Cycles in Eternity

A Confluence of Energies

                                                                                    Kathy Newburn

Today there is a growing recognition of the Earth as the embodiment of a great Life within Whose aura we live and move and have our being.  As awakening brain cells within this Life, we  naturally are subject to the cycles and  rhythms and guidance of this Master Musician, who, at this time, is said to be tuning his instrument to a new note and key–one that resounds more harmoniously with the shifting of the inpouring energies.  

Within this panoply of whirling colors and notes we enter into Capricorn on Tuesday with the solstice, when in the heavens we appear to take a pause. The sun seemingly “stands still” for three days and throughout time this been revered as a holy time, a time when out of darkness comes light, a new birth and hope and the desire for peace are spread abroad–continuing on into the Christmas season.  Triangles workers and all those who use the Great Invocation can help to raise this massed intent into the higher realms and then redirect the evocative response by the angelic realms in concert with the members of the spiritual Hierarchy, releasing the joy of the soul into all open minds and hearts that are seeking.

The present interlude in which we are working brings together an amazing array of energies that give added potency to this year’s solstice which makes the opportunity greater than would ordinarily be the case. We’re working with a bridging between the days of distribution of the Sagittarius full moon and the days of preparation for the solstice.  Just yesterday Venus began her 40-42 day retrograde cycle that will end on January 29th.  This cycle occurs every 17-18 months and the highpoint which is the mid-point of the cycle occurs when Venus moves towards her inferior conjunction with the Sun, which will occur on January 8, 2022 at 7:47 pm.  This is the time when Venus and the Sun are in direct alignment and she stands between the Sun and Earth.  This is the time of Venus’s closest position to our Earth and we might speculate that because Venus is so close to us and stands as the soul to Earth's personality that this is a time when we are receiving a direct alignment from the heart of the Sun, the spiritual sun when the divinity within all forms is sparked and a great influx of love pours in upon our world.  

The entire retrograde period is a holy time, perhaps reflective symbolically of Christ's 40 days of purification but also testing in the desert.  Every eight years the conjunction occurs in the same sign and almost the same degree in the zodiac. This time it is occurring in Capricorn--the sign in which Venus rules hierarchically so this is a very refined energy that is working out within the planet during this period, allowing for this special light, the light supernal, to pour in.

Not only has Venus just begun her retrograde cycle but leading up to Tuesday’s solstice are these days of distribution for the Sagittarius full moon. This is the energy which confers direction, forward-movement and that momentum, garnering the necessary strength to achieve that goal in Capricorn.

 

CYCLES IN ETERNITY

Triangles Webinar – 20 Dec. 2021

                                                            Eduardo Gramaglia

Tomorrow the Sun will be on the solstice, thus marking an important point in the yearly cycle of light distribution. As the ancient philosophers observed, all nature consists of an endless movement of /cycles within cycles. The pulse of natural life, the sequence of seasons, days and nights, years, life stages… 

Everything changes, and the life forces in a universe are incessantly working; as the river of Heraclitus, not for a moment they become motionless. A universe comes into being because a cosmic entity is embodying itself; and a /universe dies, as a human being dies, because it has come to the point where the major part of its energies have already passed into invisible realms. The same fundamental laws prevail in the great as in the small. Death is only a change; life on earth, is only one minute in the life of our souls. The only enduring thing is pure consciousness, which includes everything else. 

The Doctrine of Cycles is a highly important chapter of the Esoteric Philosophy, because repetitive and rhythmic action is fundamental in nature. Every being and thing exists as an expression of rhythmic pulsation: we are not only immersed in cycles greater than ourselves, but actually within our own beings embody cycles because we are cyclical in all our life processes. The Law of Cycles is a part of the Harmony of the Spheres, because it provides rhythm, number and a system of durations, in which silence and rest are as important as sound and activity. 

The Law of periodicity and constant renewal is based on the principle that to each period of activity follows a period of rest; followed by another period of activity, and so on. Thus evolution works. 

The relationship between Eternity and cyclical periods of activity is beautifully summed up in the three fundamental propositions in Blavatsky’s Secret Doctrine. The first of these propositions postulates an Omnipresent, Eternal, Boundless and Immutable Principle, on which all speculation is impossible, since it transcends the power of human conception. An intuitive mind would understand that the substratum of this universe must necessarily be an eternal principle, since That Which is the Causeless Cause, from Which everything springs, cannot be born or perish. It must be eternal and independent of any conceivable limitation. The idea of Absoluteness makes the mind silent, but it is by all means far better an explanation than a personal God who creates the world out of nothing. 

