The whole Bible and the whole history of the world, past, present
and future, are contained in embryo in the story of Eden, for
they are nothing else than the continuous unfolding of certain
great principles which are there allegorically stated. That this
is by no means a new notion is shown by the following quotation
from Origen:--"Who is there so foolish and without common-sense
as to believe that God planted trees in the Garden of Eden like a
husbandman; and planted therein the tree of life perceptible to
the eyes and to the senses, which gave life to the eater; and
another tree which gave to the eater a knowledge of good and
evil? I believe that everybody must regard these as figures under
which a recondite sense is concealed." Let us, then, follow up
the suggestion of this early Father of the Church, and enquire
what may be the "recondite sense" concealed under this figure of
the two trees. On the face of the story there are two roots, one
of Life and the other of Death, two fundamental principles
bringing about diametrically opposite results. The distinctive
mark of the latter is that it is the knowledge of good and evil,
that is to say, the recognition of two antagonistic principles,
and so requiring a knowledge of the relations between them to
enable us to continually make the needful adjustments to keep
ourselves going. Now, in appearance this is exceedingly specious.
It looks so entirely reasonable that we do not see its ultimate
destructiveness; and so we are told that Eve ate the fruit
because she "saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes." But
careful consideration will show us in what the destructive nature
of this principle consists. It is based on the fallacy that good
is limited by evil, and that you cannot receive any good except
through eliminating the corresponding evil by realizing it and
beating it back. In this view life becomes a continual combat
against every imaginable form of evil, and after we have racked
our brains to devise precautions against all possible evil
happenings, there remains the chance, and much more than the
chance, that we have by no means exhausted the category of
negative possibilities, and that others may arise which no amount
of foresight on our part could have imagined. The more we see
into this position the more intolerable it becomes, because from
this stand-point we can never attain any certain basis of action,
and the forces of possible evil multiply as we contemplate them.
To set forth to out-wit all evil by our own knowledge of its
nature is to attempt a task the hopelessness of which becomes
apparent when we see it in its true light.
The mistake is in supposing that Life can be generated in
ourselves by an intellectual process; but, as we have seen in the
preceding lectures, Life is the primary movement of the Spirit,
whether in the cosmos or in the individual. In its proper order
intellectual knowledge is exceedingly important and useful, but
its place in the order of the whole is not that of the
Originator. It is not Life in itself, but is a function of life;
it is an effect and not the cause. The reason why this is so is
because intellectual study is always the study of the various
laws which arise from the different RELATIONS of things to one
another; and it therefore presupposes that these things together
with their laws are already in existence. Consequently it does
not start from the truly creative stand-point, that of creating
something entirely new, creation ex nihilo as distinguished from
CONSTRUCTION, or the laying-together of existing materials, which
is what the word literally means. To recognize evil as a force to
be reckoned with is therefore to give up the creative stand-point
altogether. It is to quit the plane of First Cause and descend
into the realm of secondary causation and lose ourselves amid the
confusion of a multiplicity of relative causes and effects
without grasping any unifying principle behind them.
Now the only thing that can release us from the inextricable
confusion of an infinite multiplicity is the realization of an
underlying unity, and at the back of all things we find the
presence of one Great Affirmative principle without which nothing
could have existence. This, then, is the Root of Life; and if we
credit it with being able, not only to supply the power, but also
the form for its manifestation we shall see that we need not go
beyond this SINGLE Power for the production of anything. It is
Spirit producing Substance out of its own essence, and the
Substance taking Form in accordance with the movement of the
Spirit. What we have to realize is, not only that this is the way
in which the cosmos is brought into existence, but also that,
because the Spirit finds a new centre in ourselves, the same
process is repeated in our own mentality, and therefore we are
continually creating ex nihilo whether we know it or not.
Consequently, if we look upon evil as a force to be reckoned
with, and therefore requiring to be studied, we are in effect
creating it; while on the other hand if we realize that there is
only ONE force to be considered, and that absolutely good, we are
by the law of the creative process bringing that good into
manifestation. No doubt for this affirmative use of our creative
power it is necessary that we start from the basic conception of
a SINGLE originating power which is absolutely good and
life-giving; but if there were a self-originating power which was
destructive then no creation could ever have come into existence
at all, for the positive and negative self-originating powers
would cancel each other and the result would be zero. The fact,
therefore, of our own existence is a sufficient proof of the
singleness and goodness of the Originating Power, and from this
starting-point there is no second power to be taken into
consideration, and consequently we do not have to study the evil
that may arise out of existing or future circumstances, but
require to keep our minds fixed only upon the good which we
intend to create. There is a very simple reason for this. It is
that every new creation necessarily carries its own law with it
and by that law produces new conditions of its own. A balloon
affords a familiar illustration of my meaning. The balloon with
its freight weighs several hundredweight, yet the introduction of
a new factor, the gas, brings with it a law of its own which
entirely alters the conditions, and the force of gravity is so
completely overcome that the whole mass rises into the air. The
Law itself is never altered, but we have previously known it only
under limiting conditions. These conditions, however, are no part
of the Law itself; and a clearer realization of the Law shows us
that it contains in itself the power of transcending them. The
law which every new creation carries with it is therefore not a
contradiction of the old law but its specialization into a higher
mode of action.
