Theos-Talk Archives (August 1994 Message tl00171)

This is by Eldon Tucker.

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Jerry S. & Paul J.:

    When we deal with anything that is cyclic, we find a
start, a growth reaching a zenith, then a decline and eventual
disappearance. We see that in a day, with dawn, high noon,
then sunset. The year has Spring, Summer, and Autumn. A
lifetime has birth, maturity, and death. (There is also a
turning point in the silence, in the darkness, respectively
the midnight, Winter, and reemergence of Tanha and renewed
thirst for existence.)
    A cycle repeats itself, then happens again, and happens
yet again. It never ends, unless the thing undergoing the
cycle dies. There will always be the cycle of day and night as
long as there is our physical globe, spinning on its axis.
    Consider a clock. The second hand moves from 12 to 1, 2,
and sweeps around the clock's face, eventually coming back to
the 12 again. It has descended to the 6, then reascended to
the 12. At one point in time, it was descending; at another
point in time it was ascending. Someone might argue that it is
quite arbitrary which way it is going. But is this so?
    Each time that we go through a cycle of life, it is not
the same thing. We are not the same people. The universe
itself is not the same. The cycle itself has repeated, but we
are something more, with each time through it. Each day we
wake up and have our regular routine, there is something more
to us that before.
    There are two ways to view the growth, the progress that
happens each time that we repeat a cycle. One is regarding
"wheels within wheels." Consider the analogy of a clock. As
the second hand spins around, the minute hand is slowly moving
forward, in its own direction, regardless of the upward or
downward motion of the second hand. And the hour hand is
moving, in its own direction, even more slowly. Even slower
than the hands, the calendar itself is moving, at an almost-
imperceptible pace.
    This shows relative degrees of reality, relative degrees
of closeness to the absolute direction to the sweep of life.
Looking at one level, the subordinate levels are Maya,
illusion, ephemeral changes on the surface of things. Looking
up to a higher level, we see a "purpose in life," a higher
reality.
    Each cycle that we may thing of--that of a day, a
lifetime, an manvantaric evolution--is but a passing phase of
yet a bigger cycle. And there is no top-most cycle. Each
cycle, no matter how grand, is rooted in yet a vaster cycle of
yet more unimaginable proportion. This is an example of a
Golden Tree of Life.
    All this is one way to view cycles. Another way to view
them is more related to Chaos. Consider the birth of an being.
That would be its first iteration, its first cycle of exis-
tence in this particular lifetime. Everyone starts off nearly
the same, but with continued interations, based upon slight
differences in the initial impulse given to life, vast
differences between individuals emerge. The iterations are not
reversible, and with the increasing complexity of personality
and attributes that one takes on with repeated differentiation
of his consciousness in personal existence, soon it is no
longer possible to maintain a unified consciousness. The life
energies start to break down, the coherent whole of the
individual starts to fragment, and death eventually ensues.
    (An partial analogy to this can be watched with a Julia
Set, using a fractal-generating computer program like "fra-
ctint." Everything starts off as a circle with the first
iteration, but quickly takes on individual shapes in a few
iterations. And after a while many break apart and rapidly
dissolve into an infinite cloud of dust (a Cantor Set).)
    Under this view to the cyclic nature of things, each
cycle is started completely anew. There is an increasing
complexity to manifest life, as myriad choices are made and
one becomes more differentiated as a personality. Eventually
the complexity becomes too much to sustain and death is
required. This is followed, after a period of rest and
assimilation, with another attempt at life in the world.