SPIRIT AND MATTER.
In commencing a course of lectures on Mental Science, it is
somewhat
difficult for the lecturer to fix upon the best method of opening the
subject. It can be approached from many sides, each with some peculiar
advantage of its own; but, after careful deliberation, it appears to me
that, for the purpose of the present course, no better starting-point
could be selected than the relation between Spirit and Matter. I select
this starting-point because the distinction--or what we believe to be
such--between them is one with which we are so familiar that I can
safely assume its recognition by everybody; and I may, therefore, at
once state this distinction by using the adjectives which we habitually
apply as expressing the natural opposition between the two--living
spirit and dead matter. These terms express our current
impression of the opposition between spirit and matter with sufficient
accuracy, and considered only from the point of view of outward
appearances this impression is no doubt correct. The general consensus
of mankind is right in trusting the evidence of our senses, and any
system which tells us that we are not to do so will never obtain a
permanent footing in a sane and healthy community. There is nothing
wrong in the evidence conveyed to a healthy mind by the senses of a
healthy body, but the point where error creeps in is when we come to
judge of the meaning of this testimony. We are accustomed to judge only
by external appearances and by certain limited significances which we
attach to words; but when we begin to enquire into the real meaning of
our words and to analyse the causes which give rise to the appearances,
we find our old notions gradually falling off from us, until at last we
wake up to the fact that we are living in an entirely different world
to that we formerly recognized. The old limited mode of thought has
imperceptibly slipped away, and we discover that we have stepped out
into a new order of things where all is liberty and life. This is the
work of an enlightened intelligence resulting from persistent
determination to discover what truth really is irrespective of any
preconceived notions from whatever source derived, the determination to
think honestly for ourselves instead of endeavouring to get our
thinking done for us. Let us then commence by enquiring what we really
mean by the livingness which we attribute to spirit and the deadness
which we attribute to matter.
At first we may be disposed to say that livingness consists in
the
power of motion and deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into
the most recent researches of science will soon show us that this
distinction does not go deep enough. It is now one of the
fully-established facts of physical science that no atom of what we
call "dead matter" is without motion. On the table before me lies a
solid lump of steel, but in the light of up-to-date science I know that
the atoms of that seemingly inert mass are vibrating with the most
intense energy, continually dashing hither and thither, impinging upon
and rebounding from one another, or circling round like miniature solar
systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex activity is enough to
bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may lie inert upon the
table; but so far from being destitute of the element of motion it is
the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with a
swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It is,
therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the
distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we
must go deeper than that. The solution of the problem will never be
found by comparing Life with what we call deadness, and the reason for
this will become apparent later on; but the true key is to be found by
comparing one degree of livingness with another. There is, of course,
one sense in which the quality of livingness does not admit of degrees;
but there is another sense in which it is entirely a question of
degree. We have no doubt as to the livingness of a plant, but we
realize that it is something very different from the livingness of an
animal. Again, what average boy would not prefer a fox-terrier to a
goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it that the boy himself is an
advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the dog, and the boy are all
equally alive; but there is a difference in the quality of
their livingness about which no one can have any doubt, and no one
would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of
intelligence. In whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find
that what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately
measured by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater
intelligence that places the animal higher in the scale of being than
the plant, the man higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher
than the savage. The increased intelligence calls into activity modes
of motion of a higher order corresponding to itself. The higher the
intelligence, the more completely the mode of motion is under its
control: and as we descend in the scale of intelligence, the descent is
marked by a corresponding increase in automatic motion not
subject to the control of a self-conscious intelligence. This descent
is gradual from the expanded self-recognition of the highest human
personality to that lowest order of visible forms which we speak of as
"things," and from which self-recognition is entirely absent.
We see, then, that the livingness of Life consists in
intelligence--in other words, in the power of Thought; and we may
therefore say that the distinctive quality of spirit is Thought, and,
as the opposite to this, we may say that the distinctive quality of
matter is Form. We cannot conceive of matter without form. Some form
there must be, even though invisible to the physical eye; for matter,
to be matter at all, must occupy space, and to occupy any particular
space necessarily implies a corresponding form. For these reasons we
may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the distinctive
quality of spirit is Thought and the distinctive quality of matter is
Form. This is a radical distinction from which important consequences
follow, and should, therefore, be carefully noted by the student.
Form implies extension in space and also limitation within
certain
boundaries. Thought implies neither. When, therefore, we think of Life
as existing in any particular form we associate it with the
idea of extension in space, so that an elephant may be said to consist
of a vastly larger amount of living substance than a mouse. But if we
think of Life as the fact of livingness we do not associate it with any
idea of extension, and we at once realize that the mouse is quite as
much alive as the elephant, notwithstanding the difference in size. The
important point of this distinction is that if we can conceive of
anything as entirely devoid of the element of extension in space, it
must be present in its entire totality anywhere and everywhere--that is
to say, at every point of space simultaneously. The scientific
definition of time is that it is the period occupied by a body in
passing from one given point in space to another, and, therefore,
according to this definition, when there is no space there can be no
time; and hence that conception of spirit which realizes it as devoid
of the element of space must realize it as being devoid of the element
of time also; and we therefore find that the conception of spirit as
pure Thought, and not as concrete Form, is the conception of it as
subsisting perfectly independently of the elements of time and space.
From this it follows that if the idea of anything is conceived as
existing on this level it can only represent that thing as being
actually present here and now. In this view of things nothing can be
remote from us either in time or space: either the idea is entirely
dissipated or it exists as an actual present entity, and not as
something that shall be in the future, for where there is no
sequence in time there can be no future. Similarly where there is no
space there can be no conception of anything as being at a distance
from us. When the elements of time and space are eliminated all our
ideas of things must necessarily be as subsisting in a universal here
and an everlasting now. This is, no doubt, a highly abstract
conception, but I would ask the student to endeavour to grasp it
thoroughly, since it is of vital importance in the practical
application of Mental Science, as will appear further on.
The opposite conception is that of things expressing
themselves
through conditions of time and space and thus establishing a variety of
relations to other things, as of bulk, distance, and
direction,
or of sequence in time. These two conceptions are respectively the
conception of the abstract and the concrete, of the unconditioned and
the conditioned, of the absolute and the relative. They are not opposed
to each other in the sense of incompatibility, but are each the
complement of the other, and the only reality is in the combination of
the two. The error of the extreme idealist is in endeavouring to
realize the absolute without the relative, and the error of the extreme
materialist is in endeavouring to realize the relative without the
absolute. On the one side the mistake is in trying to realize an inside
without an outside, and on the other in trying to realize an outside
without an inside; both are necessary to the formation of a substantial
entity.
THE HIGHER MODE OF
INTELLIGENCE CONTROLS THE LOWER.
We have seen that the descent from personality, as we know it
in
ourselves, to matter, as we know it under what we call inanimate forms,
is a gradual descent in the scale of intelligence from that mode of
being which is able to realize its own will-power as a capacity for
originating new trains of causation to that mode of being which is
incapable of recognizing itself at all. The higher the grade of life,
the higher the intelligence; from which it follows that the supreme
principle of Life must also be the ultimate principle of intelligence.
This is clearly demonstrated by the grand natural order of the
universe. In the light of modern science the principle of evolution is
familiar to us all, and the accurate adjustment existing between all
parts of the cosmic scheme is too self-evident to need insisting upon.
Every advance in science consists in discovering new subtleties of
connection in this magnificent universal order, which already exists
and only needs our recognition to bring it into practical use. If,
then, the highest work of the greatest minds consists in nothing else
than the recognition of an already existing order, there is no getting
away from the conclusion that a paramount intelligence must be inherent
in the Life-Principle, which manifests itself as this order;
and thus we see that there must be a great cosmic intelligence
underlying the totality of things.
The physical history of our planet shows us first an
incandescent
nebula dispersed over vast infinitudes of space; later this condenses
into a central sun surrounded by a family of glowing planets hardly yet
consolidated from the plastic primordial matter; then succeed untold
millenniums of slow geological formation; an earth peopled by the
lowest forms of life, whether vegetable or animal; from which crude
beginnings a majestic, unceasing, unhurried, forward movement brings
things stage by stage to the condition in which we know them now.
Looking at this steady progression it is clear that, however we may
conceive the nature of the evolutionary principle, it unerringly
provides for the continual advance of the race. But it does this by
creating such numbers of each kind that, after allowing a wide margin
for all possible accidents to individuals, the race shall still
continue:--
"So careful of the type it seems
So careless of the single life."
In short, we may say that the cosmic intelligence works by a
Law of
Averages which allows a wide margin of accident and failure to the
individual.
But the progress towards higher intelligence is always in the
direction of narrowing down this margin of accident and taking the
individual more and more out of the law of averages, and substituting
the law of individual selection. In ordinary scientific language this
is the survival of the fittest. The reproduction of fish is on a scale
that would choke the sea with them if every individual survived; but
the margin of destruction is correspondingly enormous, and thus the law
of averages simply keeps up the normal proportion of the race. But at
the other end of the scale, reproduction is by no means thus enormously
in excess of survival. True, there is ample margin of accident and
disease cutting off numbers of human beings before they have gone
through the average duration of life, but still it is on a very
different scale from the premature destruction of hundreds of thousands
as against the survival of one. It may, therefore, be taken as an
established fact that in proportion as intelligence advances the
individual ceases to be subject to a mere law of averages and has a
continually increasing power of controlling the conditions of his own
survival.
We see, therefore, that there is a marked distinction between
the
cosmic intelligence and the individual intelligence, and that the
factor which differentiates the latter from the former is the presence
of individual volition. Now the business of Mental Science is
to ascertain the relation of this individual power of volition to the
great cosmic law which provides for the maintenance and advancement of
the race; and the point to be carefully noted is that the power of
individual volition is itself the outcome of the cosmic evolutionary
principle at the point where it reaches its highest level. The effort
of Nature has always been upwards from the time when only the lowest
forms of life peopled the globe, and it has now culminated in the
production of a being with a mind capable of abstract reasoning and a
brain fitted to be the physical instrument of such a mind. At this
stage the all-creating Life-principle reproduces itself in a form
capable of recognizing the working of the evolutionary law, and the
unity and continuity of purpose running through the whole progression
until now indicates, beyond a doubt, that the place of such a being in
the universal scheme must be to introduce the operation of that factor
which, up to this point, has been, conspicuous by its absence--the
factor, namely, of intelligent individual volition. The evolution which
has brought us up to this standpoint has worked by a cosmic law of
averages; it has been a process in which the individual himself has not
taken a conscious part. But because he is what he is, and leads the van
of the evolutionary procession, if man is to evolve further, it can now
only be by his own conscious co-operation with the law which has
brought him up to the standpoint where he is able to realize that such
a law exists. His evolution in the future must be by conscious
participation in the great work, and this can only be effected by his
own individual intelligence and effort. It is a process of intelligent
growth. No one else can grow for us: we must each grow for ourselves;
and this intelligent growth consists in our increasing recognition of
the universal law, which has brought us as far as we have yet got, and
of our own individual relation to that law, based upon the fact that we
ourselves are the most advanced product of it. It is a great maxim that
Nature obeys us precisely in proportion as we first obey Nature. Let
the electrician try to go counter to the principle that electricity
must always pass from a higher to a lower potential and he will effect
nothing; but let him submit in all things to this one fundamental law,
and he can make whatever particular applications of electrical power he
will.
