Chapter I: Am Is One (1)

This may seem a very elementary proposition, but it is one of which we are too apt to lose sight. What does it mean? It means everything; but we are most concerned with what it means in regard to ourselves, and to each of us personally it means this. It means that there are not two Spirits, one which is myself and one which is another. It means that there is not some great unknown power external to myself which may be actuated by perfectly different motives to my own, and which will, therefore, oppose me with its irresistible force and pass over me, leaving me crushed and broken like the devotee over whom the car of Jaggarnath has rolled. It means that there is only one mind, one motive, one power--not two opposing each other--and that my conscious mind in all its movements is only the one mind expressing itself as (not merely through) my own particular individuality.

There are not two I AMS, but one I am. Whatever, therefore, I can conceive the Great Universal Life Principle to be, that I am. Let us try fully to realise what this means. Can you conceive the Great Originating and Sustaining Life Principle of the whole universe as poor, weak, sordid, miserable, jealous, angry, anxious, uncertain, or in any other way limited? We know that this is impossible. Then because the I AM is one it is equally untrue of ourselves. Learn first to distinguish the true self that you are from the mental and physical processes which it throws forth as the instruments of its expression, and then learn that this self controls these instruments, and not vice versa. As we advance in this knowledge we know ourselves to be unlimited, and that, in the miniature world, whose centre we are, we ourselves are the very same overflowing of joyous livingness that the Great Life Spirit is in the Great All. The I AM is One.

IV

AFFIRMATIVE POWER

Thoroughly to realise the true nature of affirmative power is to possess the key to the great secret. We feel its presence in all the innumerable forms of life by which we are surrounded and we feel it as the life in ourselves; and at last some day the truth bursts upon us like a revelation that we can wield this power, this life, by the process of Thought. And as soon as we see this, the importance of regulating our thinking begins to dawn upon us. We ask ourselves what this thought process is, and we then find that it is thinking affirmative force into forms which are the product of our own thought. We mentally conceive the form and then think life into it.

This must always be the nature of the creative process on whatever scale, whether on the grand scale of the Universal Cosmic Mind or on the miniature scale of the individual mind; the difference is only in degree and not in kind. We may picture the mental machinery by which this is done in the way that best satisfies our intellect--and the satisfying of the intellect on this point is a potent factor in giving us that confidence in our mental action without which we can effect nothing--but the actual externalisation is the result of something more powerful than a merely intellectual apprehension. It is the result of that inner mental state which, for want of a better word, we may call our emotional conception of ourselves. It is the "self" which we _feel_ ourselves to be which takes forms of our own creating. For this reason our thought must be so grounded upon knowledge that we shall _feel_ the truth of it, and thus be able to produce in ourselves that mental attitude of feeling which corresponds to the condition which we desire to externalise.

We cannot think into manifestation a different sort of life to that which we realise in ourselves. As Horace says, "_Nemo dat quod non habet_," we cannot give what we have not got. And, on the other hand, we can never cease creating forms of some sort by our mental activity, thinking life into them. This point must be very carefully noted. We cannot sit still producing nothing: the mental machinery _will_ keep on turning out work of some sort, and it rests with us to determine of what sort it shall be. In our entire ignorance or imperfect realisation of this we create negative forms and think life into them. We create forms of death, sickness, sorrow, trouble, and limitation of all sorts, and then think life into these forms; with the result that, however non-existent in themselves, to us they become realities and throw their shadow across the path which would otherwise be bright with the many-coloured beauties of innumerable flowers and the glory of the sunshine.

This need not be. It is giving to the negative an affirmative force which does not belong to it. Consider what is meant by the negative. It is the absence of something. It is not-being, and is the absence of all that constitutes being. Left to itself, it remains in its own nothingness, and it only assumes form and activity when we give these to it by our thought.

Here, then, is the great reason for practising control over our thought. It is the one and only instrument we have to work with, but it is an instrument which works with the greatest certainty, for limitation if we think limitation, for enlargement if we think enlargement. Our thought as feeling is the magnet which draws to us those conditions which accurately correspond to itself. This is the meaning of the saying that "thoughts are things." But, you say, how can I think differently from the circumstances? Certainly you are not required to say that the circumstances _at the present moment_ are what they are not; to say so would be untrue; but what is wanted is not to think from the standpoint of circumstances at all. Think from that interior standpoint where there are no circumstances, and from whence you can dictate what circumstances shall be, and then leave the circumstances to take care of themselves.

