Troward sets out to show that the power of personal creation is neither a gift handed out at whim nor a technique to be seized. It is the same law that brought the universe into being, carried on within the individual. The book is built as a single deductive argument. It begins from first principles about Spirit and its self-awareness, moves down through the formation of worlds and the rise of living forms, and arrives at the human person as the point where creative action becomes conscious, selective, and self-directing. Each stage is meant to follow necessarily from the one before, and Troward offers the whole as suggestions each reader must think out for himself.
The method is closer to geometry than to devotion. Troward reasons from what Spirit must be if it is the sole originating cause, and from that premise he draws conclusions about personality, the body, and the future of the race. Those conclusions reach far: a common standard of personality underlies all individual initiative, the expectations inherited from humanity at large act as a real limiting force, and evolution points toward mastery of form rather than flight from it.
The book suits readers already acquainted with The Edinburgh Lectures on Mental Science or The Doré Lectures who wish to see the reasoning behind practical mental science set out in its most systematic form. It calls for slow reading and repays a second pass, since the later chapters depend on distinctions drawn early.
Several features deserve attention. Troward uses ordinary words such as harmony, inversion, and standard in precise technical senses, and the argument falters if they are read loosely. His teaching on the body and on the end of the creative process follows logically from the first premises, as the Foreword sets out. The final two chapters, written for the new edition of 1915, turn openly to Christian doctrine and interpret sacrifice and redemption as expressions of the same creative law. Troward offers them as points of vital importance, connected with all that goes before, and the closing pages make plain that he regarded right relation to the Source, and not technique alone, as the condition of lasting creative power.
Chapter by chapter
Troward presents the book as one unbroken chain of creative action, running from the formation of the globe to a vista of infinite possibilities open to anyone who follows the right line of unfoldment. He calls his method purely speculative reasoning, yet insists that each step follows from incontrovertible scientific facts by cause and effect. Every advance of civilization, from matches to aeroplanes, came from reasoning back to first principles and carrying them further, and he holds that Principle is not bound by Precedent. He suggests that the law of our own being may now require us to take a more active part in our own evolution. He then gives the reader a charge: no writer can put an idea into another mind, so each reader must think these suggestions through and take them in alone. Troward commends the book to his readers on both sides of the Atlantic and in Australia and New Zealand, and the foreword closes with lines from Walt Whitman on worship and the divinity of man.
- The book traces a single sequence of creative action from the making of the earth to the unfoldment of the individual.
- Speculative reasoning that starts from known first principles is how every real advance has been made.
- Principle is not bound by Precedent, so past experience does not set the limit of future possibility.
- Our own nature may now require us to take an active part in our own evolution.
- Only the reader can take an idea in; no teacher can do it for him.
Troward argues that the creative power we seek, the power to get more out of Life in an ever-widening degree, must work by a strict sequence of cause and effect, and that its first principle is Harmony. Two people holding an irresistible power could not use it against each other, so every individual use must be a particular application of one Universal Creative Principle. Whoever brings their action into line with that Principle cannot work in opposition to anyone else who does the same. The order of the cosmos shows that this Principle is in essence Unity and in manifestation Multiplicity. Troward then turns to Matter. He rules out both a world where each person could flux matter at will, apart from any common principle, and the view that matter is a private illusion. Matter is fluent substance held in form by a Cosmic Mind, which projects individual minds as well, so the relation between mind and matter is real and not invented. Using the example of fixed multipliers and planks of steady width, he shows that a cosmos needs these generic unities. He concludes that matter is the necessary Polar Opposite to Spirit, the channel through which Spirit expresses itself in many forms.
- Progress comes from arranging unchanging laws in a better order, as aviation shows: principle triumphing over precedent.
- Creative power cannot be divided against itself, so its first principle must be Harmony.
- Every individual use of creative power is a particular application of one Universal Creative Principle, and those aligned with it cannot conflict.
- Matter is fluent substance held in stable form by a cosmic, not an individual, will.
- Matter is no illusion: mind and matter are both projected by the Divine Mind, so their relation is real.
- Matter is the Polar Opposite of Spirit and the channel through which Spirit recognizes itself from the individual standpoint.
Troward argues that the cosmos can only be traced back to the Self-contemplation of Spirit. He starts from the physics of his day. Matter is condensed ether, and that ether must fill all space, since light reaches us from the farthest stars. Because ether lies everywhere in equilibrium, it cannot start motion by itself, so something beyond it must choose where activity begins. Troward calls that power Spirit. Substance is inert and cannot have made itself, so it must come from Thought. That leads him to an original movement of Mind upon itself, standing before time and space. Consciousness needs something to be conscious of, and Spirit's wish to feel alive in every part projects a universal plastic medium. In this way the first Polarity of Spirit and Substance comes about. Troward warns the student never to treat Polarity as the starting point of creation: Self-contemplation produces Polarity, and Polarity produces Form. The same order works in the individual mind. Spirit seeks to enjoy its own Life, so the process has no end. It has moved from the rotating sphere through plant, animal and intellectual man. The fifth stage can only come through personal participation in the Divine Ideal.
