“WHAT if there was no big bang and we live in an ever-cycling universe?” a recent issue of the NewScientist magazine asks, suggestive of ancient Eastern teachings.

“There is no good evidence that our universe even had a beginning,” the article further states, “a startling proposition that means the cosmos could collapse in about 100 billion years.”

Theosophy has a very similar teaching: the “progressive development” of the universe, “worlds as well as atoms,” according to H. P. Blavatsky from a The Secret Doctrine 1:43 quote:

“… 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.”

Again, to Initiated Seers our universe, while full of important information, is “only one of an infinite number of Universes, all links in the great Cosmic chain of Universes,” she insisted. (The Secret Doctrine 1: 272-3):

“The system in question is no fancy of one or several isolated individuals,” she wrote: “It is the uninterrupted record covering thousands of generations of Seers whose respective experiences were made to test and

to verify the traditions passed orally by one early race to another, of the teachings of higher and exalted beings, who watched over the childhood of Humanity.

Those “Wise Men”, she explained, “had passed their lives in learning, not teaching. How did they do so?

“It is answered: by checking, testing, and verifying in every department of nature the traditions of old by the independent visions of great adepts; i.e., men who have developed and perfected their physical, mental, psychic, and spiritual organizations to the utmost possible degree.”

No vision of one adept was accepted till it was checked and confirmed by the visions — so obtained as to stand as independent evidence — of other adepts, and by centuries of experiences.

See more: [The Secret Doctrine 1:43]

In this view, each individual cosmos and corresponding single human life is the result and the effect of its predecessor. Under the never-erring law of Karma, every universe becomes “a cause as regards its successor.”

Instead of one ‘Big Bang,’ as recent standard model science describes the origin of the universe, Theosophy postulates conversely an infinite number of recurring universes, each one an improvement on the last based on lessons learned. Now, a newly held view in modern theoretical physics suggests a similar idea.

“There was not just one bang,” assert theoretical physicists Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok in their book Endless Universe, postulating a groundbreaking “Cyclic Universe” theory. According to the theory, the Big Bang “was not the beginning of time but the bridge to a past filled with endlessly repeating cycles of evolution.” Very close to the Theosophical view, it turns out.

What these scientists seem to be proposing is the law of periodicity, the Second of Three Fundamental Propositions of The Secret Doctrine.

“In Endless Universe, Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok, both distinguished theoretical physicists, present their bold new cosmology. Two world-renowned scientists present an audacious new vision of the cosmos that ‘steals the thunder from the Big Bang theory.'” —Wall Street Journal

The distinguished theoretical physicists propose that “the evolution of the universe is cyclic with big bangs occurring once every trillion or so.”

Such a ‘periodicity’ is would be a new beginning for modern science. But unlike the speculation of an “infinite cycle of titanic collisions,” Theosophy offers a much kinder and gentler solution tied to the cosmology offered by numerous “generations of initiated seers.”

Those findings conclude that we exist in a living universe, where everything to its core is alive, sustained by an eternal, perpetual rhythmic breathing or pulsation.

(We may be asleep at night, but thankfully, we continue breathing.) The Universe, according to the occult dynamics of The Secret Doctrine, does the same.

The Cosmic Heart

“The Absolute is characterized as the Supreme Eternal Heart of all existence because, although it is ever-present, it is at the same time never fathomable by thought or word. It is closer to us than anything we can ever say or think, just as there is nothing more fundamental than the beating of the heart, and there is nothing around us that is more palpable, if only we would listen, than the beating of the cosmic heart. Great beings have always shown us how to tune ourselves to the great heart of the cosmos.” – Raghavan Iyer, The Eye of Self-Existence

Dr. Deepak Chopra answers the question “why is the heart so important” in the compelling video below:

Meta-Physical

Every ‘new’ universe is a recapitulation of preexisting universal prototypes or ‘negatives’ (the hypothetical dark matter?) — records of prior systems stored in an ever-existing and ever-present Astral Light. Such prototypes are the building blocks of every new iteration of the cosmos.