Do not think of this, that, or the other particular _circumstances_ of health, peace, etc., but of health, peace, and prosperity themselves. Here is an advertisement from _Pearson's Weekly_:--"Think money. Big moneymakers _think_ money." This is a perfectly sound statement of the power of thought, although it is only an advertisement; but we may make an advance beyond thinking "money." We can think "Life" in all its fulness, together with that perfect harmony of conditions which includes all that we need of money and a thousand other good things besides, for some of which money stands as the symbol of exchangeable value, while others cannot be estimated by so material a standard.

Therefore think Life, illumination, harmony, prosperity, happiness--think the things rather than this or that condition of them. And then by the sure operation of the Universal Law these things will form themselves into the shapes best suited to your particular case, and will enter your life as active, living forces, which will never depart from you because you know them to be part and parcel of your own being.

V

SUBMISSION

There are two kinds of submission: submission to superior force and submission to superior truth. The one is weakness and the other is strength. It is an exceedingly important part of our training to learn to distinguish between these two, and the more so because the wrong kind is extolled by nearly all schools of popular religious teaching at the present day as constituting the highest degree of human attainment. By some this is pressed so far as to make it an instrument of actual oppression, and with all it is a source of weakness and a bar to progress. We are forbidden to question what are called the wise dispensations of Providence and are told that pain and sorrow are to be accepted because they are the will of God; and there is much eloquent speaking and writing concerning the beauty of quiet resignation, all of which appeals to a certain class of gentle minds who have not yet learnt that gentleness does not consist in the absence of power but in the kindly and beneficent use of it.

Minds cast in this mould are peculiarly apt to be misled. They perceive a certain beauty in the picture of weakness leaning upon strength, but they attribute its soothing influence to the wrong element of the combination. A thoughtful analysis would show them that their feelings consisted of pity for the weak figure and admiration for the strong one, and that the suggestiveness of the whole arose from its satisfying the artistic sense of balance which requires a compensation of this sort. But which of the two figures in the picture would they themselves prefer to be? Surely not the weak one needing help, but the strong one giving it. By itself the weak figure only stirs our pity and not our admiration. Its form may be beautiful, but its very beauty only serves to enhance the sense of something wanting--and the something wanting is strength. The attraction which the doctrine of passive resignation possesses for certain minds is based upon an appeal to sentiment, which is accepted without any suspicion that the sentiment appealed to is a false one.

Now the healthful influence of the movement known as "The Higher Thought" consists precisely in this--that it sets itself rigorously to combat this debilitating doctrine of submission. It can see as well as others the beauty of weakness leaning upon strength; but it sees that the real source of the beauty lies in the strong element of the combination. The true beauty consists in the power to confer strength, and this power is not to be acquired by submission, but by the exactly opposite method of continually asserting our determination not to submit.

Of course, if we take it for granted that all the sorrow, sickness, pain, trouble, and other adversity in the world is the expression of the will of God, then doubtless we must resign ourselves to the inevitable with all the submission we can command, and comfort ourselves with the vague hope that somehow in some far-off future we shall find that

"Good is the final goal of ill,"

though even _this_ vague hope is a protest against the very submission we are endeavouring to exercise. But to make the assumption that the evil of life is the will of God is to assume what a careful and intelligent study of the laws of the universe, both mental and physical, will show us is not the truth; and if we turn to that Book which contains the fullest delineation of these universal laws, we shall find nothing taught more clearly than that submission to the evils of life is not submission to the will of God. We are told that Christ was manifested for this end, that he should destroy him that hath the power of death--that is, the devil. Now death is the very culmination of the Negative. It is the entire absence of all that makes Life, and whatever goes to diminish the living quality of Life reproduces, in its degree, the distinctive quality of this supreme exhibition of the Negative. Everything that tends to detract from the fulness of life has in it this deathful quality.

In that completely renovated life, which is figured under the emblem of the New Jerusalem, we are told that sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and that the inhabitant shall not say, I am sick. Nothing that obscures life, or restricts it, can proceed from the same source as the Power which gives light to them that sit in darkness, and deliverance to them that are bound. Negation can never be Affirmation; and the error we have always to guard against is that of attributing positive power to the Negative. If we once grasp the truth that God is life, and that life in every mode of expression can never be anything else than Affirmative, then it must become clear to us that nothing which is of the opposite tendency can be according to the will of God. For God (the good) to will any of the "evil" that is in the world would be for Life to act with the purpose of diminishing itself, which is a contradiction in terms to the very idea of Life. God is Life, and Life is, by its very nature, Affirmative. The submission we have hitherto made has been to our own weakness, ignorance, and fear, and not to the supreme good.

