The Doré Lectures: Being Sunday addresses at the Doré Gallery, London, given in connection with the Higher Thought Centre — John Shaqi
The Doré Lectures: Being Sunday addresses at the Doré Gallery, London, given in connection with the Higher Thought CentreTroward, T. (Thomas)
Religion
The Doré Lectures: Being Sunday addresses at the Doré Gallery, London, given in connection with the Higher Thought Centre
Troward, T. (Thomas)
New Thought
giving it expression in form in the world of space and time, and
thus is solved the great problem of enabling the Universal to act
upon the plane of the particular without being hampered by those
limitations which the merely generic law of manifestation imposes
upon it. It is just here that subconscious mind performs the
function of a "bridge" between the finite and the infinite as
noted in my "Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science" (page 31), and
it is for this reason that a recognition of its susceptibility to
impression is so important.
By establishing, then, a personal relation to the life of the
Spirit, the sphere of the individual becomes enlarged. The reason
is that he allows a greater intelligence than his own to take the
initiative; and since he knows that this Intelligence is also the
very Principle of Life itself, he cannot have any fear that it
will act in any way to the diminution of his individual life, for
that would be to stultify its own operation--it would be
self-destructive action which is a contradiction in terms to the
conception of Creative Spirit. Knowing, then, that by its
inherent nature this Intelligence can only work to the expansion
of the individual life, we can rest upon it with the utmost
confidence and trust it to take an initiative which will lead to
far greater results than any we could forecast from the
stand-point of our own knowledge. So long as we insist on
dictating the particular form which the action of the Spirit is
to take, we limit it, and so close against ourselves avenues of
expansion which might otherwise have been open to us; and if we
ask ourselves why we do this we shall find that in the last
resort it is because we do not believe in the Spirit as a FORMING
power. We have, indeed, advanced to the conception of it as
executive power, which will work to a prescribed pattern, but we
have yet to grasp the conception of it as versed in the art of
design, and capable of elaborating schemes of construction, which
will not only be complete in themselves, but also in perfect
harmony with one another. When we advance to the conception of
the Spirit as containing in itself the ideal of Form as well as
of Power, we shall cease from the effort of trying to force
things into a particular shape, whether on the inner or the outer
plane, and shall be content to trust the inherent harmoniousness
or Beauty of the Spirit to produce combinations far in advance of
anything that we could have conceived ourselves. This does not
mean that we shall reduce ourselves to a condition of apathy, in
which all desire, expectation and enthusiasm have been quenched,
for these are the mainspring of our mental machinery; but on the
contrary their action will be quickened by the knowledge that
there is working at the back of them a Formative Principle so
infallible that it cannot miss its mark; so that however good and
beautiful the existing forms may be, we may always rest in the
happy expectation of something still better to come.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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