  Inflationary cosmologies, regarded as dynamical systems, have rather simple
asymptotic behavior, insofar as the cosmic baldness principle holds.
Nevertheless, in the early stages of an inflationary process, the dynamical
behavior may be very complex. In this paper, we show how even a simple
inflationary scenario, based on Linde's ``chaotic inflation'' proposal,
manifests nontrivial dynamical effects such as the breakup of invariant tori,
formation of cantori and Arnol'd's diffusion. The relevance of such effects is
highlighted by the fact that even the occurrence or not of inflation in a given
Universe is dependent upon them.