But is no such thing as submission, then, required of us under any circumstances? Are we always to have our own way in everything? Assuredly the whole secret of our progress to liberty is involved in acquiring the habit of submission; but it is submission to superior Truth, and not to superior force. It sometimes happens that, when we attain a higher Truth, we find that its reception requires us to re-arrange the truths which we possessed before: not, indeed, to lay any of them aside, for Truth once recognised cannot be again put out of sight, but to recognise a different relative proportion between them from that which we had seen previously. Then there comes a submitting of what has hitherto been our highest truth to one which we recognise as still higher, a process not always easy of attainment, but which must be gone through if our spiritual development is not to be arrested. The lesser degree of life must be swallowed up in the greater; and for this purpose it is necessary for us to learn that the smaller degree was only a partial and limited aspect of that which is more universal, stronger, and of a larger build every way.

Now, in going through the processes of spiritual growth, there is ample scope for that training in self-knowledge and self-control which is commonly understood by the word "submission." But the character of the act is materially altered. It is no longer a half-despairing resignation to a superior force external to ourselves, which we can only vaguely hope is acting kindly and wisely, but it is an intelligent recognition of the true nature of our own interior forces and of the laws by which a robust spiritual constitution is to be developed; and the submission is no longer to limitations which drain life of its livingness, and against which we instinctively rebel, but to the law of our own evolution which manifests itself in continually increasing degrees of life and strength.

The submission which we recognise is the price that has to be paid for increase in any direction. Even in the Money Market we must invest before we can realise profits. It is a universal rule that Nature obeys us exactly in proportion as we first obey Nature; and this is as true in regard to spiritual science as to physical. The only question is whether we will yield an ignorant submission to the principle of Death, or a joyous and intelligent obedience to the principle of Life.

If we have clearly grasped the fact of our identity with Universal Spirit, we shall find that, in the right direction, there is really no such thing as submission. Submission is to the power of another--a man cannot be said to submit to himself. When the "I AM" in us recognises a greater degree of I AM-ness (if I may coin the word) than it has hitherto attained, then, by the very force of this recognition, it _becomes what it sees_, and therefore naturally puts off from itself whatever would limit its expression of its own completeness.

But this is a natural process of growth, and not an unnatural act of submission; it is not the pouring-out of ourselves in weakness, but the gathering of ourselves together in increasing strength. There is no weakness in Spirit, it is all strength; and we must therefore always be watchful against the insidious approaches of the Negative which would invert the true position. The Negative always points to some external source of strength. Its formula is "I AM NOT." It always seeks to fix a gulf between us and the Infinite Sufficiency. It would always have us believe that that sufficiency is not our own, but that by an act of uncertain favour we may have occasional spoonfuls of it doled out to us. Christ's teaching is different. We do not need to come with our pitcher to the well to draw water, like the woman of Samaria, but we have _in ourselves_ an inexhaustible supply of the living water springing up into everlasting life.

Let us then inscribe "No Surrender" in bold characters upon our banner, and advance undaunted to claim our rightful heritage of liberty and life.

VI

COMPLETENESS

A point on which students of mental science often fail to lay sufficient stress is the completeness of man--not a completeness to be attained hereafter, but here and now. We have been so accustomed to have the imperfection of man drummed into us in books, sermons, and hymns, and above all in a mistaken interpretation of the Bible, that at first the idea of his completeness altogether staggers us. Yet until we see this we must remain shut out from the highest and best that mental science has to offer, from a thorough understanding of its philosophy, and from its greatest practical achievements.

To do any work successfully you must believe yourself to be a _whole_ man in respect of it. The completed work is the outward image of a corresponding completeness in yourself. And if this is true in respect of one work it is true of all; the difference in the importance of the work does not matter; we cannot successfully attempt _any_ work until, for some reason or other, we believe ourselves able to accomplish it; in other words, until we believe that none of the conditions for its completion is wanting in us, and that we are therefore complete in respect of it. Our recognition of our completeness is thus the measure of what we are able to do, and hence the great importance of knowing the fact of our own completeness.

But, it may be asked, do we not see imperfection all around? Is there not sorrow, sickness, and trouble? Yes; but why? Just for the very reason that we do not realise our completeness. If we realised _that_ in its fulness these things would not be; and in the degree in which we come to realise it we shall find them steadily diminish. Now if we really grasp the two fundamental truths that Spirit is Life pure and simple, and that external things are the result of interior forces, then it ought not to be difficult to see why we should be complete; for to suppose otherwise is to suppose the reactive power of the universe to be either unable or unwilling to produce the complete expression of its own intention in the creation of man.

That it should be unable to do so would be to depose it from its place as the creative principle, and that it should be unwilling to fulfil its own intention is a contradiction in terms; so that on either supposition we come to a _reductio ad absurdum_. In forming man the creative principle therefore _must_ have produced a perfect work, and our conception of ourselves as imperfect can only be the result of our own ignorance of what we really are; and our advance, therefore, does not consist in having something new added to us, but in learning to bring into action powers which already exist in us, but which we have never tried to use, and therefore have not developed, simply because we have always taken it for granted that we are by nature defective in some of the most important faculties necessary to fit us to our environment.