These considerations show us that what differentiates the
higher
from the lower degree of intelligence is the recognition of its own
self-hood, and the more intelligent that recognition is, the greater
will be the power. The lower degree of self-recognition is that which
only realizes itself as an entity separate from all other entities, as
the ego distinguished from the non-ego. But the higher
degree of self-recognition is that which, realizing its own spiritual
nature, sees in all other forms, not so much the non-ego, or
that which is not itself, as the alter-ego, or that which is
itself in a different mode of expression. Now, it is this higher degree
of self-recognition that is the power by which the Mental Scientist
produces his results. For this reason it is imperative that he should
clearly understand the difference between Form and Being; that the one
is the mode of the relative and, the mark of subjection to conditions,
and that the other is the truth of the absolute and is that which
controls conditions.
Now this higher recognition of self as an individualization of
pure
spirit must of necessity control all modes of spirit which have not yet
reached the same level of self-recognition. These lower modes of spirit
are in bondage to the law of their own being because they do not know
the law; and, therefore, the individual who has attained to this
knowledge can control them through that law. But to understand this we
must inquire a little further into the nature of spirit. I have already
shown that the grand scale of adaptation and adjustment of all parts of
the cosmic scheme to one another exhibits the presence somewhere
of a marvellous intelligence, underlying the whole, and the question
is, where is this intelligence to be found? Ultimately we can only
conceive of it as inherent in some primordial substance which is the
root of all those grosser modes of matter which are known to us,
whether visible to the physical eye, or necessarily inferred by science
from their perceptible effects. It is that power which, in every
species and in every individual, becomes that which that species or
individual is; and thus we can only conceive of it as a self-forming
intelligence inherent in the ultimate substance of which each thing is
a particular manifestation. That this primordial substance must be
considered as self-forming by an inherent intelligence abiding in
itself becomes evident from the fact that intelligence is the essential
quality of spirit; and if we were to conceive of the primordial
substance as something apart from spirit, then we should have to
postulate some other power which is neither spirit nor matter, and
originates both; but this is only putting the idea of a self-evolving
power a step further back and asserting the production of a lower grade
of undifferentiated spirit by a higher, which is both a purely
gratuitous assumption and a contradiction of any idea we can form of
undifferentiated spirit at all. However far back, therefore, we may
relegate the original starting-point, we cannot avoid the conclusion
that, at that point, spirit contains the primary substance in itself,
which brings us back to the common statement that it made everything
out of nothing. We thus find two factors to the making of all things,
Spirit and--Nothing; and the addition of Nothing to Spirit leaves only
spirit: x + 0 = x.
From these considerations we see that the ultimate foundation
of
every form of matter is spirit, and hence that a universal intelligence
subsists throughout Nature inherent in every one of its manifestations.
But this cryptic intelligence does not belong to the particular form
excepting in the measure in which it is physically fitted for its
concentration into self-recognizing individuality: it lies hidden in
that primordial substance of which the visible form is a grosser
manifestation. This primordial substance is a philosophical necessity,
and we can only picture it to ourselves as something infinitely finer
than the atoms which are themselves a philosophical inference of
physical science: still, for want of a better word, we may conveniently
speak of this primary intelligence inherent in the very substance of
things as the Atomic Intelligence. The term may, perhaps, be open to
some objections, but it will serve our present purpose as
distinguishing this mode of spirit's intelligence from that of
the opposite pole, or Individual Intelligence. This distinction should
be carefully noted because it is by the response of the atomic
intelligence to the individual intelligence that thought-power is able
to produce results on the material plane, as in the cure of disease by
mental treatment, and the like. Intelligence manifests itself by
responsiveness, and the whole action of the cosmic mind in bringing the
evolutionary process from its first beginnings up to its present human
stage is nothing else but a continual intelligent response to the
demand which each stage in the progress has made for an adjustment
between itself and its environment. Since, then, we have recognized the
presence of a universal intelligence permeating all things, we must
also recognize a corresponding responsiveness hidden deep down in their
nature and ready to be called into action when appealed to. All mental
treatment depends on this responsiveness of spirit in its lower degrees
to higher degrees of itself. It is here that the difference between the
mental scientist and the uninstructed person comes in; the former knows
of this responsiveness and makes use of it, and the latter cannot use
it because he does not know it.
THE UNITY OF THE
SPIRIT.
We have now paved the way for understanding what is meant by
"the
unity of the spirit." In the first conception of spirit as the
underlying origin of all things we see a universal substance which, at
this stage, is not differentiated into any specific forms. This is not
a question of some bygone time, but subsists at every moment of all
time in the innermost nature of all being; and when we see
this, we see that the division between one specific form and another
has below it a deep essential unity, which acts as the supporter of all
the several forms of individuality arising out of it. And as our
thought penetrates deeper into the nature of this all-producing
spiritual substance we see that it cannot be limited to any one portion
of space, but must be limitless as space itself, and that the idea of
any portion of space where it is not is inconceivable. It is one of
those intuitive perceptions from which the human mind can never get
away that this primordial, all-generating living spirit must be
commensurate with infinitude, and we can therefore never think of it
otherwise than as universal or infinite. Now it is a mathematical truth
that the infinite must be a unity. You cannot have two infinites, for
then neither would be infinite, each would be limited by the other, nor
can you split the infinite up into fractions. The infinite is
mathematically essential unity. This is a point on which too much
stress cannot be laid, for there follow from it the most important
consequences. Unity, as such, can be neither multiplied nor divided,
for either operation destroys the unity. By multiplying, we produce a
plurality of units of the same scale as the original; and by dividing,
we produce a plurality of units of a smaller scale; and a plurality of
units is not unity but multiplicity. Therefore if we would penetrate
below the outward nature of the individual to that innermost principle
of his being from which his individuality takes its rise, we can do so
only by passing beyond the conception of individual existence into that
of the unity of universal being. This may appear to be a merely
philosophical abstraction, but the student who would produce practical
results must realize that these abstract generalizations are the
foundation of the practical work he is going to do.
Now the great fact to be recognized about a unity is that, because
it is a single unit, wherever it is at all the whole of it must
be. The moment we allow our mind to wander off to the idea of extension
in space and say that one part of the unit is here and another there,
we have descended from the idea of unity into that of parts or
fractions of a single unit, which is to pass into the idea of a
multiplicity of smaller units, and in that case we are dealing with the
relative, or the relation subsisting between two or more entities which
are therefore limited by each other, and so have passed out of
the region of simple unity which is the absolute. It is, therefore, a
mathematical necessity that, because the originating Life-principle is
infinite, it is a single unit, and consequently, wherever it is at all,
the whole of it must be present. But because it is infinite,
or limitless, it is everywhere, and therefore it follows that the whole
of spirit must be present at every point in space at the same moment.
Spirit is thus omnipresent in its entirety, and it is
accordingly logically correct that at every moment of time all
spirit is concentrated at any point in space that we may choose to fix
our thought upon. This is the fundamental fact of all being, and it is
for this reason that I have prepared the way for it by laying down the
relation between spirit and matter as that between idea and form, on
the one hand the absolute from which the elements of time and space are
entirely absent, and on the other the relative which is entirely
dependent on those elements. This great fact is that pure spirit
continually subsists in the absolute, whether in a corporeal body or
not; and from it all the phenomena of being flow, whether on the mental
plane or the physical. The knowledge of this fact regarding spirit is
the basis of all conscious spiritual operation, and therefore in
proportion to our increasing recognition of it our power of producing
outward visible results by the action of our thought will grow. The
whole is greater than its part, and therefore, if, by our recognition
of this unity, we can concentrate all spirit into any given
point at any moment, we thereby include any individualization of it
that we may wish to deal with. The practical importance of this
conclusion is too obvious to need enlarging upon.
Pure spirit is the Life-principle considered apart from the
matrix
in which it takes relation to time and space in a particular form. In
this aspect it is pure intelligence undifferentiated into
individuality. As pure intelligence it is infinite responsiveness and
susceptibility. As devoid of relation to time and space it is devoid of
individual personality. It is, therefore, in this aspect a purely
impersonal element upon which, by reason of its inherent intelligence
and susceptibility, we can impress any recognition of personality that
we will. These are the great facts that the mental scientist works
with, and the student will do well to ponder deeply on their
significance and on the responsibilities which their realization must
necessarily carry with it.
ENTERING INTO THE SPIRIT OF
IT.
We all know the meaning of this
phrase
in our everyday life. The Spirit is that which gives life and movement
to anything, in fact it is that which causes it to exist at all. The
thought of the author, the impression of the painter, the feeling of
the musician, is that without which their works could never have come
into being, and so it is only as we enter into the IDEA which gives
rise to the work, that we can derive all the enjoyment and benefit from
it which it is able to bestow. If we cannot enter into the Spirit of
it, the book, the picture, the music, are meaningless to us: to
appreciate them we must share the mental attitude of their creator.
This is a universal principle; if we do not enter into the Spirit of a
thing, it is dead so far as we are concerned; but if we do enter into
it we reproduce in ourselves the same quality of life which called that
thing into existence.
Now if this is a general
principle,
why can we not carry it to a higher range of things? Why not to the
highest point of all? May we not enter into the originating Spirit of
Life itself, and so reproduce it in ourselves as a perennial spring of
livingness? This, surely, is a question worthy of our careful
consideration.
The spirit of a thing is that
which is
the source of its inherent movement, and therefore the question before
us is, what is the nature of the primal moving power, which is at the
back of the endless array of life which we see around us, our own life
included? Science gives us ample ground for saying that it is not
material, for science has now, at least theoretically, reduced all
material things to a primary ether, universally distributed, whose
innumerable particles are in absolute equilibrium; whence it follows on
mathematical grounds alone that the initial movement which began to
concentrate the world and all material substances out of the particles
of the dispersed ether, could not have originated in the particles
themselves. Thus by a necessary deduction from the conclusions of
physical science, we are compelled to realize the presence of some
immaterial power capable of separating off certain specific areas for
the display of cosmic activity, and then building up a material
universe with all its inhabitants by an orderly sequence of evolution,
in which each stage lays the foundation for the development of the
stage, which is to follow--in a word we find ourselves brought face to
face with a power which exhibits on a stupendous scale, the faculties
of selection and adaptation of means to ends, and thus distributes
energy and life in accordance with a recognizable scheme of cosmic
progression. It is therefore not only Life, but also Intelligence, and
Life guided by Intelligence becomes Volition. It is this primary
originating power which we mean when we speak of "The Spirit," and it
is into this Spirit of the whole universe that we must enter if we
would reproduce it as a spring of Original Life in ourselves.
