But perhaps you will say, "Why should we want to have anything more to do with the physical plane? surely we have had enough of it already!"
Yes; in its old sense of limitation; but not in the new sense of a world of glorious possibilities, a new field for our creative activities; not the least of which is the helping of those who are still in those lower stages which we have already pa.s.sed through.
I think if we realize the position of the Fully Risen Man, we shall see that he is not likely to turn his back upon the Earth as a rotten, old thing. Therefore a new physical body is a necessary part of his equipment.
If, then, we take it as a general principle, that for self-recognition upon any plane a body in terms of that plane is a necessity, this will throw some light on the Bible narrative of our Lord"s appearances after his Resurrection. It is noteworthy that he himself lays stress on the body as an integral part of the individuality. When the disciples thought they had seen an apparition he said: "Handle me and see that it is I _myself_, and _not_ a spirit, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see I have" (Luke xxiv, 39). This very clearly states that the spirit without a corresponding body is not the complete "I myself"; yet from the same narrative we gather that the solid body in which he appeared is able to pa.s.s through closed doors, and to be disintegrated and re-integrated at will. Now on the electronic theory of the const.i.tution of matter which I have spoken of in the earlier part of this book, there is nothing impossible in this; on the contrary it is only the known Law of synchronous vibration carried into those further ranges of wave-lengths which, though not yet produced by laboratory experiment, are unavoidably recognized by the mathematicians.
In this way then the Resurrection of the Body appears to me to be the legitimate termination of our present stage of existence. What further developments may follow, who shall say? for we must remember that the end of one series is always the commencement of another--that is the doctrine of the Octave. But this is far enough to look forward in all conscience. As to _when_ the completion of our present stage of evolution will be attained, it is impossible even to hazard a guess; but that the _individual_ attainment of such a Resurrection is not dependent on any particular date in the world"s history, is clearly the teaching of Scripture. When Martha said to Jesus that she knew her brother would rise again "at the last day," he ignored the question of "the last day," and said "I am the Resurrection and the Life" (St. John xi, 25); and similarly St. Paul puts it forward as a thing to be attained (Ph. iii, 15). It is not a resurrection _of_ the dead but _from among_ the dead that St. Paul is aiming at--not an "anastasis ton nekron," but an "anastasis _ek_ ton nekron."
Doubtless there are other pa.s.sages of Scripture which speak of a general resurrection, which to some will be a resurrection to condemnation (St.
John v, 29), a resurrection to shame and everlasting contempt (Dan. xii, 2). This is a subject upon which I will not attempt to enter--I have a great many things to learn, and this is one of them; but if the Bible statements regarding resurrection are to be taken as a whole, these pa.s.sages cannot be pa.s.sed over without notice. On the other hand the Bible statements regarding _individual_ resurrection are there also, and the general principle on which they are based becomes clear when we see the fundamental relation between the Law and the Word. Only we must remember that the Word that can thus set in motion the Law of Life, and make it triumph over the Law of Death, cannot be spoken by the limited personality which only knows itself as John Smith or Mary Jones. We must attain a larger personality than that, before we can speak the Word. And this larger personality is not just John Smith or Mary Jones magnified; that is the mistake we are all so apt to fall into. Mere magnification will not do it. A square will continue to be a square however large you make it; it will never become a circle. But on the other hand, there is such a thing as stating the area of a circle in the form of a square; and when we learn to regard our square as not existing on its own account, but as an expression of the circle in another form, our attention will be directed to the circle first, as the generating figure, and _then_ to the square as a particular mode of expressing the same area. If we look at it in this way we shall never mistake the square for the circle, but we shall see that as the circle grows, the corresponding square will grow with it. It is this dependence of the square on the circle that makes all the difference, and makes it a living, growing square. For the true circle represents Infinitude. It is not bounded by a limiting circ.u.mference as in the merely symbolic geometrical figure, but is rather represented by the impulse which generates an ever widening circle of electro-magnetic waves; and when we realize this, our square becomes a living thing. The "Word" that we speak with this recognition is no longer ours, but His who sent us--the expression, on the plane of individuality, of the Thought that sent us into existence and so it is the "Word of Life." This is the true Resurrection of the Individual.