Now the ultimate Law is that of production ex nihilo by the
movement of the Spirit within itself, and all subordinate laws
are merely the measurements of the relations which spontaneously
arise between different things when they are brought into
manifestation, arid therefore, if an entirely new thing is
created it must necessarily establish entirely new relations and
so produce entirely new laws. This is the reason why, if we take
the action of pure unmanifested Spirit as our starting-point, we
may confidently trust it to produce manifestations of law which,
though perfectly new from the stand-point of our past experience,
are quite as natural in their own way as any that have gone
before. It is on this account that in these addresses I lay so
much stress on the fact that Spirit creates ex nihilo, that is,
out of no pre-existing forms, but simply by its own movement
within itself. If, then, this idea is clearly grasped, it
logically follows from it that the Root of Life is not to be
found in the comparison of good and evil, but in the simple
affirmation of the Spirit as the All-creating power of Good. And
since, as we have already seen, this same all-creating Spirit
finds a centre and fresh starting-point of operation in our own
minds, we can trust it to follow the Law of its own being there
as much as in the creation of the cosmos.
Only we must not forget that it is working through our own minds.
It thinks through our mind, and our mind must be made a suitable
channel for this mode of its operation by conforming itself to
the broad generic lines of the Spirit's thinking. The reason for
this is one which I have sought to impress throughout these
lectures, namely, that the specialization of a law is never the
denial of it, but on the contrary the fuller recognition of its
basic principles; and if this is the case in ordinary physical
science it must be equally so when we come to specialize the
great Law of Life itself. The Spirit can never change its
essential nature as the essence of Life, Love, and Beauty; and if
we adopt these characteristics, which constitute the Law of the
Spirit, as the basis of our own thinking, and reject all that is
contrary to them, then we afford the broad generic conditions for
the specialized thinking of the Spirit through our own minds: and
the thinking of the Spirit is that INVOLUTION, or passing of
spirit into form, which is the whole being of the creative
process.
The mind which is all the time being thus formed is our own. It
is not a case of control by an external individuality, but the
fuller expression of the Universal through an organized mentality
which has all along been a less perfect expression of the
Universal; and therefore the process is one of growth. We are not
losing our individuality, but are coming into fuller possession
of ourselves by the conscious recognition of our personal share
in the great work of creation. We begin in some slight measure to
understand what the Bible means when it speaks of our-being
"partakers of the Divine nature" (II. Peter i. 4) and we realize
the significance of the "unity of the Spirit" (Ephesians iv. 3).
Doubtless this will imply changes in our old mode of thinking;
but these changes are not forced upon us, they are brought about
naturally by the new stand-point from which we now see things.
Almost imperceptibly to ourselves we grow into a New Order of
Thought which proceeds, not from a knowledge of good and evil,
but from the Principle of Life itself. That is what makes the
difference between our old thought and our new thought. Our old
thought was based upon a comparison of limited facts: our new
thought is based upon a comprehension of principles. The
difference is like that between the mathematics of the infant,
who cannot count beyond the number of apples or marbles put
before him, and that of the senior wrangler who is not dependent
upon visible objects for his calculations, but plunges boldly
into the unknown because he knows that he is working by
indubitable principles. In like manner when we realize the
infallible Principle of the Creative Law we no longer find we
need to see everything cut and dried beforehand, for if so, we
could never get beyond the range of our old experiences; but we
can move steadily forward because we know the certainty of the
creative principle by which we are working, or rather, which is
working through us, and that our life, in all its minutes"
details, is its harmonious expression. Thus the Spirit thinks
through our thought only its thought is greater than ours. It is
the paradox of the less containing the greater. Our thought will
not be objectless or unintelligible to ourselves. It will be
quite clear as far as it goes. We shall know exactly what we want
to do and why we want to do it, and so will act in a reasonable
and intelligent manner. But what we do not know is the greater
thought that is all the time giving rise to our smaller thought,
and which will open out from it as our lesser thought progresses
into form. Then we gradually see the greater thought which
prompted our smaller one and we find ourselves working along its
lines, guided by the invisible hand of the Creative Spirit into
continually increasing degrees of livingness to which we need
assign no limits, for it is the expansion of the Infinite within
ourselves.
This, as it appears to me, is the hidden meaning of the two trees
in Eden, the Garden of the Soul. It is the distinction between a
knowledge which is merely that of comparisons between different
sorts of conditions, and a knowledge which is that of the Life
which gives rise to and therefore controls conditions. Only we
must remember that the control of conditions is not to be
attained by violent self-assertion which is only recognizing them
as substantive entities to be battled with, but by conscious
unity with that All-creating Spirit which works silently, but
surely, on its own lines of Life, Love, and Beauty.
"Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of
Hosts."