The Point of the Circle

One of the most famous symbol, common to East and West, is the Center and the Circle. The circle, because it has no beginning or end, is symbolic of eternity. The Center stands for the One, immobile in the midst of everything. From this Supreme Point, Source of all Creations, emanate rays in all direction. The circle represents the Many, or all the phenomena ever changing outside. Like an image of a wheel, the circumference represent the manifestation produced by all the spokes emanating from the center.  The Point within the Circle was hailed among all the nations as the Beginning and the End, the Cause and Effect, the Principle of Life and Action which pervades, animates and governs the universe.  

As you look at the hindu yantra, allow your eyes to focus on its center. This dot in the center is called the Bindu, which represents the unity that underlies all the diversity of the physical world. Bindu is the sparkling, infinitesimal dot, the spark, the blue pearl from which worlds, unfurl and into which they curl back. And from bindu, says Hindu religious thought, came energy and time and space, perhaps the first light followed by the first sound.  According to Vedantic texts, there was none before the creation except Brahman, the pure Being, the non-manifested, the undifferentiated Maha Bindu, the Supreme Point, the Conscience-Energy-Potentiality. The Ishvara's symbol is the Circle with the point in the Center.

 We read in Chuang Tzu: "The Point which is the pivot of the norm is the immobile Center of a circumference, on the periphery of which rolled all contingence, all distinctions and individualities." Egyptians called God as the Center of everything, or Tem, the pivot of all stars.
This Center and this circumference, besides, express the relation between our personal inside and external "part". If man identified oneself with the manifested and transitory world, then he will undergo the fate of this world. And the Center represented the Real Self in man. In every human world there is a place where God has manifested Himself to spread His grace therein. It is our life, wherever we are, we are always connected with the middle of a sacred circle.

The point appeared in the circle

And was not;

But it was the dot

That the circle begot.

The point appears

As a circle, as it revolves

In the eyes of him

Who a circle draws.

When the point

Completed the circle

Its beginning and end

Were one.

When the compass

Did the circle complete

It was wrapped up

And rested its feet.

Without existence

Not-being are we;

We who are Not

And You existence free.

I said the whole world was His dream;

Then I saw His dream was He.

Sweeter than the words of our guide,

Nimatullah knows no other words.

---Shah Nematollah Vali