8. The Origin Of The Cycle

In the first chapter we mentioned succinctly the different sources of rhythm that could be at the origin of the cycles of the mind and we talked about the existence of a clock that would determine these rhythms. We said that this clock could be either a characteristic of the mental field itself, or located in a plane other than the mind from which it would propel the rhythm.

This clock could be a rhythm of life, derived for example from biological clocks: we rejected this hypothesis because life, with its short cycles, did not seem to be able to generate cycles of several thousand years.

It could also be a rhythm derived from some sub-matter or supra-mental plane which is still completely unknown to us: we cannot rule out this hypothesis, but we have no elements to go further.

This leads us to consider the last hypothesis, namely a rhythm derived from matter, resulting either from fields of electromagnetic forces, or from indirect consequences of the race of planets or galaxies, or any other material phenomenon.

Without going into a detailed study that would take us outside the scope of this book, we present some additional clarifications to what we said in the first chapter concerning the astronomical cycles and the theory of paleoclimates (All the indications given below concerning the theory of paleoclimates have been taken from the following books: André Berger Le climat de la terre, De Boeck Université 1992, and Climat. Alain Foucault, Fayard 1993).

It is a relatively new science that was originally developed by the Yugoslav Milutin Milankovitch in the thirties, but rejected by the scientific community until 1982, when it was confirmed by various researchers, including the astronomer-mathematician-climatologist André Berger. This theory shows that climatic variations are linked to irregularities in the movement of the Earth in its orbit – themselves resulting from the action of the Moon and other planets of the solar system (gravitational phenomena) – which cause changes in the exposure to sunlight. These irregularities depend on three major elements (the number of parameters in play is such that the cycles that have been highlighted must always be considered an average, not as precise values): the phenomenon of precession of the equinoxes, the obliquity of the earth’s axis of rotation and the eccentricity or shape of the ellipse of the Earth’s trajectory around the sun.

Considering the very long-term level (the parameter is eccentricity), cycles of 400,000 years and glacial cycles of approximately 115,000 years were observed. Each cycle includes a warm period followed by a cold period of equivalent duration. The last full cycle started 120,000 years ago and ended about 11,000 years ago. The beginning of the new cycle marks the entry into the Neolithic and an acceleration of history that is not found in previous eras. The definition of the Neolithic, such as the transition from a predatory society to a productive society, is not unanimous, as this transition has taken very diverse forms in terms of places and times, even if this is of little importance in the context of our study.

It was during this period that the rains returned to the north of Africa and no doubt there were strong climatic anomalies that caused aberrant floods in Egypt, with water rising more than eight or nine metres above the plains. (Béatrix Midant-Reynes, The Prehistory of Egypt: from the first Egyptians to the first Pharaohs) These elements are reminiscent of the “deluges” reported by various traditions that marked the passage to a new era. The obliquity parameter defines a cycle of 41,000 years.

The precession cycle of the equinoxes, due to the fact that the axis of rotation of the earth does not remain parallel to itself but describes a cone, has a duration of 26,000 years. But the variation in exposure to sunlight and atmospheric composition actually responds to more complex cycles of 19,000 and 23,000 years.

At even larger timescales, cyclical phenomena already appear to be at the level of distanciation and separation of continents. Our current phase of distanciation, which saw the explosion of Gondwana, the southern continent, into several separate continents, would, according to the geologists, be part of the third cycle of distanciation and rapprochement of the continents.

We also know from recent studies that the Gulf Stream has stopped or slowed down several times in the past, creating or accompanying climatic variations. Apart from these great glacial cycles, the influence of solar stains on terrestrial electromagnetic fields has been highlighted. For example, the Middle Ages experienced a decrease in the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field by about 12%, which is considerable, for about ten centuries (between 500 and 1500). This phenomenon is what makes Robert Delort (Life in the Middle Ages) say that people in the Middle Ages received fewer high-energy particles than we do, and that the sun they knew was not quite the same as ours.

Other phenomena, such as the shift of the magnetic poles of the earth will give us more precise elements concerning the cycles to which mankind is subjected, when they are better known. The enumeration of these different rhythms shows us that the problem is complex and that there is still a long way to go before finding a precise correlation with the cerebral functions.

We suggested the possibility of an influence of the composition of the atmosphere – and in particular of the variation of the rate of CO2 – on the brain that could lead to the dominance of one hemisphere over the other to the rhythm of Glaciations in the first chapter. Even if this influence were correct, it would still be necessary to elucidate the question of the specialisation of the two hemispheres which leads us to hypotheses – of the morphogenetic fields developed by Rupert Sheldrake. The very rapid variation of this rate in the coming years, resulting from the warming of the atmosphere, could then induce changes in the brain.

