Law of cycles
The law of cycles is the mathematical formula whereby Spirit cycles through Matter and Matter cycles through Spirit.
The origin of all cycles
We approach the law of cycles with reverence for the Creator whose Self-expression it contains. All evidences of its outworking in man, the earth, the elements and the stars are but the tracings of his Being, footprints in the sands, tracks in the upper snows. Wherever we behold his markings as cyclings of infinity tumbling through the finite coils of time and space, there he has been, there his awful, wonderful Presence is—just beyond the veiled spirals of his creation.
Attempting to penetrate the law of cycles, we find secrets sublime and all-encompassing—the being of man the microcosm, in man the Macrocosm. These secrets have remained closely guarded by the adepts of the mystery schools for thousands of years, for an understanding of these laws provides a predictable platform of evolution—and the power to initiate cycles of our own.
No matter where we start, by following any cycle of life to its origin, there we stand face to face with God. For he is the originator of all cycles. He is the driving force spinning at the pivot point of all form.
The cycle defined
A cycle is an interval of time during which a sequence of a recurring succession of events or phenomena is completed. It is also defined as a “recurrent sequence of events which occur in such order that the last event of one sequence immediately precedes the recurrence of the first event in a new series.”
Place your hand on your heart and feel the cycles of your heart’s pulsation, the beat of your physical life sustaining the vehicles of your soul’s evolution in Matter. Look up at a light bulb and know that it shines because electricity is pulsating at a cycle of sixty times per second through its filament. Listen to a piece of music and hear the cyclic vibration of the violin strings resonating through the eardrum as sound.
All of cosmos can be comprehended in terms of cycles. The warp and woof of creation is manifest in currents of spiritual sound vibrating according to cyclic law. The very atoms and electrons of this world of form bow to the cyclic interchange of Spirit into Matter, Matter into Spirit—all encompassed in the one element from which all of life issues forth.
The cosmic magnet
To understand one of the basic tenets of the law of cycles, we must delve into the deepest mysteries of our Spirit-Matter universe. Here we contact the simplest and grandest of all cycles: the dual pulsation that is the heartbeat of cosmos. Here we find the one element, forever in equilibrium, forever pulsating in the rhythmic cycles that reverberate down to the inner core of every atom.
The entire religious philosophy of the yin/yang of Taoism is built upon the existence and importance of the cyclic interchange between an infinite hierarchy of opposing, or complementary, forces. It is the grand cycle of Alpha to Omega.
We hear it singing the song of the atom within our very own cosmos. It is the inhalation and exhalation of the Godhead. This primary cycle is the simplest relationship of two forces—and the most all-encompassing action. If we clearly embrace the cyclic flow and unity between the Spirit/Matter, or Father/Mother, principles of motion, it is as if we are given a library card to God’s storehouse of universal knowledge. This divine polarity exists throughout cosmos—from the balanced pulsation of the Great Central Sun to the systemic equilibrium of the hydrogen atom.
We learn from the science of sound and from the archives of the Brotherhood that all manifested cosmos is the interplay of vibrations—a vast web of electromagnetic waves oscillating at different numbers of cycles per second. And what is a vibration if not a cyclic motion related to a framework of time and space orientation? The range of cycles is infinite—from one cycle in billions of years to billions of cycles each second.
The law of transcendence
As we ponder the immense odyssey of God’s Being through eternal rounds of beginnings and endings, we can ask the fateful question: Why? What is the purpose of it all if the universe is just an endless cycle of rounds with man floating on a speck of dust in space cast loose on a shoreless ocean? What is the nature of the Godhead as he exists through endless cycles in infinite space?
The answer, we are told, is that the law of cycles implements the law of transcendence. God is a transcendent being, and with each new outbreath, he evolves to a greater state of cosmic perfection and beauty.
The cycles are not really circles or sine waves but they are spirals—spirals of infinite expansion according to the geometry of the golden ratio (1:1.618...). Each cycle of evolution takes in more of God. Each round sends us into wider spheres of the body of God’s cosmos.
As the cycles of cosmos spiral upward into greater and greater dimensions, so man can forever transcend the veils of Matter that form the schoolrooms for his soul’s evolution.
The circle of life
The riddle of eternity and evolution is contained within the symbol of the circle. The circle is the two-dimensional representation of the spiral that begins in the square base of the pyramid and rises to the apex of realization in the capstone of life. And there in the center of the capstone, the law of transcendence functions through the eye of God. For when the spiral passes through the All-Seeing Eye, it transcends the dimensions of form and passes from Matter to Spirit.
