History DOES Repeat Itself by bheat23

I'm sure someone has come up with a similar theory to this, so apologies in advance if so. I'm also fully prepared for the possibility (even probability) that upon another episode airing this will be completely debunked, but I think it ears mentioning for the time being.

The more I think about things, it seems that time really is on a loop. The analogy of time being a record has been used repeatedly, in theories and even on air. I actually picture time in a more modern sense - it's kind of like a CD on repeat. Each song is its own track, and upon the conclusion of the final track, the repeat function starts the whole thing over again, with everything playing out as it did before until someone turns off the repeat function. This seems to fit in with what is happening on LOST pretty well, at least based on how I am picturing things.

Look at it this way: Each arrival of a group of people is a new track. The ancient influences on the island (mostly Egyptian) would be one track; the Black Rock's arrival in the mid-1800s would be another; the US soldiers and the nuke testing another; DHARMA in the 1970s another; and finally our Losties and Oceanic 815 another. It is my belief that these (and very possibly others, with all the time in between some of the arrival points) events are repeating over and over. We've been told "It only ends once, and everything before that is just progress"; as the CD keeps playing, it slowly becomes scratched and allows things to play a little differently. Sometimes the song skips (our Left-Behinders flashing through time), sometimes things just stop (time passing differently on the island), but it will continue playing until someone stops the repeat (our unseen end-game).

I think we have been shown some evidence that everything is happening over and over again already. Some examples:

-The magical movement of little Ben's gunshot wound from one side to the other. The first time everything happened, he was shot on one side; another time it was on the other side.

-The picture frame in Miles' client's home changing from before he went upstairs to when he came back down.

-Richard's appearance to young Ben in the 1970s. This was the only time we have seen him all scraggly and dirty and unkempt; maybe this was (somehow) in the first loop, right after he first arrived on the island on the Black Rock (which still hasn't been proven as correct, but is a pretty good bet based on the info we currently have), and all of his other appearances have been in subsequent iterations of the timeline. If this is true, it would mean he was granted his immortality/specialness early on, and has been performing his duties for a longer time than we thought.

The "flash-sideways" timeline also tends to indicate something has happened in regards to a loop. Things are still playing out in a similar fashion, just no longer on the island. I am of the belief - as others are - that the "side-flash" is really more like an epilogue/season 6A-type thing; everything that happens in the side-line comes AFTER something else, and it will end up being the final loop. We've been shown the island underwater, so the events of the past cannot happen there, but they can still happen in some fashion. We've seen some of it already - Jack saves Charlie (who thinks who should have died), Kate is involved in the birth (and possible raising?) of Aaron, and very possibly others that we will see in coming episodes. Because the island no longer exists as a physical, reachable place, this is the FINAL LOOP, where it (mankind?) will only end once.

Thoughts/comments are welcome! Sound off!