This theory precedes the existence of any form of a “field of form” which pushes any atom or cell to take a place and a function adapted to the place it occupies and one which pushes the shape to grow to correspond to the shape of the preexisting field. These morphogenetic fields would have the property to resonate, instantly, no matter the distance. So the information would be instantly transmitted to all points of the universe. This is in a way the principle converse to that of the hologram: if a part changes, the whole changes. Here again, we echo the words of the elders who tell us that “everything is acting”.

One of the characteristic properties of the morphogenetic fields would tend to show that the more people go through a given experience, the easier this experience becomes for those who follow. This would explain that acquisitions that took millennia to develop become almost instinctive at a time in history. The innate would be nothing more than an acquired experience that has become instinctive.

The last hypothesis we have to look at is the existence of force fields that would be totally unknown to us at present and that would regulate the human mind according to the cycles we have proposed. We are obliged to recognise that in the known universe everything is rhythm, pulsation, vibration, from the elementary particles to the most extensive constellations. Even the universe could be the result of a vast inhale/exhale, at least in some of its regions. According to the quasi-stationary universe model developed by Fred Hoyle which challenges the Big Bang theory.

Stephen Hawking, a contemporary mathematician, after contending with Penrose the idea that a big-bang singularity must have existed, provided that the theory of relativity was correct, changed his mind in the 1990s and challenged the existence of such a phenomenon.

It would not surprise us beyond measure if these grandiose-sized rhythms were accompanied by force fields at very high frequencies. Science today knows and works on frequencies up to X-rays, i.e. 10¹⁶ to 10¹⁹ Hz, but Gamma rays between 10¹⁹ and 10²⁶ Hz rays and cosmic rays from 10²⁶ onwards are almost totally unknown.

If we cannot demonstrate their existence, it is not possible to scientifically prove that such fields do not exist either. The question that arises then, assuming their existence and influence on man, concerns their nature, or at least their sphere of influence: why would they act on the mind of man as powers of separation, of individuation on one side, and as powers of fusion, of union, on the other? We may think that these vast cosmic movements have little to do with our wretched humanity struggling on a tiny planet in some random galaxy in the universe.

This question can only be answered by metaphysical reflections or intuition. In fact, the answer is always the same: we forget that the universe is One. What is acting on one level necessarily also acts on all other levels.

Without developing this subject that would lead us too far away, we can state that the universe seems driven by currents of forces that correspond sometimes to a distanciation from the centre, sometimes to a rapprochement. And this occurs, whether at the highest levels of the mind or at the most material levels. If the universe is One, and Nature has organised the plans from the mind, life until the densest planes of matter namely the two brains, in such a way that there are physical supports (whether they are merely receptacles of these forces or endowed with capacities of autonomous action within certain limits), this seems to make sense.

This alternation would thus act in all planes, by subdividing and particularising itself into multiple rhythms, sometimes fixed, sometimes changing, often unknown to us or incomprehensible. That rhythms affect the mind, which is derived from life, itself born from matter where it was latent, does not seem surprising. How these rhythms are linked to the links of life and the cosmos is still an enigma.

The previous answers allow us to reformulate our first hypothesis in a more complete way: We have seen that the mind is made up of two poles, one whose role is to maintain the separate forms and to push – towards – fulfilment and – perfection, and the other, receptive to the essence of truth, which is responsible for maintaining these forms in Unity.

Fusion and separation were the generic terms we used to qualify these two aspects of the mind. They are probably only the reflection or densification of principles derived from the higher planes that were called, at different levels, Yin/Yang in the Oriental tradition and Purusha/Prakriti in India. Purusha represents the consciousness concentrated within itself, which will become the intuition, the force of return within oneself, aspiration towards Union, and Prakriti, the executing energy, which descending the echelons of consciousness, allows any idea, any form, to achieve the perfection of realisation that it carries within itself, initially in the form of a germ.

The observation shows us that these two principles are constantly at work in nature where they operate together, but either in separate spaces or in separate times. Indeed it seems that matter cannot simultaneously crystallise and merge in one same place, two galaxies cannot simultaneously come closer and move away from each other, and nature cannot simultaneously let life burst out like in summer and concentrate itself within the Earth like in winter. But what is winter here is summer elsewhere. Matter and life continually undergo cycles of alternation, but as long as life is not too mentalised, it seems to be done in the most complete harmony: the action, the realisation takes place exactly according to the laws of what must be, according to the perception of the nature of the real; in other words the two parts of the mind act in close collaboration and in perfect harmony.

