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.