Now in the case of the
productions of
artistic genius we know that we must enter into the movement of the
creative mind of the artist, before we can realize the principle which
gives rise to his work. We must learn to partake of the feeling, to
find expression for which is the motive of his creative activity. May
we not apply the same principle to the Greater Creative Mind with which
we are seeking to deal? There is something in the work of the artist
which is akin to that of original creation. His work, literary,
musical, or graphic is original creation on a miniature scale, and in
this it differs from that of the engineer, which is constructive, or
that of the scientist which is analytical; for the artist in a sense
creates something out of nothing, and therefore starts from the
stand-point of simple feeling, and not from that of a pre-existing
necessity. This, by the hypothesis of the case, is true also of the
Parent Mind, for at the stage where the initial movement of creation
takes place, there are no existing conditions to compel action in one
direction more than another. Consequently the direction taken by the
creative impulse is not dictated by outward circumstances, and the
primary movement must therefore be entirely due to the action of the
Original Mind upon itself; it is the reaching out of this Mind for
realization of all that it feels itself to be.
The creative process thus in the
first
instance is purely a matter of feeling--exactly what we speak of as
"motif" in a work of art.
Now it is this original feeling
that
we need to enter into, because it is the fons et origo of the whole
chain of causation which subsequently follows. What then can this
original feeling of the Spirit be? Since the Spirit is Life-in-itself,
its feeling can only be for the fuller expression of Life--any other
sort of feeling would be self-destructive and is therefore
inconceivable. Then the full expression of Life implies Happiness, and
Happiness implies Harmony, and Harmony implies Order, and Order implies
Proportion, and Proportion implies Beauty; so that in recognizing the
inherent tendency of the Spirit towards the production of Life, we can
recognise a similar inherent tendency to the production of these other
qualities also; and since the desire to bestow the greater fulness of
joyous life can only be described as Love, we can sum up the whole of
the feeling which is the original moving impulse in the Spirit as Love
and Beauty--the Spirit finding expression through forms of beauty in
centres of life, in harmonious reciprocal relation to itself. This is a
generalized statement of the broad principle by which Spirit expands
from the innermost to the outermost, in accordance with a Law of
tendency inherent in itself.
It sees itself, as it were,
reflected
in various centres of life and energy, each with its appropriate form;
but in the first instance these reflections can have no existence
except within the originating Mind. They have their first beginning as
mental images, so that in addition to the powers of Intelligence and
Selection, we must also realise that of Imagination as belonging to the
Divine Mind; and we must picture these powers as working from the
initial motive of Love and Beauty.
Now this is the Spirit that we
need to
enter into, and the method of doing so is a perfectly logical one. It
is the same method by which all scientific advance is made. It consists
in first observing how a certain law works under the conditions
spontaneously provided by nature, next in carefully considering what
principle this spontaneous working indicates, and lastly deducing from
this how the same principle would act under specially selected
conditions, not spontaneously provided by nature.
The progress of shipbuilding
affords a
good example of what I mean. Formerly wood was employed instead of
iron, because wood floats in water and iron sinks; yet now the navies
of the world are built of iron; careful thought showed the law of
floatation to be that anything could float which, bulk for bulk, is
lighter than the mass of liquid displaced by it; and so we now make
iron float by the very same law by which it sinks, because by the
introduction of the PERSONAL factor, we provide conditions which do not
occur spontaneously--according to the esoteric maxim that "Nature
unaided fails." Now we want to apply the same process of specializing a
generic Law to the first of all Laws, that of the generic life-giving
tendency of Spirit itself. Without the element of INDIVIDUAL
PERSONALITY the Spirit can only work cosmically by a GENERIC Law; but
this law admits of far higher specialization, and this specialization
can only be attained through the introduction of the personal factor.
But to introduce this factor the individual must be fully aware of the
PRINCIPLE which underlies the spontaneous or cosmic action of the law.
Where, then, will he find this principle of Life? Certainly not by
contemplating Death. In order to get a principle to work in the way we
require it to, we must observe its action when it is working spon"
taneously in this particular direction. We must ask why it goes in the
right direction as far as it does--and having learnt this we shall then
be able to make it go further. The law of floatation was not discovered
by contemplating the sinking of things, but by contemplating the
floating of things which floated naturally, and then intelligently
asking why they did so.
The knowledge of a principle is
to be
gained by the study of its affirmative action; when we understand THAT
we are in a position to correct the negative conditions which tend to
prevent that action.
Now Death is the absence of
Life, and
disease is the absence of health, so to enter into the Spirit of Life
we require to contemplate it, where it is to be found, and not where it
is not- -we are met with the old question, "Why seek ye the living
among the dead?" This is why we start our studies by considering the
cosmic creation, for it is there that we find the Life Spirit working
through untold ages, not merely as deathless energy, but with a
perpetual advance into higher degrees of Life. If we could only so
enter into the Spirit as to make it personally IN OURSELVES what it
evidently is in ITSELF, the magnum opus would be accomplished. This
means realizing our life as drawn direct from the Originating Spirit;
and if we now understand that the Thought or Imagination of the Spirit
is the great reality of Being, and that all material facts are only
correspondences, then it logically follows that what we have to do is
to maintain our individual place in the Thought of the Parent Mind.
We have seen that the action of
the
Originating Mind must needs be GENERIC, that is according to types
which include multitudes of individuals. This type is the reflection of
the Creative Mind at the level of that particular GENIUS; and at the
human level it is Man, not as associated with particular circumstances,
but as existing in the absolute ideal.
In proportion then as we learn
to
dissociate our conception of ourselves from particular circumstances,
and to rest upon our ABSOLUTE nature, as reflections of the Divine
ideal, we, in our turn, reflect back into the Divine Imagination its
original conception of itself as expressed in generic or typical Man,
and so by a natural law of cause and effect, the individual who
realizes this mental attitude enters permanently into the Spirit of
Life, and it becomes a perennial fountain of Life springing up
spontaneously within him.
He then finds himself to be as
the
Bible says, "the image and likeness of God." He has reached the level
at which he affords a new starting point for the creative process, and
the Spirit, finding a personal centre in him, begins its work de nova,
having thus solved the great problem of how to enable the Universal to
act directly upon the plane of the Particular.
It is in this sense, as
affording the
requisite centre for a new departure of the creative Spirit, that man
is said to be a "microcosm," or universe in miniature; and this is also
what is meant by the esoteric doctrine of the Octave, of which I may be
able to speak more fully on some other occasion.
If the principles here stated
are
carefully considered, they will be found to throw light on much that
would otherwise be obscure, and they will also afford the key to the
succeeding essays.
The reader is therefore asked to
think
them out carefully for himself, and to note their connection with the
subject of the next article.
INDIVIDUALITY.
Individuality is the necessary
complement of the Universal Spirit, which was the subject of our
consideration last Sunday. The whole problem of life consists in
finding the true relation of the individual to the Universal
Originating Spirit; and the first step towards ascertaining this is to
realize what the Universal Spirit must be in itself. We have already
done this to some extent, and the conclusions we have arrived at are:--
That the essence of the Spirit
is
Life, Love, and Beauty.
That its Motive, or primary
moving
impulse, is to express the Life, Love and Beauty which it feels itself
to be.
That the Universal cannot act on
the
plane of the Particular except by becoming the particular, that is by
expression through the individual.
If these three axioms are
clearly
grasped, we have got a solid foundation from which to start our
consideration of the subject for to-day.
The first question that
naturally
presents itself is,
If these things be so, why does
not
every individual express the life, love, and beauty of the Universal
Spirit? The answer to this question is to be found in the Law of
Consciousness. We cannot be conscious of anything except by realizing a
certain relation between it and ourselves. It must affect us in some
way, otherwise we are not conscious of its existence; and according to
the way in which it affects us we recognize ourselves as standing
related to it. It is this self-recognition on our own part carried out
to the sum total of all our relations, whether spiritual, intellectual,
or physical, that constitutes our realization of life. On this
principle, then, for the REALIZATION of its own Livingness, the
production of centres of life, through its relation to which this
conscious realization can be attained, becomes a necessity for the
Originating Mind. Then it follows that this realization can only be
complete where the individual has perfect liberty to withhold it; for
otherwise no true realization could have taken place. For instance, let
us consider the working of Love. Love must be spontaneous, or it has no
existence at all. We cannot imagine such a thing as mechanically
induced love. But anything which is formed so as to automatically
produce an effect without any volition of its own, is.nothing but a
piece of mechanism. Hence if the Originating Mind is to realize the
reality of Love, it can Only be by relation to some being which has the
power to withhold love. The same applies to the realization of all the
other modes of livingness; so that it is only in proportion, as the
individual life is an independent centre of action, with the option of
acting either positively or negatively, that any real life has been
produced at all. The further the created thing is from being a merely
mechanical arrangement, the higher is the grade of creation. The solar
system is a perfect work of mechanical creation, but to constitute
centres which can reciprocate the highest nature of the Divine Mind,
requires not a mechanism, however perfect, but a mental centre which
is, in itself, an independent source of action. Hence by the
requirements of the case man should be capable of placing himself
either in a positive or a negative relation to the Parent Mind, from
which he originates; otherwise he would be nothing more than a
clockwork figure.
In this necessity of the case,
then,
we find the reason why the life, love, and beauty of the Spirit are not
visibly reproduced in every human being. They ARE reproduced in the
world of nature, so far as a mechanical and automatic action can
represent them, but their perfect reproduction can only take place on
the basis of a liberty akin to that of the Originating Spirit itself,
which therefore implies the liberty of negation as well as of
affirmation.
Why, then, does the individual
make a
negative choice? Because he does not understand the law of his own
individuality, and believes it to be a law of limitation, instead of a
Law of Liberty. He does not expect to find the starting point of the
Creative Process reproduced within himself, and so he looks to the
mechanical side of things for the basis of his reasoning about life.
Consequently his reasoning lands him in the conclusion that life is
limited, because he has assumed limitation in his premises, and
so-logically cannot escape from it in his conclusion. Then he thinks
that this is the law and so ridicules the idea of transcending it. He
points to the sequence of cause and effect, by which death, disease,
and disaster, hold their sway over the individual, and says that
sequence is law. And he is perfectly right so far as he goes--it is a
law; but not THE Law. When we have only reached this stage of
comprehension, we have yet to learn that a higher law can include a
lower one so completely as entirely to swallow it up.
