The Creative Process in the Individual

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

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

mechanical side the primordial principle of the Unity including the Duality

in itself.

But the Spirit wants something more than mechanical motion, something more

alive than the preliminary Rota, and so the first step toward

individualized consciousness meets us in plant life. Then on the principle

that each successive stage affords the platform for a further outlook,

plant life is followed by animal life, and this by the Human order in which

the liberty of selecting its own conditions is immensely extended. In this

way the Spirit's expression of itself has now reached the point where its

polar complementary, or Reciprocal, manifests as Intellectual Man--thus

constituting the Fourth great stage of Spirit's Self-recognition. But the

Creative Process cannot stop here, for, as we have seen, its root in the

Self-contemplation of Spirit renders it of necessity an Infinite

Progression. So it is no use asking what is its ultimate, for it has no

ultimate--its word is "Excelsior"--ever Life and "Life more Abundant."

Therefore the question is not as to finality where there is none, but as to

the next step in the progression. Four kingdoms we know: what is to be the

Fifth? All along the line the progress has been in one direction, namely,

toward the development of more perfect Individuality, and therefore on the

principle of continuity we may reasonably infer that the next stage will

take us still further in the same direction. We want something more perfect

than we have yet reached, but our ideas as to what it should be are very

various, not to say discordant, for one person's idea of better is another

person's idea of worse. Therefore what we want to get at is some broad

generalization of principle which will be in advance of our past

experiences. This means that we must look for this principle in something

that we have not yet experienced, and the only place where we can possibly

find principles which have not yet manifested themselves is _in gremio

Dei_--that is, in the innermost of the Originating Spirit, or as St. John

calls it, "in the bosom of the Father." So we are logically brought to

personal participation in the Divine Ideal as the only principle by which

the advance into the next stage can possibly be made. Therefore we arrive

at the question, What is the Divine Ideal like?

THE DIVINE IDEAL

What is the Divine Ideal? At first it might appear hopeless to attempt to

answer such a question, but by adhering to a definite principle we shall

find that it will open out, and lead us on, and show us things which we

could not otherwise have seen--this is the nature of principle, and is what

distinguishes it from mere rules which are only the application of

principle under some particular set of conditions. We found two principles

as essential in our conception of the Originating Spirit, namely its power

of Selection and its power of Initiative; and we found a third principle as

its only possible Motive, namely the Desire of the LIVING for ever

increasing Enjoyment of Life. Now with these three principles as the very

essence of the All-originating Spirit to guide us, we shall, I think, be

able to form some conception of that Divine Ideal which gives rise to the

Fifth Stage of Manifestation of Spirit, upon which we should now be

preparing to enter.

We have seen that the Spirit's Enjoyment of Life is necessarily a

_reciprocal_--it must have a corresponding fact in manifestation to answer

to it; otherwise by the inherent law of mind no consciousness, and

consequently no enjoyment, could accrue; and therefore by the law of

continuous progression the required Reciprocal should manifest as a being

awakening to the consciousness of the principle by which he himself comes

into existence.

Such an awakening cannot proceed from a comparison of one set of existing

conditions with another, but only from the recognition of a Power which is

independent of all conditions, that is to say, the absolute Self-dependence

of the Spirit. A being thus awakened would be the proper correspondence of

the Spirit's Enjoyment of Life at a stage not only above mechanical motion

or physical vitality, but even above intellectual perception of existing

phenomena, that is to say at the stage where the Spirit's Enjoyment

consists in recognizing itself as the Source of all things. The position in

the Absolute would be, so to speak, the awakening of Spirit to the

recognition of its own Artistic Ability. I use the word "Artistic" as more

nearly expressing an almost unstatable idea than any other I can think of,

for the work of the artist approaches more closely to creation _ex nihilo_

than any other form of human activity. The work of the artist is the

expression of the self that the artist is, while that of the scientist is

the comparison of facts which exist independently of his own personality.

It is true that the realm of Art is not without its methods of analysis,

but the analysis is that of the artist's own feeling and of the causes

which give rise to it. These are found to contain in themselves certain

principles which are fundamental to all Art, but these principles are the

laws of the creative action of mind rather than those of the limitations of

matter. Now if we may transfer this familiar analogy to our conception of

the working of the All-Originating Mind we may picture it as the Great

Artist giving visible expression to His feeling by a process which, though

subject to no restriction from antecedent conditions, yet works by a Law

which is inseparable from the Feeling itself--in fact the Law _is_ the

Feeling, and the Feeling _is_ the Law, the Law of Perfect Creativeness.

