Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00437)

Jerry S:

> ... the human mind desires
>some kind of meaning from a life of mortality.
>Evolution through reincarnation is a model that gives
>the mind a meaning. I personally find HPB's Divine
>Breath of evolution and involution to be a
>satisfactory model. But to suggest (as the early
>theosophists did) that such evolution--involution
>leads to a "higher" or more developed monad (how can
>perfection ever become more perfect?) is a fiction
>(albeit a nice one - I too believed it for years).
> ... It is purely
>a Western idea, born out of the desire of ego to
>have some kind of meaningful purpose to existence.

If look at life, things start off simple, acquire a growing
degree of complexity, and eventually have to die. We grow
up, age, then die. It is like with certain fractals that
after a certain number of interations break apart and
dissappear. If we're writing a book, there is the start of
the work on the project, the experience of doing it, then
the completion and moving on to other things.

If we were doing a painting, we'd start with a blank canvas,
and with each added brusk stroke we'd come nearer the end
and having to start over. From the standpoint of the painting,
there is a beginning, a period of growth, then completion.

The same, I'd suggest, is true of our "evolution." We start
off with nothing, acquire faculties of consciousness and
self-expression, and eventually reach "completion". And
*then we start over again.*

There are small cycles within bigger ones within still bigger
ones. We have no biggest cycle. Our evolution through the
seven or twelve kingdoms of nature is a big cycle, but is only
seven days in the 36,000 of the lifetime of Brahma. I wound
not suggest that there are 36,000 Kingdoms to go through!
Rather, we go through the seven or twelve kingdoms *many times.*
And thus we should speak respectfully of the Elementals, for
some may be far "older" than we are!

How does the idea of a fresh start to things fit in with that
of evolution? No matter how big a cycle that we have ended, and
are starting again, it is but a moment in a still grander cycle
of evolution that is still underway. There is an ultimate sweep
to evolution in which there is no "biggest cycle." The wheels
of life are grand beyond conception, and transcend our highest
vision to perceive.

We do not, in the ultimate sense, get "higher". But there is
a part of us that is beyond the experience of time, it is our
Ideal Nature, which I'd like to call Swabhava, and it draws
us forth into existence, to ever approach, but never reach it.
It is our essential nature, and we are drawn continually into
time and existence, striving to give it more perfect expression.

-- Eldon