- Spirit is the selective, initiating power that starts motion in a substance which, being evenly balanced, cannot move itself.
- Consciousness needs a relation to something else, so Spirit's self-contemplation calls forth a complementary substance.
- The true order is Self-contemplation, then Polarity, then Form. To change a manifestation you must change the polarity, and to change the polarity you must return to Self-contemplation.
- Evolution unfolds what has already been created. Creation calls into being what does not yet exist, and that power works in each mind as a subordinate center.
- The Creative Process has no limit because its method never changes. The next stage of individuality must be drawn from the Divine Ideal.
The Divine Ideal, Troward argues, is an individual who recognizes his Source and the way he springs from it, so that the Originating Life can flow through him without interruption. He starts from three principles he has already set down: the Spirit's Selection, its Initiative, and its Motive, the desire for ever increasing Enjoyment of Life. From these he reasons that the Fifth Stage of manifestation must be the Spirit waking to its own Artistic Ability, its freedom to create from within by a Law that is one with its Feeling. By the Law of Reciprocity, that waking needs a matching being in the world of the Relative, one who can see this creative freedom in himself while keeping its relation to the Universal. That relation rests on a simple Law of Unity, the threefold Law of Truth, Life, and Beauty. It leaves the individual unfettered except in the one direction of breaking the harmony he himself depends on. Because the Spirit always contemplates itself, its creativeness never stops. It is the Spirit of the Affirmative, and negative conditions come from inverted thought. We create no force, but like the electrician we can supply the conditions under which it specializes. When the individual sees that his life is the same as the Spirit's, the Spirit contemplates itself from his point of view, and the Cosmic Creative Process is carried over into the individual.
- Troward pictures the Originating Spirit as the Great Artist, whose Law and Feeling are one and the same.
- The relation between the Universal and the individual is what makes each become what it does, and to miss that relation is to miss the Principle altogether.
- The Spirit's Law of Unity is Truth, Life, and Beauty, and it limits the individual only in the direction of self-destruction.
- Because the Spirit is always contemplating itself, its creativeness never ceases, and so it is the Spirit of the Affirmative.
- We generate no power, but by offering suitable conditions we specialize it, as we do with electricity.
- The individual who recognizes his life as one with the Spirit's lives directly from the Originating Life, as a special direct creation.
Troward holds that the Life-principle always clothes itself in a body suited to the natural order of the plane where it works, and that the form is necessary but no single form is essential. He imagines an individual carried to another planet. Such a person would build a fitting body there, and one who consciously knew his unity with the Creative Principle could change bodies at will without disturbing the order of that world. The same law holds Here and Now. The starting point is a mode of Thought, not a time or a place. Because Spirit creates by Self-contemplation, what the individual contemplates as the law of his being becomes that law. The error that holds back results is the belief that the Creative Power is limited by the material it works in, which is to measure the Fifth Kingdom by the Fourth. Troward then separates Spirit from its vehicles. The vehicle grows by a Law of Growth, and its pace depends on how fully the individualized spirit appreciates its own livingness. The body is built by the sub-conscious mind through restful harmony with Nature, not by strained volition, and a deeper sense of union with the All-creating Spirit can bring effects beyond past experience while leaving universal order intact.
- A principle is not a manifestation: the Life-principle always needs a form, but no single form is essential to it.
- The Creative Process starts in a mode of Thought, so it can be applied Here and Now rather than put off to another world.
- Spirit creates by Self-contemplation, so whatever the individual contemplates as the law of his being becomes that law.
- Limiting the Creative Power by the material it works in, and judging by past experience alone, is the root error that holds back results.
- The polarity of opposite forces only distributes energy. Creation belongs to the Single Power.
- The vehicle grows by a Law of Growth, at a rate set by the spirit's vitalizing conception, so the student must hold the thought and not faint.
- The sub-conscious mind builds the body through a restful sense of unity with Nature, not by effort of will.