This is the fulfillment of the law of cycles that begins in the heart of God and culminates in every perfect creation. The eternal Logos is the dot in the center of the circle, the beginning and ending of cycles that are composed of circles, layer upon layer. Energy that begins as a spiral in Spirit descends into Matter, there to coalesce around the flame and then—in the twinkling of an eye—to return to Spirit over the descending and ascending spirals of God’s consciousness.
The heavenly bodies are undergoing cyclic evolution within the larger infinite spiral of God’s Being in Spirit—passing through material manifestation and returning to Spirit. In the Macrocosm as well as in the microcosm, circling spirals trigger the flow of energy into and out of form.
Throughout the universe, the pattern of cyclic return is reproduced again and again with infinite precision, traversing realms of eternity, expanding according to the golden ratio.
Man as co-creator
The circle represents a cross section of a spiral that has neither beginning nor ending but appears to be finite as it passes through the physical universe in the form of planets, stars, galaxies—and man himself. Although the circle itself is without beginning or ending, at any point on the circumference of the circle the hand of God may draw an intersecting line, thereby creating a beginning and an ending. Thus cycles are initiated and worlds are born.
Drop a stone into a still pond and watch the cyclic wave patterns continue to flow and flow in smooth rhythm. Drop a stone into an agitated pond, and there results a complex of wave-pattern interchange, but the cycle initiated by the stone continues to affect the water. Thus it is by the hand of God and by his emissaries. The entire universe is the interplay of cyclic vibrations, initiated somewhere, somehow, by someone.
That someone could be you. As we ascend the scales of evolution, we are entrusted with the divine power and authority to initiate cycles that may last forever. Who is to say that the candle glow of your love in this very moment will not exist forevermore in the continuum of God’s Being?
Within the form of the circle the mystery of the beginning and the ending of God is solved. God himself is the circle that has neither beginning nor ending of cycles. Until man becomes one with God, he is but a dot on the circumference, caught up in the flow of the Infinite and fulfilling cycles of life, cycles perhaps that he is unaware of. But once man has passed through the cycles of the initiatic process—the spirals of destiny that unlock the total pattern of his identity—he earns the right to be congruent with the dot in the center of the great circle of life.
The return to God
The cycle of the heartbeat of cosmos exudes life’s energies to all creatures great and small. Through it, we can contact a sense of everlasting comfort during the trials and tribulations of our lives. The law of cycles is thus the instrumentation of the Comforter’s own flame. It is a swaddling garment wound round about the earth. The very currents of the earth’s surface, the very emanations from its sun center, the law of cycles, the comfort flame, the hum just below the level of our own hearing transfer to us this comfort of the cyclic law of the sounding of God’s Word.
Life is ongoing, and the law of cycles promises us that life will go on. God’s heart will beat on. The wheel of cyclic return will rotate on the spokes of our karmic creations.
By the law of cycles, then, we are set upon our courses spiraling through once again the nexus of being, the nexus being the Word itself, the law of cycles being the emanation of the Word—the eternal Logos. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And without this Word “was not any thing made that was made.”
As we become congruent with the dot in the center of God’s circle, the power is bestowed upon us to imprint the cyclic energies of God with the pattern of our God-oriented idea or desire. This is the way to return to God as a permanent atom in his Being—through this Word that has incarnated in the avatars with the cyclic law of manifestation. The great manus, the lawgivers of the ages and of their races, upheld the cycle of the Word whereby all seed going forth from the great Tree of Life might return through the Word as the law of cycles.
There is joy in this law of cycles. And the joy of this marriage of science and religion is you at the nexus of infinity, you converging with that living Word.
God has neither beginning nor ending because his Being takes in the universe of cycles and all that precedes and follows them in the formed and unformed dimensions of Spirit. Man, on the other hand, seems for a brief interim to have a beginning and an ending because he identifies with a slice of the spiral that initiates in Spirit, evolves through Matter, and returns to Spirit. When man’s beginnings and his endings are seen as part of the never-ending cycles of God’s Self-awareness, he will realize that although the spirals of his own life travel in a linear pattern through the limited spheres of outer manifestation, there is, in reality, no end to the involution and evolution of his consciousness.
When man returns to God, aligning the energies he has gathered in spirals with the Great Spiral that is God’s Being, both God and man transcend their former state, and the law of cycles implements the law of transcendence. God transcends himself as man transcends himself, for God is in man and man is in God. Through the merging of cycles, man becomes more of God and God becomes more in man; hence new creations are continually being born into spirals that expand the circle of the Infinite One.
See also
For more information
Mark L. Prophet and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, The Path to Immortality, Chapter 1, “The Law of Cycles.”
Sources
Elizabeth Clare Prophet, Predict Your Future: Understand the Cycles of the Cosmic Clock, pp. 9-15.