If we wish to attain to these great powers, the question is, where are we to seek them? And the answer is _in ourselves_. That is the great secret. We are not to go outside ourselves to look for power. As soon as we do so we find, not power, but weakness. To seek strength from any outside source is to make affirmation of our weakness, and all know what the natural result of such an affirmation must be.

We are complete _in ourselves_; and the reason why we fail to realise this is that we do not understand how far the "self" of ourselves extends. We know that the whole of anything consists of _all_ its parts and not only of some of them; yet this is just what we do not seem to know about ourselves. We say rightly that every person is a concentration of the Universal Spirit into individual consciousness; but if so, then each individual consciousness must find the Universal Spirit to be the infinite expression of _itself_. It is _this_ part of the "Self" that we so often leave out in our estimate of what we are; and consequently we look upon ourselves as crawling pygmies when we might think of ourselves as archangels. We try to work with the mere shadows of ourselves instead of with the glorious substance, and then wonder at our failures. If we only understood that our "better half" is the whole infinite of Spirit--that which creates and sustains the universe--then we should know how complete our completeness is.

As we approach this conception, our completeness becomes a reality to us, and we find that we need not go outside ourselves for anything. We have only to draw on that part of ourselves which is infinite to carry out any intention we may form in our individual consciousness; for there is no barrier between the two parts, otherwise they would not be a whole. Each belongs perfectly to the other, and the two are one. There is no antagonism between them, for the Infinite Life can have no interest against its individualisation of _itself_. If there is any feeling of tension it proceeds from our not fully realising this conception of our own wholeness; we are placing a barrier somewhere, when in truth there is none; and the tension will continue until we find out where and how we are setting up this barrier and remove it.

This feeling of tension is the feeling that we are _not using our Whole Being_. We are trying to make half do the work of the whole; but we cannot rid ourselves of our wholeness, and therefore the whole protests against our attempts to set one half against the other. But when we realise that our concentration _out of_ the Infinite also implies our expansion _into_ it, we shall see that our _whole_ "self" includes both the concentration and the expansion; and seeing this first intellectually we shall gradually learn to use our knowledge practically and bring our whole man to bear upon whatever we take in hand. We shall find that there is in us a constant action and reaction between the infinite and the individual, like the circulation of the blood from the heart to the extremities and back again, a constant pulsation of vital energy quite natural and free from all strain and exertion.

This is the great secret of the livingness of Life, and it is called by many names and set forth under many symbols in various religions and philosophies, each of which has its value in proportion as it brings us nearer the realisation of this perfect wholeness. But the thing itself is Life, and therefore can only be suggested, but not described, by any words or symbols; it is a matter of personal experience which no one can convey to another. All we can do is to point out the direction in which this experience is to be sought, and to tell others the intellectual arguments which have helped us to find it; but the experience itself is the operation of definite vital functions of the inner being, and no one but ourselves can do our living for us.

But, so far as it is possible to express these things in words, what must be the result of realising that the "self" in us includes the Infinite as well as the Individual? All the resources of the Infinite must be at our disposal; we may draw on them as we will, and there is no limit save that imposed by the Law of Kindness, a self-imposed limitation, which, because of being _self_-imposed, is not bondage but only another expression of our liberty. Thus we are free and all limitations are removed.

We are also no longer ignorant, for since the "self" in us includes the Infinite we can draw thence all needed knowledge, and though we may not always be able to formulate this knowledge in the mentality, we shall _feel_ its guidance, and eventually the mentality will learn to put this also into form of words; and thus by combining thought and experience, theory and practice, we shall by degrees come more and more into the knowledge of the Law of our Being, and find that there is no place in it for fear, because it is the law of perfect liberty. And knowing what our whole self really is, we shall walk erect as free men and women radiating Light and Life all round, so that our very presence will carry a vivifying influence with it, because we realise ourselves to be an Affirmative Whole, and not a mere negative disintegration of parts.

We know that our whole self includes that Greater Man which is back of and causes the phenomenal man, and this Greater Man is the true human principle in us. It is, therefore, universal in its sympathies, but at the same time not less individually _ourself_; and thus the true man in us, being at once both universal and individual, can be trusted as a sure guide. It is that "Thinker" which is behind the conscious mentality, and which, if we will accept it as our centre, and realise that it is not a separate entity but _ourself_, will be found equal to every occasion, and will lead us out of a condition of servitude into "the glorious liberty of the sons of God."