Troward holds that the Personal Factor, which brings Initiative and Selection into the Creative Order, needs a common Standard of Personality, just as ordinary perception needs one Universal Mind behind every individual mind. Our minds keep to the generic laws of mind automatically. Keeping to the personal standard cannot be automatic, because personality is made of free choice, so each of us forms our own conception of what is normal and brings forth the conditions that match it. Troward shows why every attempt to rise above the Law of the Universe by personal will, magical rites, austerity, or calling on other individualities must fail: each rests on the fallacy that the less can be greater than its source. Our real error, he says, has been to set the Normal too low. He then works out the true Normal from the nature of Spirit itself. Its Substantive Being is Life, Love, Light, Power, Peace, Beauty, and Joy, and its Active Power is Initiative and Selection. Taken together these form the Universal Principle of Humanity, and we rise toward it by contemplating it as our own standard. Through the image of the iron ship, Troward shows that the Personal Factor works by finding the Affirmative Principle hidden in natural law and supplying new conditions for it to act in. Without a shared Divine Standard, powers gained in this way would turn into a scourge. That is why the secrets hidden in the inner laws of Nature are so jealously guarded by those who know them, and why systematic teaching moves from the Macrocosm to the Microcosm. The Octave is the passage from the Spirit's generic working in the cosmos to its specific working in the individual.
- What we finally attain is set by what we hold as normal, not by what we merely wish.
- Trying to overcome universal law by personal will, rites, austerity, or outside help rests on the fallacy that the less can exceed the greater.
- Rising above humanity's present conditions does not mean breaking humanity's normal law. The mistake has been fixing that law too low.
- The Normal Standard of Personality is the nature of Spirit, Life, Love, Light, Power, Peace, Beauty, and Joy, reproduced in the individual.
- Resting on this universal Pattern does not erase individuality. It frees each person to become more fully themselves.
- The Personal Factor, like the builder of iron ships, uncovers the Affirmative Principle hidden in natural law and gives it new conditions to work in.
- A shared Divine Standard keeps awakened powers from becoming a scourge, and the Octave is the passage from the Spirit's working in the cosmos to its working in the individual.
Power is not something Spirit sometimes gives and sometimes holds back. Spirit itself is the power. When we contemplate Spirit as the power we want, that same power is generated in us. Troward warns that a Spirit pictured as both giving and withholding becomes a plus and a minus that cancel each other, so nothing results. He tells the student to dwell on the kind of power wanted in the abstract, not on the circumstances, which only press a sense of opposition on the mind. To apply that power, we picture ourselves surrounded by the conditions we desire, then trust the Forming Power to shape the details instead of forcing a fixed mental picture on it. In this way the individual uses initiative and selection, the two faculties that belong to Spirit, by Spirit's own method of self-contemplation, and repeats the making of the cosmos in miniature. Troward then names the ground of this work: a Divine Standard of Personality held within the Universal Mind, Filius in gremio Patris. Because this Standard is the Law of the Creative Process working at the personal level, it sets no limit on human growth. It holds back only what is destructive. Unlike the generic law of mind, which all people follow automatically, this personal Standard has to be chosen freely.
- Spirit and power are not separate: the power exists through Spirit's self-contemplation, so contemplating Spirit as the power generates it in us.
- Seeing Spirit as sometimes giving and sometimes withholding sets a plus against a minus, and they cancel out.
- Contemplate the kind of power you want in itself, not the circumstances, which only suggest something opposed to it.
- Dwell on the idea of an Infinite Power producing the happiness you desire, and trust the Forming Power to shape the details instead of forcing a fixed pattern on it.
- The Divine Standard of Personality is the Creative Law working at the personal level, so it sets no limit on human possibility. It restrains only what is destructive.
- The generic law of mind works on everyone automatically, but the personal Standard must be chosen, because initiative and selection are the essence of personality.
The real New Thought, Troward argues, is the individual's decision to measure himself by the Universal Individuality of the All-creating Spirit and not by the old race-standard. Race-thought holds that physical death is a normal part of personality and that the race lives on only because the individual dies, and this belief works against anyone who tries to pass into a higher order of life. Troward overturns it with its own premise. Matter is neutral and cannot choose or begin anything on its own, so it answers to the Law of Life as readily as to the Law of Death. Iron sinks by a law, and by that same law it can be made to float. The race-nature is therefore the ground of the new Individuality and the very material the Spirit uses to build up the New Man. The passage from the Fourth Kingdom to the Fifth comes neither by divine decree nor by cosmic law acting on the race as a whole. It is a specializing of law, and only personal initiative and selection can bring it about. That is why it leads to more activity, more life, and more selfhood, and not to reabsorption into an undifferentiated essence. New Thought is neither a sect nor a set of rules. It is a new fact of experience, sustained by habitual personal intercourse with the Spirit. From that intercourse come fresh ideas and a steady gain in livingness. The power is received, not manufactured, so Rest and Power turn out to be the same thing.
- Race-personality is the necessary ground for further growth, but it is only the first stage and not the standard to measure by.
- Matter is neutral, so the body can serve the Law of Life as fully as it has served the Law of Death.
- The negative race-thought is overcome with its own weapon, in the same way that iron is made to float by the law that makes it sink.
- The step into the Fifth Kingdom is strictly individual and cannot be forced on the race as a whole.
- Further evolution means more conscious activity and more selfhood, not absorption into the Divine essence.
