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The Dore Lectures on Mental Science by Thomas Troward -
Contents
FOREWORD.
The addresses contained in this volume were delivered by me at
the Dore Gallery, Bond Street, London, on the Sundays of the
first three months of the present year, and are now published at
the kind request of many of my hearers, hence their title of "The
Dore Lectures." A number of separate discourses on a variety of
subjects necessarily labours under the disadvantage of want of
continuity, and also under that of a liability to the frequent
repetition of similar ideas and expressions, and the reader will,
I trust, pardon these defects as inherent in the circumstances of
the work. At the same time it will be found that, although not
specially so designed, there is a certain progressive development
of thought through the dozen lectures which compose this volume,
the reason for which is that they all aim at expressing the same
fundamental idea, namely that, though the laws of the universe
can never be broken, they can be made to work under special
conditions which will produce results that could not be produced
under the conditions spontaneously provided by nature. This is a
simple scientific principle and it shows us the place which is
occupied by the personal factor, that, namely, of an intelligence
which sees beyond the present limited manifestation of the Law
into its real essence, and which thus constitutes the
instru-mentality by which the infinite possibilities of the Law
can be evoked into forms of power, usefulness, and beauty.
The more perfect, therefore, the working of the personal factor,
the greater will be the results developed from the Universal Law;
and hence our lines of study should be two-fold--on the one hand
the theoretical study of the action of Universal Law, and on the
other the practical fitting of ourselves to make use of it; and
if the present volume should assist any reader in this two-fold
quest, it will have answered its purpose.
The different subjects have necessarily been treated very
briefly, and the addresses can only be considered as suggestions
for lines of thought which the reader will be able to work out
for himself, and he must therefore not expect that careful
elabora-tion of detail which I would gladly have bestowed had I
been writing on one of these subjects exclusively. This little
book must be taken only for what it is, the record of somewhat
fragmentary talks with a very indulgent audience, to whom I
gratefully dedicate the volume.
JUNE 5, 1909.
T.T.
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 LIFE OF THE SPIRIT.
The three preceding lectures have touched upon certain
fundamental truths in a definite order--first the nature of the
Originating Spirit itself, next the generic relation of the
individual to this All-embracing Spirit, and lastly the way to
specialize this relation so as to obtain greater results from it
than spontaneously arise by its merely generic action, and we
have found that this can only be done through a new order of
thought. This sequence is logical because it implies a Power, an
Individual who understands the Power, and a Method of applying
the power deduced from understanding its nature. These are
general principles without realizing which it is impossible to
proceed further, but assuming that the reader has grasped their
significance, we may now go on to consider their application in
greater detail.
Now this application must be a personal one, for it is only
through the individual that the higher specialization of the
power can take place, but at the same time this must not lead us
to suppose that the individual, himself, brings the creative
force into being. To suppose this is inversion; and we cannot
impress upon ourselves too deeply that the relation of the
individual to the Divine Spirit is that of a distributor, and not
that of the original creator. If this is steadily borne in mind
the way will become clear, otherwise we shall be led into
confusion.
What, then, is the Power which we are to distribute? It is the
Originating Spirit itself. We are sure that it is this because
the new order of thought always begins at the beginning of any
series which it contemplates bringing into manifestation, and it
is based upon the fact that the origin of everything is Spirit.
It is in this that its creative power resides; hence the person
who is in the true new order of thought assumes as an axiomatic
fact that what he has to distribute, or differentiate into
manifestation is nothing else than the Originating Spirit. This
being the case, it is evident that the PURPOSE of the
distribution must be the more perfect expression of the
Originating Spirit as that which it is in itself, and what it is
in itself is emphatically Life. What is seeking for expression,
then, is the perfect Livingness of the Spirit; and this
expression is to be found, through ourselves, by means of our
renewed mode of thought. Let us see, then, how our new order of
thought, with regard to the Principle of Life, is likely to
operate In our old order of thought we have always associated
Life with the physical body--life has been for us the supreme
physical fact. Now, however, we know that Life is much more than
this; but, as the greater includes the less, it includes physical
life as one mode of its manifestation. The true order does not
require us to deny the reality of physical life or to call it an
illusion; on the contrary it sees in physical life the completion
of a great creative series, but it assigns it the proper place in
that series, which is what the old mode of thought did not.
