The Dore Lectures on Mental Sciencel. Thomas Troward

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      THE DORE LECTURES ENTERING INTO THE SPIRIT OF IT.

      We all know the meaning of this phrase in our everyday life. The

      Spirit is that which gives life and movement to anything, in fact

      it is that which causes it to exist at all. The thought of the

      author, the impression of the painter, the feeling of the

      musician, is that without which their works could never have come

      into being, and so it is only as we enter into the IDEA which

      gives rise to the work, that we can derive all the enjoyment and

      benefit from it which it is able to bestow. If we cannot enter

      into the Spirit of it, the book, the picture, the music, are

      meaningless to us: to appreciate them we must share the mental

      attitude of their creator. This is a universal principle; if we

      do not enter into the Spirit of a thing, it is dead so far as we

      are concerned; but if we do enter into it we reproduce in

      ourselves the same quality of life which called that thing into

      existence.

      Now if this is a general principle, why can we not carry it to a

      higher range of things? Why not to the highest point of all? May

      we not enter into the originating Spirit of Life itself, and so

      reproduce it in ourselves as a perennial spring of livingness?

      This, surely, is a question worthy of our careful consideration.

      The spirit of a thing is that which is the source of its inherent

      movement, and therefore the question before us is, what is the

      nature of the primal moving power, which is at the back of the

      endless array of life which we see around us, our own life

      included? Science gives us ample ground for saying that it is not

      material, for science has now, at least theoretically, reduced

      all material things to a primary ether, universally distributed,

      whose innumerable particles are in absolute equilibrium; whence

      it follows on mathematical grounds alone that the initial

      movement which began to concentrate the world and all material

      substances out of the particles of the dispersed ether, could not

      have originated in the particles themselves. Thus by a necessary

      deduction from the conclusions of physical science, we are

      compelled to realize the presence of some immaterial power

      capable of separating off certain specific areas for the display

      of cosmic activity, and then building up a material universe with

      all its inhabitants by an orderly sequence of evolution, in which

      each stage lays the foundation for the development of the stage,

      which is to follow--in a word we find ourselves brought face to

      face with a power which exhibits on a stupendous scale, the

      faculties of selection and adaptation of means to ends, and thus

      distributes energy and life in accordance with a recognizable

      scheme of cosmic progression. It is therefore not only Life, but

      also Intelligence, and Life guided by Intelligence becomes

      Volition. It is this primary originating power which we mean when

      we speak of "The Spirit," and it is into this Spirit of the whole

      universe that we must enter if we would reproduce it as a spring

      of Original Life in ourselves.

      Now in the case of the productions of artistic genius we know

      that we must enter into the movement of the creative mind of the

      artist, before we can realize the principle which gives rise to

      his work. We must learn to partake of the feeling, to find

      expression for which is the motive of his creative activity. May

      we not apply the same principle to the Greater Creative Mind with

      which we are seeking to deal? There is something in the work of

      the artist which is akin to that of original creation. His work,

      literary, musical, or graphic is original creation on a miniature

      scale, and in this it differs from that of the engineer, which is

      constructive, or that of the scientist which is analytical; for

      the artist in a sense creates something out of nothing, and

      therefore starts from the stand-point of simple feeling, and not

      from that of a pre-existing necessity. This, by the hypothesis of

      the case, is true also of the Parent Mind, for at the stage where

      the initial movement of creation takes place, there are no

      existing conditions to compel action in one direction more than

      another. Consequently the direction taken by the creative impulse

      is not dictated by outward circumstances, and the primary

      movement must therefore be entirely due to the action of the