The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science

By Thomas Troward, Late Divisional Judge, Punjab, 1904

VII. RECEPTIVITY.

In order to lay the foundations for practical work, the student must
endeavour to get a clear conception of what is meant by the intelligence of
undifferentiated spirit. We want to grasp the idea of intelligence apart
from individuality, an idea which is rather apt to elude us until we grow
accustomed to it. It is the failure to realize this quality of spirit that
has given rise to all the theological errors that have brought bitterness
into the world and has been prominent amongst the causes which have
retarded the true development of mankind. To accurately convey this
conception in words, is perhaps, impossible, and to attempt definition is
to introduce that very idea of limitation which is our object to avoid. It
is a matter of feeling rather than of definition; yet some endeavour must
be made to indicate the direction in which we must feel for this great
truth if we are to find it. The idea is that of realizing personality
without that selfhood which differentiates one individual from another. “I
am not that other because I am myself”–this is the definition of
individual selfhood; but it necessarily imparts the idea of limitation,
because the recognition of any other individuality at once affirms a point
at which our own individuality ceases and the other begins. Now this mode
of recognition cannot be attributed to the Universal Mind. For it to
recognize a point where itself ceased and something else began would be to
recognize itself as not universal; for the meaning of universality is the
including of all things, and therefore for this intelligence to recognize
anything as being outside itself would be a denial of its own being. We
may therefore say without hesitation that, whatever may be the nature of
its intelligence, it must be entirely devoid of the element of
self-recognition as an individual personality on any scale whatever. Seen
in this light it is at once clear that the originating all-pervading Spirit
is the grand impersonal principle of Life which gives rise to all the
particular manifestations of Nature. Its absolute impersonalness, in the
sense of the entire absence of any consciousness of individual selfhood,
is a point on which it is impossible to insist too strongly. The
attributing of an impossible individuality to the Universal Mind is one of
the two grand errors which we find sapping the foundations of religion and
philosophy in all ages. The other consists in rushing to the opposite
extreme and denying the quality of personal intelligence to the Universal
Mind. The answer to this error remains, as of old, in the simple question,
“He that made the eye shall He not see? He that planted the ear shall He
not hear?”–or to use a popular proverb, “You cannot get out of a bag more
than there is in it;” and consequently the fact that we ourselves are
centres of personal intelligence is proof that the infinite, from which
these centres are concentrated, must be infinite intelligence, and thus we
cannot avoid attributing to it the two factors which constitute
personality, namely, intelligence and volition. We are therefore brought to
the conclusion that this universally diffused essence, which we might think
of as a sort of spiritual protoplasm, must possess all the qualities of
personality without that conscious recognition of self which constitutes
separate individuality: and since the word “personality” has became so
associated in our ordinary talk with the idea of “individuality” it will
perhaps be better to coin a new word, and speak of the personalness of the
Universal Mind as indicating its personal quality, apart from
individuality. We must realize that this universal spirit permeates all
space and all manifested substance, just as physical scientists tell us
that the ether does, and that wherever it is, there it must carry with it
all that it is in its own being; and we shall then see that we are in the
midst of an ocean of undifferentiated yet intelligent Life, above, below,
and all around, and permeating ourselves both mentally and corporeally, and
all other beings as well.

Gradually as we come to realize the truth of this statement, our eyes will
begin to open to its immense significance. It means that all Nature is
pervaded by an interior personalness, infinite in its potentialities of
intelligence, responsiveness, and power of expression, and only waiting to
be called into activity by our recognition of it. By the terms of its
nature it can respond to us only as we recognize it. If we are at that
intellectual level where we can see nothing but chance governing the world,
then this underlying universal mind will present to us nothing but a
fortuitous confluence of forces without any intelligible order. If we are
sufficiently advanced to see that such a confluence could only produce a
chaos, and not a cosmos, then our conceptions expand to the idea of
universal Law, and we find this to be the nature of the all-underlying
principle. We have made an immense advance from the realm of mere accident
into a world where there are definite principles on which we can calculate
with certainty when we know them. But here is the crucial point. The laws
of the universe are there, but we are ignorant of them, and only through
experience gained by repeated failures can we get any insight into the laws
with which we have to deal. How painful each step and how slow the
progress! AEons upon aeons would not suffice to grasp all the laws of the
universe in their totality, not in the visible world only, but also in the
world of the unseen; each failure to know the true law implies suffering
arising from our ignorant breach of it; and thus, since Nature is infinite,
we are met by the paradox that we must in some way contrive to compass the
knowledge of the infinite with our individual intelligence, and we must
perform a pilgrimage along an unceasing Via Dolorosa beneath the lash of
the inexorable Law until we find the solution to the problem. But it will
be asked, May we not go on until at last we attain the possession of all
knowledge? People do not realize what is meant by “the infinite,” or they
would not ask such questions. The infinite is that which is limitless and
exhaustless. Imagine the vastest capacity you will, and having filled it
with the infinite, what remains of the infinite is just as infinite as
before. To the mathematician this may be put very clearly. Raise x to any
power you will, and however vast may be the disparity between it and the
lower powers of x, both are equally incommensurate with x^n. The
universal reign of Law is a magnificent truth; it is one of the two great
pillars of the universe symbolized by the two pillars that stood at the
entrance to Solomon’s temple: it is Jachin, but Jachin must be
equilibriated by Boaz.