The fallacy involved in this
negative
argument, is the assumption that the law of limitation is essential in
all grades of being. It is the fallacy of the old shipbuilders as to
the impossibility of building iron ships. What is required is to get at
the PRINCIPLE which is at the back of the Law in its affirmative
working, and specialize it under higher conditions than are
spontaneously presented by nature, and this can only be done by the
introduction of the personal element, that is to say an individual
intelligence capable of comprehending the principle. The question,
then, is, what is the principle by which we came into being? and this
is only a personal application of the general question, How did
anything come into being? Now, as I pointed out in the preceding
article, the ultimate deduction from physical science is that the
originating movement takes place in the Universal Mind, and is
analogous to that of our own imagination; and as we have just seen, the
perfect ideal can only be that of a being capable of reciprocating ALL
the qualities of the Originating Mind. Consequently man, in his inmost
nature, is the product of the Divine Mind imaging forth an image of
itself on the plane of the relative as the complementary to its own
sphere of the absolute.
If we will therefore go to the
INMOST
principle in ourselves, which philosophy and Scripture alike declare to
be made in the image and likeness of God, instead of to the outer
vehicles which it externalizes as instruments through which to function
on the various planes of being, we shall find that we have reached a
principle in ourselves which stands in loco dei towards all our
vehicles and also towards our environment. It is above them all, and
creates them, however unaware we may be of the fact, and relatively to
them it occupies the place of first cause. The recognition of this is
the discovery of our own relation to the whole world of the relative.
On the other hand this must not lead us into the mistake of supposing
that there is nothing higher, for, as we have already seen, this inmost
principle or ego is itself the effect of an antecedent cause, for it
proceeds from the imaging process in the Divine Mind.
We thus find ourselves holding
an
intermediate position between true First Cause, on the one hand, and
the world of secondary causes on the other, and in order to understand
the nature of this position, we must fall back on the axiom that the
Universal can only work on the plane of the Particular through the
individual. Then we see that the function of the individual is to
DIFFERENTIATE the undistributed flow of the Universal into suitable
directions for starting different trains of secondary causation.
Man's place in the cosmic order
is
that of a distributor of the Divine power, subject, however, to the
inherent Law of the power which he distributes. We see one instance of
this in ordinary science, in the fact that we never create force; all
we can do is to distribute it. The very word Man means distributor or
measurer, as in common with all words derived from the Sanderit root
MN., it implies the idea of measurement, just as in the words moon,
month, mens, mind, and "man," the Indian weight of 80 1bs.; and it is
for this reason that man is spoken of in Scripture as a "steward," or
dispenser of the Divine gifts. As our minds become open to the full
meaning of this position, the immense possibilities and also the
responsibility contained in it will become apparent.
It means that the individual is
the
creative centre of his own world. Our past experience affords no
evidence against this, but on the contrary, is evidence for it. Our
true nature is always present, only we have hitherto taken the lower
and mechanical side of things for our starting point, and so have
created limitation instead of expansion. And even with the knowledge of
the Creative Law which we have now attained, we shall continue to do
this, if we seek our starting point in the things which are below us
and not in the only thing which is above us, namely the Divine Mind,
because it is only there that we can find illimitable Creative Power.
Life is BEING, it is the experience of states of consciousness, and
there is an unfailing correspondence between these inner states and our
outward conditions. Now we see from the Original Creation that the
state of consciousness must be the cause, and the corresponding
conditions the effect, because at the starting of the creation no
conditions existed, and the working of the Creative Mind upon itself
can only have been a state of consciousness. This, then, is clearly the
Creative Order--from states to conditions. But we invert this order,
and seek to create from conditions to states. We say, If I had such and
such conditions they would produce the state of feeling which I desire;
and in so saying we run the risk of making a mistake as to the
correspondence, for it may turn out that the particular conditions
which we fixed on are not such as would produce the desired state. Or,
again, though they might produce it in a certain degree, other
conditions might produce it in a still greater degree, while at the
same time opening the way to the attainment of still higher states and
still better conditions. Therefore our wisest plan is to follow the
pattern of the Parent Mind and make mental self-recognition our
starting point, knowing that by the inherent Law of Spirit the
corelated conditions will come by a natural process of growth. Then the
great self-recognition is that of our relation to the Supreme Mind.
That is the generating centre and we are distributing centres; just as
electricity is generated at the central station and delivered in
different forms of power by reason of passing through appropriate
centres of distribution, so that in one place it lights a room, in
another conveys a message, and in a third drives a tram car. In like
manner the power of the Universal Mind takes particular forms through
the particular mind of the individual. It does not interfere with the
lines of his individuality, but works along them, thus making him, not
less, but more himself. It is thus, not a compelling power, but an
expanding and illuminating one; so that the more the individual
recognizes the reciprocal action between it and himself, the more full
of life he must become.
Then also we need not be
troubled
about future conditions because we know that the All-originating Power
is working through us and for us, and that according to the Law proved
by the whole existing creation, it produces all the conditions required
for the expression of the Life, Love and Beauty which it is, so that we
can fully trust it to open the way as we go along. The Great Teacher's
words, "Take no thought for the morrow"--and note that the correct
translation is "Take no anxious thought"-- are the practical
application of the soundest philosophy. This does not, of course, mean
that we are not to exert ourselves. We must do our share in the work,
and not expect God to do FOR us what He can only do THROUGH us. We are
to use our common sense and natural faculties in working upon the
conditions now present. We must make use of them, AS FAR AS THEY GO,
but we must not try and go further than the present things require; we
must not try to force things, but allow them to grow naturally, knowing
that they are doing so under the guidance of the All-Creating Wisdom.
Following this method we shall
grow
more and more into the habit of looking to mental attitude as the Key
to our progress in Life, knowing that everything else must come out of
that; and we shall further discover that our mental attitude is
eventually determined by the way in which we regard the Divine Mind.
Then the final result will be that we shall see the Divine Mind to be
nothing else than Life, Love and Beauty--Beauty being identical with
Wisdom or the perfect adjustment of parts to whole--and we shall see
ourselves to be distributing centres of these primary energies and so
in our turn subordinate centres of creative power. And as we advance in
this knowledge we shall find that we transcend one law of limitation
after another by finding the higher law, of which the lower is but a
partial expression, until we shall see clearly before us, as our
ultimate goal, nothing less than the Perfect Law of Liberty--not
liberty without Law which is anarchy, but Liberty according to Law. In
this way we shall find that the Apostle spoke the literal truth, when
he said, that we shall become like Him when we see Him AS HE IS,
because the whole process by which our individuality is produced is one
of reflection of the image existing in the Divine Mind. When we thus
learn the Law of our own being we shall be able to specialize it in
ways of which we have hitherto but little conception, but as in the
case of all natural laws the specialization cannot take place until the
fundamental principle of the generic law has been fully realized. For
these reasons the student should endeavour to realize more and more
perfectly, both in theory and practice, the law of the relation between
the Universal and the Individual Minds. It is that of RECIPROCAL
action. If this fact of reciprocity is grasped, it will be found to
explain both why the individual falls short of expressing the fulness
of Life, which the Spirit is, and why he can attain to the fulness of
that expression; just as the same law explains why iron sinks in water,
and how it can be made to float. It is the individualizing of the
Universal Spirit, by recognizing its reciprocity to ourselves, that is
the secret of the perpetuation and growth of our own individuality.
THE NEW THOUGHT AND THE NEW
ORDER.
In the two preceding lectures I
have
endeavoured to reach some conception of what the All-originating Spirit
is in itself, and of the relation of the individual to it. So far as we
can form any conception of these things at all we see that they are
universal principles applicable to all nature, and, at the human level,
applicable to all men: they are general laws the recognition of which
is an essential preliminary to any further advance, because progress is
made, not by setting aside the inherent law of things, which is
impossible, but by specializing it through presenting conditions which
will enable the same principle to act in a less limited manner. Having
therefore got a general idea of these two ultimates, the universal and
the individual, and of their relation to one another, let us now
consider the process of specialization. In what does the specialization
of a natural law consist? It consists in making that law or principle
produce an effect which it could not produce under the simply generic
conditions spontaneously provided by nature. This selection of suitable
conditions is the work of Intelligence, it is a process of consciously
arranging things in a new order, so as to produce a new result. The
principle is never new, for principles are eternal and universal; but
the knowledge that the same principle will produce new results when
working under new conditions is the key to the unfoldment of infinite
possibilities. What we have therefore to consider is the working of
Intelligence in providing specific conditions for the operation of
universal principles, so as to bring about new results which will
transcend our past experiences. The process does not consist in the
introduction of new elements, but in making new combinations of
elements which are always present; just as our ancestors had no
conception of carriages that could go without horses, and yet by a
suitable combination of elements which were always in existence, such
vehicles are common objects in our streets today. How, then, is the
power of Intelligence to be brought to bear upon the generic law of the
relation between the Individual and the Universal so as to specialize
it into the production of greater results than those which we have
hitherto obtained?
All the practical attainments of
science, which place the civilized world of to-day in advance of the
times of King Alfred or Charlemagne, have been gained by a uniform
method, and that a very simple one. It is by always enquiring what is
the affirmative factor in any existing combination, and asking
ourselves why, in that particular combination, it does not act beyond
certain limits. What makes the thing a success, so far as it goes, and
what prevents it going further? Then, by carefully considering the
nature of the affirmative factor, we see what sort of conditions to
provide to enable it to express itself more fully. This is the
scientific method; it has proved itself true in respect of material
things, and there is no reason why it should not be equally reliable in
respect of spiritual things also.
Taking this as our method, we
ask,
What is the affirmative factor in the whole creation, and in ourselves
as included in the creation, and, as we found in the first lecture,
this factor is Spirit--that invisible power which concentrates-the
primordial ether into forms, and endows those forms with various modes
of motion, from the simply mechanical motion of the planet up to the
volitional motion in man. And, since this is so, the primary
affirmative factor can only be the Feeling and the Thought of the
Universal Spirit.* Now, by the hypothesis of the case, the Universal
Spirit must be the Pure Essence of Life, and therefore its feeling and
thought can only be towards the continually increasing expression of
the livingness which it is; and accordingly the specialization, of
which we are in search, must be along the line of affording it a centre
from which it may more perfectly realize this feeling and express this
thought: in other words the way to specialize the generic principle of
Spirit is by providing new mental conditions in consonance with its own
original nature.
* See my "Edinburgh Lectures on
Mental
Science."
The scientific method of enquiry
therefore brings us to the conclusion that the required conditions for
translating the racial or generic operation of the Spirit into a
specialized individual operation is a new way of THINKING mode of
thought concurring with, and not in opposition to, the essential
forward movement of the Creative Spirit itself. This implies an entire
reversal of our old conceptions. Hitherto we have taken forms and
conditions as the starting point of our thought and inferred that they
are the causes of mental states; now we have learnt that the true order
of the creative process is exactly the reverse, and that thought and
feeling are the causes, and forms and conditions the effects. When we
have learnt this lesson we have grasped the foundation principle on
which individual specialization of the generic law of the creative
process becomes a practical possibility.
