The Great Breath, that basic Life whose com plete cycle constitutes a day and a night of Parabrahman - a period of 622,080,000,000,000 of our years - by its out-breathing and in-breathing measures the eons from the birth of one universe to that of another. The words out-breathing and in-breathing symbolize a process which may be superficially described thus:

Imagine a point of all-surpassing brilliancy amidst seemingly empty space, and appearing not far from the center of what now are the zodiacal constellations. Imagine that point expanding to an orb larger than the sun seems to be, and afterward filling the entire circle of the Zodiac. Ever enlarging its circumference, through ages and ages, that Life Globe eventually attains to a limit which fixes the dimensions of the Universe for one great evolutionary epoch. To human sense the Absolute Light of that transcendent globe would be absolute darkness, and even to the loftiest zodiacal intelligences, for instance, those of Taurus with its Pleiadic suns, that Light would be seen as through a veil.

Everywhere outside the circumference of the universal Life Globe, lethargic world stuff - more and more dormant according to its distance from that Globe - would fill an abysm limited or unlimited; but who can determine? The rim of the Cosmic Globe will indicate the advance into the domain of darkness which Positive Light, associated with negative light, has made in that day of Parabrahman, which, like all preceding days, began at midnight and will end at the next midday. At that time the circumference of the universal globe will begin to contract, and so continue during 311,040,000,000,000 years. Then only the infinitesimal point will remain. Even this will diminish, and so disappear for a moment of universal time. There is warrant for the belief that the present universe has reached its maximum, and is now in process of contraction, but ages upon ages must elapse ere the circumscribing process reaches the outskirts of our solar system, then in its culminating rebirth.

In the chapter "Heart Centers," it was suggested that Positive Light might obey some demand sourced within itself. Our opinion is that, like negative light, Positive Light periodically requires a subjective condition into which it retires during each Cosmic Night, there to receive unknown and probably unknowable benefits, while at the same time relieving negative life of the stress and strain of the Great Day.

The astrologers of most ancient times knew that, in a far off Maha Manvantara, the Universal Life Globe at its utmost had expanded only to the circumference of the zodiacal circle, whose inlaying constellations since then have but little changed their configurations despite many rebirths. Then, as now, the zodiacal intelligences were governed from the Heart Center of the Universal Globe. However, as the universe grew, the rulership of the newer star-clusters and single suns - our own among them - was delegated to those hierarchies; hence for the star-clusters and suns indicated they are the Lords of Karma. Therefore originated the hoary saying that all wisdom and knowledge is sourced in the Zodiac.

By some of the ancient Wise, it was held that a secondary and even a tertiary rulership of worlds and systems of worlds had been delegated to certain constellated intelligences beyond the Zodiac. Hence the astrological systems of these enlightened star-readers considered many influences originating in certain outlying regions. We regret that much knowledge necessary to correct astrological castings, disappeared from the outer world at about the beginning of the Christian Era.

M.