VII

THE PRINCIPLE OF GUIDANCE

If I were asked which of all the spiritual principles ranked first, I should feel inclined to say the Principle of Guidance; not in the sense of being more essential than the others, for _every_ portion is equally essential to the completeness of a perfect whole, but in the sense of being first in order of sequence and giving value to all our other powers by placing them in their due relation to one another. "Giving value to our _other_ powers," I say, because this also is one of our powers. It is that which, judged from the standpoint of personal self-consciousness, is above us; but which, realised from the point of view of the unity of all Spirit, is part and parcel of ourselves, because it is that Infinite Mind which is of necessity identified with all its manifestations.

Looking to this Infinite Mind as a Superior Intelligence from which we may receive guidance does not therefore imply looking to an external source. On the contrary, it is looking to the innermost spring of our own being, with a confidence in its action which enables us to proceed to the execution of our plans with a firmness and assurance that are in themselves the very guarantee of our success.

The action of the spiritual principles in us follows the order which we impose upon them by our thought; therefore the order of realisation will reproduce the order of desire; and if we neglect this first principle of right order and guidance, we shall find ourselves beginning to put forth other great powers, which are at present latent within us, without knowing how to find suitable employment for them--which would be a very perilous condition, for without having before us objects worthy of the powers to which we awake, we should waste them on petty purposes dictated only by the narrow range of our unilluminated intellect. Therefore the ancient wisdom says, "With all thy getting, get understanding."

The awakening to consciousness of our mysterious interior powers will sooner or later take place, and will result in our using them whether we understand the law of their development or not, just as we already use our physical faculties whether we understand their laws or not. The interior powers are natural powers as much as the exterior ones. We can direct their use by a knowledge of their laws; and it is therefore of the highest importance to have some sound principle of guidance in the use of these higher faculties as they begin to manifest themselves.

If, therefore, we would safely and profitably enter upon the possession of the great inheritance of power that is opening out before us, we must before all things seek to realise in ourselves that Superior Intelligence which will become an unfailing principle of guidance if we will only recognise it as such. Everything depends on our recognition. Thoughts are things, and therefore as we _will_ our thoughts to be so we _will_ the thing to be. If, then, we will to use the Infinite Spirit as a spirit of guidance, we shall find that the fact is as we have willed it; and in doing this we are still making use of our own supreme principle. And this is the true "understanding" which, by placing all the other powers in their correct order, creates one grand unity of power directed to clearly defined and worthy aims, in place of the dispersion of our powers, by which they only neutralise each other and effect nothing.

This is that Spirit of Truth which shall guide us into all Truth. It is the sincere Desire of us reaching out after Truth. Truth first and Power afterwards is the reasonable order, which we cannot invert without injury to ourselves and others; but if we follow this order we shall always find scope for our powers in developing into present realities the continually growing glory of our vision of the ideal.

The ideal is the true real, but it must be brought into manifestation before it can be shown to be so, and it is in this that the _practical_ nature of our mental studies consists. It is the _practical_ mystic who is the man of power; the man who, realising the mystical powers within, fits his outward action to this knowledge, and so shows his faith by his works; and assuredly the first step is to make use of that power of infallible guidance which he can call to his aid simply by desiring to be led by it.

VIII

DESIRE AS THE MOTIVE POWER

There are certain Oriental schools of thought, together with various Western offshoots from them, which are entirely founded on the principle of annihilating all desire. Reach that point at which you have no wish for anything and you will find yourself free, is the sum and substance of their teaching; and in support of this they put forward a great deal of very specious argument, which is all the more likely to entangle the unwary, because it contains a recognition of many of the profoundest truths of Nature. But we must bear in mind that it is possible to have a very deep knowledge of psychological facts, and at the same time vitiate the results of our knowledge by an entirely wrong assumption in regard to the law which binds these facts together in the universal system; and the injurious results of misapprehension upon such a vital question are so radical and far-reaching that we cannot too forcibly urge the necessity of clearly understanding the true nature of the point at issue. Stripped of all accessories and embellishments, the question resolves itself into this: Which shall we choose for our portion, Life or Death? There can be no accommodation between the two; and whichever we select as our guiding principle must produce results of a kind proper to itself.

The whole of this momentous question turns on the place that we assign to desire in our system of thought. Is it the Tree of Life in the midst of the Garden of the Soul? or is it the Upas Tree creating a wilderness of death all around? This is the issue on which we have to form a judgment, and this judgment must colour all our conception of life and determine the entire range of our possibilities. Let us, then, try to picture to ourselves the ideal proposed by the systems to which I have alluded--a man who has succeeded in entirely annihilating all desire. To him all things must be alike. The good and the evil must be as one, for nothing has any longer the power to raise any desire in him; he has no longer any feeling which shall prompt him to say, "This is good, therefore I choose it; that is evil, therefore I reject it"; for all choice implies the perception of something more desirable in what is chosen than in what is rejected, and consequently the existence of that feeling of desire which has been entirely eliminated from the ideal we are contemplating.