CHAPTER VIII
TRANSFERRING THE BURDEN
The more we grow into a clear perception of what is really meant by "Squaring the Circle," the freer we shall find ourselves from the burden of anxiety. We shall rise to a larger generalization of the Law of Cause and Effect. We shall learn in all things to reach out to First Cause as operating through the channels of secondary causation,--"causa causas"
as producing, and therefore controlling "causa causata"--and so we cease to worry about secondary causes. On the plane of the lower personality we see certain facts, and argue that they are bound to produce certain results, which would be quite true if we really saw _all_ the facts; or, again, allowing that in any particular case we actually did see all the facts as they now exist, we can either deny the operation of First Cause, or recognize its infinite capacity for creating new facts.
Therefore, whatever may be the nature of our anxiety, we should endeavour to dispel it by the consideration that there may be already existing other facts we do not know of, which will produce a different result from the one we fear, and that in any case there is a power which can produce new facts in answer to our appeal to it.
But I can imagine some one saying to us, "You b.u.mptious little midget, do you think First Cause is going to trouble Itself about you and your petty concerns? Do you not know that First Cause works by universal Law, and makes no exceptions?" Well, I would not have written this book if I did not suppose that First Cause works by universal Law, and it is just because It does so that I believe It _will_ work for me and my concerns.
The Law makes no exceptions, but it can be specialized through the power of the Word. Then our sceptic says, "What, do you think _your_ word can do that?" To which I reply, "It is not my word because I am not using it in my lower personality, as John Smith or Mary Jones, but in that higher personality which recognizes only one all-embracing Personality and itself as included in that."
Which comes first, the Law or the Word?
The distribution of the solar systems in s.p.a.ce, the localization of the Spirit in specific areas of cosmic activity, proclaims the starting of all manifestation through the "Word." Then the operation of Law follows with mathematical precision, just as when we write 2 2 we cannot avoid getting 4 as the result--only there is no reason why we should not write 2 3 and so get 6 instead of 4. Let it be borne in mind that the Law flows from the Word, and not _vice versa_, and you have got the clue to the enigma of Life.
How far we shall be able to make practical use of this clue depends, of course, on our acceptance of its principle.
The Directing Power of the Word is _inherent_ in the Word, and we cannot alter it. _It is the Law_ OF _the Law_, and so, like any other law, it cannot be broken, but its action can be inverted. We cannot deprive the Word of its efficacy, but our denial of it as the Word of Expansion is equivalent to an affirmation of it as the Word of Contraction, and so the Law acts towards us as a Limitation. But the fault is not in the Law, but in the way we use the Word. Now if the reader grasps this, he will see that the less we trouble ourselves about what appear to us to be the visible and calculable causes of things, the freer we must become from the burden of anxiety; and as we advance step by step to a clearer recognition of the true order of Cause and Effect, so all intermediate causes will fade from our view. Only the two extremes of the sequence of Cause and Effect will remain in sight. First Cause, moving as the Word, starting a sequence, and the desired result terminating it, as the Word taking Form in Fact. The intermediate links in the chain will be there, but they will be seen as effects, not causes. The wider the generalization we thus make, the less we shall need to trouble about particulars, knowing that they will form themselves by the natural action of the Law; and the widest generalization is therefore, to state not what we want to _have_, but what we want to _be_. The only reason we ever want to _have_ anything, is because we think it will help us to be something--something more than we are now; so that the "having" is only a link in the chain of secondary causes, and may therefore be left out of consideration, for it will come of itself through the natural workings of the Law, set in operation by the Word as First Cause. This principle is set forth in the statement of the Divine Name given to Moses (Ex. iii, 13-14). The Name is simply "I AM"--it is Being, not having--the having follows as a natural consequence of the Being; and if it be true that we are made in the likeness and image of G.o.d, that is to say on the same Principle, then what is the Law of the Divine nature must be the Law of ours also--and as we awake to this we become "partakers of the Divine Nature" (2 Pet. i, 4).