Logically, an ‘infinite’ universe cannot get any ‘larger’ thus any ‘big bang’ expansion is an obvious misconception. The concept of expansion in Theosophical terms refers simply to a “change of condition,” (The Secret Doctrine 1:63):

This expansion, not being an increase in size — for infinite extension admits of no enlargement — was a change of condition. 

We suggest the process is analogous to an image appearing on the sensitized paper in a darkroom, in the old film process of photography. The image appears uniformly and gradually over the entire surface. Sort of like waking up in the morning, our world gradually dawns on us until we are fully aware of it, we are then in a ‘waking state’ of consciousness. It’s all about consciousness and awareness.

It’s time for a more sensible alternative to ‘explosion cosmology’, and the new scientific proponents of the Electric Universe theory would agree. Dr. Donald Scott systematically unravels the myths of Big Bang cosmology in his The Electric Sky —and he does so without resorting to black holes, dark matter, dark energy, neutron stars, magnetic reconnection, or any other fictions needed to prop up a failed theory.

The core of the Cosmos or One Reality, called “Be-ness,” in The Secret Doctrine (1:14) is symbolized by the term “The Great Breath” — “a symbol sufficiently graphic,” Blavatsky wrote, “to need no further elucidation.”

The universe manifests by ‘breathing’ out, and after long cycles withdraws, called ‘breathing in.’

“It is impossible to conceive anything without a cause,” H. P. Blavatsky also  wrote (The Secret Doctrine 1:44), and “the attempt to do so makes the mind a blank.” Invisible images as “metaphysical abstractions are the only conceivable cause of physical concretions.”

Continuing the teaching, The Secret Doctrine 1:47 states: “Dreamless sleep is one of the seven states of consciousness known in Oriental esotericism. In each of these states, a different portion of the mind comes into action — or as a Vedantin would express it, the individual is conscious in a different plane of his being.” 

“The term ‘dreamless sleep,’ in this case is applied allegorically to the Universe to express a condition somewhat analogous to that state of consciousness in man, which, not being remembered in a waking state, seems a blank, just as the sleep of the mesmerized [hypnotized] subject seems to him an unconscious blank when he returns to his normal condition, although he has been talking and acting as a conscious individual would.”  The Secret Doctrine (1:47)

Another way of analogizing this is Blavatsky’s metaphor of the composition of water: “The idea that things can cease to exist and still be, is a fundamental one in Eastern psychology. Under this apparent contradiction in terms, there rests a fact of Nature to realise which in the mind, rather than to argue about words, is the important thing. A familiar instance of a similar paradox is afforded by chemical combination.

The question whether Hydrogen and Oxygen cease to exist, when they combine to form water, is still a moot one, some arguing that since they are found again when the water is decomposed they must be there all the while.

“Others contending that as they actually turn into something totally different they must cease to exist as themselves for the time being; but neither side is able to form the faintest conception of the real condition of a thing, which has become something else and yet has not ceased to be itself.”

The Existence of Non-Being

“Existence as water may be said to be, for Oxygen and Hydrogen, a state of Non-being which is ‘more real being’ than their existence as gases — and it may faintly symbolize the condition of the Universe when it goes to sleep, or ceases to be, during the ‘Nights of Brahma’ — to awaken or reappear again, when the dawn of the new Manvantara recalls it to what we call existence.”

[The Secret Doctrine 1:54-5]

They phenomenalise in the form of the material Universe, by a process of conversion of metaphysics into physics.

Unexpressed thoughts and emotions are immaterial, i.e. ‘meta-physical,’ yet they underlie all our actions.

The Dance of Life

If lifetimes of individuals and universes can be thought of as dance productions, then every new scene is an adventure in consciousness, pushing us to ever greater self-awareness and spiritual harmony — if only we become wise enough to embody the wisdom of the adept choreographers of humanity down the ages.

Thus our lives ought to be a series of “progressive awakenings,” driven by the lessons of our individual, family, racial, national and global experiences.