When we realize the truth about the Creative Process, we see that
the originating life is not physical: its livingness consists in
thought and feeling. By this inner movement it throws out
vehicles through which to function, and these become living forms
because of the inner-principle which is sustaining them; so that
the Life with which we are primarily concerned in the new order
is the life of thought and feeling in ourselves as the vehicle,
or distributing medium, of the Life of the Spirit.
Then, if we have grasped the idea of the Spirit as the great
FORMING Power, as stated in the last lecture, we shall seek in it
the fountain-head of Form as well as of Power: and as a logical
deduction from this we shall look to it to give form to our
thoughts and feelings. If the principle is once recognised the
sequence is obvious. The form taken by our outward conditions,
whether of body or circumstance, depends on the form taken by our
thoughts and feelings, and our thoughts and feelings will take
form from that source from which we allow them to receive
suggestion. Accordingly if we allow them to accept their
fundamental suggestions from the relative and limited, they will
assume a corresponding form and transmit them to our external
environment, thus repeating the old order of limitation in a
ceaselessly recurring round. Now our object is to get out of this
circle of limitation, and the only way to do so is to get our
thoughts and feelings moulded into new forms continually
advancing to greater and greater perfection. To meet this
requirement, therefore, there must be a forming power greater
than that of our own unaided conceptions, and this is to be found
in our realization of the Spirit as the Supreme Beauty, or
Wisdom, moulding our thoughts and feelings into shapes
harmoniously adjusted to the fullest expression, in and through
us, of the Livingness which Spirit is in itself.
Now this is nothing more than transferring to the innermost plane
of origination, a principle with which all readers who are "in
the thought" may be presumed to be quite familiar--the principle
of Receptiveness. We all know what is meant by a receptive mental
attitude when applied to healing or telepathy; and does it not
logically follow that the same principle may be applied to the
receiving of life itself from the Supreme Source? What is wanted,
therefore, is to place ourselves in a receptive mental attitude
towards the Universal Spirit with the intention of receiving its
forming influence into our mental substance. It is always the
presence of a definite intention that distinguishes the
intelligent receptive attitude of mind from a merely sponge-like
absorbency, which sucks in any and every influence that may
happen to be floating round: for we must not shut our eyes to the
fact that there are various influences in the mental atmosphere
by which we are surrounded, and some of them of the most
undesirable kind. Clear and definite intention is therefore as
necessary in our receptive attitude as in our active and creative
one; and if our intention is to have our own thoughts and
feelings moulded into such forms as to express those of the
Spirit, then we establish that relation to the Spirit which, by
the conditions of the case, must necessarily lead us to the
conception of new ideals vitalised by a power which will enable
us to bring them into concrete manifestation. It is in this way
that we become differentiating centres of the Divine Thought
giving it expression in form in the world of space and time, and
thus is solved the great problem of enabling the Universal to act
upon the plane of the particular without being hampered by those
limitations which the merely generic law of manifestation imposes
upon it. It is just here that subconscious mind performs the
function of a "bridge" between the finite and the infinite as
noted in my "Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science" (page 31), and
it is for this reason that a recognition of its susceptibility to
impression is so important.
By establishing, then, a personal relation to the life of the
Spirit, the sphere of the individual becomes enlarged. The reason
is that he allows a greater intelligence than his own to take the
initiative; and since he knows that this Intelligence is also the
very Principle of Life itself, he cannot have any fear that it
will act in any way to the diminution of his individual life, for
that would be to stultify its own operation--it would be
self-destructive action which is a contradiction in terms to the
conception of Creative Spirit. Knowing, then, that by its
inherent nature this Intelligence can only work to the expansion
of the individual life, we can rest upon it with the utmost
confidence and trust it to take an initiative which will lead to
far greater results than any we could forecast from the
stand-point of our own knowledge. So long as we insist on
dictating the particular form which the action of the Spirit is
to take, we limit it, and so close against ourselves avenues of
expansion which might otherwise have been open to us; and if we
ask ourselves why we do this we shall find that in the last
resort it is because we do not believe in the Spirit as a FORMING
power. We have, indeed, advanced to the conception of it as
executive power, which will work to a prescribed pattern, but we
have yet to grasp the conception of it as versed in the art of
design, and capable of elaborating schemes of construction, which
will not only be complete in themselves, but also in perfect
harmony with one another. When we advance to the conception of
the Spirit as containing in itself the ideal of Form as well as
of Power, we shall cease from the effort of trying to force
things into a particular shape, whether on the inner or the outer
plane, and shall be content to trust the inherent harmoniousness
or Beauty of the Spirit to produce combinations far in advance of
anything that we could have conceived ourselves. This does not
mean that we shall reduce ourselves to a condition of apathy, in
which all desire, expectation and enthusiasm have been quenched,
for these are the mainspring of our mental machinery; but on the
contrary their action will be quickened by the knowledge that
there is working at the back of them a Formative Principle so
infallible that it cannot miss its mark; so that however good and
beautiful the existing forms may be, we may always rest in the
happy expectation of something still better to come. And it will
come by a natural law of growth, because the Spirit is in itself
the Principle of Increase. They will grow out of present
conditions for the simple reason that if you are to reach some
further point it can only be by starting from where you are now.
