The physical world affords endless examples of the working of "inversion". In a dynamo the sequence commences with mechanical force which is ultimately transformed into the subtler power of electricity; but invert this order, commence by supplying electricity to a motor, and it becomes converted into mechanical force. In one order, the rotation of a wheel produces electricity; in the opposite order, electricity produces the rotation of a wheel. Or to exhibit the same principle in the simplest arithmetical form, if 10 ÷ 2 = 5, then 10 ÷ 5 = 2.
"Inversion" is a factor of the greatest magnitude and has to be reckoned with. However, I must here content myself only with indicating the general principle that the same power is capable of producing diametrically opposite effects if it be applied under opposite conditions. We are apt to fall into the mistake of supposing that results of opposite character require powers of opposite character to produce them. Our conceptions of things in general become much simplified when we recognise that this is not the case, but rather that the same power will produce opposite results as it starts from opposite poles.
The idea conveyed to the subjective consciousness may be false but, until some truer idea is more forcibly impressed in its stead, it remains a substantial reality to the mind which gives it objective existence. I have seen a man speak to the stump of a tree which in the moonlight looked like a person standing in a garden, and repeatedly ask its name and what it wanted. So far as the speaker's conception was concerned, the garden contained a living man who refused to answer.
Thus every mind lives in a world to which its own perceptions give objective reality. Its perceptions may be erroneous, but they nevertheless constitute the very reality of life for the mind that gives form to them. No life is possible other than the life we lead in our own minds. Hence the advance of the whole race depends on substituting the ideas of good, of liberty, and of order for their opposites. This can be done only by giving some sufficient reason for accepting the new idea in place of the old. For each one of us, our beliefs constitute our facts, and these beliefs can be changed only by discovering some ground for a different belief.
This is the Law of Works, the Circle of Karma, the Wheel of Fate, from which there is no escape — because the complete fulfilment of the law of our moral nature today is only sufficient for today and leaves no surplus to compensate the failure of yesterday. This is the necessary law of things as they appear from external observation only; and so long as this conception remains, the law of each man's subjective consciousness makes it a reality for him.
What is needed, therefore, is to establish the conception that external acts are NOT the only causative power, but that there is another law of causation, namely that of pure Thought. This is the Law of Faith and of Liberty, for it introduces us to a power which is able to inaugurate a new sequence of causation not related to any past actions.
Ultimately we find this ground in the great Truth of the eternal relation between spirit in the Universal and in the particular. When we realise that substantially there is nothing else but spirit, and that we ourselves are reproducing in individuality the Intelligence and Love which rule the Universe, we have reached the firm standing ground where we find that we can send forth our Thought to produce any effect we will. We have passed beyond the idea of two opposites requiring reconciliation into that of a duality in which there is no opposition other than that of the inner and the outer of the same unity. This is the polarity which is inherent in all Being. When we realise this unity, our Thought is possessed of illimitable creative power; it is free to range where it will; and it is by no means bound down to accept as inevitable the consequences which, if unchecked by renovated thought, would flow from our past actions.
In its own independent creative power the mind has found the way out of the fatal circle in which its previous ignorance of the highest law had imprisoned it. The Unity of the Spirit is found to result in perfect Liberty. The old sequence of Karma has been cut off, and a new and higher order has been introduced. In the old order the line of thought received its quality from the quality of actions, and since they always fell short of perfection, the development of a higher thought-power from this root was impossible. This is the order in which everything is seen from without. But in the true order everything is seen from within.
It is the thought which determines the quality of the action, and not vice versa. Since thought is free, it is at liberty to direct itself to the highest principles, which thus spontaneously reproduce themselves in the outward acts. Thus both thoughts and actions are brought into harmony with the Universal Mind. The individual realises that he is no longer bound by the consequences of his former deeds, done in the time of his ignorance. He realises, indeed, that he was never bound by them except so far as he himself gave them this power by false conceptions of the truth.
Thus recognising himself for what he really is — the expression of the Infinite Spirit in individual personality — Man finds that he is a free "partaker of Divine nature", not losing his identity but becoming more and more fully himself with an ever-expanding perfection, following out a line of evolution whose possibilities are inexhaustible.
This idea is not, as some suppose, a misconception of the truth of Being. On the contrary, when rightly understood, it will be found to imply the very widest grasp of that truth. It is only from the platform of this supreme knowledge that an idea so comprehensive in its adaptation to every class of mind could have evolved. It is the translation of the relations arising from the deepest laws of Being into terms which can be realised even by the most unlearned — a translation arranged with such consummate skill that, as the mind grows in spirituality, every stage of advance is met by a corresponding unfolding of the Divine meaning. Even the crudest apprehension of the implied idea is a sufficient basis for an entire renovation of the man's thoughts concerning himself because it gives him a ground from which to think of himself as no longer bound by the law of retribution for past offences, but as free to follow out the new law of Liberty as a child of God.
The man's conception of the modus operandi of this emancipation may take the form of the grossest anthropomorphism or the most childish notions as to the satisfaction of the Divine justice by vicarious substitution: but the practical result will be the same. He has got what satisfies him as a ground for thinking of himself in a perfectly new light; and since the states of our subjective consciousness constitute the realities of our life, to afford him a convincing ground for thinking himself free is to make him free.
With increasing light he may find that his first explanation of the modus operandi was inadequate. But when he reaches this stage, further investigation will show him that the great truth of his liberty rests upon a firmer foundation than the conventional interpretation of traditional dogmas, and that it has its roots in the great laws of Nature which are never doubtful and which can never be overturned. It is precisely because their whole action has its root in the unchangeable laws of Mind that there exists a perpetual necessity for presenting to men something which they can lay hold of as a sufficient ground for that change of mental attitude by which alone they can be rescued from the fatal circle which is figured under the symbol of the Old Serpent.
This is the conception presented to us, whether we apprehend it in the most literally material sense, or as the ideal presentation of the deepest philosophic study of mental laws, or in whatever variety of ways we may combine these two extremes. The ultimate idea impressed upon the mind must always be the same: it is that there is a Divine warrant for knowing ourselves to be the children of God and "partakers of the Divine nature". When we thus realise that there is solid ground for believing ourselves free, by force of this very belief, we become free.
The proper outcome of the study of the laws of spirit which constitute the inner side of things is not the gratification of a mere idle curiosity, nor the acquisition of abnormal powers, but the attainment of our spiritual liberty, without which no further progress is possible. When we have reached this goal, the old things have passed away and all things have become new. The mystical seven days of the old creation have been fulfilled, and the first day of the new week dawns upon us with its resurrection to a new life, expressing on the highest plane that great doctrine of the "octave" [see The Law of Seven - Ed.] which the science of ancient temples traced through Nature, and which the science of the present day endorses, though ignorant of its supreme significance.
When we have thus been made free by recognising our oneness with Infinite Being, we have reached the termination of the old series of sequences and have gained the starting-point of the new. The old limitations are found never to have had any existence save in our own misapprehension of the truth, and one by one they fall off as we advance into clearer light. We find that the Life-Spirit we seek is in ourselves. Having this for our centre, our relation to all else becomes part of a wondrous living Order in which every part works in sympathy with the whole, the whole in sympathy with every part, in a harmony wide as infinitude, and in which there are no limitations save those imposed by the Law of Love.