In what does the specialisation of a natural law consist? It consists in making that law or principle produce an effect which it could not produce under the simply generic conditions spontaneously provided by nature.
What we have therefore to consider is the working of Intelligence in providing specific conditions for the operation of universal principles so as to bring about new results which will transcend our past experiences. The process does not consist in the introduction of new elements, but in making new combinations of elements which are always present. Our ancestors had no conception of carriages that could go without horses; and yet, by a suitable combination of elements which were always in existence, such vehicles are common objects on our roads today.
How, then, is the power of Intelligence to be brought to bear upon the generic law of the relation between the Individual and the Universal so as to specialise it into the production of greater results than those which we have hitherto obtained?
Taking this as our method, we ask, What is the affirmative factor in the whole creation, and in ourselves as included in the creation? As we found in the first lecture, this factor is Spirit — that invisible power which concentrates the primordial ether into forms, and endows those forms with various modes of motion, from the simply mechanical motion of the planet up to the volitional motion in man. And since this is so, the primary factor can only be the Feeling and the Thought of the Universal Spirit. {See my Edinburgh Lectures in Mantal Science}
Now, by the hypothesis of the case, the Universal Spirit must be the Pure Essence of Life, and therefore its feeling and thought can only be towards the continually increasing expression of the livingness which it is; and accordingly, the specialisation of which we are in search must be along the line of affording it a centre from which it may more perfectly realise this feeling and express this thought. In other words, the way to specialise the generic principle of Spirit is by providing new mental conditions in consonance with its own original nature.
The scientific method of enquiry therefore brings us to the conclusion that the required conditions for translating the racial or generic operation of the Spirit into a specialised individual operation is a new way of thinking — a mode of thought concurring with, and not in opposition to, the essential forward movement of the Creative Spirit itself.
This implies an entire reversal of our old conceptions. Hitherto we have taken forms and conditions as the starting point of our thought and inferred that they are the causes of mental states; now we have learnt that the true order of the creative process is exactly the reverse, and that thought and feeling are the causes, and forms and conditions the effects. When we have learnt this lesson we have grasped the foundation principle on which individual specialisation of the generic law of the creative process becomes a practical possibility.
In themselves this order and this method of thinking are not new. They are older than the foundation of the world, for they are those of the Creative Spirit itself; and all through the ages this teaching has been handed down under various forms, the true meaning of which has been perceived only by a few in each generation. But as the light breaks in upon any individual, it is a new light to him; and so to each one in succession it becomes the New Thought. And when anyone reaches it, he finds himself in a New Order. He continues indeed to be included in the universal order of the cosmos, but in a perfectly different way to what he had previously supposed: for, from his new standpoint, he finds that he is included, not so much as a part of the general effect, but as part of the general cause. When he perceives this, he then sees that the method of his further advance must be by letting the General Cause flow more and more freely into his own specific centre: and he therefore seeks to provide thought conditions which will enable him to do so.
Then, still employing the scientific method of following up the affirmative factor, he realises that this universal causative power (by whatever name he may call it) manifests as Supreme Intelligence in the adaptation of means to ends. It does so in the mechanism of the planet for the support of physical life and in the maintenance of the race as a whole. True, the investigator is met at every turn with individual failure: but his answer to this is not that there is cosmic failure and that the apparent individual failure is itself a part of the cosmic process, but rather that individual tendency to failure will diminish in proportion as the individual attains to the recognition of the Moving Principle of that process and provides the conditions necessary to enable it to establish a new starting point in his own individuality.
Now one of these conditions is to recognise it as Intelligence, and to remember that when working through our own mentality it in no way changes its essential nature, just as electricity loses none of its essential qualities in passing through the special apparatus which enables it to manifest as light.
This is a legitimate line of argument from the premises established in the recognition of the relation between the individual and the Universal Mind: and it results in our looking to the Divine Mind not only as creative, but also as directive — that is, as determining the actual forms which the conditions for its manifestation will take in our own particular world, as well as supplying the energy for their production. We miss the point of the relation between the individual and the universal if we do not see that the Originating Spirit is a forming power. It is the forming power throughout nature, and if we would specialise it we must learn to trust its formative quality when operating from its new starting point in ourselves.
This is the rationale of the reciprocal action between the Universal Mind and the individual mind, and this shows us that our desires should not be directed so much to the acquisition of particular things so much as to the reproduction in ourselves of particular phases of the spirit's activity; and this, being in its very nature creative, is bound to externalise as corresponding things and circumstances. Then, when these external facts appear in the circle of our objective life, we must work upon them from the objective standpoint.
This is where many fall short of completed work. They realise the subjective or creative process, but do not see that it must be followed by an objective or constructive process; and consequently they are unpractical dreamers and never reach the stage of completed work. The creative process brings us the materials and conditions for the the work to our hands; then we must make use of them with diligence and common sense — God will provide the food, but He will not cook the dinner.
As the esoteric maxim has it, "What is a truth on one plane is a truth on all". But the key to this enfranchisement of body, mind, and circumstances is in that new thought which creates new conditions, because it realises the true order of the creative process. Therefore it is that, if we would bring a new order of Life, Light, and Liberty into our lives, we must commence by bringing a new order into our thought. Then we find in ourselves the starting point of a new creative series, not by the force of personal will, but by union with the Divine Spirit which, in the expression of its inherent Love and Beauty, makes all things new.