Then, if the perception of all that makes one thing preferable to another has been obliterated, there can be no motive for any sort of action whatever. Endue a being who has thus extinguished his faculty of desire with the power to create a universe, and he has no motive for employing it. Endue him with all knowledge, and it will be useless to him; for, since desire has no place in him, he is without any purpose for which to turn his knowledge to account. And with Love we cannot endue him, for that is desire in its supreme degree. But if all this be excluded, what is left of the man? Nothing, except the mere outward form. If he has actually obtained this ideal, he has practically ceased to be. Nothing can by any means interest him, for there is nothing to attract or repel in one thing more than in another. He must be dead alike to all feeling and to all motive of action, for both feeling and action imply the preference for one condition rather than another; and where desire is utterly extinguished, no such preference can exist.

No doubt some one may object that it is only evil desires which are thus to be suppressed; but a perusal of the writings of the schools of thought in question will show that this is not the case. The foundation of the whole system is that _all_ desire must be obliterated, the desire for the good just as much as the desire for the evil. The good is as much "illusion" as the evil, and until we have reached absolute indifference to both we have not attained freedom. When we have utterly crushed out _all_ desire we are free. And the practical results of such a philosophy are shown in the case of Indian devotees, who, in pursuance of their resolve to crush out _all_ desire, both for good and evil alike, become nothing more than outward images of men, from which all power of perception and of action have long since fled.

The mergence in the universal, at which they thus aim, becomes nothing more than a self-induced hypnotism, which, if maintained for a sufficient length of time, saps away every power of mental and bodily activity, leaving nothing but the outside husk of an attenuated human form--the hopeless wreck of what was once a living man. This is the logical result of a system which assumes for its starting-point that desire is evil in itself, that every desire is _per se_ a form of bondage, independently of the nature of its object. The majority of the followers of this philosophy may lack sufficient resolution to carry it out rigorously to its practical conclusions; but whether their ideal is to be realised in this world or in some other, the utter extinction of desire means nothing else than absolute apathy, without feeling and without action.

How entirely false such an idea is--not only from the standpoint of our daily life, but also from that of the most transcendental conception of the Universal Principle--is evidenced by the mere fact that anything exists at all. If the highest ideal is that of utter apathy, then the Creative Power of the universe must be extremely low-minded; and all that we have hitherto been accustomed to look upon as the marvellous order and beauty of creation, is nothing but a display of vulgarity and ignorance of sound philosophy.

But the fact that creation exists proves that the Universal Mind thinks differently, and we have only to look around to see that the true ideal is the exercise of creative power. Hence, so far from desire being a thing to be annihilated, it is the very root of every conceivable mode of Life. Without it Life could not be. Every form of expression implies the selection of all that goes to make up that form, and the passing-by of whatever is not required for that purpose; hence a desire for that which is selected in preference to what is laid aside. And this selective desire is none other than the universal Law of Attraction.

Whether this law acts as the chemical affinity of apparently unconscious atoms, or in the instinctive, if unreasoned, attractions of the vegetable and animal worlds, it is still the principle of selective affinity; and it continues to be the same when it passes on into the higher kingdoms which are ruled by reason and conscious purpose. The modes of activity in each of these kingdoms are dictated by the nature of the kingdom; but the activity itself always results from the preference of a certain subject for a certain object, to the exclusion of all others; and all action consists in the reciprocal movement of the two towards each other in obedience to the law of their affinity.

When this takes place in the kingdom of conscious individuality, the affinities exhibit themselves as mental action; but the principle of selection prevails without exception throughout the universe. In the conscious mind this attraction towards its affinity becomes desire; the desire to create some condition of things better than that now existing. Our want of knowledge may cause us to make mistakes as to what this better thing really is, and so in seeking to carry out our desire we may give it a wrong direction; but the fault is not in the desire itself, but in our mistaken notion of what it is that it requires for its satisfaction. Hence unrest and dissatisfaction until its true affinity is found; but, as soon as this is discovered, the law of attraction at once asserts itself and produces that better condition, the dream of which first gave direction to our thoughts.

