In both these passages we find a change of name; and since a name stands for something which corresponds to it, and in truth only amounts to a succinct description, the fact indicated in these texts is a change of condition answering to the change of name.
Now the change from Baali to Ishi indicates an important alteration in the relation between the Divine Being and the worshipper; but since the Divine Being cannot change, the altered relation must result from a change in the standpoint of the worshipper; and this can only come from a new mode of looking at the Divine, that is, from a new order of thought regarding it. Baali means Lord, and Ishi means husband, and so the change in relation is that of a female slave who is liberated and married to her former master.
But when the light begins to break in upon us, all this becomes changed. We see that a system of terrorism cannot give expression to the Divine Spirit, and we realise the truth of St Paul's words, "He hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind". As the true nature of the relation between the individual mind and the Universal Mind becomes clearer, we find it to be one of mutual action and reaction, a perfect reciprocity which cannot be better symbolised than by the relation between an affectionate husband and wife. Everything is done from love and nothing from compulsion; there is perfect confidence on both sides; and both are equally indispensable to each other. It is simply the carrying out of the fundamental maxim that the Universal cannot act on the plane of the Particular except through the Particular; only this philosophical axiom develops into a warm living intercourse.
It is precisely this conception of being guarded by a superior power that distinguishes the worship of Ishi from that of Baali. A special relation has been established between the Divine Spirit and the individual soul, one of absolute confidence and personal intercourse. This does not require any departure from the general law of the universe, but is due to that specialising of the law through the presentation of special conditions personal to the individual of which I have spoken before. But all the time there has been no change in the Universal Spirit: the only change has been in the mental attitude of the individual — he has come into a new thought, a clearer perception of God. He has faced the questions, What is God? Where is God? How does God work? and he has found the answer in the apostolic statement that God is "over all, through all, and in all"; and he realises that "God" is the root of his (the individual's) own being, ever present in him, ever working through him, and universally present around him.
And what is the Whole which is thus created? It is our conscious personality; and therefore whatever we draw from the Universal Spirit acquires in us the quality of personality. It is that process of differentiation of the universal into the particular of which I have so often spoken which, by a rude analogy, we may compare to the differentiation of the universal electric fluid into specific sorts of power by its passage through suitable apparatus. It is for this reason that relatively to ourselves the Universal Spirit must necessarily assume a personal aspect, and that the aspect which it will assume will be in exact correspondence with our own conception of it.
This is in accordance with mental and spiritual laws inherent in our own being, and it is on this account that the Bible seeks to build up our conception of God on such lines as will set us free from all fear of evil, and thus leave us at liberty to use the creative power of our thought affirmatively from the standpoint of a calm and untroubled mind. This standpoint can only be reached by passing beyond the range of the happening of the moment, and this can only be done by the discovery of our immediate relation to the undifferentiated source of all good.
We can never too deeply ponder the old esoteric definition of Spirit as "the Power which knows itself"; the secret of all things past, present, and future is contained in these words. The self-recognition or self-contemplation of Spirit is the primary movement out of which all creation proceeds, and the attainment in the individual of a fresh centre for self-recognition is what the Spirit gains in the process — this gain accruing to the Spirit is what is referred to in the parables where the lord is represented as receiving increase from his servants.
Our old enemies, doubt and fear, may seek to bring us back under bondage to Bali, but our new standpoint for the recognition of the All-originating Spirit as being absolutely identified with ourselves must always be kept resolutely in mind. Short of this, we are not working on the creative level — we are creating, indeed, for we can never divest ourselves of our creative power, but we are creating in the image of the old limiting and destructive conditions. This is merely perpetuating the cosmic Law of Averages, which is just what the individual has to rise superior to. The creative level is where new laws begin to manifest themselves in a new order of conditions, something transcending our past experiences and thus bringing about a real advance. For it is no advance only to go on in the same old round even if we kept at it for centuries; it is the steady go-ahead nature of the Spirit that has made the world of today an improvement upon the world of the pterodactyl and the icthyosaurus, and we must look for the same forward movement of the Spirit from its new starting point in ourselves.
It is of course true that in the merely generic order the Spirit must be present in every form of Life, as the Master pointed out when he said that not a sparrow falls to the ground without "the Father". But as the sparrows he alluded to had been shot and were on sale at a price which shows that this was the fate of a good many of them, we see here precisely that stage of manifestation where the Spirit has not woken up to individual self-recognition, and remains at the lower level of self-recognition, that of the generic or race-spirit. The Master's comment, "Ye are of more value than many sparrows", points out this difference; in us the generic creation has reached the level which affords the conditions for the waking up of the Spirit to self-recognition in the Individual.
The remedy is to go back to the original starting point of the Cosmic Creation and ask, Where were the pre-existing forms that dictated to the Spirit then? Then, because the Spirit never changes, it is still the same, and is just as independent of existing conditions now as it was in the beginning; and so we must pass over all existing conditions, however apparently adverse, and go straight to the Spirit as the originator of new forms and new conditions. This is real New Thought, for it does not trouble about the old things, but is going straight ahead from where we are now.
When we do this, just trusting the Spirit and not laying down the particular details of its action — just telling it what we want without dictating how we are to get it — we shall find that things will open out more and more clearly day by day both on the inner and the outer plane. Remember that the Spirit is alive and working here and now, for if ever the Spirit is to get from the past into the future, it must be by passing through the present. Therefore what you have to do is to acquire the habit of living direct from the Spirit here and now. You will find that this is a matter of personal intercourse, perfectly natural and not requiring any abnormal conditions for its production. You just treat the Spirit as you would any other kind-hearted sensible person, remembering that it is always there — "closer than hands and feet", as Tennyson says — and you will gradually begin to appreciate its reciprocity as a very practical fact indeed.