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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

Original Mind upon itself; it is the reaching out of this Mind

for realization of all that it feels itself to be.

The creative process thus in the first instance is purely a

matter of feeling--exactly what we speak of as "motif" in a work

of art.

Now it is this original feeling that we need to enter into,

because it is the fons et origo of the whole chain of causation

which subsequently follows. What then can this original feeling

of the Spirit be? Since the Spirit is Life-in-itself, its feeling

can only be for the fuller expression of Life--any other sort of

feeling would be self-destructive and is therefore inconceivable.

Then the full expression of Life implies Happiness, and Happiness

implies Harmony, and Harmony implies Order, and Order implies

Proportion, and Proportion implies Beauty; so that in recognizing

the inherent tendency of the Spirit towards the production of

Life, we can recognise a similar inherent tendency to the

production of these other qualities also; and since the desire to

bestow the greater fulness of joyous life can only be described

as Love, we can sum up the whole of the feeling which is the

original moving impulse in the Spirit as Love and Beauty--the

Spirit finding expression through forms of beauty in centres of

life, in harmonious reciprocal relation to itself. This is a

generalized statement of the broad principle by which Spirit

expands from the innermost to the outermost, in accordance with a

Law of tendency inherent in itself.

It sees itself, as it were, reflected in various centres of life

and energy, each with its appropriate form; but in the first

instance these reflections can have no existence except within

the originating Mind. They have their first beginning as mental

images, so that in addition to the powers of Intelligence and

Selection, we must also realise that of Imagination as belonging

to the Divine Mind; and we must picture these powers as working

from the initial motive of Love and Beauty.

Now this is the Spirit that we need to enter into, and the method

of doing so is a perfectly logical one. It is the same method by

which all scientific advance is made. It consists in first

observing how a certain law works under the conditions

spontaneously provided by nature, next in carefully considering

what principle this spontaneous working indicates, and lastly

deducing from this how the same principle would act under

specially selected conditions, not spontaneously provided by

nature.

The progress of shipbuilding affords a good example of what I

mean. Formerly wood was employed instead of iron, because wood

floats in water and iron sinks; yet now the navies of the world

are built of iron; careful thought showed the law of floatation

to be that anything could float which, bulk for bulk, is lighter

than the mass of liquid displaced by it; and so we now make iron

float by the very same law by which it sinks, because by the

introduction of the PERSONAL factor, we provide conditions which

do not occur spontaneously--according to the esoteric maxim that

"Nature unaided fails." Now we want to apply the same process of

specializing a generic Law to the first of all Laws, that of the

generic life-giving tendency of Spirit itself. Without the

element of INDIVIDUAL PERSONALITY the Spirit can only work

cosmically by a GENERIC Law; but this law admits of far higher

specialization, and this specialization can only be attained

through the introduction of the personal factor. But to introduce

this factor the individual must be fully aware of the PRINCIPLE

which underlies the spontaneous or cosmic action of the law.

Where, then, will he find this principle of Life? Certainly not

by contemplating Death. In order to get a principle to work in

the way we require it to, we must observe its action when it is

working spon" taneously in this particular direction. We must ask

why it goes in the right direction as far as it does--and having

learnt this we shall then be able to make it go further. The law

of floatation was not discovered by contemplating the sinking of

things, but by contemplating the floating of things which floated

naturally, and then intelligently asking why they did so.

The knowledge of a principle is to be gained by the study of its

affirmative action; when we understand THAT we are in a position

to correct the negative conditions which tend to prevent that

action.

Now Death is the absence of Life, and disease is the absence of

health, so to enter into the Spirit of Life we require to

contemplate it, where it is to be found, and not where it is not-

-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.