Thus it is eternally true that desire is the cause of all feeling and all action; in other words, of all Life. The whole livingness of Life consists in receiving or in radiating forth the vibrations produced by the law of attraction; and in the kingdom of mind these vibrations necessarily become conscious out-reachings of the mind in the direction in which it feels attraction; that is to say, they become desires. Desire is therefore the mind seeking to manifest itself in some form which as yet exists only in its thought. It is the principle of creation, whether the thing created be a world or a wooden spoon; both have their origin in the desire to bring something into existence which does not yet exist. Whatever may be the scale on which we exercise our creative ability, the motive power must always be desire.

Desire is the force behind all things; it is the moving principle of the universe and the innermost centre of all Life. Hence, to take the negation of desire for our primal principle is to endeavour to stamp out Life itself; but what we have to do is to acquire the requisite knowledge by which to guide our desires to their true objects of satisfaction. To do this is the whole end of knowledge; and any knowledge applied otherwise is only a partial knowledge, which, having failed in its purpose, is nothing but ignorance. Desire is thus the sum-total of the livingness of Life, for it is that in which all movement originates, whether on the physical level or the spiritual. In a word, desire is the creative power, and must be carefully guarded, trained, and directed accordingly; but thus to seek to develop it to the highest perfection is the very opposite of trying to kill it outright.

And desire has fulfilment for its correlative. The desire and its fulfilment are bound together as cause and effect; and when we realise the law of their sequence, we shall be more than ever impressed with the supreme importance of Desire as the great centre of Life.

IX

TOUCHING LIGHTLY

What is our point of support? Is it in ourselves or outside us? Are we self-poised, or does our balance depend on something external? According to the actual belief in which our answer to these questions is embodied so will our lives be. In everything there are two parts, the essential and the incidental--that which is the nucleus and _raison d'être_ of the whole thing, and that which gathers round this nucleus and takes form from it. The true knowledge always consists in distinguishing these two from each other, and error always consists in misplacing them.

In all our affairs there are two factors, ourselves and the matter to be dealt with; and since _for us_ the nature of anything is always determined by our thought of it, it is entirely a question of our belief which of these two factors shall be the essential and which the accessory. Whichever we regard as the essential, the other at once becomes the incidental. The incidental can never be absent. For any sort of action to take place there must be _some_ conditions under which the activity passes out into visible results; but the same sort of activity may occur under a variety of different conditions, and may thus produce very different visible results. So in every matter we shall always find an essential or energising factor, and an incidental factor which derives its quality from the nature of the energy.

We can therefore never escape from having to select our essential and our incidental factor, and whichever we select as the essential, we thereby place the other in the position of the incidental. If, then, we make the mistake of reversing the true position and suppose that the energising force comes from the merely accessory circumstances, we make _them_ our point of support and lean upon _them_, and stand or fall with them accordingly; and so we come into a condition of weakness and obsequious waiting on all sorts of external influences, which is the very reverse of that strength, wisdom, and opulence which are the only meaning of Liberty.

But if we would ask ourselves the common-sense question Where can the centre of a man's Life be except in himself? we shall see that in all which pertains to us the energising centre must be in ourselves. We can never get away from ourselves as the centre of our own universe, and the sooner we clearly understand this the better. There is really no energy in _our_ universe but what emanates from ourselves in the first instance, and the power which appears to reside in our surroundings is derived entirely from our own mind.

If once we realise this, and consider that the Life which flows into us from the Universal Life-Principle is at every moment _new_ Life entirely undifferentiated to any particular purpose besides that of supporting our own individuality, and that it is therefore ours to externalise in any form we will, then we find that this manifestation of the eternal Life-Principle _in ourselves_ is the standpoint from which we can control our surroundings. We must lean firmly on the central point of our own being and not on anything else. Our mistake is in taking our surroundings too much "_au grand serieux_." We should touch things more lightly. As soon as we feel that their weight impedes our free handling of them they are mastering us, and not we them.

Light handling does not mean weak handling. On the contrary, lightness of touch is incompatible with a weak grasp of the instrument, which implies that the weight of the tool is excessive relatively to the force that seeks to guide it. A light, even playful handling, therefore implies a firm grasp and perfect control over the instrument. It is only in the hands of a Grinling Gibbons that the carving tool can create miracles of aerial lightness from the solid wood. The light yet firm touch tells not of weakness, but of power held in reserve; and if we realise our own out-and-out spiritual nature we know that behind any measure of power we may put forth there is the whole reserve of the infinite to back us up.

As we come to know this we begin to handle things lightly, playing with them as a juggler does with his flying knives, which cannot make the slightest movement other than he has assigned to them, for we begin to see that our control over things is part of the necessary order of the universe. The disorder we have met with in the past has resulted precisely from our never having attempted consciously to introduce this element of our personal control as part of the system.