What we really want, therefore, is to _be_ something--something more than we are now; and this is quite right. It is our consciousness of the continually generative impulse of the Eternal Living Spirit, which is the _fons et origo_ (fountain and source) of all differentiated life working within us for ever more and more perfect individual expression of all that is in Itself. If the reader remembers what I said at the beginning of this book about the Verb Substantive of Being, he will see that each of us is in truth a "Word (verb.u.m) of G.o.d." Let not the orthodox reader be shocked at this--I am only saying what the Bible does. Look up the following pa.s.sages: "I will write upon him the name of my G.o.d and my own new name" (Rev. xiii, 12). "I saw, and behold a lamb standing on the Mount Zion (note, the word Zion means the principle of Life), and with him a hundred and forty and four thousand, having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads" (Rev. xiv, 1). "His name shall be on their foreheads" (Rev. xxii, 4). Read particularly the whole pa.s.sage Rev. xix, 11-16, where we are expressly told that the name in question is "the Word of G.o.d"; and that this name is the one put upon those who follow their Leader, is shown by the same description being given of the followers as of the Leader. They all ride upon "white horses," and the "horse" is the symbol of the intellect.
Also in the case of the Leader, the peculiarity of his Name is that "no one knows it but himself," and in Rev. ii, 17, exactly the same thing is said of the "New Name" to be given "to him that overcometh." Again, in Isaiah lxii, 2, "Thou shalt be called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord shall name"; and again in Num. vi, 27, "They shall put my name upon the children of Israel."
Then as the meaning of that Name "the Word of G.o.d." In Ps. cxix, 160: "Thy word is true from the beginning," and Jesus said: "Thy Word is Truth" (John xvii, 17).
This also corresponds with the description in Rev. xix, 11-16 where another name for "the Word of G.o.d" is "Faithful and True"; and the same metaphor of the Truth "_riding into action_" is contained in Ps. xlv, 3, 4. "Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty; and in thy majesty ride prosperously because of Truth." The same symbol of "riding" also occurs in Ps. lxviii: "Extol him that rideth upon the heavens," "Sing praises to him that rideth upon the heaven of heavens which were of old (i.e., _ab initio_); lo, he doth send out his Voice and that a mighty Voice"--and the word "Voice" is the Hebrew Word [Hebrew: "K[=o]l"], meaning "Sound" or "Word"--so that here again we have the idea of "The Word" riding into action. Once more--"Thou hast magnified thy Word above all thy Name" (Ps. cx.x.xviii, 2), thus repeating the idea of the Word as the Name.
In other pa.s.sages we have the idea of the Word as a Weapon. "The Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of G.o.d" (Eph. vi, 17), which answers to the description in Revelations of the Sword proceeding out of the mouth of the Word; and we have the same metaphor of the Word riding into action in Habakkuk iii, 8 and 9. "Thou didst ride upon thine horses and thy chariots of salvation. Thy bow was made quite naked ... even thy Word"; and similarly those that oppose the Word are "killed with the sword of him that sat upon the horse, which sword proceeded out of his mouth."
In other pa.s.sages we have the Word put before us as a Defence. "His Truth shall be thy shield and buckler" (Ps. xci, 4); and again "The Name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe" (Prov. xviii, 10); and we have already seen that this Name is "The Word of G.o.d"; and similarly in Ps. cxxiv, 8: "Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."
Lastly, we get "the Word" as the final deliverance from all ill; "Into thy hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord G.o.d of Truth"
(Ps. x.x.xi, 5).
And the reason of all this is because "His Truth endureth to all generations" (Ps. c, 5); it is everlasting, Changeless Principle. "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth" (Ps. x.x.xiii, 6), as is also said of the Word in the opening of St. John"s Gospel and First Epistle.
Now a careful comparison of these and similar pa.s.sages will make it clear that the sequence presented to us is as follows: The "Word" is the pa.s.sing of the Verb Substantive of Being into Action. It is always the same in Principle, on whatever scale, and therefore applies to ourselves also, so that each one of us is a "Word of G.o.d." We are this by the very essence of our being, and that is why the first thing we are told about Man is, that he is made in the image and likeness of G.o.d. But how far any of us will become a really effective "Word," depends upon our acceptance of the New Name which is ready to be bestowed upon each one.
"To as many as _receive_ him, to them gives he power to become Sons of G.o.d, even to them that believe on his Name" (John 1-12). We get the New Name by realizing the Truth, which Truth is that we ourselves are included in THE NAME, and that name is called "The Word of G.o.d."
