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.
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 recognising 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 [out of nothing Ed.] 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 limitation 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.
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 realising the Free Creative Artistry of the Spirit, and of recognising the same principle in himself, while at the same time realising 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 realise 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.
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 centre 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. Then, since the Spirit's statement of 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 controvert these fundamental principles.
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 specialising influence of our own thought [See my Dorι Lectures on Mental Science], 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 this, in however small a degree, becomes a portion of the working of the Spirit in its inherent creativeness.
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 [by itself Ed.] 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 in 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 Creativity 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 realise its nature, we find ourselves able to facilitate its progress by offering more and more favourable 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 specialise 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 lie hidden in the power until brought to light by the co-operation of the Personal factor.
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 [method of operation Ed.] 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 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 Great 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 specialised 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 recognises its Source, and recognises also the method by which it springs from that Source, and which is therefore able to open up in itself a channel by which the 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.