Of course, I speak of the _whole_ man, and not merely of that part of him which Walt Whitman says is contained between his hat and his boots. The _whole_ man is an infinitude, and the visible portion of him is the instrument through which he looks out upon and enjoys all that belongs to him, his own kingdom of the infinite. And when he learns that this is the meaning of his conscious individuality, he sees _how_ it is that he is infinite, and finds that he is one with Infinite Mind, which is the innermost core of the universe. Having thus reached the true centre of his own being, he can never give this central place to anything else, but will realise that relatively to this all other things are in the position of the incidental and accessory, and growing, daily in this knowledge he will learn so to handle all things lightly, yet firmly, that grief, fear, and error will have less and less space in his world, until at last sorrow and sighing shall flee away, and everlasting joy shall take their place. We may have taken only a few steps on the way as yet, but they are in the right direction, and what we have to do now is to go on.

X

PRESENT TRUTH

If Thought power is good for anything it is good for everything. If it can produce one thing it can produce all things. For what is to hinder it? Nothing can stop us from thinking. We can _think_ what we please, and if to think is to form, then we can form what we please. The whole question, therefore, resolves itself into this: Is it true that to think is to form? If so, do we not see that our limitations are formed in precisely the same way as our expansions? We think that conditions outside our thought have power over us, and so we think power into them. So the great question of life is whether there is any _other_ creative power than Thought. If so, where is it, and what is it?

Both philosophy and religion lead us to the truth that "in the beginning" there was no other creative power than Spirit, and the only mode of activity we can possibly attribute to Spirit is Thought, and so we find Thought as the root of all things. And if this was the case "in the beginning" it must be so still; for if all things originate in Thought, all things must be modes of Thought, and so it is impossible for Spirit ever to hand over its creations to some power which is not itself--that is to say, which is not Thought-power; and consequently all the forms and circumstances that surround us are manifestations of the creative power of Thought.

But it may be objected that this is God's Thought; and that the creative power is in God and not Man. But this goes away from the self-evident axiomatic truth that "in the beginning" nothing could have had any origin except Thought. It is quite true that nothing has any origin except in the Divine Mind, and Man himself is therefore a mode of the Divine Thought. Again, Man is self-conscious; therefore Man is the Divine Thought evolved into _individual_ consciousness, and when he becomes sufficiently enlightened to realise this as his origin, then he sees that he is a reproduction _in individuality_ of the _same_ spirit which produces all things, and that his own thought in individuality has exactly the same quality as the Divine Thought in universality, just as fire is equally igneous whether burning round a large centre of combustion or a small one, and thus we are logically brought to the conclusion that our thought must have creative power.

But people say, "We have not found it so. We are surrounded by all sorts of circumstances that we do not desire." Yes, you _fear_ them, and in so doing you _think_ them; and in this way you are constantly exercising this Divine prerogative of creation by Thought, only through ignorance you use it in a wrong direction. Therefore the Book of Divine Instructions so constantly repeats "Fear not; doubt not," because we can never divest our Thought of its inherent creative quality, and the only question is whether we shall use it ignorantly to our injury or understandingly to our benefit.

The Master summed up his teaching in the aphorism that knowledge of the Truth would make us free. Here is no announcement of anything we have to do, or of anything that has to be done for us, in order to gain our liberty, neither is it a statement of anything _future_. Truth _is_ what is. He did not say, you must wait till something becomes true which is not true _now_. He said: "Know what _is_ Truth now, and you will find that the Truth concerning yourself is Liberty." If the knowledge of Truth makes us free it can only be because in truth we are free already, only we do not know it.

Our liberty consists in our reproducing on the scale of the individual the same creative power of Thought which first brought the world into existence, "so that the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear." Let us, then, confidently claim our birthright as "sons and daughters of the Almighty," and by habitually thinking the good, the beautiful, and the true, surround ourselves with conditions corresponding to our thoughts, and by our teaching and example help others to do the same.

XI

YOURSELF

I want to talk to you about the livingness there is in being yourself. It has at least the merit of simplicity, for it must surely be easier to be oneself than to be something or somebody else. Yet that is what so many are constantly trying to do; the self that is their own is not good enough for them, and so they are always trying to go one better than what God has made them, with endless strain and struggle as the consequence. Of course, they are right to put before them an ideal infinitely grander than anything they have yet attained--the only possible way of progress is by following an ideal that is always a stage ahead of us--but the mistake is in not seeing that its attainment is a matter of growth, and that growth must be the expansion of something that already exists in us, and therefore implies our being what we are and where we are as its starting point. This growth is a continuous process, and we cannot do next month's growth without first doing this month's; but we are always wanting to jump into some ideal of the future, not seeing that we can reach it only by steadily going on from where we are now.