The meaning of which becomes clear if we remember that the spiritual name of anything is its "Noumenon" or essential being, which is manifested through its "Phenomenon" or outward reproduction in Form; so that the true order is first our "Name" or essential Being, then our "Word" or active manifestation of this essential Being, then the "Truth"
or the unchangeable Law of Being pa.s.sing into Manifestation--and these three are ONE. Then when we see that this is true of ourselves, not because of some arbitrary favouritism making us exceptions to the human race, but because it is the working on the plane of Human Individuality of the same Power and the same Law by which the world has come into existence, we can see that we have here a Principle which we can trust to work as infallibly as the principle of Mathematics; and that therefore the desire to become something more than we now are is nothing else than the Eternal Spirit of Life seeking ever fuller expression.
The correction which our mode of thinking needs therefore is to start with Being, not with Having, and we may then trust the Having to come along in its right order; and if we can get into this new manner of thinking, what a world of worry it will save us! If we realize that the Law flows from the Word, and not vice versa, then the Law of attraction must work in this manner, and will bring to us all those conditions through which we shall be able to express the more expanded Being towards which we are directing our Word; and as a consequence, we shall have no need to trouble about forcing particular conditions into existence--they will grow spontaneously out of the seed we have planted.
All we have to do now, or at any time, is to take the conditions that are ready to hand and use them on the lines of the sort of "being"
towards which we are directing our Thought--use them just as far as they go at the time, without trying to press them further--and we shall find by experience that out of the present conditions thus used to-day, more favourable conditions will grow in a perfectly natural manner to-morrow, and so on, day by day, until, when later on we look back, we shall be surprised to find ourselves expressing all, and more than all, the sort of "_being_" we had thought of. Then, from this new standpoint of our being, we shall continue to go on in the same way, and so on _ad infinitum_, so that our life will become one endless progress, ever widening as we go on. And this will be found a very quiet and peaceful way, free from worry and anxiety, and wonderfully effective. It may lead you to some position of authority or celebrity; but as such things belong to the category of "Having" and not of "Being" they were not what you aimed at, and are only by-products of what you have become in yourself. They are conditions, and like all other conditions should be made use of for the development of still more expanded "being"; that is to say, you will go on working on the more extended scale which such a position makes possible to you. But the one thing you would not try to do with it would be to "boss the show." The moment you do this you are no longer using the Word of the larger Personality, and have descended to your old level of the smaller personality, just John Smith or Mary Jones, ignorant of yourselves as being anything greater. It is true your Word still directs the operation of the Law towards yourself--it always does this--but your word has become inverted, and so calls into operation the Law of Contraction instead of the Law of Expansion. A higher position means a wider field for usefulness--that is all; and to the extent to which you fit yourself for it, it will come to you. So, if you content yourself with always speaking in your Thought the Creative Word of "Being" from day to day, you will find it the Way of Peace and the Secret of a Happy Life--by no means monotonous, for all sorts of unexpected interests will be continually opening out to you, giving you scope for all the activities of which your present degree of "being"
renders you capable. You will always find plenty to do, and find pleasure in doing it, so you need never be afraid of feeling dull.
But perhaps you will say:
"How am I to know that I am not speaking my own Word instead of that of the Creative Spirit?"
Well, the word of the smaller personality is always based on the idea of possessing, and the Word of the Spirit is always based on the idea of Becoming--that is the criterion. And also, if we base our speaking of the Word on the Promises of Spirit, we may be sure that we are on the right track.
We may be sure of it, because when we come to a.n.a.lyze these promises we shall find that they are all statements of the Creative Law of Being, and the nature of this Law is obvious from the facts of the Visible Creation.
These things are not true because they are written in the Bible, but the Bible is true because these things are written in it. The more we examine the Bible Promises, the more they will impress themselves upon us as being Promises according to Law; and since the Law can never be broken, we can feel quite secure of it, subject to the one condition that we do not stop the Law from working to the fulfilment of the Promise, by our own inverted use of the Word. But if we take the _Word of the Promise_ and make it our own Word, then we know that we are speaking the right Word, which will so specialize the action of the Law, as to produce the fulfilment of the Promise. Apart from the Word there is no Foundation. In all other systems we have either Law without Will, or Will without Law.
