Читать книгу The Dore Lectures on Mental Sciencel - Thomas Troward - Страница 6

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.