The Hidden Power, and Other Papers upon Mental ScienceTroward, T. (Thomas)
Religion
The Hidden Power, and Other Papers upon Mental Science
Troward, T. (Thomas)
New Thought
The study of the material world is not Materialism, if it be allowed to
progress to its legitimate issue. Materialism is that limited view of
the universe which will not admit the existence of anything but
mechanical effects of mechanical causes, and a system which recognises
no higher power than the physical forces of nature must logically result
in having no higher ultimate appeal than to physical force or to fraud
as its alternative. I speak, of course, of the tendency of the system,
not of the morality of individuals, who are often very far in advance of
the systems they profess. But as we would avoid the propagation of a
mode of thought whose effects history shows only too plainly, whether in
the Italy of the Borgias, or the France of the First Revolution, or the
Commune of the Franco-Prussian War, we should set ourselves to study
that inner and spiritual aspect of things which is the basis of a system
whose logical results are truth and love instead of perfidy and
violence.
Some of us, doubtless, have often wondered why the Heavenly Jerusalem is
described in the Book of Revelations as a cube; "the length and the
breadth and the height of it are equal." This is because the cube is the
figure of perfect stability, and thus represents Truth, which can never
be overthrown. Turn it on what side you will, it still remains the
perfect cube, always standing upright; you cannot upset it. This figure,
then, represents the manifestation in concrete solidity of that central
life-giving energy, which is not itself any one plane but generates all
planes, the planes of the above and of the below and of all four sides.
But it is at the same time a city, a place of habitation; and this is
because that which is "the within" is Living Spirit, which has its
dwelling there.
As one plane of the cube implies all the other planes and also "the
within," so any plane of manifestation implies the others and also that
"within" which generates them all. Now, if we would make any progress in
the spiritual side of science--and _every_ department of science has its
spiritual side--we must always keep our minds fixed upon this "innermost
within" which contains the potential of all outward manifestation, the
"fourth dimension" which generates the cube; and our common forms of
speech show how intuitively we do this. We speak of the spirit in which
an act is done, of entering into the spirit of a game, of the spirit of
the time, and so on. Everywhere our intuition points out the spirit as
the true essence of things; and it is only when we commence arguing
about them from without, instead of from within, that our true
perception of their nature is lost.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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