Then we know that we are not speaking of ourselves, but are speaking the Word of the Power that sent us into the World. The Law alone cannot fulfil the Promises. It is in itself Cosmic and Impersonal, and, as every scientific discovery amply demonstrates, it needs the co-operation of the Personal Factor to bring out its latent possibilities; so that the Word is as necessary as the Law for the fulfilment of the Promises; but if the Word which we speak is that of the Creating Spirit, we may reckon it as being just as certain in its operation as the Law, and the two together form an infallible Power.
But there is one thing we must not forget, and this is the Law of Growth. If the Law which we plant is the seed, then we must allow time for it to grow; we must leave it alone and go about our business as usual, and the seed we have sown will spring and grow up of itself, we know not how, a truth which we have been told by the Master himself (Mark iv, 26, 29).
We must not be like children who plant a seed one day, and dig it up the next to see whether it is growing. Our part is to plant the seed, not to make it grow,--the Creative Law of Life will do that. It is for this reason that the Bible gives us such injunctions as "Study to be quiet"
(1 Thess. iv, 11). "He that believeth shall not make haste" (Is.
xxviii, 16). "In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength"
(Is. x.x.x, 15). To make ourselves anxious as to whether the Word we have planted will fructify is just to dig it up again, and then of course it will not grow.
The fundamental maxim, then, which we must always keep in mind is that "Every creation carries its own Mathematics along with it," and that therefore "The Law flows from the Word, and not _vice versa_;" and consequently "_The Word is the Foundation of every creative series_,"
whether that series be great or small, cosmic or individual, constructive or destructive. Every series commences with Intention; and remember the exact meaning of the Word. It is from the two Latin words "in," towards, and "tendere," to stretch, and it therefore means a "reaching out in a certain direction." This "reaching out in a certain direction" is the Conception of ourself as arrived at the destination towards which our Thought tends, and is therefore _the conceiving of an idea_, and our formulated idea is stated, if only mentally, in Words--and the termination of the series is the realization of the idea in actual fact. Therefore it is equally true of every series, whether it be the creation of a lady"s blouse or the creation of a world, that "in the Beginning is the Word"--the Word is _the Point of Origination_.
Then, since the Word is the Point of Origination, what is our conception of the best thing we can originate with it? There is a great variety of opinion as to what is desirable; and it is only natural and right that it should be so, for otherwise we should be without any individuality, which means that we should have no real life in us--in fact such a world is unthinkable; it would be a world that had ceased to move, it would be a dead world. So it is the varied conception of "the Good" that makes the world go on. Uniformity means reducing things to one dead level. But on the other hand there must be Unity--unity of action resulting from unity of purpose, otherwise the world logically terminates in internecine strife. If then the world is to go on, it can only be by means of Unity expressing itself in Variety, and therefore the question is: What is the _unifying Desire_ which underlies all the varieties of expression? It is a very simple one--it is just to ENJOY LIVING. Our ideas of an enjoyable life may be very various, but that is what we all really want; so what we want to get at is: What is the basis of an enjoyable life?
I have no hesitation in saying that the secret of enjoying life is _to take an interest in it_. The opposite of Livingness is Deadness, that is, inertia and stagnation. Dying of "ennui" is a very real thing indeed, and if we would not die of this malady we must have an interest in life that will always keep going on.
Now for anything to interest us we must enter into the spirit of it. If we do not enter into the spirit of a game it does not interest us; if we do not enter into the spirit of a book, it does not interest us, we are bored to death with it; and so on with everything. So from our own experience we may lay down the maxim that "To enjoy anything we must enter into the spirit of it," and if this be so, then, to enjoy the "Living Quality of Life" we must enter into the Spirit of Life itself. I say the "Living Quality of Life" so as to dissociate it from all ideas of particular conditions; because what we are trying to get at is the fundamental principle of Life which creates conditions, and not the reflex of sensations, whether physical or mental, which any particular set of conditions may induce in us for the time being. In this way we come back to the initial proposition with which we started--that the origin of everything is only to be found in a Universal Ever-Living Spirit, and that our own life proceeds from this Spirit in accordance with the maxim "Omne vivum ex vivo." Thus we are logically brought to the conclusion that the ultimate Desire of all Humanity is to consciously enter into the Spirit of Life as it is _in itself_, antecedently to all conditions. This is the widest of all generalizations, and so opens the door to the highest of all specializations; for it is a scientific fact that the more widely we can generalize the principle of any Law, the more highly we can specialize its working. It is only as our conception of it is limited that any Law limits us.
