The Law and the Word by Thomas Troward

T >> Thomas Troward >> The Law and the Word

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

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 bumptious 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 space, 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 x 2 we cannot avoid
getting 4 as the result--only there is no reason why we should not write
2 x 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 God, 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 (verbum) of God." Let not the
orthodox reader be shocked at this--I am only saying what the Bible
does. Look up the following passages: "I will write upon him the name
of my God 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 passage Rev. xix, 11-16, where we are expressly
told that the name in question is "the Word of God"; 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 God." 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 God" 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. cxxxviii,
2), thus repeating the idea of the Word as the Name.

In other passages we have the idea of the Word as a Weapon. "The Sword
of the Spirit which is the Word of God" (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 passages 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 God"; 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 God of Truth"
(Ps. xxxi, 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. xxxiii, 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 passages will make it
clear that the sequence presented to us is as follows: The "Word" is the
passing 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 God." 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 God. 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
God, 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 God."

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 passing 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 analyze 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. xxx, 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 Homo." It must say with Horace "Homo 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 analogous 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.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10