Thomas Troward - The Creative Process in the Individual

supplies Selection and Motion. Substance supplies something from which

selection can be made and to which Motion can be imparted; so that it is a

_sine qua non_ for the Expression of Spirit.

Then comes the question, How did the Universal Substance get there? It

cannot have made itself, for its only quality is inertia, therefore it must

have come from some source having power to project it by some mode of

action not of a material nature. Now the only mode of action not of a

material nature is Thought, and therefore to Thought we must look for the

origin of Substance. This places us at a point antecedent to the existence

even of primary substance, and consequently the initial action must be that

of the Originating Mind upon Itself, in other words, Self-contemplation.

At this primordial stage neither Time nor Space can be recognized, for both

imply measurement of successive intervals, and in the primary movement of

Mind upon itself the only consciousness must be that of Present Absolute

Being, because no external points exist from which to measure extension

either in time or space. Hence we must eliminate the ideas of time and

space from our conception of Spirit's _initial_ Self-contemplation.

This being so, Spirit's primary contemplation of itself as simply Being

necessarily makes its presence universal and eternal, and consequently,

paradoxical as it may seem, its independence of Time and Space makes it

present throughout all Time and Space. It is the old esoteric maxim that

the point expands to infinitude and that infinitude is concentrated in the

point. We start, then, with Spirit contemplating itself simply as Being.

But to realize your being you must have consciousness, and consciousness

can only come by the recognition of your relation to something else. The

something else may be an external fact or a mental image; but even in the

latter case to conceive the image at all you must mentally stand back from

it and look at it--something like the man who was run in by the police at

Gravesend for walking behind himself to see how his new coat fitted. It

stands thus: if you are not conscious of something you are conscious of

nothing, and if you are conscious of nothing, then you are unconscious, so

that to be conscious at all you must have something to be conscious of.

This may seem like an extract from "Paddy's Philosophy," but it makes it

clear that consciousness can only be attained by the recognition of

something which is not the recognizing _ego_ itself--in other words

consciousness is the realization of some particular sort of _relation_

between the cognizing subject and the cognized object; but I want to get

away from academical terms into the speech of human beings, so let us take

the illustration of a broom and its handle--the two together make a broom;

that is one sort of relation; but take the same stick and put a rake-iron

at the end of it and you have an altogether different implement. The stick

remains the same, but the difference of what is put at the end of it makes

the whole thing a broom or a rake. Now the thinking and feeling power is

the stick, and the conception which it forms is the thing at the end of the

stick, so that the quality of its consciousness will be determined by the

ideas which it projects; but to be conscious at all it must project ideas

of some sort.

Now of one thing we may be quite sure, that the Spirit of Life must _feel

alive_. Then to feel alive it must be conscious, and to be conscious it

must have something to be conscious of; therefore the contemplation of

itself as standing related to something which is not its own originating

self _in propria persona_ is a necessity of the case; and consequently the

Self-contemplation of Spirit can only proceed by its viewing itself as

related to something standing out from itself, just as we must stand at a

proper distance to see a picture--in fact the very word "existence" means

"standing out." Thus things are called into existence or "outstandingness"

by a power which itself does not stand out, and whose presence is therefore

indicated by the word "subsistence."

The next thing is that since in the beginning there is nothing except

Spirit, its primary feeling of aliveness must be that of being alive _all

over_; and to establish such a consciousness of its own universal

livingness there must be the recognition of a corresponding _relation_

equally extensive in character; and the only possible correspondence to

fulfil this condition is therefore that of a universally distributed and

plastic medium whose particles are all in perfect equilibrium, which is

exactly the description of the Primary Substance or ether. We are thus

philosophically led to the conclusion that Universal Substance must be

projected by Universal Spirit as a necessary consequence of Spirit's own

inherent feeling of Aliveness; and in this way we find that the great

Primary Polarity of Being becomes established.

From this point onward we shall find the principle of Polarity in universal

activity. It is that relation between opposites without which no external

Motion would be possible, because there would be nowhere to move from, and

nowhere to move to; and without which external Form would be impossible

because there would be nothing to limit the diffusion of substance and

bring it into shape. Polarity, or the interaction of Active and Passive, is

therefore the basis of all _Evolution_.

This is a great fundamental truth when we get it in its right order; but

all through the ages it has been a prolific source of error by getting it

in its wrong order. And the wrong order consists in making Polarity the

originating point of the Creative Process. What this misconception leads to

we shall see later on; but since it is very widely accepted under various

guises even at the present day it is well to be on our guard against it.

Therefore I wish the student to see clearly that there is something which

comes before that Polarity which gives rise to Evolution, and that this

something is the original movement of Spirit _within itself_, of which we

can best get an idea by calling it Self-contemplation.

Now this may seem an extremely abstract conception and one with which we

have no practical concern. I fancy I can hear the reader saying "The Lord

only knows how the world started, and it is His business and not mine,"

which would be perfectly true if this originating faculty were confined to

the Cosmic Mind. But it is not, and the same action takes place in our own

minds also, only with the difference that it is ultimately subject to that

principle of Cosmic Unity of which I have already spoken. But, subject to

that unifying principle, this same power of origination is in ourselves

also, and our personal advance in evolution depends on our right use of it;

and our use of it depends on our recognition that we ourselves give rise to

the particular polarities which express themselves in our whole world of

consciousness, whether within or without. For these reasons it is very

important to realize that Evolution is not the same as Creation. It is the

unfolding of potentialities involved in things already created, but not the

calling into existence of what does not yet exist--_that_ is Creation.

The order, therefore, which I wish the student to observe is, first the

Self-contemplation of Spirit producing Polarity, and next Polarity