Therefore it is written, "Despise not the day of small things."
There is only one proviso attached to this forward movement of
the Spirit in the world of our own surroundings, and that is that
we shall co-operate with it; and this co-operation consists in
making the best use of existing conditions in cheerful reliance
on the Spirit of Increase to express itself through us, and for
us, because we are in harmony with it. This mental attitude will
be found of immense value in setting us free from worry and
anxiety, and as a consequence our work will be done in a much
more efficient manner. We shall do the present work FOR ITS OWN
sake, knowing that herein is the principle of unfoldment; and
doing it simply for its own sake we shall bring to bear upon it a
power of concentration which cannot fail of good results--and
this quite naturally and without any toilsome effort. We shall
then find that the secret of co-operation is to have faith in
ourselves because we first have faith in God; and we shall
discover that this Divine self-confidence is something very
different from a boastful egotism which assumes a personal
superiority over others. It is simply the assurance of a man who
knows that he is working in accordance with a law of nature. He
does not claim as a personal achievement what the Law does FOR
him: but on the other hand he does not trouble himself about
outcries against his presumptuous audacity raised by persons who
are ignorant of the Law which he is employing. He is therefore
neither boastful nor timorous, but simply works on in cheerful
expectancy because he knows that his reliance is upon a Law which
cannot be broken.
In this way, then, we must realize the Life of the Spirit as
being also the Law of the Spirit. The two are identical, and
cannot deny themselves. Our recognition of them gives them a new
starting point through our own mentality, but they still continue
to be the same in their nature, and unless limited or inverted by
our mental affirmation of limited or inverted conditions, they
are bound to work out into fuller and continually fuller
expression of the Life, Love, and Beauty which the Spirit is in
itself. Our path, therefore, is plain; it is simply to
contemplate the Life, Love, and Beauty of the Originating Spirit
and affirm that we are already giving expression to it in our
thoughts and in our actions however insignificant they may at
present appear. This path may be very narrow and humble in its
beginning, but it ever grows wider and mounts higher, for it is
the continually expanding expression of the Life of the Spirit
which is infinite and knows no limits.
ALPHA AND OMEGA.
Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. What does this mean? It
means the entire series of causation from the first originating
movement to the final and completed result. We may take this on
any scale from the creation of a cosmos to the creation of a
lady's robe. Everything has its origin in an idea, a thought; and
it has its completion in the manifestation of that thought in
form. Many intermediate stages are necessary, but the Alpha and
Omega of the series are the thought and the thing. This shows us
that in essence the thing already existed in the thought. Omega
is already potential in Alpha, just as in the Pythagorean system
all numbers are said to proceed from unity and to be resolvable
back again into it. Now it is this general principle of the
already existence of the thing in the thought that we have to lay
hold of, and as we find it true in an architect's design of the
house that is to be, so we find it true in the great work of the
Architect of the Universe. When we see this we have realized a
general principle, which we find at work everywhere. That is the
meaning of a general principle: it can be applied to any sort of
subject; and the use of studying general principles is to give
them particular application to anything we may have to deal with.
Now what we have to deal with most of all is ourselves, and so we
come to the consideration of Alpha and Omega in the human being.
In the vision of St. John, the speaker of the words, "I am Alpha
and Omega, the First and the Last," is described as "Like unto a
son of man"--that is, however transcendent the appearance in the
vision, it is essentially human, and thus suggests to us the
presence of the universal principle at the human level. But the
figure in the apocalyptic vision is not that of man as we
ordinarily know him. It is that of Omega as it subsists enshrined
in Alpha: it is the ideal of humanity as it subsists in the
Divine Mind which was manifested in objective form to the eyes of
the seer, and therefore presented the Alpha and Omega of that
idea in all the majesty of Divine glory.