In the Second Proposition, that Absolute and infinite nature underlying everything is shown to be “the playground of numberless universes incessantly manifesting and disappearing”. They do so on the backdrop of eternity. The opportunities for development are always associated with appearance and disappearance, birth and death, as a basic necessity for all renovation, because it leads towards new and greater possibilities. Where there is renewal and progress, there is something that has to die, to be reborn again; something incomplete that requires new and more appropriate resources. This necessary renewal turns out to be the very fuel for development, for the forces that keep the whole universe running must never be exhausted, and need recharging.

The third proposition affirms the identity of all those sparks springing from the One source with the Great Flame. All those sparks must go through cyclical incarnations in accordance with a universal karmic law which constantly balances the forces, not allowing scarcity or overflowing. The Law of Universal Balance. 

The Universe is a living and conscious Being. The emergence and disappearance of the universe is beautifully described by the Eastern Wisdom as the “Breath” of that being whose external appearance is the universe: 

The Divine Breath, regarded as the breathing of the One Existence, breathes out a thought which becomes the Kosmos. When the Divine Breath is inspired, the Universe disappears into the bosom of The Great Mother, Space, who then sleeps “wrapped in her invisible robes”. (SD I, p. 43)

As we perceive cycles through the recurrence of moving beings and things, we may de deluded into thinking that these repetitions are caused by an intangible entity called Time, while it is just movement through eternal Duration. Time is only an illusion produced by the succession of our states of consciousness as we travel through eternal duration, and it does not exist where no consciousness exists in which the illusion can be produced. 

            Such an effort for the mind to grasp these ancient and deep truths! However, we must accept that they do change our perspective of the world, since everything around us, no matter how “solid” it appears to be, how strongly it seems to upset our lives, is not the essential. The truly real, has no form, and is One. This idea was symbolized by a white sphere within a dull black background: this is the symbol found on one of those ancient palm leaves, the existence of which Blavatsky reveals at the beginning of the Secret Doctrine. The point at the center stands for the beginning of all cycles: The Divine Will awakening to manifestation. A symbol we could meditate on for hours, isn’t it?

            All the varied phenomena of the infinitesimal worlds of physical chemistry; all the movements of nature everywhere, astronomical and meteorological phenomena, like storms, periods of droughts, electromagnetic outbursts such as the aurorae; the periodic epidemics of diseases – all these are rhythmic, because cyclical. The pulsing of the blood and the heartbeat in the human body manifests cycles as fully as the sunspot period, the return of the Sun to the Solstice, or the flowing of the rivers of life along the circulations of the cosmos. 

The reason for this periodicity we found in one of the most extraordinary statements Blavatsky made:

The Secret Doctrine teaches the progressive development of everything, worlds as well as atoms; and this stupendous development has neither conceivable beginning nor imaginable end. Our “Universe” is only one of an infinite number of Universes, all of them “Sons of Necessity,” because links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes, each one standing in the relation of an effect as regards its predecessor, and being a cause as regards its successor.

We are pretty sure that our Earth had a beginning, and that it will have an end. But this statement implies that there was a previous earth, another previous globe, in turn an incarnation of a previous one, and so on. We could also extend this idea in the direction of what we consider to be the future, until our imagination collapses, at the same time suggesting that unthinkable developments are in store for mankind. Each of the appearances of a human being on earth, what we call an incarnation (and had so many names in antiquity, many of them philosophically more acceptable than the awkward word “incarnation”) is an effect of a preceding one, and will be a cause for a following one – this we call “karma”. So what at first sight seems complex has a beautiful underlying simplicity. Every spark of the universal flame must go through a pilgrimage, must find its way into substance, to then return to the Father’s house, the Formless, Infinity, Boundless Space, our true Home. 

            As the Agni Yoga has it, “even a stone is cut in facets for the manifestation of the inner light. Likewise, the path to the Light is divided by clearly discernible lines”. But “each manifested shifting is created by the principle of the concept of Hierarchy”. Each cycle has its own guiding hands, its spiritual Leadership. We can imagine the biblical “ladder of Jacob” as a series of ascending cycles, thus revealing a Plan… In other words, to state baldly that the cosmic life is rhythmic is incompleteuntil we add that such rhythmical activity, our manifested universe, is the embodied expression of the movement of a Cosmic Mind. This manifested Logos, God, the Cosmos, is The Great Architect of the Universe, as Freemasonry calls it. Every cycle, irrespective of scale or magnitude or hierarchical plane, is the life movement of the heartbeat, and mind-beat of some cosmic, subcosmic or infracosmic being. 