It is an enduring truth, which can never be altered, that every infraction
of the Law of Nature must carry its punitive consequences with it. We can
never get beyond the range of cause and effect. There is no escaping from
the law of punishment, except by knowledge. If we know a law of Nature and
work with it, we shall find it our unfailing friend, ever ready to serve
us, and never rebuking us for past failures; but if we ignorantly or
wilfully transgress it, it is our implacable enemy, until we again become
obedient to it; and therefore the only redemption from perpetual pain and
servitude is by a self-expansion which can grasp infinitude itself. How is
this to be accomplished? By our progress to that kind and degree of
intelligence by which we realize the inherent personalness of the divine
all-pervading Life, which is at once the Law and the Substance of all that
is. Well said the Jewish rabbis of old, “The Law is a Person.” When we once
realize that the universal Life and the universal Law are one with the
universal Personalness, then we have established the pillar Boaz as the
needed complement to Jachin; and when we find the common point in which
these two unite, we have raised the Royal Arch through which we may
triumphantly enter the Temple. We must dissociate the Universal
Personalness from every conception of individuality. The universal can
never be the individual: that would be a contradiction in terms. But
because the universal personalness is the root of all individual
personalities, it finds its highest expression in response to those who
realize its personal nature. And it is this recognition that solves the
seemingly insoluble paradox. The only way to attain that knowledge of the
Infinite Law which will change the Via Dolorosa into the Path of Joy is to
embody in ourselves a principle of knowledge commensurate with the
infinitude of that which is to be known; and this is accomplished by
realizing that, infinite as the law itself, is a universal Intelligence in
the midst of which we float as in a living ocean. Intelligence without
individual personality, but which, in producing us, concentrates itself
into the personal individualities which we are. What should be the relation
of such an intelligence towards us? Not one of favouritism: not any more
than the Law can it respect one person above another, for itself is the
root and support for each alike. Not one of refusal to our advances; for
without individuality it can have no personal object of its own to conflict
with ours; and since it is itself the origin of all individual
intelligence, it cannot be shut off by inability to understand. By the very
terms of its being, therefore, this infinite, underlying, all-producing
Mind must be ready immediately to respond to all who realize their true
relation to it. As the very principle of Life itself it must be infinitely
susceptible to feeling, and consequently it will reproduce with absolute
accuracy whatever conception of itself we impress upon it; and hence if we
realize the human mind as that stage in the evolution of the cosmic order
at which an individuality has arisen capable of expressing, not merely the
livingness, but also the personalness of the universal underlying spirit,
then we see that its most perfect mode of self-expression must be by
identifying itself with these individual personalities.

The identification is, of course, limited by the measure of the individual
intelligence, meaning, not merely the intellectual perception of the
sequence of cause and effect, but also that indescribable reciprocity of
feeling by which we instinctively recognize something in another making
them akin to ourselves; and so it is that when we intelligently realize
that the innermost principle of being, must by reason of its universality,
have a common nature with our own, then we have solved the paradox of
universal knowledge, for we have realized our identity of being with the
Universal Mind, which is commensurate with the Universal Law. Thus we
arrive at the truth of St. John’s statement, “Ye know all things,” only
this knowledge is primarily on the spiritual plane. It is not brought out
into intellectual statement whether needed or not; for it is not in itself
the specific knowledge of particular facts, but it is the undifferentiated
principle of knowledge which we may differentiate in any direction that we
choose. This is a philosophical necessity of the case, for though the
action of the individual mind consists in differentiating the universal
into particular applications, to differentiate the whole universal would
be a contradiction in terms; and so, because we cannot exhaust the
infinite, our possession of it must consist in our power to differentiate
it as the occasion may require, the only limit being that which we
ourselves assign to the manifestation.

In this way, then, the recognition of the community of personality
between ourselves and the universal undifferentiated Spirit, which is the
root and substance of all things, solves the question of our release from
the iron grasp of an inflexible Law, not by abrogating the Law, which would
mean the annihilation of all things, but by producing in us an intelligence
equal in affinity with the universal Law itself, and thus enabling us to
apprehend and meet the requirements of the Law in each particular as it
arises. In this way the Cosmic Intelligence becomes individualized, and the
individual intelligence becomes universalized; the two became one, and in
proportion as this unity is realized and acted on, it will be found that
the Law, which gives rise to all outward conditions, whether of body or of
circumstances, becomes more and more clearly understood, and can therefore
be more freely made use of, so that by steady, intelligent endeavour to
unfold upon these lines we may reach degrees of power to which it is
impossible to assign any limits. The student who would understand the
rationale of the unfoldment of his own possibilities must make no mistake
here. He must realize that the whole process is that of bringing the
universal within the grasp of the individual by raising the individual to
the level of the universal and not vice-versa. It is a mathematical truism
that you cannot contract the infinite, and that you can expand the
individual; and it is precisely on these lines that evolution works. The
laws of nature cannot be altered in the least degree; but we can come into
such a realization of our own relation to the universal principle of Law
that underlies them as to be able to press all particular laws, whether of
the visible or invisible side of Nature, into our service and so find
ourselves masters of the situation. This is to be accomplished by
knowledge; and the only knowledge which will effect this purpose in all its
measureless immensity is the knowledge of the personal element in Universal
Spirit in its reciprocity to our own personality. Our recognition of this
Spirit must therefore be twofold, as the principle of necessary sequence,
order or Law, and also as the principle of Intelligence, responsive to our
own recognition of it.