This sequence is logical because it implies a Power, an Individual who understands the Power, and a Method of applying the power deduced from understanding its nature. These are general principles without realising which it is impossible to proceed further; but assuming that the reader has grasped their significance, we may now go on to consider their application in greater detail.
Now this application must be a personal one, for it is only through the individual that the higher specialisation of the power can take place. But at the same time, this must not lead us to suppose that the individual, himself, brings the creative force into being. To suppose this is inversion; and we cannot impress upon ourselves too deeply that the relation of the individual to the Divine Spirit is that of a distributor, and not that of the original creator. If this is steadily borne in mind, the way will become clear: otherwise we shall be led into confusion.
This being the case, it is evident that the purpose of the distribution must be the more perfect expression of the Originating Spirit as that which it is in itself, and what it is in itself is emphatically Life. What is seeking for expression, then, is the perfect Livingness of the Spirit; and this expression is to be found through ourselves, by means of our renewed mode of thought. Let us see, then, how our new order of thought with regard to the Principle of Life is likely to operate.
In our old order of thought, we have always associated Life with the physical body — life has been for us the supreme physical fact. Now, however, we know that Life is much more than this; but, as the greater includes the less, it includes physical life as one mode of its manifestation. The true order does not require us to deny the reality of physical life or to call it an illusion: on the contrary, it sees in physical life the completion of a great creative series. But it assigns it the proper place in that series, which is what the old mode of thought did not.
Then, if we have grasped the idea of the Spirit as the great forming Power, as stated in the last lecture, we shall seek in it the fountain-head of Form as well as of Power; and as a logical deduction from this we shall look to it to give form to our thoughts and feelings. If the principle is once recognised, the sequence is obvious.
The form taken by our outward conditions, whether of body or circumstance, depends on the form taken by our thoughts and feelings, and our thoughts and feelings will take their form from that source from which we allow them to receive suggestion. Accordingly, if we allow them to accept their fundamental suggestions from the relative and limited, they will assume corresponding forms and transmit them to our external environment, thus repeating the old order of limitation in a ceaselessly recurring round.
Now our object is to get out of this circle of limitation, and the only way to do so is to get our thoughts and feelings moulded into new forms continually advancing to greater and greater perfection. To meet this requirement, therefore, there must be a forming power greater than that of our own unaided conceptions, and this is to be found in our realisation of the Spirit as the Supreme Beauty, or Wisdom, moulding our thoughts and feelings into shapes harmoniously adjusted to the fullest expression, in and through us, of the Livingness which Spirit is in itself.
It is in this way that we become differentiating centres of the Divine Thought, giving it expression in form in the world of space and time, and thus is solved the great problem of enabling the Universal to act upon the plane of the particular without being hampered by those limitations which the merely generic law of manifestation imposes upon it. It is just here that subconscious mind performs the function of a "bridge" between the finite and the infinite as noted in Personal Creativity in Edinburgh Lecture No. 5, and it is for this reason that a recognition of its susceptibility to impression is so important.
Knowing, then, that by its inherent nature this Intelligence can only work to the expansion of the individual life, we can rest upon it with the utmost confidence and trust it to take an initiative which will lead to far greater results than any we could forecast from the standpoint of our own knowledge. So long as we insist on dictating the particular form which the action of the Spirit is to take, we limit it, and so close against ourselves avenues of expansion which might otherwise have been open to us. And if we ask ourselves why we do this, we shall find that in the last resort it is because we do not believe in the Spirit as a forming power.
We have, indeed, advanced to the conception of it as executive power, which will work to a prescribed pattern. But we have yet to grasp the conception of it as versed in the art of design, and capable of elaborating schemes of construction which will not only be complete in themselves, but will also be in perfect harmony with one another. When we advance to the conception of the Spirit as containing in itself the ideal of Form as well as of Power, we shall cease from the effort of trying to force things into a particular shape, whether on the inner or the outer plane, and shall be content to trust the inherent harmoniousness or Beauty of the Spirit to produce combinations far in advance of anything we could have conceived ourselves.
This does not mean that we shall reduce ourselves to a condition of apathy, in which all desire, expectation and enthusiasm have been quenched, for these are the mainspring of our mental machinery. On the contrary, their action will be quickened by the knowledge that there is working at the back of them a Formative Principle so infallible that it cannot miss its mark, so that however good and beautiful existing forms may be, we may always rest in the happy expectation of something still better to come. And it will come by a natural law of growth, because Spirit is in itself the Principle of Increase. It will grow out of present conditions for the simple reason that if you are to reach some further point, it can only be by starting from where you are now. Therefore it is written, "Despise not the day of small things".
We shall then find that the secret of co-operation is to have faith in ourselves because we first have faith in God; and we shall discover that this Divine self-confidence is something very different from a boastful egotism which assumes a personal superiority over others. It is simply the assurance of a man who knows that he is working in accordance with a law of nature. He does not claim as a personal achievement what the Law does for him; but on the other hand he does not trouble himself about outcries against his presumptuous audacity raised by persons who are ignorant of the Law which he is employing. He is therefore neither boastful nor timorous, but simply works on in cheerful expectancy because he knows that his reliance is upon a Law which cannot be broken.
In this way, then, we must realise the Life of the Spirit as being also the Law of the Spirit. The two are identical, and cannot deny themselves. Our recognition of them gives them a new starting point through our own mentality, but they still continue to be the same in their nature, and unless limited or inverted by our mental affirmation of limited or inverted conditions, they are bound to work out into fuller and continually fuller expression of the Life, Love, and Beauty which the Spirit is in itself.