            We can now see that all the cycles that we as human race experience are truly a copy of what takes place at grander scales. Humanity and all the kingdoms in nature go through successive cycles of materialization and spiritualization, upwards and downwards, so to say, progress can never be a straight line. Each of these periods of time has a certain quality, and “spiritual hands” guiding it.  In the Eastern tradition, these cycles are called YUGAS, we call them Ages or Eras. They are in turn part of greater cycles. For example, according to Eastern records, our humanity is now in its Kali Yuga, which began 5000 years ago, and will last into the future for about 400 thousand years. Eventually, a Krita or Golden Age will be ushered in, followed by other eras. The Eastern tradition gives some symbolic numbers for these ages. They fairly correspond to Hesiod’s and Ovid’s ages, respectively a Greek and Roman writer. The secret of the Eras is deeply buried in number, but the computation of these cycles is said by both Blavatsky and the Tibetan to be a secret, the only numbers given in written records being but blinds. Intertwined with these are astrological eras, like the incoming Aquarian Age. Each race or nation has its own periods as well, some rising, some falling, all interworking with each other, and all subject to the influences of grander cycles. A monumental canvas of cycles within cycles. 

            One can see now why the ancient philosophers, like Pythagoras, insisted on the Universe being born from number. If the universe is rhythmic, it is based on numeric proportions: it is true that “God geometrizes”. The basic fact is that all nature is based on numerical relationships in harmonic interplay, and that is what cycles are about after all. The artist Rafael Araujo, from Venezuela, beautifully depicts this cosmic geometry in this picture on the Golden Ratio. 

So we see that within those greater cosmic cycles, new ages are ushered in for mankind, and therefore renewed opportunities for growth and awakening are offered by the incoming energies. The Great Musician of the Universe moves the keys of the Cosmic keyboard, sounds forth another note and thus brings in another turn of the wheel, the Tibetan said. These new energies bring with them – in every kingdom of nature – all that is attuned to them: states of matter or planes, human beings, specific types of devas, and changes in each kingdom in nature, like flowers of certain colors, fruits and vegetables of specific kinds, and different animal species. Each new note sounded by the Logos signals the extinction of particular forms, some type of animal life, and leads some vegetable aspect to an end. 

When we think about the periodic nature of the universe, with eternity in the background our perception of life changes. 

• If we learn “to read between the lines”, so to say, each incarnation, or experience as a personality, will be seen to have a rhythm, a pulsation, and therefore, different stages, periods of learning. 
• The events of our lives are no longer seen as a haphazard and chance combination of events. We find there is a purpose behind, and our personal problems are no longer unique, but part of the human experience.  In other words, we are here, and now, for a reason. 
• We learn to accept that our own cycles may differ from those of others, thus getting closer to the understanding of what brotherhood and harmlessness are really about. 
• We understand that the Inner Path of self-discovery must be a cyclical process, in turn part of greater cycles. We have to become aware of those forces which oppose the unfoldment of our inner possibilities, and for that, discrimination is needed, most particularly today.
• To focus on the Eternal is not mere theory, but a real liberating possibility. That “peace that surpasses all understanding” of St. Paul can only be attained by minds dwelling on the Eternal.

     We live in an interesting period, dark in some sense, but full of opportunities. As a matter of fact, through our work with Triangles we are making our own contribution to a new age, in which the etheric web will be instrumental in bringing down ideas from higher realms, thus changing the world. 

            A beautiful prophecy about a coming age is found in one of the Hindu Purāṇas, which runs: “In the Kali Age external types will be the only distinction, the rich will be reputed pure and decay will proceed, until a portion of that divine Being which exists… shall descend on Earth… the Kalki Avatar, The Coming One, endowed with superhuman faculties… He will re-establish righteousness, and the human race will be changed… those who are changed will be the seeds of the race who shall follow the laws of the Kṛta or Golden Age, the age of Joy and Truth”. 

That there is a conflict of forces, we cannot deny; but this is a time of choice, when the most advanced egos will become the seed of the succeeding Root-race. In the midst of this world unrest, we can choose to be part of that group that builds the lighted path towards a brighter age. This involves understanding and working with the new energies, one of the main tasks of the NGWS. It also involves a detached recognition of the opposing forces. We must really understand what kind of “empowering” (a word much used today) we need to live in that “peace that passes understanding”. 

Let me please finish with an extract from a beautiful poem by Oliver Wendel Holmes, which I think captures the essence of cycles: 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!