Thomas Troward - The Dore Lectures on Mental Sciencel

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 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