Some such Self-contemplation as this is the only way in which we can

conceive the next, or Fifth, stage of Spirit's Self-recognition as taking

place. Having got as far as it has in the four previous stages, that is to

the production of intellectual man as its correspondence, the next step in

advance must be on the lines I have indicated--unless, indeed, there were a

sudden and arbitrary breaking of the Law of Continuity, a supposition which

the whole Creative Process up to now forbids us to entertain. Therefore we

may picture the Fifth stage of the Self-contemplation of Spirit as its

awakening to the recognition of its own Artistic Ability, its own absolute

freedom of action and creative power--just as in studio parlance we say

that an artist becomes "free of his palette." But by the always present Law

of Reciprocity, through which alone self-consciousness can be attained,

this Self-recognition of Spirit in the Absolute implies a corresponding

objective fact in the world of the Relative; that is to say, the coming

into manifestation of a being capable of realizing the Free Creative

Artistry of the Spirit, and of recognizing the same principle in himself,

while at the same time realizing also the _relation_ between the Universal

Manifesting Principle and its Individual Manifestation.

Such, it appears to me, must be the conception of the Divine Ideal embodied

in the Fifth Stage of the progress of manifestation. But I would draw

particular attention to the concluding words of the last paragraph, for if

we miss the _relation_ between the Universal Manifesting Principle and its

Individual Manifestation, we have failed to realize the Principle

altogether, whether in the Universal or in the Individual--it is just their

interaction that makes each become what it does become--and in this further

becoming consists the progression. This relation proceeds from the

principle I pointed out in the opening chapter which makes it necessary for

the Universal Spirit to be always harmonious with itself; and if this Unity

is not recognized by the individual he cannot hold that position of

Reciprocity to the Originating Spirit which will enable it to recognize

itself as in the Enjoyment of Life at the higher level we are now

contemplating--rather the feeling conveyed would be that of something

antagonistic, producing the reverse of enjoyment, thus philosophically

bringing out the point of the Scriptural injunction, "Grieve not the

Spirit." Also the re-action upon the individual must necessarily give rise

to a corresponding state of inharmony, though he may not be able to define

his feeling of unrest or to account for it. But on the other hand if the

grand harmony of the Originating Spirit within itself is duly regarded,

then the individual mind affords a fresh center from which the Spirit

contemplates itself in what I have ventured to call its Artistic

Originality--a boundless potential of Creativeness, yet always regulated by

its own inherent Law of Unity.

And this Law of the Spirit's Original Unity is a very simple one. It is the

Spirit's necessary and basic conception of itself. A lie is a statement

that something is, which is not. Then, since the Spirit's statement or

conception of anything necessarily makes that thing exist, it is logically

impossible for it to conceive a lie. Therefore the Spirit is Truth.

Similarly disease and death are the negative of Life, and therefore the

Spirit, as the Principle of Life, cannot embody disease or death in its

Self-contemplation. In like manner also, since it is free to produce what

it will, the Spirit cannot desire the presence of repugnant forms, and so

one of its inherent Laws must be Beauty. In this threefold Law of Truth,

Life, and Beauty, we find the whole underlying nature of the Spirit, and no

action on the part of the individual can be at variance with the

Originating Unity which does not contravert these fundamental principles.

This it will be seen leaves the individual absolutely unfettered except in

the direction of breaking up the fundamental harmony on which he himself,

as included in the general creation, is dependent. This certainly cannot be

called limitation, and we are all free to follow the lines of our own

individuality in every other direction; so that, although the recognition

of our relation to the Originating Spirit safeguards us from injuring

ourselves or others, it in no way restricts our liberty of action or

narrows our field of development. Am I, then, trying to base my action upon

a fundamental desire for the opening out of Truth, for the increasing of

Livingness, and for the creating of Beauty? Have I got this as an ever

present Law of Tendency at the back of my thought? If so, then this law

will occupy precisely the same place in My Microcosm, or personal world,

that it does in the Macrocosm, or great world, as a power which is in

itself formless, but which by reason of its presence necessarily impresses

its character upon all that the creative energy forms. On this basis the

creative energy of the Universal Mind may be safely trusted to work through

the specializing influence of our own thought[1] and we may adopt the maxim

"trust your desires" because we know that they are the movement of the

Universal in ourselves, and that being based upon our fundamental

recognition of the Life, Love, and Beauty which the Spirit is, their

unfoldments must carry these initial qualities with them all down the line,

and thus, in however small a degree, becomes a portion of the working of

the Spirit in its inherent creativeness.

