In recorded history, time has always been a enigma. To some time is merely a regulator. Everything they have to do is divided into hours, minutes and seconds. In the modern world it is normal to be slaves to time. To others, time is seen as a continuous subtle thread to which all events and scenes are tied. Whichever, time stands as the measure of processes. Though time is not tangible, it can be understood. The nature of time can be described by the processes which it measures, or in other words, the processes which take place within time.

All the processes of nature are cyclic; day and night, the four seasons, the phases of the moon, the motion of the planets, the cycles of water and carbon, etc. yet scientists still cling to the idea that historical time is linear, that there was at some moment a beginning.

Human beings thought that the earth was flat until it was discovered that one could travel in a straight direction for a certain distance and arrive at the same point. So after the invention of the telescope and the voyages of the great navigators we had to change our understanding of the world, and in this way all subsequent scientific theories have continued to change and become more refined. Through the ‘apparatus’ of meditation and spiritual knowledge we penetrate new dimensions and come to a cyclic understanding of time.

Most would agree that time and spaces are infinite. Even the symbol for infinity, the figure eight written sideways, suggests something has no beginning or end. One can safely say that the law of cause and effect operates forever. Each point in the cyclic flow of events gives cause to the next point, until eventually it arrives at the same point that it begins from. Time as a cycle is the only possible way that we can bring infinity and the law of cause and effect together and ties them neatly into one ‘unified field’.

What does cyclic time imply?

The most important point of all is that if time is cyclic, there can be neither beginning nor end to anything else, because everything exists in the physical universe with time. Everything is eternal and can be measured in terms of space time co-ordinates.

If there was creation from nothing, then we are left with the difficulty of trying to explain how God was created. As it is reasonable to accept that there was no beginning to God, it is just as reasonable to accept that souls and matter had no beginning. With a cyclic view of time we need not lose time in the dilemma of creation theories but see the universe as it is; a complexity of energies, physical and metaphysical, that both expand and contract, that can neither be created nor destroyed and which are bound by the laws of cause and effect to a never beginning and never ending swirl of change. The processes of integration and disintegration of forms and events never ceases but the components that come together to make up those forms and events, atoms and souls, while retaining their intrinsic ‘individualness’ merely pass through a series of changes of position and function.

Cyclic time implies that God neither creates matter nor souls, but all three ‘forces’ co-exist and interact externally to produce all phenomena.