THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE

THOMAS TROWARD

THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE

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THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE

CONTENTS.

SPIRIT AND MATTER.

THE HIGHER MODE OF INTELLIGENCE CONTROLS THE LOWER.

THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT.

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MIND.

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MIND.

THE LAW OF GROWTH.

RECEPTIVITY.

RECIPROCAL ACTION OF THE UNIVERSAL AND INDIVIDUAL MINDS.

CAUSES AND CONDITIONS.

INTUITION.

THE WILL.

IN TOUCH WITH SUB-CONSCIOUS MIND.

THE BODY.

THE SOUL.

THE SPIRIT.

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THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE

THE EDINBURGH LECTURES ON MENTAL SCIENCE

BY THOMAS TROWARD

THE WRITER AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATES THIS LITTLE VOLUME TO HIS WIFE

This book contains the substance of a course of lectures recently given by

the writer in the Queen Street Hall, Edinburgh. Its purpose is to indicate

the _Natural Principles_ governing the relation between Mental Action and

Material Conditions, and thus to afford the student an intelligible

starting-point for the practical study of the subject.

T.T.

March, 1904.

CONTENTS.

SPIRIT AND MATTER.

THE HIGHER MODE OF INTELLIGENCE CONTROLS THE LOWER

THE UNITY OF THE SPIRIT

SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MIND

FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE MIND

THE LAW OF GROWTH

RECEPTIVITY.

RECIPROCAL ACTION OF THE UNIVERSAL AND INDIVIDUAL MINDS

CAUSES AND CONDITIONS

INTUITION

HEALING

THE WILL

TOUCH WITH SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

THE BODY

THE SOUL

THE SPIRIT

SPIRIT AND MATTER.

In commencing a course of lectures on Mental Science, it is somewhat

difficult for the lecturer to fix upon the best method of opening the

subject. It can be approached from many sides, each with some peculiar

advantage of its own; but, after careful deliberation, it appears to me

that, for the purpose of the present course, no better starting-point could

be selected than the relation between Spirit and Matter. I select this

starting-point because the distinction--or what we believe to be such--

between them is one with which we are so familiar that I can safely assume

its recognition by everybody; and I may, therefore, at once state this

distinction by using the adjectives which we habitually apply as expressing

the natural opposition between the two--_living_ spirit and _dead_ matter.

These terms express our current impression of the opposition between spirit

and matter with sufficient accuracy, and considered only from the point of

view of outward appearances this impression is no doubt correct. The

general consensus of mankind is right in trusting the evidence of our

senses, and any system which tells us that we are not to do so will never

obtain a permanent footing in a sane and healthy community. There is

nothing wrong in the evidence conveyed to a healthy mind by the senses of a

healthy body, but the point where error creeps in is when we come to judge

of the meaning of this testimony. We are accustomed to judge only by

external appearances and by certain limited significances which we attach

to words; but when we begin to enquire into the real meaning of our words

and to analyse the causes which give rise to the appearances, we find our

old notions gradually falling off from us, until at last we wake up to the

fact that we are living in an entirely different world to that we formerly

recognized. The old limited mode of thought has imperceptibly slipped away,

and we discover that we have stepped out into a new order of things where

all is liberty and life. This is the work of an enlightened intelligence

resulting from persistent determination to discover what truth really is

irrespective of any preconceived notions from whatever source derived, the

determination to think honestly for ourselves instead of endeavouring to

get our thinking done for us. Let us then commence by enquiring what we

really mean by the livingness which we attribute to spirit and the deadness

which we attribute to matter.