Undomesticated animals still have this immediate perception-action ability. However, there came a time when man, in his evolution, had to leave his customary herd mentality and embark on the path of individuation. So it seems that this is the moment of imbalance: if man was created for freedom, then there must necessarily be a moment when he loses consciousness of his divine nature, of the essence of reality, to assume his own individual nature. It is during this process of maturation of the mind that man has lost the ability to perceive the reality of things by intuition. This was called “The Fall” in Genesis.

But that does not mean in any way that the power of Union has disappeared, otherwise Nature would have shown signs of imbalance, which is not the case. Rather, it is a human sensitivity that has not refined itself to the height of the conquests of the mind of reason, and thus was no longer able to perceive the phenomena of reality that had receded in the background by this phenomenon of alternation whose nature we try to identify in this book. Thus, this sensitivity which some wise beings managed to develop within themselves, prompted them to continually remind men of their participation in unity, their divine nature: all the sacred books, all the paths of inner progression are aimed – at this one and only thing: remind and enable man to realise unity with Reality, which we can call God, or any other name we please. And this path can only be made by contact with the source of unity within oneself.

If the two aspects of fusion and separation had been maintained with equal intensity, man could not have emerged from a herd animal mentality and conquered his freedom. And as we have seen, the rhythm existed at all levels, it means that there must be a cosmic plan that plays with both aspects of itself, projecting them cyclically into its manifestation. As long as man is not able to achieve a perfect development of his mind, and therefore of his sensitivity, he cannot keep himself in the middle of the path of righteousness and will shift sometimes to the side of faith, and sometimes to the side of reason. Until he has solved the problem of duality within him, he will be subject to the determinism of Nature. And he can solve the problem of duality only when he gives back its exact function to each of the parties:

• To the intuitive mind, the vision of what needs to be done in all its details
• To the logical mind, the silence and the timely execution of what is perceived by the intuition.

Our time ascribes such supremacy to the separative pole, to reason, and therefore to man as its representative, that we risk it immediately considering our proposal unacceptable. In its extreme aspect, it considers periods of faith as dark “Middle Ages” where the sound lights of reason call for healthful inquisitions. Like St. John’s, it claims that “of all wild beasts, there is none more damaging than the woman.” Or, like Plato, it “thanked the gods that they created him free and not slave, man and not woman.” This form of thinking rests on a blind trust in reason and its right hand man: progress, which is posed as superior in the absolute and at all times. It is so rooted in history and imbued with our collective psychology that it is sometimes difficult to discern all the implications. On the one hand, it is at the origin of the idea of democracy, as the most perfect completion of the mind of reason in relation to the organisation of societies. – It locks us up little by little into its own failure, of which we do not know how to escape without questioning our sacrosanct Western democracies.

Everyone knows the history of the evolution of morals and thought in this field of male supremacy and our intention is not to rewrite the “Second Sex” of Simone de Beauvoir. We will simply borrow some of her observations as an illustration of what we are saying. She notes that as far as history goes, women have always been subordinate to man, that their dependence is not the consequence of an event or a fate, that it did not happen and that it is partly because it eludes the accidental nature of the historical fact that otherness, i.e. the way in which man defines woman as other, appears as an absolute. It is on this otherness that man bases his supremacy. Apart from this historical development, Simone de Beauvoir confesses to finding no justification for the domination of man: “This world has always belonged to the males: no reason we have proposed for it seemed sufficient”. She contests as imaginary any theory which would assert that a true reign of women existed in the primitive times preceding ancient Greece, according to Engels’s thesis, even if femininity was honored as our Mother the Earth, caregiver of Abundance and fertility.

This absolute character of the supremacy of man that Simone de Beauvoir has emphasized, is the basis of an argument that we will find in different forms which all the fact that they categorically deny, often unavowedly, any gender equality have in common. They are all based on an extremely powerful postulate: the rule of ontological and metaphysical law of the masculine over the feminine. And since, in a period of separation, where God the Father reigns, the spirit is associated with the masculine, the verticality, and by extension, the good, and the matter to the feminine, to horizontality and to evil, it implies in fact a superiority of man over woman. This opinion and all its variants will no longer be sustainable in a time when the most advanced science invites us to consider that matter is consciousness, fact that was already known in the early Vedic times that spoke of the fire of the Spirit, Agni, hidden in the depths of matter.

If the hypothesis I have offered at the beginning of this book is accurate, if the shift from the separative mind to the intuitive mind really takes place, not only for a small, but also for a great cycle, then, while it were men who through all ages and in all civilisations, for more than twelve thousand years, serve as a guide to indicate the ways to access the divine within the soul, it is undoubtedly the woman who, through her intimacy with the body, will precede the men on the paths that lead to the divine hidden within Matter. Then she will fully fulfil her role as initiator to mysteries that can never be called Pagan again.