Christian era a heavy pall of darkness fell on the
minds of men in the West, and India was for many centuries isolated so as to
preserve these great ideas during the mental night of Europe. This isolation
was brought about deliberately as a necessary precaution taken by that great
Lodge, because its Adepts, knowing the cyclic laws perfectly, wished to
preserve philosophy for future generations. For this reason the Brahmanical
cycles are given, since they tally almost exactly with the correct periods
known to the great Occultists.
BRAHMANICAL CYCLES
A period or exhibition of universal manifestation is called a Brahmanda,
that is a complete life of Brahma. Brahma's life is made of his days, and
years, which, being cosmical are each of immense duration. His day is as
man's 24 odd hours long, his year 360 odd days, the number of his years is
100.
Considering our Globe -- since we are concerned with no other -- its
government and evolution proceed under Manu or man, and from this is derived
the term Manvantara or "between two Manus."
The course of evolution is divided into four Yugas for every race in its own
time and way. These Yugas do not affect all mankind at one and the same
time, as some races are in one of the Yugas while others are in a different
cycle. The “American Indian,” for instance, is in the end of his stone age,
while the Aryans are in quite a different state. These four Yugas are:
Krita, or Satya, the golden; Treta; (silver) Dvapara, (bronze); and Kali or
the black “iron” age. The present age for the West and India is Kali Yuga,
especially in respect to moral and spiritual development. The first of these
is slow in comparison with the rest, and the present -- Kali -- is very
rapid, its motion being accelerated.
===================================================
TABLE --------------------------------------------------------- Mortal
Years
* 360 (odd) mortal days make -------------------------------------
1
*
* Krita Yuga has -------------------------------------------
1,728,000
* Treta Yuga has -------------------------------------------
1,296,000
* Dvapara Yuga has ------------------------------------------
864,000
* Kali Yuga has ----------------------------------------------
432,000
*
_____________________
*
* Maha Yuga, or the four preceding, has -----------------
4,320,000
*
* 71 Maha Yugas form the reign of one Manu, or ---- 306,720,000
*
* 14 Manus are --------------------------------------- 4,294,080,000
* Add the dawns or twilights between each Manu ----- 25,920,000
* These reigns and dawns make 1,000 Maha Yugas,
* a KALPA, or Day of Brahma -----
4,320,000,000
*
_____________________
*
* Brahma's Night equals his Day & Night together- 8,640,000,000
*
_____________________
*
* 360 of these Days make Brahma's Year ------- 3,110,00,000,000
*
_____________________
*
* 100 of these Years make Brahma's Life -- 311,040,000,000,000
( 311 trillion and 40 billion years )
==============================================
The first 5000 years of Kali Yuga will end between the years 1897 and 1898.
This Yuga began about 3102 years before the Christian era, at the time of
Krishna's death. As the period of 1897-98 is recent, in retrospect, we have
had an opportunity of seeing whether the close of the five thousand year
cycle was preceded or followed by any convulsions or great changes
political, scientific, moral or physical, or all of these combined.
Cyclic changes are now proceeding as year after year the souls from prior
civilizations are being incarnated in this period when liberty of thought
and action are not so restricted in the West as they have been in the past
by dogmatic religious prejudice and bigotry. And at the present time we are
in a cycle of transition, when, as a transition period should indicate,
everything in philosophy, religion, and society is changing. In a transition
period the full and complete figures and rules respecting cycles are not
given out to a generation which elevates money above all thoughts and scoffs
at the spiritual view of man and nature.
[Extracted in part from the OCEAN OF THEOSOPHY -- W Q Judge]
===============================
CYCLES OF KARMA IN TIME
Q.: Does the cyclic law bring about its intended result without the
conscious intervention of races and individuals? Or is it part of the
working of that law that races and individuals shall consciously interfere
in behalf of their own progress or retrogression? If either or both, will
not things be what they will be and should be in spite of any or all of our
efforts?
W.Q.J.—The cyclic law has no “intended result,” since it is blind force. The
cyclic law ruled in the days of the early races just as it now does, and
before there were any races at all who could act consciously or
unconsciously. The power of choice for the human race as a whole does not
come until the turning point in evolution is reached—when four is turned
into five—and, of course, until that time comes, “conscious intervention” by
a race is impossible.
Individuals—meaning individual monads—may and do help on the progress of a
race or a nation or oppose a contrary effect, but even that is under the
cyclic law. In The Occult World by Mr. Sinnett, we have
the words of a Master on this point, as follows, speaking of the Adepts:
“There never was a time within or before the so-called historical period
when our predecessors were not moulding events and ‘making history,’ the
facts of which were subsequently and in variably distorted by historians to
suit contemporary prejudices.
We never pretended to be able to draw nations in the mass to this or that
crisis in spite of the general drift of the world’s cosmic relations. The
cycles must run their rounds. . . . The major and minor yugas must be
accomplished according to the established order of things. And we, borne
along on the mighty tide, can only modify and direct some of its minor
currents.
“Sometimes it has happened that no human power, not even the fury and force
of the loftiest patriotism, has been able to bend an iron destiny aside from
its fixed course, and nations have gone out like torches dropped into the
water, in the engulfing blackness of ruin.”
But this does not lead to negation or apathy. “Things will not be what they
will be or should be, in spite of our efforts,” but rather—”things will be
as they should be, in spite of the apathy of those who see no use in action
that is for the good of Humanity.” Those who believe that the final good
will in any case be accomplished are those who, sunk in the dark pit of
selfish indifference, are forever an obstruction in the road of the aspiring
souls who work for man’s welfare.
REINCARNATION MAKES CHANGES
In considering the subject we should not lose sight of the fact that other
souls are reincarnating every day, bringing back with them the experience
and Karma of distant past ages. That must show itself in them as they mature
in this life, and they will furnish new impulses, new ideas, new inventions,
new pieces of knowledge to the general sum, thus affecting the progress of
the races, but all under cyclic law. And if we, by supinely sitting down, do
not create for them, as they may have in the other days done for us, the
right material, the right vehicle of civilization, the end of the cycle may
be reached with their task unfinished—through our fault. The Karma of that
will then be ours, and inexorable justice will bring us upon the scene in
other cycles which eternally proceed out of the womb of time, to finish with
heavy hearts the task we shirked. No theosophist, therefore, should ever
begin to think that he need not offer any help because all will come right
anyhow.
In our small way we should imitate the Great Brotherhood in its constant
efforts to help Humanity. They know the cycles, and, using that knowledge,
can see when the impulse of a new cycle is beginning. Taking advantage of
this prescience, new ideas are projected among men and all good reforms are
fostered. Why should we, merely because we are ignorant of the cycles, do
nothing to help these great benefactors of the races? They offer to all men
the truths of the Wisdom-Religion, making no selections but leaving results
to the law. Is it for us to assume in our theosophical work that we, poor,
weak, ignorant tyros, are able to select from the mass of our fellows the
one or the many who may be fit to receive theosophy? Such a position of
judge is vain, ridiculous, and untheosophical. Our plain duty is to present
the truths of theosophy to all men, leaving it to them to accept or reject.”
Forum Answers J pp 6 - 7
================================
Best wishes,
Dallas
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