This perpetual Creativeness of the Spirit is what we must never lose sight

of, and that is why I want the student to grasp clearly the idea of the

Spirit's Self-contemplation as the only possible root of the Creative

Process. Not only at the first creation of the world, but at all times the

plane of the innermost is that of Pure Spirit,[2] and therefore at this,

the originating point, there is nothing else for Spirit to contemplate

excepting itself; then this Self-contemplation produces corresponding

manifestation, and since Self-contemplation or recognition of its own

existence must necessarily go on continually, the corresponding

creativeness must always be at work. If this fundamental idea be clearly

grasped we shall see that incessant and progressive creativeness is the

very essence and being of Spirit. This is what is meant by the

Affirmativeness of the Spirit. It cannot _per se_ act negatively, that is

to say uncreatively, for by the very nature of its Self-recognition such a

negative action would be impossible. Of course if _we_ act negatively then,

since the Spirit is always acting affirmatively, we are moving in the

opposite direction to it; and consequently so long as we regard our own

negative action as being affirmative, the Spirit's action must appear to us

negative, and thus it is that all the negative conditions of the world have

their root in negative or inverted thought: but the more we bring our

thought into harmony with the Life, Love, and Beauty which the Spirit is,

the less these inverted conditions will obtain, until at last they will be

eliminated altogether. To accomplish this is our great object; for though

the progress may be slow it will be steady if we proceed on a definite

principle; and to lay hold of the true principle is the purpose of our

studies. And the principle to lay hold of is the Ceaseless Creativeness of

Spirit. This is what we mean when we speak of it as The Spirit of the

Affirmative, and I would ask my readers to impress this term upon their

minds. Once grant that the All-originating Spirit is thus the Spirit of the

Pure Affirmative, and we shall find that this will lead us logically to

results of the highest value.

If, then, we keep this Perpetual and Progressive Creativeness of the Spirit

continually in mind we may rely upon its working as surely in ourselves as

in that great cosmic forward movement which we speak of as Evolution. It is

the same power of Evolution working within ourselves, only with this

difference, that in proportion as we come to realize its nature we find

ourselves able to facilitate its progress by offering more and more

favorable conditions for its working. We do not add to the force of the

Power, for we are products of it and so cannot generate what generates

_us_; but by providing suitable conditions we can more and more highly

specialize it. This is the method of all the advance that has ever been

made. We never create any force (_e.g._ electricity) but we provide special

conditions under which the force manifests _itself_ in a variety of useful

and beautiful ways, unsuspected possibilities which lay hidden in the power

until brought to light by the cooperation of the Personal Factor.

Now it is precisely the introduction[3] of this Personal Factor that

concerns us, because to all eternity we can only recognize things from our

own center of consciousness, whether in this world or in any other;

therefore the practical question is how to specialize in our own case the

_generic_ Originating Life which, when we give it a name, we call "the

Spirit." The method of doing this is perfectly logical when we once see

that the principle involved is that of the Self-recognition of Spirit. We

have traced the _modus operandi_ of the Creative Process sufficiently far

to see that the existence of the cosmos is the result of the Spirit's

seeing itself _in_ the cosmos, and if this be the law of the whole it must

also be the law of the part. But there is this difference, that so long as

the normal average relation of particles is maintained the whole continues

to subsist, no matter what position any particular particle may go into,

just as a fountain continues to exist no matter whether any particular drop

of water is down in the basin or at the top of the jet. This is the

_generic_ action which keeps the race going as a whole. But the question

is, What is going to become of ourselves? Then because the law of the whole

is also the law of the part we may at once say that what is wanted is for

the Spirit _to see itself in us_--in other words, to find in us the

Reciprocal which, as we have seen, is necessary to its Enjoyment of a

certain Quality of Consciousness. Now, the fundamental consciousness of the

Spirit must be that of Self-sustaining Life, and for the full enjoyment of

this consciousness there must be a corresponding _individual_ consciousness

reciprocating it; and on the part of the individual such a consciousness

can only arise from the recognition that his own life is identical with

that of the Spirit--not something sent forth to wander away by itself, but

something included in and forming part of the Greater Life. Then by the

very conditions of the case, such a contemplation on the part of the

individual is nothing else than the Spirit contemplating itself from the

standpoint of the individual consciousness, and thus fulfilling the Law of

the Creative Process under such specialized conditions as must logically

result in the perpetuation of the individual life. It is the Law of the

Cosmic Creative Process transferred to the individual.

This, it seems to me, is the Divine Ideal: that of an Individuality which

recognizes its Source, and recognizes also the method by which it springs

from that Source, and which is therefore able to open up in itself a

channel by which that Source can flow in uninterruptedly; with the result

that from the moment of this recognition the individual lives directly from

the Originating Life, as being himself _a special direct creation_, and not

merely as being a member of a generic race. The individual who has reached

this stage of recognition thus finds a principle of enduring life _within

himself_; so then the next question is in what way this principle is likely

to manifest itself.