A principle _per se_ is always undifferentiated, and capable of any sort of differentiation into particular modes of expression that are not in opposition to the principle itself; and it is true of the Principle of Life as of all others. There is therefore no limit to its expression except that which inverts it,--that is to say, anything which tends towards Death; and, accordingly, what we have to avoid is the negative mode of Thought, which starts an inverted action of the Law, logically resulting in destructiveness instead of constructiveness. But the mistake we make from not seeing the basic principle of the whole thing, is that of looking to the conditions to form the Life, instead of looking to the Life to form the conditions; and therefore what we require is a _Standard of Measurement_ for our Thought, by which we shall be able to form _The Perfect Word_ which will set in motion the Law of Cause and Effect in such a manner as to fulfil that _Basic Desire of Life_ which is common to all Humanity. The Perfect Word must therefore fulfil two Conditions--it must have the essential Quality of the Undifferentiated Eternal Life, and it must have the essential Quality of "Genus h.o.m.o." It must say with Horace "h.o.m.o sum; nihil humani mihi alienum puto" (I am Man; I regard nothing human as alien to myself). When we think it out carefully, there is no escaping the conclusion that this must be the essential Quality of the Perfect Word we are in search of. It is the final logical inference from all that we have learnt regarding the interaction between Law and Personality, that the Perfect Word must combine in itself the Quality of each--it must be at once both Human and Divine.
Of course all my readers know where the description of such a Word is to be found; but what I want them to realize is the way in which we have now reached a similar description of the Perfect Word. We have not accepted it unquestioningly as the teaching of a scholastic theology, but have arrived at it by a course of careful reasoning from the facts of physical Nature and from our experience of our own mental powers.
This way of getting at it makes it really our own. We know what we mean by it, and it is no longer a mere traditional form of words. It is the same with everything else; nothing becomes our own by being just told about it.
For instance, if I show an artist a picture, and he tells me that a boat in it is half a mile away from the spectators, I may accept this on his authority, because I suppose he knows all about it. But if next day a friend shows me a picture of a bit of coast with a fishing-boat in the distance, and asks me how far off that boat is, I am utterly stumped because I do not know how the artist was able to judge the distance.
But if I understand the principle, I give my friend a very fair approximation of the distance of the boat. I work it out like this. I say:--the immediate foreground of the picture shows an amount of detail which could not be seen more than twenty yards away, and the average size of such details in nature shows that the bottom edge of the picture must measure about ten yards across. Then from experience I know that the average length of craft of the particular rigging in the picture is, say, about eighty feet, and I then measure that this length goes sixteen and a half times across the picture on the level where the boat is situated, and so I know that a line across the picture at this level measures 80 x 16-1/2 = 1320 ft. = 440 yards. Then I make the calculation: 10 yds.: 440 yds.:: 20 yds.: the distance required to be ascertained 440 x 20 / 10 = 880 yds. 1760 yds. = 1 mile and 1760 / 2 = 880 yds. Therefore I know that the boat in the picture is represented as being about half a mile from the spectator. I really know the distance and do not merely guess it, and I know _how_ I know it. I know it simply from the geometrical principle that with a given angle at the apex of a triangle the length of a perpendicular dropped from the apex to the base of the triangle will always bear the same ratio to the length of the base, whatever the size of the triangle may be. In this way I know the distance of the boat in the picture by combining mathematics and my own observation of facts--once again to co-operation of Law and Personality.
Now a familiar instance like this shows the difference between being told a thing and really knowing it, and it is by an a.n.a.logous method that we have now arrived at the conclusion that the Perfect Word is a combination of the Human and the Divine. We have definite reasons for seeing this as the ultimate fact of human development--the power to give expression to the Perfect Word--, and that this follows naturally from the fact of our own existence and that of some originating source from which we derive it.