New Thought, then, is not the
name of
a particular sect, but is the essential factor by which our own future
development is to be carried on; and its essence consists in seeing the
relation of things in a New Order. Hitherto we have inverted the true
order of cause and effect; now, by carefully considering the real
nature of the Principle of Causation in itself--causa causans as
distinguished from cause causata--we return to the true order and adopt
a new method of thinking in accordance with it.
In themselves this order and
this
method of thinking are not new. They are older than the foundation of
the world, for they are those of the Creative Spirit itself; and all
through the ages this teaching has been handed down under various
forms, the true meaning of which has been perceived only by a few in
each generation. But as the light breaks in upon any individual it is a
new light to him, and so to each one in succession it becomes the New
Thought. And when anyone reaches it, he finds himself in a New Order.
He continues indeed to be included in the universal order of the
cosmos, but in a perfectly different way to what he had previously
supposed; for, from his new standpoint, he finds that he is included,
not so much as a part of the general effect, but as a part of the
general cause; and when he perceives this he then sees that the method
of his further advance must be by letting the General Cause flow more
and more freely into his own specific centre, and he therefore seeks to
provide thought conditions which will enable him to do so.
Then, still employing the
scientific
method of following up the affirmative factor, he realizes that this
universal causative power, by whatever name he may call it, manifests
as Supreme Intelligence in the adaptation of means to ends. It does so
in the mechanism of the planet, in the production of supply for the
support of physical life, and in the maintenance of the race as a
whole. True, the investigator is met at every turn with individual
failure; but his answer to this is that there is no cosmic failure, and
that the apparent individual failure is itself a part of the cosmic
process, and will diminish in proportion as the individual attains to
the recognition of the Moving Principle of that process, and provides
the necessary conditions to enable it to take a new starting point in
his own individuality. Now, one of these conditions is to recognize it
as Intelligence, and to remember that when working through our own
mentality it in no way changes its essential nature, just as
electricity loses none of its essential qualities in passing through
the special apparatus which enables it to manifest as light.
When we see this, our line of
thought
will run something as follows:--"My mind is a centre of Divine
operation. The Divine operation is always for expansion and fuller
expression, and this means the production of something beyond what has
gone before, something entirely new, not included in past experience,
though proceeding out of it by an orderly sequence of growth.
Therefore, since the Divine cannot change its inherent nature, it must
operate in the same manner in me; consequently in my own special world,
of which I am the centre, it will move forward to produce new
conditions, always in advance of any that have gone before." This is a
legitimate line of argument, from the premises established in the
recognition of the relation between the individual and the Universal
Mind; and it results in our looking to the Divine Mind, not only as
creative, but also as directive-- that is as determining the actual
forms which the conditions for its manifestation will take in our own
particular world, as well as supplying the energy for their production.
We miss the point of the relation between the individual and the
universal, if we do not see that the Originating Spirit is a FORMING
power. It is the forming power throughout nature, and if we would
specialize it we must learn to trust its formative quality when
operating from its new starting point in ourselves.
But the question naturally
arises, If
this is so, what part is taken by the individual? Our part is to
provide a concrete centre round which the Divine energies can play. In
the generic order of being we exercise upon it a force of attraction in
accordance with the innate pattern of our particular individuality; and
as we begin to realize the Law of this relation, we, in our turn, are
attracted towards the Divine along the lines of least resistance, that
is on those lines which are most natural to our special bent of mind.
In this way we throw out certain aspirations with the result that we
intensify our attraction of the Divine forces in a certain specific
manner, and they then begin to act both through us and around us in
accordance with our aspirations. This is the rationale of the
reciprocal action be tween the Universal Mind and the individual mind,
and this shows us that our desires should not be directed so much to
the acquisition of particular THINGS as to the reproduction in
ourselves of particular phases of the Spirit's activity; and this,
being in its very nature creative, is bound to externalize as
corresponding things and circumstances. Then, when these external facts
appear in the circle of our objective life, we must work upon them from
the objective stand-point. This is where many fall short of completed
work. They realize the subjective or creative process, but do not see
that it must be followed by an objective or constructive process, and
consequently they are unpractical dreamers and never reach the stage of
completed work. The creative process brings the materials and
conditions for the work to our hands; then we must make use of them
with diligence and common-sense--God will provide the food, but He will
not cook the dinner.
This, then, is the part taken by the
individual, and it is thus that he becomes a distributing centre of the
Divine energy, neither on the one hand trying to lead it like a blind
force, nor on the other being himself under a blind unreasoning
impulsion from it. He receives guidance because he seeks guidance; and
he both seeks and receives according to a Law which he is able to
recognize; so that he no more sacrifices his liberty or dwarfs his
powers, than does an engineer who submits to the generic laws of
electricity, in order to apply them to some specific purpose. The more
intimate his knowledge of this Law of Reciprocity becomes, the more he
finds that it leads on to Liberty, on the same principle by which we
find in physical science that nature obeys us precisely in the same
degree to which we first obey nature. As the esoteric maxim has it
"What is a truth on one plane is a truth on all." But the key to this
enfranchisement of body, mind, and circumstances is in that new thought
which becomes creative of new conditions, because it realizes the true
order of the creative process. Therefore it is that, if we would bring
a new order of Life, Light, and Liberty into our lives we must commence
by bringing a new order into our thought, and find in ourselves the
starting point of a new creative series, not by the force of personal
will, but by union with the Divine Spirit, which in the expression of
its inherent Love and Beauty, makes all things new.
THE STARTING-POINT
It is an old saying that "Order is Heaven's First Law," and
like
many other old sayings it contains a much deeper philosophy than
appears immediately on the surface. Getting things into a better order
is the great secret of progress, and we are now able to fly through the
air, not because the laws of Nature have altered, but because we have
learnt to arrange things in the right order to produce this result--the
things themselves had existed from the beginning of the world, but what
was wanting was the introduction of a Personal Factor which, by an
intelligent perception of the possibilities contained in the laws of
Nature, should be able to bring into working reality ideas which
previous generations would have laughed at as the absurd fancies of an
unbalanced mind. The lesson to be learnt from the practical aviation of
the present day is that of the triumph of principle over precedent, of
the working out of an idea to its logical conclusions in spite
of the accumulated testimony of all past experience to the contrary;
and with such a notable example before us can we say that it is futile
to enquire whether by the same method we may not unlock still more
important secrets and gain some knowledge of the unseen causes which
are at the back of external and visible conditions, and then by
bringing these unseen causes into a better order make practical working
realities of possibilities which at present seem but fantastic dreams?
It is at least worth while taking a preliminary canter over the course,
and this is all that this little volume professes to attempt; yet this
may be sufficient to show the lay of the ground.
Now the first thing in any investigation is to have some idea
of
what you are looking for--to have at least some notion of the general
direction in which to go--just as you would not go up a tree to find
fish though you would for birds' eggs. Well, the general direction in
which we all want to go is that of getting more out of Life than we
have ever got out of it--we want to be more alive in ourselves and to
get all sorts of improved conditions in our environment. However
happily any of us may be circumstanced we can all conceive something
still better, or at any rate we should like to make our present good
permanent; and since we shall find as our studies advance that the
prospect of increasing possibilities keeps opening out more and more
widely before us, we may say that what we are in search of is the
secret of getting more out of Life in a continually progressive degree.
This means that what we are looking for is something personal, and that
it is to be obtained by producing conditions which do not yet exist; in
other words it is nothing less than the exercise of a certain creative
power in the sphere of our own particular world. So, then, what we want
is to introduce our own Personal Factor into the realm of unseen
causes. This is a big thing, and if it is possible at all it must be by
some sequence of cause and effect, and this sequence it is our object
to discover. The law of Cause and Effect is one we can never get away
from, but by carefully following it up we may find that it will lead us
further than we had anticipated.
Now, the first thing to observe is that if we can
succeed in
finding out such a sequence of cause and effect as the one we are in
search of, somebody else may find out the same creative secret also;
and then, by the hypothesis of the case, we should both be armed with
an infallible power, and if we wanted to employ this power against each
other we should be landed in the "impasse" of a conflict between two
powers each of which was irresistible. Consequently it follows that the
first principle of this power must be Harmony. It cannot be
antagonizing itself from different centers--in other words its
operation in a simultaneous order at every point is the first necessity
of its being. What we are in search of, then, is a sequence of cause
and effect so universal in its nature as to include harmoniously all
possible variations of individual expression. This primary necessity of
the Law for which we are seeking should be carefully borne in mind, for
it is obvious that any sequence which transgresses this primary
essential must be contrary to the very nature of the Law itself, and
consequently cannot be conducting us to the exercise of true creative
power.
What we are seeking, therefore, is to discover how to arrange
things
in such an order as to set in motion a train of causation that will
harmonize our own conditions without antagonizing the exercise of a
like power by others. This therefore means that all individual exercise
of this power is the particular application of a universal power which
itself operates creatively on its own account independently of these
individual applications; and the harmony between the various individual
applications is brought about by all the individuals bringing their own
particular action into line with this independent creative action of
the original power. It is in fact another application of Euclid's axiom
that things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another;
so that though I may not know for what purpose some one may be using
this creative power in Pekin, I do know that if he and I both realize
its true nature, we cannot by any possibility be working in opposition
to one another. For these reasons, having now some general idea of what
it is we are in search of, we may commence our investigation by
considering this common factor which must be at the back of all
individual exercise of creative power, that is to say, the Generic
working of the Universal Creative Principle.
That such a Universal Creative Principle is at work we at once
realize from the existence of the world around us with all its
inhabitants, and the inter-relation of all parts of the cosmic system
shows its underlying Unity--thus the animal kingdom depends on the
vegetable, the vegetable kingdom on the mineral, the mineral or globe
of the earth on its relation to the rest of the solar system, and
possibly our solar system is related by a similar law to the
distribution of other suns with their attendant planets throughout
space. Our first glance therefore shows us that the All-originating
Power must be in essence Unity and in manifestation Multiplicity, and
that it manifests as Life and Beauty through the unerring adaptation of
means to ends--that is so far as its cosmic manifestation of ends goes:
what we want to do is to carry this manifestation still further by
operation from an individual standpoint. To do this is precisely our
place in the Order of Creation, but we must defer the question why we
hold this place till later on.
One of the earliest discoveries we all make is the existence
of
Matter. The bruised shins of our childhood convince us of its solidity,
so now comes the question, Why does Matter exist? The answer is that if
the form were not expressed in solid substance, things would be
perpetually flowing into each other so that no identity could be
maintained for a single moment. To this it might be replied that a
condition of matter is conceivable in which, though in itself a plastic
substance, in a fluent state, it might yet by the operation of will be
held in any particular forms desired. The idea of such a condition of
matter is no doubt conceivable, and when the fluent matter was thus
held in particular forms you would have concrete matter just as we know
it now, only with this difference, that it would return to its fluent
state as soon as the supporting will was withdrawn. Now, as we shall
see later on, this is precisely what matter really is, only the will
which holds it together in concrete form is not individual but cosmic.