But if we grasp the truth that the thing is already existent in
the thought, do we not see that this transcendent Omega must be
already existent in the Divine ideal of every one of us? If on
the plane of the absolute time is not, then does it not follow
that this glorified humanity is a present fact in the Divine
Mind? And if this is so, then this fact is eternally true
regarding every human being. But if it is true that the thing
exists in the thought, it is equally true that the thought finds
form in the thing; and since things exist under the relative
conditions of time and space, they are necessarily subject to a
law of Growth, so that while the subsistence of the thing in the
thought is perfect ab initio, the expression of the thought in
the thing is a matter of gradual development. This is a point
which we must never lose sight of in our studies; and we must
never lose sight of the perfection of the thing in the thought
because we do not yet see the perfection of the thought in the
thing. Therefore we must remember that man, as we know him now,
has by no means reached the ultimate of his evolution. We are
only yet in the making, but we have now reached a point where we
can facilitate the evolutionary process by conscious co-operation
with the Creative Spirit. Our share in this work commences with
the recognition of the Divine ideal of man, and thus finding the
pattern by which we are to be guided. For since the person to be
created after this pattern is ourself, it follows that, by
whatever processes the Divine ideal transforms itself into
concrete reality, the place where those processes are to work
must be within ourselves; in other words, the creative action of
the Spirit takes place through the laws of our own mentality. If
it is a true maxim that the thing must take form in the thought
before the thought can take form in the thing, then it is plain
that the Divine Ideal can only be externalized in our objective
life in proportion as it is first formed in our thought; and it
takes form in our thought only to the extent to which we
apprehend its existence in the Divine Mind. By the nature of the
relation between the individual mind and the Universal Mind it is
strictly a case of reflection; and in proportion as the mirror of
our own mind blurs or clearly reflects the image of the Divine
ideal, so will it give rise to a correspondingly feeble or
vigorous reproduction of it in our external life.
This being the rationale of the matter, why should we limit our
conception of the Divine ideal of ourselves? Why should we say,
"I am too mean a creature ever to reflect so glorious an image"--
or "God never intended such a limitless ideal to be reproduced in
human beings." In saying such things we expose our ignorance of
the whole Law of the Creative Process. We shut our eyes to the
fact that the Omega of completion already subsists in the Alpha
of conception, and that the Alpha of conception would be nothing
but a lying illusion if it was not capable of expression in the
Omega of completion. The creative process in us is that we become
the individual reflection of what we realize God to be relatively
to ourselves, and therefore if we realize the Divine Spirit as
the INFINITE potential of all that can constitute a perfected
human being, this conception must, by the Law of the Creative
Process, gradually build up a corresponding image in our mind,
which in turn will act upon our external conditions.
This, by the laws of mind, is the nature of the process and it
shows us what St. Paul means when he speaks of Christ being
formed in us (Gal. iv. 19) and what in another place he calls
being renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created us
(Col. iii. 10). It is a thoroughly logical sequence of cause and
effect, and what we require is to see more clearly the Law of
this sequence and use it intelligently--that is why St. Paul says
it is being "renewed in knowledge": it is a New Knowledge, the
recognition of principles which we had not previously
apprehended. Now the fact which, in our past experience, we have
not grasped is that the human mind forms a new point of departure
for the work of the Creative Spirit; and in proportion as we see
this more and more clearly, the more we shall find ourselves
entering into a new order of life in which we become less and
less subject to the old limitations. This is not a reward
arbitrarily bestowed upon us for holding dogmatically to certain
mere verbal statements, but it is the natural result of
understanding the supreme law of our own being. On its own plane
it is as purely scientific as the law of chemical reaction; only
here we are not dealing with the interaction of secondary causes
but with the Self-originating action of Spirit. Hence a new force
has to be taken into account which does not occur in physical
science, the power of Feeling. Thought creates form, but it is
feeling that gives vitality to thought. Thought without feeling
may be constructive as in some great engineering work, but it can
never be creative as in the work of the artist or musician; and
that which originates within itself a new order of causation is,
so far as all pre-existing forms are concerned, a creation ex
nihilo, and is therefore Thought expressive of Feeling. It is
this indissoluble union of Thought and Feeling that distinguishes
creative thought from merely analytical thought and places it in
a different category; and therefore if we are to afford a new
starting-point for carrying on the work of creation it must be by
assimilating the feeling of the Originating Spirit as part and
parcel of its thought--it is that entering into the Mind of the
Spirit of which I spoke in the first address.
