What is Personal Factor?

The intelligent, choosing individual who brings universal laws together in new combinations and so draws out possibilities that Nature alone never shows, as when iron is made to float. Bringing in this factor is described as the great problem of future evolution and humanity's unique place in the Creative Order.

In The Creative Process in the Individual (1910), Thomas Troward traces the self-contemplation of Spirit as it unfolds through successive stages of manifestation. Up to the appearance of man, this unfolding moves by what he calls generic law. Nature works by the average of the race and the species. She is lavish with the type and careless of the single specimen, and she never departs from the ordinary, predictable action of her forces.

The Personal Factor marks a change of method. Once an individual intelligence appears that can grasp the principles behind natural action, a new kind of result becomes possible. Such a mind does not break or suspend any law. It understands laws well enough to set them in relation to one another under conditions Nature would never arrange of herself.

Troward's illustration is the floating of iron. Left to its generic tendency, iron sinks, because it is heavier than the water it displaces. But a mind that grasps the principle of specific gravity can shape the iron so that it displaces more than its own weight, and then it floats. The law of gravitation has not been set aside. A higher understanding of the same law has been applied, and a possibility hidden in Nature all along comes into view.

From this example Troward draws a principle that reaches across his whole teaching:

- Universal law is impersonal. It answers to whatever conditions it meets, without preference. - The individual supplies selection. Through intelligent choice, laws can be combined into specialized applications. - Possibilities exceed appearances. What Nature shows is only the average working of law, not the limit of what law can do.

Troward therefore regards bringing in the Personal Factor as the great problem of future evolution. Up to man, evolution has been carried along by the cosmic process. From this point on it must go forward through the individual's conscious cooperation with the Creative Spirit. Humanity holds this unique place because in man the Spirit becomes aware of itself as individual, able to perceive the law of its own being and apply it on purpose. The Creative Process that acted on the race now continues by working through the individual.

This is why Troward treats the matter with both hope and gravity. The same faculty that makes iron float can be applied to the mind, the body, and the conditions of life. But it calls for real understanding of principle, not wishing, and it calls for alignment with the life-giving tendency of Spirit, not self-will.

"Personal" comes from Latin persona, the mask worn by an actor, through which (per) the voice sounded (sonare). Later it came to mean the individual self who acts and chooses. "Factor" comes from Latin factor, "one who makes or does," from facere, "to make." Together the phrase means "the making agency of the individual person." That suits Troward's sense of the conscious self as a co-maker within the Creative Order, not a mere product of it. Troward was a jurist trained in precise legal and scientific vocabulary, and he uses "factor" in its nineteenth-century scientific sense: an element that changes the outcome of a process.

Troward's teaching points to a disciplined practice, not a passive one. First, study principle before you seek results. Ask what law governs the condition you want to change, just as the shipbuilder had to understand displacement before iron could float. Second, notice where you have been living by generic tendency: inherited habits of thought, the expectations of your family or culture, the average outcome assumed for someone in your position. These are Nature's averages, not fixed limits. Third, choose deliberately, then work as the Creative Process works. Dwell first on the power you need in itself, rather than on the circumstances that call for it. Then contemplate yourself surrounded by the conditions you desire, and trust the Power, which is also the Forming Power of the universe, to give them their form, without laying down a hard and fast pattern of details for it to follow. Fourth, test your intention against the life-giving tendency of Spirit. Troward holds that the Personal Factor works safely and lastingly only when it moves toward greater life, liberty, and harmony, never against them.

The most common error is to think the Personal Factor means overriding or suspending natural law, as if the will could simply command results. Troward insists that floating iron obeys gravitation completely. The new result comes from a fuller understanding of law, not from defying it. A second misreading treats the Personal Factor as ego or personal ambition. For Troward, the true individual is the point at which universal Spirit becomes self-conscious and specific, so its action is most effective when it moves in harmony with the creative tendency of the whole. A third error is to suppose the principle works through intensity of desire or mental strain. Troward consistently teaches that the creative power answers to a calm, settled recognition of principle, and that anxious effort works against it. Lastly, some readers assume that Nature's generic order is something to scorn. Troward treats it as the reliable foundation that individual specialization builds on.