THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE. Thomas Troward

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      These considerations show us that what differentiates the higher from the

      lower degree of intelligence is the recognition of its own self-hood, and

      the more intelligent that recognition is, the greater will be the power.

      The lower degree of self-recognition is that which only realizes itself as

      an entity separate from all other entities, as the _ego_ distinguished from

      the _non-ego_. But the higher degree of self-recognition is that which,

      realizing its own spiritual nature, sees in all other forms, not so much

      the _non-ego_, or that which is not itself, as the _alter-ego_, or that

      which is itself in a different mode of expression. Now, it is this higher

      degree of self-recognition that is the power by which the Mental Scientist

      produces his results. For this reason it is imperative that he should

      clearly understand the difference between Form and Being; that the one is

      the mode of the relative and, the mark of subjection to conditions, and

      that the other is the truth of the absolute and is that which controls

      conditions.

      Now this higher recognition of self as an individualization of pure spirit

      must of necessity control all modes of spirit which have not yet reached

      the same level of self-recognition. These lower modes of spirit are in

      bondage to the law of their own being because they do not know the law;

      and, therefore, the individual who has attained to this knowledge can

      control them through that law. But to understand this we must inquire a

      little further into the nature of spirit. I have already shown that the

      grand scale of adaptation and adjustment of all parts of the cosmic scheme

      to one another exhibits the presence _somewhere_ of a marvellous

      intelligence, underlying the whole, and the question is, where is this

      intelligence to be found? Ultimately we can only conceive of it as inherent

      in some primordial substance which is the root of all those grosser modes

      of matter which are known to us, whether visible to the physical eye, or

      necessarily inferred by science from their perceptible effects. It is that

      power which, in every species and in every individual, becomes that which

      that species or individual is; and thus we can only conceive of it as a

      self-forming intelligence inherent in the ultimate substance of which each

      thing is a particular manifestation. That this primordial substance must be

      considered as self-forming by an inherent intelligence abiding in itself

      becomes evident from the fact that intelligence is the essential quality of

      spirit; and if we were to conceive of the primordial substance as something

      apart from spirit, then we should have to postulate some other power which

      is neither spirit nor matter, and originates both; but this is only putting

      the idea of a self-evolving power a step further back and asserting the

      production of a lower grade of undifferentiated spirit by a higher, which

      is both a purely gratuitous assumption and a contradiction of any idea we

      can form of undifferentiated spirit at all. However far back, therefore, we

      may relegate the original starting-point, we cannot avoid the conclusion

      that, at that point, spirit contains the primary substance in itself, which

      brings us back to the common statement that it made everything out of

      nothing. We thus find two factors to the making of all things, Spirit

      and--Nothing; and the addition of Nothing to Spirit leaves _only_ spirit:

      x + 0 = x.

      From these considerations we see that the ultimate foundation of every form

      of matter is spirit, and hence that a universal intelligence subsists

      throughout Nature inherent in every one of its manifestations. But this

      cryptic intelligence does not belong to the particular _form_ excepting in

      the measure in which it is physically fitted for its concentration into

      self-recognizing individuality: it lies hidden in that primordial substance

      of which the visible form is a grosser manifestation. This primordial

      substance is a philosophical necessity, and we can only picture it to

      ourselves as something infinitely finer than the atoms which are themselves

      a philosophical inference of physical science: still, for want of a better

      word, we may conveniently speak of this primary intelligence inherent in

      the very substance of things as the Atomic Intelligence. The term may,

      perhaps, be open to some objections, but it will serve our present purpose

      as distinguishing _this_ mode of spirit's intelligence from that of the

      opposite pole, or Individual Intelligence. This distinction should be

      carefully noted because it is by the response of the atomic intelligence to

      the individual intelligence that thought-power is able to produce results

      on the material plane, as in the cure of disease by mental treatment, and

      the like. Intelligence manifests itself by responsiveness, and the whole

      action of the cosmic mind in bringing the evolutionary process from its

      first beginnings up to its present human stage is nothing else but a

      continual intelligent response to the demand СКАЧАТЬ