In itself the Essence of Matter is precisely the fluent
substance we
have imagined, and as we shall see later on the knowledge of this fact,
when realized in its proper order, is the basis of the legitimate
control of mind over matter. But a world in which every individual
possessed the power of concreting or fluxing matter at his own sweet
will irrespective of any universal coordinating principle is altogether
inconceivable--the conflict of wills would prevent such a world
remaining in existence. On the other hand, if we conceive of a number
of individuals each possessing this power and all employing it on the
lines of a common cosmic unity, then the result would be precisely the
same stable condition of matter with which we are familiar--this would
be a necessity of fact for the masses who did not possess this power,
and a necessity of principle for the few who did. So under these
circumstances the same stable conditions of Nature would prevail as at
present, varied only when the initiated ones perceived that the order
of evolution would be furthered, and not hindered, by calling into
action the higher laws. Such occasions would be of rare occurrence, and
then the departure from the ordinary law would be regarded by the
multitude as a miracle. Also we may be quite sure that no one who had
attained this knowledge in the legitimate order would ever perform a
"miracle" for his own personal aggrandizement or for the purpose of
merely astonishing the beholders--to do so would be contrary to the
first principle of the higher teaching which is that of profound
reverence for the Unity of the All-originating Principle. The
conception, therefore, of such a power over matter being possessed by
certain individuals is in no way opposed to our ordinary recognition of
concrete matter, and so we need not at present trouble ourselves to
consider these exceptions.
Another theory is that matter has no existence at all but is
merely
an illusion projected by our own minds. If so, then how is it that we
all project identically similar images? On the supposition that each
mind is independently projecting its own conception of matter a lady
who goes to be fitted might be seen by her dressmaker as a cow.
Generations of people have seen the Great Pyramid on the same spot; but
on the supposition that each individual is projecting his own material
world in entire independence of all other individuals there is no
reason why any two persons should ever see the same thing in the same
place. On the supposition of such an independent action by each
separate mind, without any common factor binding them all to one
particular mode of recognition, no intercourse between individuals
would be possible--then, without the consciousness of relation to other
individuals the consciousness of our own individuality would be lost,
and so we should cease to have any conscious existence at all. If on
the other hand we grant that there is, above the individual minds, a
great Cosmic Mind which imposes upon them the necessity of all seeing
the same image of Matter, then that image is not a projection of the
individual minds but of the Cosmic Mind; and since the individual minds
are themselves similar projections of the Cosmic Mind, matter is for
them just as much a reality as their own existence. I doubt not that
material substance is thus projected by the all-embracing Divine Mind;
but so also are our own minds projected by it, and therefore the
relation between them and matter is a real relation and not a merely
fictitious one.
I particularly wish the student to be clear on this point,
that
where two factors are projected from a common source their relation to
each other becomes an absolute fact in respect of the factors
themselves, notwithstanding that the power of changing that relation by
substituting a different projection must necessarily always continue to
reside in the originating source. To take a simple arithmetical
example--by my power of mental projection working through my eyes and
fingers I write 4 X 2. Here I have established a certain numerical
relation which can only produce eight as its result. Again, I have
power to change the factors and write 4 X 3, in which case 12 is the
only possible result, and so on. Working in this way calculation
becomes possible. But if every time I wrote 4 that figure possessed an
independent power of setting down a different number by which to
multiply itself, what would be the result? The first 4 I wrote might
set down 3 as its multiplier, and the next might set down 7, and so on.
Or if I want to make a box of a certain size and cut lengths of plank
accordingly, if each length could capriciously change its width at a
moment's notice, how could I ever make the box? I myself may change the
shape and size of my box by establishing new relations between the bits
of wood, but for the pieces of wood themselves the proportions
determined by my mind must remain fixed quantities, otherwise no
construction could take place.
This is a very rough analogy, but it may be sufficient to show
that
for a cosmos to exist at all it is absolutely necessary that there
should be a Cosmic Mind binding all individual minds to certain generic
unities of action, and so producing all things as realities and nothing
as illusion. The importance of this conclusion will become more
apparent as we advance in our studies.
<>We have now got at some reason why concrete material form is a
necessity of the Creative Process. Without it the perfect
Self-recognition of Spirit from the Individual standpoint, which we
shall presently find is the means by which the Creative Process is to
be carried forward, would be impossible; and therefore, so far from
matter being an illusion, it is the necessary channel for the
self-differentiation of Spirit and its Expression in multitudinous life
and beauty. Matter is thus the necessary Polar Opposite to Spirit, and
when we thus recognize it in its right order we shall find that there
is no antagonism between the two, but that together they constitute one
harmonious whole.
THE
SELF-CONTEMPLATION OF
SPIRIT
If we ask how the cosmos came into existence we shall find
that
ultimately we can only attribute it to the Self-Contemplation of
Spirit. Let us start with the facts now known to modern physical
science. All material things, including our own bodies, are composed of
combinations of different chemical elements such as carbon, oxygen,
nitrogen, &c. Chemistry recognizes in all about seventy of these
elements each with its peculiar affinities; but the more advanced
physical science of the present day finds that they are all composed of
one and the same ultimate substance to which the name of Ether has been
given, and that the difference between an atom of iron and an atom of
oxygen results only from the difference in the number of etheric
particles of which each is composed and the rate of their motion within
the sphere of the atom, thus curiously coming back to the dictum of
Pythagoras that the universe has its origin in Number and Motion. We
may therefore say that our entire solar system together with every sort
of material substance which it contains is made up of nothing but this
one primary substance in various degrees of condensation.
Now the next step is to realize that this ether is everywhere.
This
is shown by the undulatory theory of light. Light is not a substance
but is the effect produced on the eye by the impinging of the ripples
of the ether upon the retina. These waves are excessively minute,
ranging in length from 1-39,000th of an inch at the red end of the
spectrum to 1-57,000th at the violet end. Next remember that these
waves are not composed of advancing particles of the medium but pass
onwards by the push which each particle in the line of motion gives to
the particle next to it, and then you will see that if there were a
break of one fifty-thousandth part of an inch in the connecting ether
between our eye and any source of light we could not receive light from
that source, for there would be nothing to continue the wave-motion
across the gap. Consequently as soon as we see light from any source
however distant, we know that there must be a continuous body of ether
between us and it. Now astronomy shows us that we receive light from
heavenly bodies so distant that, though it travels with the incredible
speed of 186,000 miles per second, it takes more than two thousand
years to reach us from some of them; and as such stars are in all
quarters of the heavens we can only come to the conclusion that the
primary substance or ether must be universally present.
This means that the raw material for the formation of solar
systems
is universally distributed throughout space; yet though we find that
millions of suns stud the heavens, we also find vast interstellar
spaces which show no sign of cosmic activity. Then something has been
at work to start cosmic activity in certain areas while passing over
others in which the raw material is equally available. What is this
something? At first we might be inclined to attribute the development
of cosmic energy to the etheric particles themselves, but a little
consideration will show us that this is mathematically impossible in a
medium which is equally distributed throughout space, for all its
particles are in equilibrium and so no one particle possesses per se
a greater power of originating motion than any other. Consequently the
initial movement must be started by something which, though it works on
and through the particles of the primary substance, is not those
particles themselves. It is this "Something" which we mean when we
speak of "Spirit."
Then since Spirit starts the condensation of the primary
substance
into concrete aggregation, and also does this in certain areas to the
exclusion of others, we cannot avoid attributing to Spirit the power of
Selection and of taking an Initiative on its own account.
Here, then, we find the initial Polarity of Universal
Spirit
and Universal Substance, each being the complementary of the other, and
out of this relation all subsequent evolution proceeds. Being
complementary means that each supplies what is wanting in the other,
and that the two together thus make complete wholeness. Now this is
just the case here. Spirit supplies Selection and Motion. Substance
supplies something from which selection can be made and to which Motion
can be imparted; so that it is a sine qua non for the
Expression of Spirit.
Then comes the question, How did the Universal Substance get
there?
It cannot have made itself, for its only quality is inertia, therefore
it must have come from some source having power to project it by some
mode of action not of a material nature. Now the only mode of action
not of a material nature is Thought, and therefore to Thought we must
look for the origin of Substance. This places us at a point antecedent
to the existence even of primary substance, and consequently the
initial action must be that of the Originating Mind upon Itself, in
other words, Self-contemplation.
At this primordial stage neither Time nor Space can be
recognized,
for both imply measurement of successive intervals, and in the primary
movement of Mind upon itself the only consciousness must be that of
Present Absolute Being, because no external points exist from which to
measure extension either in time or space. Hence we must eliminate the
ideas of time and space from our conception of Spirit's initial
Self-contemplation.
This being so, Spirit's primary contemplation of itself as
simply
Being necessarily makes its presence universal and eternal, and
consequently, paradoxical as it may seem, its independence of Time and
Space makes it present throughout all Time and Space. It is the old
esoteric maxim that the point expands to infinitude and that infinitude
is concentrated in the point. We start, then, with Spirit contemplating
itself simply as Being. But to realize your being you must have
consciousness, and consciousness can only come by the recognition of
your relation to something else. The something else may be an external
fact or a mental image; but even in the latter case to conceive the
image at all you must mentally stand back from it and look at
it--something like the man who was run in by the police at Gravesend
for walking behind himself to see how his new coat fitted. It stands
thus: if you are not conscious of something you are conscious of
nothing, and if you are conscious of nothing, then you are unconscious,
so that to be conscious at all you must have something to be conscious
of.
This may seem like an extract from "Paddy's Philosophy," but
it
makes it clear that consciousness can only be attained by the
recognition of something which is not the recognizing ego
itself--in other words consciousness is the realization of some
particular sort of relation between the cognizing subject and
the cognized object; but I want to get away from academical terms into
the speech of human beings, so let us take the illustration of a broom
and its handle--the two together make a broom; that is one sort of
relation; but take the same stick and put a rake-iron at the end of it
and you have an altogether different implement. The stick remains the
same, but the difference of what is put at the end of it makes the
whole thing a broom or a rake. Now the thinking and feeling power is
the stick, and the conception which it forms is the thing at the end of
the stick, so that the quality of its consciousness will be determined
by the ideas which it projects; but to be conscious at all it must
project ideas of some sort.
Now of one thing we may be quite sure, that the Spirit of Life
must feel
alive. Then to feel alive it must be conscious, and to be conscious
it must have something to be conscious of; therefore the contemplation
of itself as standing related to something which is not its own
originating self in propria persona is a necessity of the case;
and consequently the Self-contemplation of Spirit can only proceed by
its viewing itself as related to something standing out from itself,
just as we must stand at a proper distance to see a picture--in fact
the very word "existence" means "standing out." Thus things are called
into existence or "outstandingness" by a power which itself does not
stand out, and whose presence is therefore indicated by the word
"subsistence."
