universe.




The Unfolding of Consciousness



One of those pregnant and significant ideas which Theosophy
scatters so lavishly around is thisÄthat the same scale is
repeated over and over again, the same succession of events in
larger or smaller cycles. If you understand one cycle, you
understand the whole. The same laws by which a solar system is
builded go to the building up of the system of man. The laws by
which the Self unfolds his powers in the universe, from the
fire-mist up to the LOGOS, are the same laws of consciousness
which repeat themselves in the universe of man. If you understand
them in the one, you can equally understand them in the other.
Grasp them in the small, and the large is revealed to you. Grasp
them in the large, and the small becomes intelligible to you.

The great unfolding from the stone to the God goes on through
millions of years, through aeons of time. But the long unfolding
that takes place in the universe, takes place in a shorter
time-cycle within the limit of humanity, and this in a cycle so
brief that it seems as nothing beside the longer one. Within a
still briefer cycle a similar unfolding takes place in the
individualÄ rapidly, swiftly, with all the force of its past
behind it. These forces that manifest and unveil themselves in