PERSONAL POWER (Complete 12 Volume Edition). William Walker Atkinson

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СКАЧАТЬ of the material world are molded. They are the factors which determine material reality; and in this sense pure forms are more important than are material and actual things. They are super­real, and their super­reality contains the norms of all existence. Pure Form looks like nonentity, and yet the laws of Pure Form are the factors that determine existence in all of its details. Pure Form conditions the Cosmic Order and governs the universe.”

      The “Pure Form” of the philosophers is undoubtedly immaterial in its nature; it clearly must be Mental Form; In other words, Nature is seen to proceed just as does man in his work of creation. She builds the material universe upon mental patterns, or upon mental frameworks. Just how or why this is so the human mind is unable to grasp, but all investigation reveals the fact that the creative processes proceed in just this way. In this correspondence between human creative activity, and that of the Cosmos, we have a striking illustration of the principle embodied in the ancient Hermetic axiom: “As above, so below; as within, so without.” The Macrocosm and the Microcosm evidently work under the same laws, and manifest according to the same general principles.

      Beginning with the particles of which the atoms are composed, and with the atoms of which all forms of matter are composed, we see the creation of material forms apparently proceeding in accordance with some pre­existing pattern, ideal form, type or idea. Atoms group themselves in certain combinations, forming certain elements of matter, all of which forms are true to general types, and are as nearly identical as the bits of metal which are cut out by the same die or else produced from the same mold. This uniformity and adherence to type certainly is explainable only upon the hypothesis that before the material form is produced there must exist some pattern, type, idea or mental form which governs the materialization. There is no hit­or­miss, or higgledly­piggledy arrangement of the atoms—they group themselves according to typical forms, and these forms must exist ideally before the material form can be produced.

      That which we call the “inner nature” of anything is really a combination of certain inherent “mental forms” which are constantly striving to express themselves in action and objective appearance. The “inner nature” of the atom is clearly represented in and by its activities—the “inner nature” of the animal is likewise so represented by its action and its physical form. The voluntary, self­moved, spontaneous actions of any particular thing clearly represent the “inner nature” of that particular thing. The differences between classes of things result from the difference in the “inner natures,” and the “inner natures” are merely the ideal forms or types, the mental images, which constitute the elemental and essential basis of the character of those things.

      The operation and manifestation of these “inner natures,” or creative ideal forms, has a striking illustration in the case of the crystallization of the minerals or chemical elements. These crystals are formed in the “mother liquor” according to well­known and clearly defined shape, form and order. Each species of crystal has its own particular form and arrangement—some have a range of several of such forms, each, however, being true to type and pattern. Each species of crystal obeys its own order and rule concerning its form. Crystals grow just as do plants, according to a certain pattern and type­form. These forms and orders of arrangement are not caused by outside forces or energies—they result from the “in forces” of the mineral or chemical substance—from the operation of internal, inherent energy, and in response to some inner idea, form or pattern which constitutes the “inner nature” of the mineral or chemical compound.

      In the same way, we find that in the material form of the germ of the acorn there dwells an “inner nature” composed of these ideal forms or mental images, these inner patterns. These inner forces determine the material form which the sprout, root, leaves, and the complete tree shall assume. The deviations from the ideal forms result from the influence of external forces serving to modify and deflect, to cramp and to hinder, the expression of the inner form—but the inner pattern is always there doing the best it can to represent itself truly in material appearance. In every acorn there abides the design, pattern, form, and idea of the future oak—and the acorn never evolves and unfolds anything not according to that pattern, design or idea. In the same way, the seed or germ or every plant, animal, or human being contains within itself its “inner nature” composed of ideal form and pattern, type or mold.

      It is this “inner nature” or ideal form that causes the acorn to develop into the oak, instead of into the pine­tree. It causes the egg of the chicken to develop into a chick, and not into a baby hawk. It causes the creature to develop from seed­germ into completed adult form, always true to type and ideal pattern. Scientists who have witnessed the unfoldment of living forms from the reproductive cells, or egg­body, have testified in glowing words of wonder and admiration to the evident presence of “something like a directive mind” at work in the processes under way in the tiny speck of protaplasm which we call the reproductive cell or egg of the animal.

      Huxley, describing the development of the tiny egg of a newt (small aquatic salamander) said: “The plastic matter undergoes changes so rapid, and so purpose­like in their succession, that one can only compare them to those operated by a skilled modeler upon a formless lump of clay. As with an invisible trowel, the mass is divided and subdivided. Then, it is as if a delicate finger traced out the lines to be occupied by the spinal column, and molded the contour of the body; pinching up the head at one end, the tail at the other, and fashioning flank and limb into due salamanderine proportions, in so artistic a way, that, after watching the process hour by hour, one is almost involuntarily possessed by the notion that some more subtle aid to the vision than the achromatic lens would show the hidden artist, with his plan before him, striving with skilful manipulation to perfect his work.”

      The same great scientist, speaking of the continued life of the newt, says: “As life advances, and the young amphibian ranges the waters, the terror of his insect contemporaries, not only the nutritious particles supplied by its prey (by the addition of which to its frame, growth takes place) are laid down, each in its proper spot, and in due proportion to the rest, so as to reproduce the parent stock; but even the wonderful powers of reproducing lost parts, which are possessed by these animals, are controlled by the same governing tendency. Cut off the legs, the tail, the jaws, separately or all together, and these parts not only grow again, but the new limb is formed on the same type as those which were lost. The new jaw, or leg, is a newt’s, and never by an accident more like that of a frog.”

      In the above graphic word­picture of Huxley, we catch a glimpse of the subtle, silent manifestations of this materialization of mental images in Nature; for the same kind of processes are under way on all sides of us, on all planes of Nature’s activities, and in all of her phases of life­processes. There is constantly under way a process of growth, production, reproduction, building, repairing, replacing and general creative construction; and in each and all such forms and phases we may see the presence of a given pattern, form, type or mold—an ideal design or scheme upon which the materialization is effected. The “governing tendency” referred to by Huxley is seen to be none other than the operation of that principle of Creative Mental Form upon which all materialization depends.

      Moreover, we may see the operation of the same principle in the direction of the variation of form, faculty and function in the life forms—indeed, this principle constitutes the directing force of Evolution. Lamarck and other scientists have shown us that Evolution proceeds not only by Natural Selection, but also by the Unfoldment of Ideal Forms, or Mental Images. Thus, the new needs and requirements of the evolving life­forms are first manifested as ideal forms, or mental images, patterns, molds, or types, in the subconscious mentality of the creature; these then moving toward representation, expression and manifestation on the objective, material plane. Thus the “inner nature” gradually becomes modified by environment, and the “outer form” gradually responds to these changes.

      Illustrating this principle, we call your attention to the fact that certain schools of scientific thought hold that the long legs and long neck of the giraffe were evolved in response to the Creative Idea working through many generations of its ancestors. СКАЧАТЬ