Every person settles into his or her own unique rhythm called by W. Q. Judge in his Essay on Chapter II of the Bhagavad-Gita, the “mysterious power of meditation”— also called “a lifetime’s meditation”, a dynamic mix of past karma, and present motives and actions. (Notes on Chapter 8).

Each person finds her/himself challenged at unique points on an ascending evolutionary spiral-like rhythm, paying off old debts, making new ones — pushing upward or slipping back as our minds and hearts awaken, or not, to new opportunities.

It is a creative power we hold in our own hands that is not dictated by any external god or church.

“If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined,” Thoreau wrote (Walden), “he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

The choices that shape our character each lifetime, are self-chosen—compounded of physical, sensory, emotional, mental, psychic and spiritual energies.

The ancient Egyptian judgment after death symbolically weighed the individual’s heart against the “feather of truth.”

The challenges of life, the occult doctrine notes, are the result of our being stuck in a personal plane of consciousness, a world view. Whatever that may be, “both we and the things belonging to that plane are, for the time being, our only realities.”

Then, as our spiritual insight grows, “we perceive that during the stages through which we have passed we mistook shadows for realities, and the upward progress of the Ego is 

a series of progressive awakenings, each advance bringing with it the idea that now, at last, we have reached ‘reality;’ but only when we shall have reached the absolute Consciousness, and blended our own with it, shall we be free from the delusions produced by Maya [Illusion].

• H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine,
  Vol. 1, Pg. 35   Stanza I

Edgar Cayce on Soul Mates

As believed and taught for thousands of years, reincarnation is the process of experiencing a series of lifetimes, for the purpose of soul development. Edgar Cayce discussed this process in nearly two-thousand of his life readings. According to Cayce, our lives do not begin at the moment of our physical birth. Our natural state is Spirit — and in this state, we have existed for millennia.

Changes

“The great psychic and spiritual change now taking place in the realm of the human Soul,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in The Tidal Wave, “is quite remarkable.” This sometimes confusing sea change “asserts itself,” Blavatsky wrote,

amid a loud din of busy, boisterous tongues, a clash of public opinion.

Such a signal event began towards the beginning of the last quarter of the 19th century, she wrote, “and will end — so says a mystic prophecy— either for the weal or the woe of civilized humanity.”

Frontiers of Science

Until recently, I assumed that astronomers and astrophysicists knew what they were talking about.  Now – I’m sure they do not.

“A revolution is beginning in astronomy and cosmology that will rival the one set off by Copernicus and Galileo. The discipline of electric plasma physics – which until lately has been outside the realm of astronomy – is quickly displacing many of the outmoded theories of traditional cosmology and astrophysics. We now know that cosmic space is full of electricity (electric plasma) and over the last several decades the study of this form of matter has developed into an established body of scientific knowledge.”  

– Donald E. Scott, PhD., The Electric Sky

The Awakening

“But the great change is not effected in solemn silence, nor is it perceived only by the few,” H. P. Blavatsky wrote in The Tidal Wave. “By comparison, the roar even of the noisiest political agitation seems like the rustling of the young forest foliage, on a warm spring day.

Verily the Spirit in man, so long hidden out of public sight, so carefully concealed and so far exiled from the arena of modern learning, has at last awakened.

“It now asserts itself and is loudly re-demanding its unrecognized yet ever legitimate rights. It refuses to be any longer trampled under the brutal foot of Materialism — speculated upon by the Churches — and made a fathomless source of income by those who have self-constituted themselves its universal custodians.”

– H. P. Blavatsky,  The Tidal Wave

There is a road

“There is a road, steep and thorny, beset with perils of every kind, but yet a road, and it leads to the very heart of the Universe: I can tell you how to find those who will show you the secret gateway that opens inward only, and closes fast behind the neophyte for evermore. There is no danger that dauntless courage cannot conquer; there is no trial that spotless purity cannot pass through; there is no difficulty that strong intellect cannot surmount. For those who win onwards there is reward past all telling—the power to bless and save humanity; for those who fail, there are other lives in which success may come.”

• H. P. Blavatsky, Collected Writings

♥