At first we may be disposed to say that livingness consists in the power of

motion and deadness in its absence; but a little enquiry into the most

recent researches of science will soon show us that this distinction does

not go deep enough. It is now one of the fully-established facts of

physical science that no atom of what we call "dead matter" is without

motion. On the table before me lies a solid lump of steel, but in the light

of up-to-date science I know that the atoms of that seemingly inert mass

are vibrating with the most intense energy, continually dashing hither and

thither, impinging upon and rebounding from one another, or circling round

like miniature solar systems, with a ceaseless rapidity whose complex

activity is enough to bewilder the imagination. The mass, as a mass, may

lie inert upon the table; but so far from being destitute of the element of

motion it is the abode of the never-tiring energy moving the particles with

a swiftness to which the speed of an express train is as nothing. It is,

therefore, not the mere fact of motion that is at the root of the

distinction which we draw instinctively between spirit and matter; we must

go deeper than that. The solution of the problem will never be found by

comparing Life with what we call deadness, and the reason for this will

become apparent later on; but the true key is to be found by comparing one

degree of livingness with another. There is, of course, one sense in which

the quality of livingness does not admit of degrees; but there is another

sense in which it is entirely a question of degree. We have no doubt as to

the livingness of a plant, but we realize that it is something very

different from the livingness of an animal. Again, what average boy would

not prefer a fox-terrier to a goldfish for a pet? Or, again, why is it that

the boy himself is an advance upon the dog? The plant, the fish, the dog,

and the boy are all equally _alive_; but there is a difference in the

quality of their livingness about which no one can have any doubt, and no

one would hesitate to say that this difference is in the degree of

intelligence. In whatever way we turn the subject we shall always find that

what we call the "livingness" of any individual life is ultimately measured

by its intelligence. It is the possession of greater intelligence that

places the animal higher in the scale of being than the plant, the man

higher than the animal, the intellectual man higher than the savage. The

increased intelligence calls into activity modes of motion of a higher

order corresponding to itself. The higher the intelligence, the more

completely the mode of motion is under its control: and as we descend in

the scale of intelligence, the descent is marked by a corresponding

increase in _automatic_ motion not subject to the control of a

self-conscious intelligence. This descent is gradual from the expanded

self-recognition of the highest human personality to that lowest order of

visible forms which we speak of as "things," and from which

self-recognition is entirely absent.

We see, then, that the livingness of Life consists in intelligence--in

other words, in the power of Thought; and we may therefore say that the

distinctive quality of spirit is Thought, and, as the opposite to this, we

may say that the distinctive quality of matter is Form. We cannot conceive

of matter without form. Some form there must be, even though invisible to

the physical eye; for matter, to be matter at all, must occupy space, and

to occupy any particular space necessarily implies a corresponding form.

For these reasons we may lay it down as a fundamental proposition that the

distinctive quality of spirit is Thought and the distinctive quality of

matter is Form. This is a radical distinction from which important

consequences follow, and should, therefore, be carefully noted by the

student.

Form implies extension in space and also limitation within certain

boundaries. Thought implies neither. When, therefore, we think of Life as

existing in any particular _form_ we associate it with the idea of

extension in space, so that an elephant may be said to consist of a vastly

larger amount of living substance than a mouse. But if we think of Life as

the fact of livingness we do not associate it with any idea of extension,

and we at once realize that the mouse is quite as much alive as the

elephant, notwithstanding the difference in size. The important point of

this distinction is that if we can conceive of anything as entirely devoid

of the element of extension in space, it must be present in its entire

totality anywhere and everywhere--that is to say, at every point of space

simultaneously. The scientific definition of time is that it is the period

occupied by a body in passing from one given point in space to another,

and, therefore, according to this definition, when there is no space there

can be no time; and hence that conception of spirit which realizes it as

devoid of the element of space must realize it as being devoid of the

element of time also; and we therefore find that the conception of spirit

as pure Thought, and not as concrete Form, is the conception of it as

subsisting perfectly independently of the elements of time and space. From

this it follows that if the idea of anything is conceived as existing on

this level it can only represent that thing as being actually present here

and now. In this view of things nothing can be remote from us either in

time or space: either the idea is entirely dissipated or it exists as an

actual present entity, and not as something that _shall_ be in the future,

for where there is no sequence in time there can be no future. Similarly

where there is no space there can be no conception of anything as being at

a distance from us. When the elements of time and space are eliminated all

our ideas of things must necessarily be as subsisting in a universal here

and an everlasting now. This is, no doubt, a highly abstract conception,

but I would ask the student to endeavour to grasp it thoroughly, since it

is of vital importance in the practical application of Mental Science, as

will appear further on.

The opposite conception is that of things expressing themselves through

conditions of time and space and thus establishing a variety of _relations_

to other things, as of bulk, distance, and direction, or of sequence in

time. These two conceptions are respectively the conception of the abstract

and the concrete, of the unconditioned and the conditioned, of the absolute

and the relative. They are not opposed to each other in the sense of

incompatibility, but are each the complement of the other, and the only

reality is in the combination of the two. The error of the extreme idealist

is in endeavouring to realize the absolute without the relative, and the

error of the extreme materialist is in endeavouring to realize the relative

without the absolute. On the one side the mistake is in trying to realize

an inside without an outside, and on the other in trying to realize an

outside without an inside; both are necessary to the formation of a

substantial entity.

THE HIGHER MODE OF INTELLIGENCE CONTROLS THE LOWER.

We have seen that the descent from personality, as we know it in ourselves,

to matter, as we know it under what we call inanimate forms, is a gradual

descent in the scale of intelligence from that mode of being which is able

to realize its own will-power as a capacity for originating new trains of

causation to that mode of being which is incapable of recognizing itself at

all. The higher the grade of life, the higher the intelligence; from which

it follows that the supreme principle of Life must also be the ultimate

principle of intelligence. This is clearly demonstrated by the grand

natural order of the universe. In the light of modern science the principle

of evolution is familiar to us all, and the accurate adjustment existing

between all parts of the cosmic scheme is too self-evident to need

insisting upon. Every advance in science consists in discovering new

subtleties of connection in this magnificent universal order, which already

exists and only needs our recognition to bring it into practical use. If,

then, the highest work of the greatest minds consists in nothing else than

the recognition of an already existing order, there is no getting away from

the conclusion that a paramount intelligence must be inherent in the

Life-Principle, which manifests itself _as_ this order; and thus we see

that there must be a great cosmic intelligence underlying the totality of

things.

The physical history of our planet shows us first an incandescent nebula

dispersed over vast infinitudes of space; later this condenses into a

central sun surrounded by a family of glowing planets hardly yet

consolidated from the plastic primordial matter; then succeed untold

millenniums of slow geological formation; an earth peopled by the lowest

forms of life, whether vegetable or animal; from which crude beginnings a

majestic, unceasing, unhurried, forward movement brings things stage by

stage to the condition in which we know them now. Looking at this steady

progression it is clear that, however we may conceive the nature of the

evolutionary principle, it unerringly provides for the continual advance of

the race. But it does this by creating such numbers of each kind that,

after allowing a wide margin for all possible accidents to individuals, the

race shall still continue:--

"So careful of the type it seems

So careless of the single life."

In short, we may say that the cosmic intelligence works by a Law of

Averages which allows a wide margin of accident and failure to the

individual.

But the progress towards higher intelligence is always in the direction of

narrowing down this margin of accident and taking the individual more and

more out of the law of averages, and substituting the law of individual

selection. In ordinary scientific language this is the survival of the

fittest. The reproduction of fish is on a scale that would choke the sea

with them if every individual survived; but the margin of destruction is

correspondingly enormous, and thus the law of averages simply keeps up the

normal proportion of the race. But at the other end of the scale,

reproduction is by no means thus enormously in excess of survival. True,

there is ample margin of accident and disease cutting off numbers of human

beings before they have gone through the average duration of life, but

still it is on a very different scale from the premature destruction of

hundreds of thousands as against the survival of one. It may, therefore, be

taken as an established fact that in proportion as intelligence advances

the individual ceases to be subject to a mere law of averages and has a

continually increasing power of controlling the conditions of his own

survival.

We see, therefore, that there is a marked distinction between the cosmic

intelligence and the individual intelligence, and that the factor which

differentiates the latter from the former is the presence of _individual_

volition. Now the business of Mental Science is to ascertain the relation

of this individual power of volition to the great cosmic law which provides

for the maintenance and advancement of the race; and the point to be

carefully noted is that the power of individual volition is itself the

outcome of the cosmic evolutionary principle at the point where it reaches

its highest level. The effort of Nature has always been upwards from the

time when only the lowest forms of life peopled the globe, and it has now

culminated in the production of a being with a mind capable of abstract

reasoning and a brain fitted to be the physical instrument of such a mind.

At this stage the all-creating Life-principle reproduces itself in a form

capable of recognizing the working of the evolutionary law, and the unity

and continuity of purpose running through the whole progression until now

indicates, beyond a doubt, that the place of such a being in the universal

scheme must be to introduce the operation of that factor which, up to this

point, has been, conspicuous by its absence--the factor, namely, of

intelligent individual volition. The evolution which has brought us up to

this standpoint has worked by a cosmic law of averages; it has been a

process in which the individual himself has not taken a conscious part. But

because he is what he is, and leads the van of the evolutionary procession,

if man is to evolve further, it can now only be by his own conscious

co-operation with the law which has brought him up to the standpoint where

he is able to realize that such a law exists. His evolution in the future

must be by conscious participation in the great work, and this can only be

effected by his own individual intelligence and effort. It is a process of

intelligent growth. No one else can grow for us: we must each grow for

ourselves; and this intelligent growth consists in our increasing

recognition of the universal law, which has brought us as far as we have

yet got, and of our own individual relation to that law, based upon the

fact that we ourselves are the most advanced product of it. It is a great

maxim that Nature obeys us precisely in proportion as we first obey Nature.

Let the electrician try to go counter to the principle that electricity

must always pass from a higher to a lower potential and he will effect

nothing; but let him submit in all things to this one fundamental law, and

he can make whatever particular applications of electrical power he will.

These considerations show us that what differentiates the higher from the

lower degree of intelligence is the recognition of its own self-hood, and

the more intelligent that recognition is, the greater will be the power.

The lower degree of self-recognition is that which only realizes itself as

an entity separate from all other entities, as the _ego_ distinguished from

the _non-ego_. But the higher degree of self-recognition is that which,

realizing its own spiritual nature, sees in all other forms, not so much

the _non-ego_, or that which is not itself, as the _alter-ego_, or that

which is itself in a different mode of expression. Now, it is this higher

degree of self-recognition that is the power by which the Mental Scientist

produces his results. For this reason it is imperative that he should

clearly understand the difference between Form and Being; that the one is

the mode of the relative and, the mark of subjection to conditions, and

that the other is the truth of the absolute and is that which controls

conditions.

Now this higher recognition of self as an individualization of pure spirit

must of necessity control all modes of spirit which have not yet reached

the same level of self-recognition. These lower modes of spirit are in

bondage to the law of their own being because they do not know the law;

and, therefore, the individual who has attained to this knowledge can

control them through that law. But to understand this we must inquire a

little further into the nature of spirit. I have already shown that the

grand scale of adaptation and adjustment of all parts of the cosmic scheme

to one another exhibits the presence _somewhere_ of a marvellous

intelligence, underlying the whole, and the question is, where is this

intelligence to be found? Ultimately we can only conceive of it as inherent

in some primordial substance which is the root of all those grosser modes

of matter which are known to us, whether visible to the physical eye, or

necessarily inferred by science from their perceptible effects. It is that

power which, in every species and in every individual, becomes that which

that species or individual is; and thus we can only conceive of it as a

self-forming intelligence inherent in the ultimate substance of which each

thing is a particular manifestation. That this primordial substance must be

considered as self-forming by an inherent intelligence abiding in itself

becomes evident from the fact that intelligence is the essential quality of

spirit; and if we were to conceive of the primordial substance as something

apart from spirit, then we should have to postulate some other power which

is neither spirit nor matter, and originates both; but this is only putting

the idea of a self-evolving power a step further back and asserting the

production of a lower grade of undifferentiated spirit by a higher, which

is both a purely gratuitous assumption and a contradiction of any idea we

can form of undifferentiated spirit at all. However far back, therefore, we

may relegate the original starting-point, we cannot avoid the conclusion

that, at that point, spirit contains the primary substance in itself, which

brings us back to the common statement that it made everything out of

nothing. We thus find two factors to the making of all things, Spirit

and--Nothing; and the addition of Nothing to Spirit leaves _only_ spirit:

x + 0 = x.

From these considerations we see that the ultimate foundation of every form

of matter is spirit, and hence that a universal intelligence subsists

throughout Nature inherent in every one of its manifestations. But this

cryptic intelligence does not belong to the particular _form_ excepting in

the measure in which it is physically fitted for its concentration into

self-recognizing individuality: it lies hidden in that primordial substance

of which the visible form is a grosser manifestation. This primordial

substance is a philosophical necessity, and we can only picture it to

ourselves as something infinitely finer than the atoms which are themselves

a philosophical inference of physical science: still, for want of a better

word, we may conveniently speak of this primary intelligence inherent in

the very substance of things as the Atomic Intelligence. The term may,

perhaps, be open to some objections, but it will serve our present purpose

as distinguishing _this_ mode of spirit's intelligence from that of the

opposite pole, or Individual Intelligence. This distinction should be

carefully noted because it is by the response of the atomic intelligence to

the individual intelligence that thought-power is able to produce results

on the material plane, as in the cure of disease by mental treatment, and

the like. Intelligence manifests itself by responsiveness, and the whole

action of the cosmic mind in bringing the evolutionary process from its

first beginnings up to its present human stage is nothing else but a

continual intelligent response to the demand which each stage in the

progress has made for an adjustment between itself and its environment.

Since, then, we have recognized the presence of a universal intelligence

permeating all things, we must also recognize a corresponding

responsiveness hidden deep down in their nature and ready to be called into

action when appealed to. All mental treatment depends on this

responsiveness of spirit in its lower degrees to higher degrees of itself.

It is here that the difference between the mental scientist and the

uninstructed person comes in; the former knows of this responsiveness and

makes use of it, and the latter cannot use it because he does not know it.