The first question that naturally presents itself is, if these things be so, why does not every individual express the life, love, and beauty of the Universal Spirit?
The solar system is a perfect work of mechanical creation, but to constitute centres which can reciprocate the highest nature of the Divine Mind requires not a mechanism, however perfect, but a mental centre which is, in itself, an independent source of action. Hence by the requirements of the case man should be capable of placing himself in either a positive or a negative relation to the Parent Mind from which he originates: otherwise he would be nothing more than a clockwork figure.
In this necessity of the case, then, we find the reason why the life, love, and beauty of the Spirit are not visibly reproduced in every human being. They are reproduced in the world of nature, so far as a mechanical and automatic action can represent them, but their perfect reproduction can take place only on the basis of a liberty akin to that of the Originating Spirit itself, which therefore implies the liberty of negation as well as of affirmation.
The fallacy involved in this negative argument is the assumption that the law of limitation is essential to all grades of being. It is the fallacy of the old shipbuilders as to the impossibility of building iron ships. What is required is to get at the principle which is at the back of the Law in its affirmative working, and specialise it under higher conditions than are spontaneously presented by nature; and this can only be done by the introduction of the personal element, that is to say an individual intelligence capable of comprehending the principle. The question, then, is, What is the principle by which we came into being? and this is only a personal application of the general question, How did anything come into being?
If we will therefore go to the inmost principle in ourselves, which philosophy and Scripture alike declare to be made in the image and likeness of God, instead of to the outer vehicles which it externalises as instruments through which to function on the various planes of being, we shall find we have reached a principle in ourselves which stands in loco dei towards all our vehicles and also towards our environment. It is above them all and creates them, however unaware we may be of the fact, and relatively to them it occupies the place of first cause.
The recognition of this is the discovery of our own relation to the whole world of the relative. On the other hand this must not lead us into the mistake of supposing that there is nothing higher for, as we have already seen, this inmost principle or ego is itself the effect of an antecedent cause: for it proceeds from the imaging process in the Divine Mind.
Man's place in the cosmic order is that of a distributor of the Divine power — subject, however, to the inherent Law of the power which he distributes. We see one instance of this in ordinary science, in the fact that we never create force: all we can do is distribute it. The very word man means distributor or measurer as, in common with all words derived from the Sanskrit root MN, it implies the idea of measurement, just as in the words moon, month, mens, mind, and "man" — the Indian weight of 80 pounds; and it is for this reason that man is spoken of in Scripture as a "steward", or dispenser of the Divine gifts. As our minds become open to the full meaning of this position, the immense possibilities — and also the responsibility contained in it — will become apparent.
It means that the individual is the creative centre of his own world. Our past experience affords no evidence against this but, on the contrary, is evidence for it. Our true nature is always present: only we have hitherto taken the lower and mechanical side of things for our starting point, and so have created limitation instead of expansion.
And even with the knowledge of the Creative Law which we have now attained, we shall continue to do this if we seek our starting point in the things which are below us and not in the only thing which is above us, namely the Divine Mind. For it is only there that we can find illimitable Creative Power. Life is being, it is the experience of states of consciousness, and there is an unfailing correspondence between these inner states and our outward conditions.
But we invert this order, and seek to create from conditions to states. We say, If I had such and such conditions they would produce the state of feeling which I desire; and in so saying we run the risk of making a mistake as to the correspondence, for it may turn out that the particular conditions which we fixed on are not such as would produce the desired state.
Or, again, though they might produce it in a certain degree, other conditions might produce it in a still greater degree, while at the same time opening the way to the attainment of still higher states and still better conditions.
In like manner the power of the Universal Mind takes particular forms through the particular mind of the individual. It does not interfere with the lines of his individuality but works along them, making him not less, but more, himself. It is thus not a compelling power but an expanding and illuminating one; so that the more the individual recognises the reciprocal action between it and himself, the more full of life he must become.
The Great Teacher's words, "Take no thought for the morrow" — and note the correct translation is "Take no anxious thought" — are the practical application of the soundest philosophy. This does not, of course, mean that we are not to exert ourselves. We must do our share in the work, and not expect God to do for us what He can only do through us. We are to use our common sense and natural faculties in working upon the conditions now present. We must make use of them, as far as they go, but we must not try to go further than the present things require. We must not try to force things, but allow them to grow naturally, knowing that they are doing so under the guidance of the All-creating Wisdom.
Following this method we shall grow more and more into the habit of looking to mental attitude as the Key to our progress in Life, knowing that everything else must come out of that; and we shall further discover that our mental attitude is eventually determined by the way in which we regard the Divine Mind. Then the final result will be that we shall see the Divine Mind to be nothing else than Life, Love, and Beauty — Beauty being identical with Wisdom or the perfect adjustment of parts to whole — and we shall see ourselves to be distributing centres of these primary energies and so in our turn subordinate centres of creative power.
And as we advance in this knowledge we shall find that we transcend one law of limitation after another by finding the higher law, of which the lower is but a partial expression, until we shall see clearly before us, as our ultimate goal, nothing less than the Perfect Law of Liberty — not liberty without Law, which is anarchy; but Liberty according to Law.
For these reasons, the student should endeavour to realise more and more perfectly, both in theory and in practice, the law of the relation between the Universal and the Individual Minds. It is that of reciprocal action. If this fact of reciprocity is grasped, it will be found to explain both why the individual falls short of expressing the fulness of Life, which the Spirit is, and why he can attain to the fulness of that expression, just as the same law explains why iron sinks in water and how it can be made to float. It is the individualising of the Universal Spirit, by recognising its reciprocity to ourselves, that is the secret of the perpetuation and growth of our own individuality.