The Dore Lectures on Mental Sciencel. Thomas Troward

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      -we are met with the old question, "Why seek ye the living among

      the dead?" This is why we start our studies by considering the

      cosmic creation, for it is there that we find the Life Spirit

      working through untold ages, not merely as deathless energy, but

      with a perpetual advance into higher degrees of Life. If we could

      only so enter into the Spirit as to make it personally IN

      OURSELVES what it evidently is in ITSELF, the magnum opus would

      be accomplished. This means realizing our life as drawn direct

      from the Originating Spirit; and if we now understand that the

      Thought or Imagination of the Spirit is the great reality of

      Being, and that all material facts are only correspondences, then

      it logically follows that what we have to do is to maintain our

      individual place in the Thought of the Parent Mind.

      We have seen that the action of the Originating Mind must needs

      be GENERIC, that is according to types which include multitudes

      of individuals. This type is the reflection of the Creative Mind

      at the level of that particular GENIUS; and at the human level it

      is Man, not as associated with particular circumstances, but as

      existing in the absolute ideal.

      In proportion then as we learn to dissociate our conception of

      ourselves from particular circumstances, and to rest upon our

      ABSOLUTE nature, as reflections of the Divine ideal, we, in our

      turn, reflect back into the Divine Imagination its original

      conception of itself as expressed in generic or typical Man, and

      so by a natural law of cause and effect, the individual who

      realizes this mental attitude enters permanently into the Spirit

      of Life, and it becomes a perennial fountain of Life springing up

      spontaneously within him.

      He then finds himself to be as the Bible says, "the image and

      likeness of God." He has reached the level at which he affords a

      new starting point for the creative process, and the Spirit,

      finding a personal centre in him, begins its work de nova, having

      thus solved the great problem of how to enable the Universal to

      act directly upon the plane of the Particular.

      It is in this sense, as affording the requisite centre for a new

      departure of the creative Spirit, that man is said to be a

      "microcosm," or universe in miniature; and this is also what is

      meant by the esoteric doctrine of the Octave, of which I may be

      able to speak more fully on some other occasion.

      If the principles here stated are carefully considered, they will

      be found to throw light on much that would otherwise be obscure,

      and they will also afford the key to the succeeding essays.

      The reader is therefore asked to think them out carefully for

      himself, and to note their connection with the subject of the

      next article.

      INDIVIDUALITY.

      Individuality is the necessary complement of the Universal

      Spirit, which was the subject of our consideration last Sunday.

      The whole problem of life consists in finding the true relation

      of the individual to the Universal Originating Spirit; and the

      first step towards ascertaining this is to realize what the

      Universal Spirit must be in itself. We have already done this to

      some extent, and the conclusions we have arrived at are:--

      That the essence of the Spirit is Life, Love, and Beauty.

      That its Motive, or primary moving impulse, is to express the

      Life, Love and Beauty which it feels itself to be.

      That the Universal cannot act on the plane of the Particular

      except by becoming the particular, that is by expression through

      the individual.

      If these three axioms are clearly grasped, we have got a solid

      foundation from which to start our consideration of the subject

      for to-day.

      The first question that naturally presents itself is,

      If these things be so, why does not every individual express the

      life, love, and beauty of the Universal Spirit? The answer to

      this question is to be found in the Law of Consciousness. We

      cannot be conscious of anything except by realizing a certain

      relation between it and ourselves. It must affect us in some way,

      otherwise we are not conscious of its existence; and according to

      the way in which it affects us we recognize ourselves as standing

      related to it. It is this self-recognition on our own part

      carried out to the sum total of all our relations, whether

      spiritual, intellectual, or physical, that constitutes our

      realization of life. On this principle, then, for the REALIZATION

      of its own Livingness, the production of centres of life, through

      its relation to which this conscious СКАЧАТЬ