The next thing is that since in the beginning there is nothing
except Spirit, its primary feeling of aliveness must be that of being
alive all over; and to establish such a consciousness of its
own universal livingness there must be the recognition of a
corresponding relation equally extensive in character; and the
only possible correspondence to fulfil this condition is therefore that
of a universally distributed and plastic medium whose particles are all
in perfect equilibrium, which is exactly the description of the Primary
Substance or ether. We are thus philosophically led to the conclusion
that Universal Substance must be projected by Universal Spirit as a
necessary consequence of Spirit's own inherent feeling of Aliveness;
and in this way we find that the great Primary Polarity of Being
becomes established.
From this point onward we shall find the principle of Polarity
in
universal activity. It is that relation between opposites without which
no external Motion would be possible, because there would be nowhere to
move from, and nowhere to move to; and without which external Form
would be impossible because there would be nothing to limit the
diffusion of substance and bring it into shape. Polarity, or the
interaction of Active and Passive, is therefore the basis of all Evolution.
This is a great fundamental truth when we get it in its right
order;
but all through the ages it has been a prolific source of error by
getting it in its wrong order. And the wrong order consists in making
Polarity the originating point of the Creative Process. What this
misconception leads to we shall see later on; but since it is very
widely accepted under various guises even at the present day it is well
to be on our guard against it. Therefore I wish the student to see
clearly that there is something which comes before that Polarity which
gives rise to Evolution, and that this something is the original
movement of Spirit within itself, of which we can best get an
idea by calling it Self-contemplation.
Now this may seem an extremely abstract conception and one
with
which we have no practical concern. I fancy I can hear the reader
saying "The Lord only knows how the world started, and it is His
business and not mine," which would be perfectly true if this
originating faculty were confined to the Cosmic Mind. But it is not,
and the same action takes place in our own minds also, only with the
difference that it is ultimately subject to that principle of Cosmic
Unity of which I have already spoken. But, subject to that unifying
principle, this same power of origination is in ourselves also, and our
personal advance in evolution depends on our right use of it; and our
use of it depends on our recognition that we ourselves give rise to the
particular polarities which express themselves in our whole world of
consciousness, whether within or without. For these reasons it is very
important to realize that Evolution is not the same as Creation. It is
the unfolding of potentialities involved in things already created, but
not the calling into existence of what does not yet exist--that
is Creation.
The order, therefore, which I wish the student to observe is,
first
the Self-contemplation of Spirit producing Polarity, and next Polarity
producing Manifestation in Form--and also to realize that it is in this
order his own mind operates as a subordinate center of creative energy.
When the true place of Polarity is thus recognized, we shall find in it
the explanation of all those relations of things which give rise to the
whole world of phenomena; from which we may draw the practical
inference that if we want to change the manifestation we must change
the polarity, and to change the polarity we must get back to the
Self-contemplation of Spirit. But in its proper place as the
root-principle of all secondary causation, Polarity is one of
those fundamental facts of which we must never lose sight. The term
"Polarity" is adopted from electrical science. In the electric battery
it is the connecting together of the opposite poles of zinc and copper
that causes a current to flow from one to the other and so provides the
energy that rings the bell. If the connection is broken there is no
action. When you press the button you make the connection. The same
process is repeated in respect of every sort of polarity throughout the
universe. Circulation depends on polarity, and circulation is the manifestation
of Life, which we may therefore say depends on the principle of
polarity. In relation to ourselves we are concerned with two great
polarities, the polarity of Soul and Body and the polarity of Soul and
Spirit; and it is in order that he may more clearly realize their
working that I want the student to have some preliminary idea of
Polarity as a general principle.
The conception of the Creative Order may therefore be
generalized as
follows. The Spirit wants to enjoy the reality of its own Life--not
merely to vegetate, but to enjoy giving--and therefore by
Self-contemplation it projects a polar opposite, or complementary,
calculated to give rise to the particular sort of relation out
of which the enjoyment of a certain mode of self-consciousness will
necessarily spring. Let this sentence be well pondered over until the
full extent of its significance is grasped, for it is the key to the
whole matter Very well, then: Spirit wants to Enjoy Life, and so, by
thinking of itself as having the enjoyment which it wishes, it
produces the conditions which, by their re-action upon itself, give
rise to the reality of the sort of enjoyment contemplated. In more
scientific language an opposite polarity is induced, giving rise to a
current which stimulates a particular mode of sensation, which
sensation in turn becomes a fresh starting-point for still further
action; and in this way each successive stage becomes the
stepping-stone to a still higher degree of sensation--that is, to a
Fuller Enjoyment of Life.
Such a conception as this presents us with a Progressive
Series to
which it is impossible to assign any limit. That the progression must
be limitless is clear from the fact that there is never any change in
the method. At each successive stage the Creating Power is the
Self-consciousness of the Spirit, as realized at that stage, still
reaching forward for yet further Enjoyment of Life, and so always
keeping on repeating the one Creative Process at an ever-rising
level; and since these are the sole working conditions, the progress is
one which logically admits of no finality. And this is where the
importance of realizing the Singleness of the Originating Power comes
in, for with a Duality each member would limit the other; in fact,
Duality as the Originating Power is inconceivable, for, once more to
quote "Paddy's Philosophy," "finality would be reached before anything
was begun."
This Creative Process, therefore, can only be conceived of as
limitless, while at the same time strictly progressive, that is,
proceeding stage by stage, each stage being necessary as a preparation
for the one that is to follow. Let us then briefly sketch the stages by
which things in our world have got as far as they have. The interest of
the enquiry lies in the fact that if we can once get at the principle
which is producing these results, we may discover some way of giving it
personal application.
On the hypothesis of the Self-contemplation of Spirit being
the
originating power, we have found that a primary ether, or universal
substance, is the necessary correspondence to Spirit's simple awareness
of its own being. But though awareness of being is the necessary
foundation for any further possibilities it is, so to say, not much to
talk about. The foundation fact, of course, is to know that I Am; but
immediately on this consciousness there follows the desire for
Activity--I want to enjoy my I Am-ness by doing something with it.
Translating these words into a state of consciousness in the Cosmic
Mind they become a Law of Tendency leading to localised
activity, and, looking only at our own world, this would mean the
condensation of the universal etheric substance into the primary nebula
which later on becomes our solar system, this being the correspondence
to the Self-contemplation of Spirit as passing into specific activity
instead of remaining absorbed in simple awareness of Being. Then this
self-recognition would lead to the conception of still more specific
activity having its appropriate polar opposite, or material
correspondence, in the condensation of the nebula into a solar system.
Now at this stage Spirit's conception of itself is that of
Activity,
and consequently the material correspondence is Motion, as
distinguished from the simple diffused ether which is the
correspondence of mere awareness of Being, But what sort of motion? Is
the material movement evolved at this stage bound to take any
particular form? A little consideration will show us that it is. At
this initial stage, the first awakening, so to say, of Spirit into
activity, its consciousness can only be that of activity absolute;
that is, not as related to any other mode of activity because as yet
there is none, but only as related to an all-embracing Being; so that
the only possible conception of Activity at this stage is that of Self-sustained
activity, not depending on any preceding mode of activity because there
is none. The law of reciprocity therefore demands a similar
self-sustained motion in the material correspondence, and mathematical
considerations show that the only sort of motion which can sustain a
self-supporting body moving in vacuo is a rotary motion
bringing the body itself into a spherical form. Now this is exactly
what we find at both extremes of the material world. At the big end the
spheres of the planets rotating on their axes and revolving round the
sun; and at the little end the spheres of the atoms consisting of
particles which, modern science tells us, in like manner rotate round a
common center at distances which are astronomical as compared with
their own mass. Thus the two ultimate units of physical manifestation,
the atom and the planet, both follow the same law of self-sustained
motion which we have found that, on a priori grounds, they
ought in order to express the primary activity of Spirit. And we may
note in passing that this rotary, or absolute, motion is the
combination of the only two possible relative modes of motion,
namely, motion from a point and motion to it, that is to say
centrifugal and centripetal motion; so that in rotary, or absolute,
motion we find that both the polarities of motion are included, thus
repeating on the purely mechanical side the primordial principle of the
Unity including the Duality in itself.
But the Spirit wants something more than mechanical motion,
something more alive than the preliminary Rota, and so the first step
toward individualized consciousness meets us in plant life. Then on the
principle that each successive stage affords the platform for a further
outlook, plant life is followed by animal life, and this by the Human
order in which the liberty of selecting its own conditions is immensely
extended. In this way the Spirit's expression of itself has now reached
the point where its polar complementary, or Reciprocal, manifests as
Intellectual Man--thus constituting the Fourth great stage of Spirit's
Self-recognition. But the Creative Process cannot stop here, for, as we
have seen, its root in the Self-contemplation of Spirit renders it of
necessity an Infinite Progression. So it is no use asking what is its
ultimate, for it has no ultimate--its word is "Excelsior"--ever Life
and "Life more Abundant." Therefore the question is not as to finality
where there is none, but as to the next step in the progression. Four
kingdoms we know: what is to be the Fifth? All along the line the
progress has been in one direction, namely, toward the development of
more perfect Individuality, and therefore on the principle of
continuity we may reasonably infer that the next stage will take us
still further in the same direction. We want something more perfect
than we have yet reached, but our ideas as to what it should be are
very various, not to say discordant, for one person's idea of better is
another person's idea of worse. Therefore what we want to get at is
some broad generalization of principle which will be in advance of our
past experiences. This means that we must look for this principle in
something that we have not yet experienced, and the only place where we
can possibly find principles which have not yet manifested themselves
is in gremio Dei--that is, in the innermost of the Originating
Spirit, or as St. John calls it, "in the bosom of the Father." So we
are logically brought to personal participation in the Divine Ideal as
the only principle by which the advance into the next stage can
possibly be made. Therefore we arrive at the question, What is the
Divine Ideal like?
THE DIVINE IDEAL
What is the Divine Ideal? At first it might appear hopeless to
attempt to answer such a question, but by adhering to a definite
principle we shall find that it will open out, and lead us on, and show
us things which we could not otherwise have seen--this is the nature of
principle, and is what distinguishes it from mere rules which are only
the application of principle under some particular set of conditions.
We found two principles as essential in our conception of the
Originating Spirit, namely its power of Selection and its power of
Initiative; and we found a third principle as its only possible Motive,
namely the Desire of the LIVING for ever increasing Enjoyment of Life.
Now with these three principles as the very essence of the
All-originating Spirit to guide us, we shall, I think, be able to form
some conception of that Divine Ideal which gives rise to the Fifth
Stage of Manifestation of Spirit, upon which we should now be preparing
to enter.
We have seen that the Spirit's Enjoyment of Life is
necessarily a reciprocal--it
must have a corresponding fact in manifestation to answer to it;
otherwise by the inherent law of mind no consciousness, and
consequently no enjoyment, could accrue; and therefore by the law of
continuous progression the required Reciprocal should manifest as a
being awakening to the consciousness of the principle by which he
himself comes into existence.