Now the images in the Mind of the Spirit must necessarily be
GENERIC. The reason for this is that by its very nature the
Principle of Life must be prolific, that is, tending to
Multiplicity, and therefore the original Thought-image must be
fundamental to whole races, and not exclusive to particular
individuals. Consequently the images in the Mind of the Spirit
must be absolute types of the true essentials of the perfect
development of the race, just what Plato meant by architypal
ideas. This is the perfect subsistence of the thing in the
thought. Therefore it is that our evolution as centres of
CREATIVE activity, the exponents of new laws, and through them of
new conditions, depends on our realizing in the Divine Mind the
architype of mental perfection, at once as thought and feeling.
But when we find all this in the Divine Mind, do we not meet with
an infinite and glorious Personality? There is nothing lacking of
all that we can understand by Personality, excepting outward
form; and since the very essence of telepathy is that it
dispenses with the physical presence, we find ourselves in a
position of interior communion with a Personality at once Divine
and Human. This is that Personality of the Spirit which St. John
saw in the apocalyptic vision, and which by the very conditions
of the case is the Alpha and Omega of Humanity.
But, as I have said, it is simply GENERIC in itself, and it
becomes active and specific only by a purely personal relation to
the individual. But once more we must realize that nothing can
take place except according to Law, and therefore this specific
relation is nothing arbitrary, but arises out of the generic Law
applied under specific conditions. And since what makes a law
generic is precisely the fact that it does not supply the
specific conditions, it follows that the conditions for the
specializing of the Law must be provided by the individual. Then
it is that his recognition of the originating creative movement,
as arising from combined Thought and Feeling, becomes a practical
working asset. He realizes that there is a Heart and Mind of the
Spirit reciprocal to his own heart and mind, that he is not
dealing with a filmy abstraction, nor yet with a mere
mathematical sequence, but with something that is pulsating with
a Life as warm and vivid and full of interest as his own--nay,
more so, for it is the Infinite of all that he himself is. And
his recognition goes even further than this, for since this
specialization can only take place through the individual
himself, it logically follows that the Life, which he thus
specializes, become HIS OWN life. Quoad the individual it does
not know itself apart from him. But this self-recognition through
the individual cannot in any way change the inherent nature of
the Creative Spirit, and therefore to the extent to which the
individual perceives its identification with himself, he places
himself under its guidance, and so he becomes one of those who
are "led by the Spirit." Thus he begins to find the Alpha and
Omega of the Divine ideal reproduced in himself--in a very small
degree at present, but containing the principle of perpetual
growth into an infinite expansion of which we can as yet form no
conception.
St. John sums up the whole of this position in his memorable
words:--"Beloved now are we the Sons of God, and it doth not yet
appear what we SHALL be; but we know that when He shall appear
(i.e., become clear to us) we shall be like Him; for (i.e., the
reason of all this) we shall see Him as He is" (I. John iii. 2).
THE CREATIVE POWER OF THOUGHT.
One of the great axioms in the new order of ideas, of which I
have spoken, is that our Thought possesses creative power, and
since the whole superstructure depends on this foundation, it is
well to examine it carefully. Now the starting point is to see
that Thought, or purely mental action, is the only possible
source from which the existing creation could ever have come into
manifestation at all, and it is on this account that in the
preceding addresses I have laid stress on the origin of the
cosmos. It is therefore not necessary to go over this ground
again, and we will start this morning's enquiry on the assumption
that every manifestation is in essence the expression of a Divine
Thought. This being so, our own mind is the expression of a
Divine Thought. The Divine Thought has produced something which
itself is capable of thinking; but the question is whether its
thinking has the same creative quality as that of the Parent
Mind.
Now by the very hypothesis of the case the whole Creative Process
consists in the continual pressing so forward of the Universal
Spirit for expression through the individual and particular, and
Spirit in its different modes is therefore the Life and Substance
of the universe. Hence it follows that if there is to be an
expression of thinking power it can only be by expressing the
same thinking power which subsists latent in the Originating
Spirit. If it were less than this it would only be some sort of
mechanism and would not be thinking power, so that to be thinking
power at all it must be identical in kind with that of the
Originating Spirit. It is for this reason that man is said to be
created in the image and likeness of God; and if we realize that
it is impossible for him to be otherwise, we shall find a firm
foundation from which to draw many important deductions.
