Thomas Troward - The Creative Process in the Individual

producing Manifestation in Form--and also to realize that it is in this

order his own mind operates as a subordinate center of creative energy.

When the true place of Polarity is thus recognized, we shall find in it the

explanation of all those relations of things which give rise to the whole

world of phenomena; from which we may draw the practical inference that if

we want to change the manifestation we must change the polarity, and to

change the polarity we must get back to the Self-contemplation of Spirit.

But in its proper place as the root-principle of all _secondary_ causation,

Polarity is one of those fundamental facts of which we must never lose

sight. The term "Polarity" is adopted from electrical science. In the

electric battery it is the connecting together of the opposite poles of

zinc and copper that causes a current to flow from one to the other and so

provides the energy that rings the bell. If the connection is broken there

is no action. When you press the button you make the connection. The same

process is repeated in respect of every sort of polarity throughout the

universe. Circulation depends on polarity, and circulation is the

_manifestation_ of Life, which we may therefore say depends on the

principle of polarity. In relation to ourselves we are concerned with two

great polarities, the polarity of Soul and Body and the polarity of Soul

and Spirit; and it is in order that he may more clearly realize their

working that I want the student to have some preliminary idea of Polarity

as a general principle.

The conception of the Creative Order may therefore be generalized as

follows. The Spirit wants to enjoy the reality of its own Life--not merely

to vegetate, but to enjoy giving--and therefore by Self-contemplation it

projects a polar opposite, or complementary, calculated to give rise to the

particular sort of _relation_ out of which the enjoyment of a certain mode

of self-consciousness will necessarily spring. Let this sentence be well

pondered over until the full extent of its significance is grasped, for it

is the key to the whole matter Very well, then: Spirit wants to Enjoy Life,

and so, by thinking of itself as _having_ the enjoyment which it wishes, it

produces the conditions which, by their re-action upon itself, give rise to

the reality of the sort of enjoyment contemplated. In more scientific

language an opposite polarity is induced, giving rise to a current which

stimulates a particular mode of sensation, which sensation in turn becomes

a fresh starting-point for still further action; and in this way each

successive stage becomes the stepping-stone to a still higher degree of

sensation--that is, to a Fuller Enjoyment of Life.

Such a conception as this presents us with a Progressive Series to which it

is impossible to assign any limit. That the progression must be limitless

is clear from the fact that there is never any change in the method. At

each successive stage the Creating Power is the Self-consciousness of the

Spirit, as realized at that stage, still reaching forward for yet further

Enjoyment of Life, and so always keeping on repeating the _one_ Creative

Process at an ever-rising level; and since these are the sole working

conditions, the progress is one which logically admits of no finality. And

this is where the importance of realizing the Singleness of the Originating

Power comes in, for with a Duality each member would limit the other; in

fact, Duality as the Originating Power is inconceivable, for, once more to

quote "Paddy's Philosophy," "finality would be reached before anything was

begun."

This Creative Process, therefore, can only be conceived of as limitless,

while at the same time strictly progressive, that is, proceeding stage by

stage, each stage being necessary as a preparation for the one that is to

follow. Let us then briefly sketch the stages by which things in our world

have got as far as they have. The interest of the enquiry lies in the fact

that if we can once get at the principle which is producing these results,

we may discover some way of giving it personal application.

On the hypothesis of the Self-contemplation of Spirit being the originating

power, we have found that a primary ether, or universal substance, is the

necessary correspondence to Spirit's simple awareness of its own being. But

though awareness of being is the necessary foundation for any further

possibilities it is, so to say, not much to talk about. The foundation

fact, of course, is to know that I Am; but immediately on this

consciousness there follows the desire for Activity--I want to enjoy my I

Am-ness by doing something with it. Translating these words into a state of

consciousness in the Cosmic Mind they become a Law of Tendency leading to

_localised_ activity, and, looking only at our own world, this would mean

the condensation of the universal etheric substance into the primary nebula

which later on becomes our solar system, this being the correspondence to

the Self-contemplation of Spirit as passing into specific activity instead

of remaining absorbed in simple awareness of Being. Then this

self-recognition would lead to the conception of still more specific

activity having its appropriate polar opposite, or material correspondence,

in the condensation of the nebula into a solar system.

Now at this stage Spirit's conception of itself is that of Activity, and

consequently the material correspondence is Motion, as distinguished from

the simple diffused ether which is the correspondence of mere awareness of

Being, But what sort of motion? Is the material movement evolved at this

stage bound to take any particular form? A little consideration will show

us that it is. At this initial stage, the first awakening, so to say, of

Spirit into activity, its consciousness can only be that of activity

_absolute_; that is, not as related to any other mode of activity because

as yet there is none, but only as related to an all-embracing Being; so

that the only possible conception of Activity at this stage is that of

_Self-sustained_ activity, not depending on any preceding mode of activity

because there is none. The law of reciprocity therefore demands a similar

self-sustained motion in the material correspondence, and mathematical

considerations show that the only sort of motion which can sustain a

self-supporting body moving _in vacuo_ is a rotary motion bringing the body

itself into a spherical form. Now this is exactly what we find at both

extremes of the material world. At the big end the spheres of the planets

rotating on their axes and revolving round the sun; and at the little end

the spheres of the atoms consisting of particles which, modern science

tells us, in like manner rotate round a common center at distances which

are astronomical as compared with their own mass. Thus the two ultimate

units of physical manifestation, the atom and the planet, both follow the

same law of self-sustained motion which we have found that, on _a priori_

grounds, they ought in order to express the primary activity of Spirit. And

we may note in passing that this rotary, or _absolute_, motion is the

combination of the only two possible _relative_ modes of motion, namely,

motion from a point and motion to it, that is to say centrifugal and

centripetal motion; so that in rotary, or absolute, motion we find that

both the polarities of motion are included, thus repeating on the purely