Thomas Troward's The Dore Lectures on Mental Science,
Chapter Four...The Life of the Spirit
Chapter 4 of Thomas Troward's The Dore Lectures on Mental Science, 'The Life of the Spirit,' provides a practical guide on how the individual can deliberately cultivate a consciousness that allows the Universal Life Principle (the Spirit) to flow through them, enriching their personal life and circumstances.
1. The Necessity of Repose and Stillness
The chapter emphasizes that the activity of the Spirit requires a counter-balancing repose on the part of the individual.
The individual mind is the channel through which the Universal Life flows, but the channel must be clear and still to receive the full flow.
By cultivating a state of repose or stillness in the mind, the individual allows the Universal Livingness to provide innumerable avenues for enrichment, whether in giving or receiving, which they had never before suspected.
This is a purposeful attitude, where the will does not relax its control, but merely alters its direction from external effort to internal receptivity.
2. The Power of Unrecognized Working
Troward discusses the unrecognized working of the Spirit, which is the sub-conscious mind at the individual level and the silent power of evolution at the universal level.
This unrecognized power is the spring of all automatic action in the body and mind.
By conscious recognition and rapport with this power, the individual can gradually bring the automatic action of their circumstances under their control, eventually controlling their whole individual world.
3. How to Contact the Sub-Conscious Mind
The chapter provides the practical key to putting oneself in touch with the sub-conscious (subjective) mind, which is the link to the Universal Spirit. This clue is found in the impersonal quality of the sub-conscious mind.
Pure Being: To make contact, we must endeavor to think of ourselves as Pure Being—the entity that interiorly supports the outward manifestation—losing sight of the facts connected with the external personality (Kim’s riddle in Kipling’s story is used as an analogy).
Affirmation of Good: The essential quality of Pure Being is Good (pure Life). Therefore, the purer our intentions, the more readily we connect with our subjective entity, and by extension, the Greater Sub-conscious Mind.
The Deductive Process: The Universal Mind acts deductively—it starts with the principle and applies it, not inductively (working from a concrete pattern). Therefore, the individual must form a clear, objective conception of the idea they wish to convey, and then mentally impress this idea onto the subjective mind as though it were an independent entity.
4. Subjective States are Reality
The chapter concludes with the fundamental law of the subjective life: "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he."
Our inward, subjective states are the true reality.
What we call external realities are only their objective correspondences.
By entering into the life of the Spirit through conscious, deliberate thought and feeling, we make that Spirit's inherent reality manifest in our external world.
For more insights into Troward's philosophy on the nature of reality and the Universal Mind, you can listen to
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