Such an awakening cannot proceed from a comparison of one set
of
existing conditions with another, but only from the recognition of a
Power which is independent of all conditions, that is to say, the
absolute Self-dependence of the Spirit. A being thus awakened would be
the proper correspondence of the Spirit's Enjoyment of Life at a stage
not only above mechanical motion or physical vitality, but even above
intellectual perception of existing phenomena, that is to say at the
stage where the Spirit's Enjoyment consists in recognizing itself as
the Source of all things. The position in the Absolute would be, so to
speak, the awakening of Spirit to the recognition of its own Artistic
Ability. I use the word "Artistic" as more nearly expressing an almost
unstatable idea than any other I can think of, for the work of the
artist approaches more closely to creation ex nihilo than any
other form of human activity. The work of the artist is the expression
of the self that the artist is, while that of the scientist is the
comparison of facts which exist independently of his own personality.
It is true that the realm of Art is not without its methods of
analysis, but the analysis is that of the artist's own feeling and of
the causes which give rise to it. These are found to contain in
themselves certain principles which are fundamental to all Art, but
these principles are the laws of the creative action of mind rather
than those of the limitations of matter. Now if we may transfer this
familiar analogy to our conception of the working of the
All-Originating Mind we may picture it as the Great Artist giving
visible expression to His feeling by a process which, though subject to
no restriction from antecedent conditions, yet works by a Law which is
inseparable from the Feeling itself--in fact the Law is the
Feeling, and the Feeling is the Law, the Law of Perfect
Creativeness.
Some such Self-contemplation as this is the only way in which
we can
conceive the next, or Fifth, stage of Spirit's Self-recognition as
taking place. Having got as far as it has in the four previous stages,
that is to the production of intellectual man as its correspondence,
the next step in advance must be on the lines I have indicated--unless,
indeed, there were a sudden and arbitrary breaking of the Law of
Continuity, a supposition which the whole Creative Process up to now
forbids us to entertain. Therefore we may picture the Fifth stage of
the Self-contemplation of Spirit as its awakening to the recognition of
its own Artistic Ability, its own absolute freedom of action and
creative power--just as in studio parlance we say that an artist
becomes "free of his palette." But by the always present Law of
Reciprocity, through which alone self-consciousness can be attained,
this Self-recognition of Spirit in the Absolute implies a corresponding
objective fact in the world of the Relative; that is to say, the coming
into manifestation of a being capable of realizing the Free Creative
Artistry of the Spirit, and of recognizing the same principle in
himself, while at the same time realizing also the relation
between the Universal Manifesting Principle and its Individual
Manifestation.
Such, it appears to me, must be the conception of the Divine
Ideal
embodied in the Fifth Stage of the progress of manifestation. But I
would draw particular attention to the concluding words of the last
paragraph, for if we miss the relation between the Universal
Manifesting Principle and its Individual Manifestation, we have failed
to realize the Principle altogether, whether in the Universal or in the
Individual--it is just their interaction that makes each become what it
does become--and in this further becoming consists the progression.
This relation proceeds from the principle I pointed out in the opening
chapter which makes it necessary for the Universal Spirit to be always
harmonious with itself; and if this Unity is not recognized by the
individual he cannot hold that position of Reciprocity to the
Originating Spirit which will enable it to recognize itself as in the
Enjoyment of Life at the higher level we are now contemplating--rather
the feeling conveyed would be that of something antagonistic, producing
the reverse of enjoyment, thus philosophically bringing out the point
of the Scriptural injunction, "Grieve not the Spirit." Also the
re-action upon the individual must necessarily give rise to a
corresponding state of inharmony, though he may not be able to define
his feeling of unrest or to account for it. But on the other hand if
the grand harmony of the Originating Spirit within itself is duly
regarded, then the individual mind affords a fresh center from which
the Spirit contemplates itself in what I have ventured to call its
Artistic Originality--a boundless potential of Creativeness, yet always
regulated by its own inherent Law of Unity.
And this Law of the Spirit's Original Unity is a very simple
one. It
is the Spirit's necessary and basic conception of itself. A lie is a
statement that something is, which is not. Then, since the Spirit's
statement or conception of anything necessarily makes that thing exist,
it is logically impossible for it to conceive a lie. Therefore the
Spirit is Truth. Similarly disease and death are the negative of Life,
and therefore the Spirit, as the Principle of Life, cannot embody
disease or death in its Self-contemplation. In like manner also, since
it is free to produce what it will, the Spirit cannot desire the
presence of repugnant forms, and so one of its inherent Laws must be
Beauty. In this threefold Law of Truth, Life, and Beauty, we find the
whole underlying nature of the Spirit, and no action on the part of the
individual can be at variance with the Originating Unity which does not
contravert these fundamental principles.
This it will be seen leaves the individual absolutely
unfettered
except in the direction of breaking up the fundamental harmony on which
he himself, as included in the general creation, is dependent. This
certainly cannot be called limitation, and we are all free to follow
the lines of our own individuality in every other direction; so that,
although the recognition of our relation to the Originating Spirit
safeguards us from injuring ourselves or others, it in no way restricts
our liberty of action or narrows our field of development. Am I, then,
trying to base my action upon a fundamental desire for the opening out
of Truth, for the increasing of Livingness, and for the creating of
Beauty? Have I got this as an ever present Law of Tendency at the back
of my thought? If so, then this law will occupy precisely the same
place in My Microcosm, or personal world, that it does in the
Macrocosm, or great world, as a power which is in itself formless, but
which by reason of its presence necessarily impresses its character
upon all that the creative energy forms. On this basis the creative
energy of the Universal Mind may be safely trusted to work through the
specializing influence of our own thought[1] and we may
adopt the maxim "trust your desires" because we know that they are the
movement of the Universal in ourselves, and that being based upon our
fundamental recognition of the Life, Love, and Beauty which the Spirit
is, their unfoldments must carry these initial qualities with them all
down the line, and thus, in however small a degree, becomes a portion
of the working of the Spirit in its inherent creativeness.
This perpetual Creativeness of the Spirit is what we must
never lose
sight of, and that is why I want the student to grasp clearly the idea
of the Spirit's Self-contemplation as the only possible root of the
Creative Process. Not only at the first creation of the world, but at
all times the plane of the innermost is that of Pure Spirit and
therefore at this, the originating point, there is nothing else for
Spirit to contemplate excepting itself; then this Self-contemplation
produces corresponding manifestation, and since Self-contemplation or
recognition of its own existence must necessarily go on continually,
the corresponding creativeness must always be at work. If this
fundamental idea be clearly grasped we shall see that incessant and
progressive creativeness is the very essence and being of Spirit. This
is what is meant by the Affirmativeness of the Spirit. It cannot per
se act negatively, that is to say uncreatively, for by the very
nature of its Self-recognition such a negative action would be
impossible. Of course if we act negatively then, since the
Spirit is always acting affirmatively, we are moving in the opposite
direction to it; and consequently so long as we regard our own negative
action as being affirmative, the Spirit's action must appear to us
negative, and thus it is that all the negative conditions of the world
have their root in negative or inverted thought: but the more we bring
our thought into harmony with the Life, Love, and Beauty which the
Spirit is, the less these inverted conditions will obtain, until at
last they will be eliminated altogether. To accomplish this is our
great object; for though the progress may be slow it will be steady if
we proceed on a definite principle; and to lay hold of the true
principle is the purpose of our studies. And the principle to lay hold
of is the Ceaseless Creativeness of Spirit. This is what we mean when
we speak of it as The Spirit of the Affirmative, and I would ask my
readers to impress this term upon their minds. Once grant that the
All-originating Spirit is thus the Spirit of the Pure Affirmative, and
we shall find that this will lead us logically to results of the
highest value.
If, then, we keep this Perpetual and Progressive Creativeness
of the
Spirit continually in mind we may rely upon its working as surely in
ourselves as in that great cosmic forward movement which we speak of as
Evolution. It is the same power of Evolution working within ourselves,
only with this difference, that in proportion as we come to realize its
nature we find ourselves able to facilitate its progress by offering
more and more favorable conditions for its working. We do not add to
the force of the Power, for we are products of it and so cannot
generate what generates us; but by providing suitable
conditions we can more and more highly specialize it. This is the
method of all the advance that has ever been made. We never create any
force (e.g. electricity) but we provide special conditions under
which the force manifests itself in a variety of useful and
beautiful ways, unsuspected possibilities which lay hidden in the power
until brought to light by the cooperation of the Personal Factor.
Now it is precisely the introduction of this Personal Factor
that
concerns us, because to all eternity we can only recognize things from
our own center of consciousness, whether in this world or in any other;
therefore the practical question is how to specialize in our own case
the generic Originating Life which, when we give it a name, we
call "the Spirit." The method of doing this is perfectly logical when
we once see that the principle involved is that of the Self-recognition
of Spirit. We have traced the modus operandi of the Creative
Process sufficiently far to see that the existence of the cosmos is the
result of the Spirit's seeing itself in the cosmos, and if this
be the law of the whole it must also be the law of the part. But there
is this difference, that so long as the normal average relation of
particles is maintained the whole continues to subsist, no matter what
position any particular particle may go into, just as a fountain
continues to exist no matter whether any particular drop of water is
down in the basin or at the top of the jet. This is the generic
action which keeps the race going as a whole. But the question is, What
is going to become of ourselves? Then because the law of the whole is
also the law of the part we may at once say that what is wanted is for
the Spirit to see itself in us--in other words, to find in us
the Reciprocal which, as we have seen, is necessary to its Enjoyment of
a certain Quality of Consciousness. Now, the fundamental consciousness
of the Spirit must be that of Self-sustaining Life, and for the full
enjoyment of this consciousness there must be a corresponding individual
consciousness reciprocating it; and on the part of the individual such
a consciousness can only arise from the recognition that his own life
is identical with that of the Spirit--not something sent forth to
wander away by itself, but something included in and forming part of
the Greater Life. Then by the very conditions of the case, such a
contemplation on the part of the individual is nothing else than the
Spirit contemplating itself from the standpoint of the individual
consciousness, and thus fulfilling the Law of the Creative Process
under such specialized conditions as must logically result in the
perpetuation of the individual life. It is the Law of the Cosmic
Creative Process transferred to the individual.
This, it seems to me, is the Divine Ideal: that of an
Individuality
which recognizes its Source, and recognizes also the method by which it
springs from that Source, and which is therefore able to open up in
itself a channel by which that Source can flow in uninterruptedly; with
the result that from the moment of this recognition the individual
lives directly from the Originating Life, as being himself a
special direct creation, and not merely as being a member of a
generic race. The individual who has reached this stage of recognition
thus finds a principle of enduring life within himself; so then
the next question is in what way this principle is likely to manifest
itself.