All our experiences are like that haunting scent: situations recur with almost boring familiarity until we have mastered them in the light of the previous time round. The more we do this, the steeper the gradient, which is the measure of our growth. The spiral we travel round life is the means we have to compare ourselves with ourselves, and discover how much we have changed since we were last in the city, met our brother, or celebrated Christmas. Time itself is cyclic, and by the spiral of its returning seasons we review the progress and growth of our own understanding. Ours is the spiral house we build to keep us from life's continuous outpouring, from an otherwise unchecked flow into the unknown. Since what is unknown has power over us, we should otherwise be vulnerable as the snail would be if his shell grew long and straight. The familiarity of life's experiences curls round and protects us, creating those mysterious mountain views of half-concealed windings which keep us bright with speculation and anticipation. The steepness of the straight path is prohibitve for most of us. The mystic calls this the 'short cut', the Path of Illumination; but that which lights the mystic's way blinds the ordinary man, unprepared for the light of full knowledge. For him, unveiled truth is death; instead he must make his gradual ascent, allowing himself the protecting reassurance of its gentle windings." "It is significant that, while the simple two-dimensional spiral is one of the most ancient symbols for eternity, it does not ever seem to have been a symbol for the Absolute. This is because it is not a whole; it can, by its very nature, never be complete. The implication here is that all our conceptions of the Absolute must be more than unlimited extension: they must contain. In all traditions God is seen as containing everything within himself. All manifestation extends from, and yet is contained within, the point, to which it also returns. So, while the two-dimensional spiral starts in infinity and extends to infinity, passing through all the intermediary coils of manifestation in time and the relative world, it is only symbolic of the spherical vortex. This, one of the most ancient symbols known to man, is familiar as the Yin Yang sign; and all though this was restricted to the Far East, the spherical vortex existed in the West possibly even earlier. Certainly it is found as the double spirals carved by Megalithic man. When the flat double spiral is moved up into three dimensions, it has its origin and end in the opposite poles of a central axis: the central infinity, or axis of consciousness. The spiral has actually returned by winding on to its source. Its 'end' is not a second and therfore relativating infinity, as implied by the single spiral. The duplication of the One is simply the One looking at itself, and in so doing becoming subject and object: this is the duality by which all is known. Keeping this dual picture in mind, we now have a third element: relation. This distance between the subject and object is knowledge; hence, in Japanese, the word meaning 'to understand' (wakaru) literally means 'to be divided'." Jill Purce, The Mystic Spiral  |