But if our thought possesses this creative power, why are we
hampered by adverse conditions? The answer is, because hitherto
we have used our power invertedly. We have taken the starting
point of our thought from external facts and consequently created
a repetition of facts of a similar nature, and so long as we do
this we must needs go on perpetuating the old circle of
limitation. And, owing to the sensitiveness of the subconscious
mind to suggestion--(See Edinburgh Lectures, chapter V.)--we are
subject to a very powerful negative influence from those who are
unacquainted with affirmative principles, and thus race-beliefs
and the thought-currents of our more immediate environment tend
to consolidate our own inverted thinking. It is therefore not
surprising that the creative power of our thought, thus used in a
wrong direction, has produced the limitations of which we
complain. The remedy, then, is by reversing our method of
thinking, and instead of taking external facts as our starting
point, taking the inherent nature of mental power as our starting
point. We have already gained two great steps in this direction,
first by seeing that the whole manifested cosmos could have had
its origin nowhere but in mental power, and secondly by realizing
that our own mental power must be the same in kind with that of
the Originating Mind.
Now we can go a step further and see how this power in ourselves
can be perpetuated and intensified. By the nature of the creative
process your mind is itself a thought of the Parent Mind; so, as
long as this thought of the Universal Mind subsists, you will
subsist, for you are it. But so long as you think this thought it
continues to subsist, and necessarily remains present in the
Divine Mind, thus fulfilling the logical conditions required for
the perpetuation of the individual life. A poor analogy of the
process may be found in a self-influencing dynamo where the
magnetism generates the current and the current intensifies the
magnetism with the result of producing a still stronger current
until the limit of saturation is reached; only in the substantive
infinitude of the Universal Mind and the potential infinitude of
the Individual Mind there is no limit of saturation. Or we may
compare the interaction of the two minds to two mirrors, a great
and a small one, opposite each other, with the word "Life"
engraved on the large one. Then, by the law of reflection, the
word "Life" will also appear on the image of the smaller mirror
reflected in the greater. Of course these are only very imperfect
analogies; but if you car once grasp the idea of your own
individuality as a thought in the Divine Mind which is able to
perpetuate itself by thinking of itself as the thought which it
is, you have got at the root of the whole matter, and by the same
process you will not only perpetuate your life but will also
expand it.
When we realize this on the one hand, and on the other that all
external conditions, including the body, are produced by thought,
we find ourselves standing between two infinites, the infinite of
Mind and the infinite of Substance--from both of which we can
draw what we will, and mould specific conditions out of the
Universal Substance by the Creative Power which we draw in from
the Universal Mind. But we must recollect that this is not by the
force of personal will upon the substance, which is an error that
will land us in all sorts of inversion, but by realizing our mind
as a channel through which the Universal Mind operates upon
substances in a particular way, according to the mode of thought
which we are seeking to embody. If, then, our thought is
habitually concentrated upon principles rather than on particular
things, realizing that principles are nothing else than the
Divine Mind in operation, we shall find that they will
necessarily germinate to produce their own expression in
corresponding facts, thus verifying the words of the Great
Teacher, "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness
and all these things shall be added unto you."
But we must never lose sight of the reason for the creative power
of our thought, that it is because our mind is itself a thought
of the Divine Mind, and that consequently our increase in
livingness and creative power must be in exact proportion to our
perception of our relation to the Parent Mind. In such
considerations as these is to be found the philosophical basis of
the Bible doctrine of "Sonship," with its culmination in the
conception of the Christ. These are not mere fancies but the
expression of strictly scientific principles, in their
application to the deepest problems of the individual life; and
their basis is that each one's world, whether in or out of the
flesh, must necessarily be created by his own consciousness, and,
in its turn, his mode of consciousness will necessarily take its
colour front his conception of his relation to the Divine Mind--
to the exclusion of light and colour, if he realizes no Divine
Mind, and to their building up into forms of beauty in proportion
as he realizes his identity of being with that All-Originating
Spirit which is Light, Love, and Beauty in itself. Thus the great
creative work of Thought in each of us is to make us consciously
"sons and daughters of the Almighty," realizing that by our
divine origin we can never be really separated from the Parent
Mind which is continually seeking expression through us, and that
any apparent separation is due to our own misconception of the
true nature of the inherent relation between the Universal and
the Individual. This is the lesson which the Great Teacher has so
luminously out before us in the parable of the Prodigal Son. |
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THE GREAT AFFIRMATIVE |
