eternal return

What is clear and concise can't deal with reality,

for what is real is to be surrounded by mystery.- James Joyce

What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.'-- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche  (The Gay Science with a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs)

Eternal return (also knownWebmail  as "eternal recurrence") is a concept which posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur in a self-similar form an infinite number of times. The concept has roots in ancient Egypt, and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics. With the decline of antiquity and the spread of Christianity, the concept fell into disuse, though Friedrich Nietzsche resurrected it on the grounds that it provides a reason for affirming life after the decline of theism.

the basic premise:

sooner or later, the same state will recur <-----> <---- > the number of possible changes is finite <----> matter is constantly changing its state < ----> the universe is limited in extent and contains a finite amount of matter< ---- > time is infinite< --- > the universe has no starting or ending state< ----> matter is constantly changing its state <---- > the number of possible changes is finite  <---> sooner or later, the same state will recur <----->

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"Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn;

that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning,

and under every deep a lower deep opens."--Emerson

The concept of cyclical patterns is very prominent in Indian religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism among others. The Wheel of life represents an endless cycle of birth, life, and death from which one seeks liberation. In Tantric Buddhism, a wheel of time concept known as the Kalachakra expresses the idea of an endless cycle of existence and knowledge.

lanterta nruter

"But since Force is thus inherent in existence and it is the nature of Force to have this double or alternative potentiality of rest and movement, that is to say, of self-concentration in Force and self-diffusion in Force, the question of the how of the movement, its possibility, initiating impulsion or impelling cause does not arise. For we can easily, then, conceive that this potentiality must translate itself either as an alternative rhythm of rest and movement succeeding each other in Time or else as an eternal self-concentration of Force in immutable existence with a superficial play of movement, change and formation like the rising and falling of waves on the surface of the ocean. And this superficial play---we are necessarily speaking in inadequate images--may be either coeval with the self-concentration and itself also eternal or it may begin and end in Time and be resumed by a sort of constant rhythm; it is then not eternal in continuity but eternal in recurrence" -Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine