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-