- Real New Thought grows out of habitual personal communion with the Spirit, not out of rules, teachers, or sects.
- The power is received and not manufactured, so Rest and Power are found to be identical.
Troward argues that the logical end of evolution is not escape from the body. It is the body taken up into the conscious life of the Spirit, an immortal physical form that answers wholly to the will within while still keeping the laws of matter. Most people still pass through death, and he explains death as the withdrawal of life into subjective mind alone. Because subjective mind reasons only deductively, the departed live a kind of dream shaped by whatever suggestion they carried over. Some suffer an earth-bound nightmare. Others shape a lovely dream at will, but they cannot take the initiative that further progress needs. The way out lies inside the same law: if the soul is impressed with the conviction that it keeps its objective mentality, it carries selection and initiative into the unseen. Since Spirit is the Alpha of the Creative Process and solid Form its Omega, such souls will look toward the Resurrection of the Body, and they can help free others by telepathic suggestion. Death persists only through race-belief and a theology that is materialism in disguise. Scripture, which Troward calls the pioneer book, and philosophy both hold that God wills Life, and that regeneration here and now is a present possibility.
- The dénouement of the Law of Life is not the putting off of the body but its inclusion in the conscious life of the Spirit.
- After death, the subjective mind can only work out the premises it brought with it, so the suggestion becomes the life.
- Bringing the objective mind across, with its power of selection and initiative, rests on a firm conviction drawn from the Normal Standard of Humanity.
- Solid material form completes the Creative Series, so true progress points toward the Resurrection of the Body and not toward a purely subjective existence.
- A force that pulls down cannot be part of the force that builds up, so death is no part of the Law of Life.
- Race-belief and theology both rest on past experience, which proves nothing about the possibilities still open.
- Enoch and Elijah show that the great attainment needs no austerity, only a daily habit of walking with God.
The individual's creative power comes from the All-originating Spirit, and it stays life-giving only while the individual knows where it comes from and presents himself to the Spirit with no inversion. Troward brings his whole argument together under the Law of Reciprocity. Creation works only by action and corresponding re-action. Once the generic stage ends with genus homo, further evolution depends on the individual using his own spiritual initiative. If he forgets where that power comes from, he cannot rise above the generic level. If he impresses on the Spirit a specific, personal relation to It, a current flows back to him multiplied, like the battery in a telegraph office, and grows into an endless flow of Life. Every inversion he brings is reproduced just as faithfully, and in extreme cases it can turn that stream deadly. We can only specialize a force, never create one, so we must first be shown the Universality of Specialization. Troward finds this in the Bible's central figure: Jesus Christ as the Principle of Humanity specialized to the full while remaining universal. When we recognize ourselves in Him, we present an image to the Eternal Mind that carries no inversion. In this way the Son of Man is the Son of God, and we receive power to become sons of God, which is the end point of the Creative Process. Troward closes by promising a further volume on the logic of Scripture and on healing.
- Creation has only one method: reciprocity, where the re-action always equals and corresponds to the action.
- Our power of initiative is derived from the Spirit. Forgetting this keeps us at the generic level and shuts us out of the Kingdom of Individuality.
- The Spirit multiplies what we send into it, so the circulation between the individual and the Universal grows stronger the longer it continues.
- Any inversion in how we present ourselves comes back to us, and the more personal power we recognize, the more dangerous that return becomes.
- Christ, as the universal specialized, gives the pattern that lets us present ourselves to the Spirit without inversion.
- A truth becomes our own only when we see the reason why it is true.
Troward holds that the Divine Sacrifice is no unphilosophical dogma. It follows from the same law of cause and effect that brought creation into being. God does not demand the sacrifice; man does, because the soul needs a certainty of reconciliation solid enough to build the Divine Ideal on. Repeated offerings can never give that certainty, so the Levitical sacrifices served only as symbols, and the real Offering had to be made once for all. Troward rejects the 'forensic' theory of a surety because it treats guilt as transferable. In its place he sets Christ as the Divine Principle of Humanity, present in every person, so that in Him every human being offers and condemns himself. Since Time has no substantive existence, past sins are 'blotted out', sent from manifestation into Not-being. To keep dwelling on them is the Affirmation of Negation, an inverted use of our creative thought. The One Offering joins Law and Personality, the Pillars Jachin and Boaz, in their highest union. Eternal in principle, it was bound to appear in history, and it lays an immovable foundation for the future.
- The need for sacrifice comes from man's longing for certainty, not from any demand made by Divine Love.
- An offering that must be repeated can never give assurance, so true reconciliation has to be once for all.
- A symbol only points to a reality. Resting in the symbol alone leaves the worshiper where he began.
- Christ as the Divine Principle of Humanity includes every person, so the Offering is a universal self-offering, not a legal transfer of guilt.
- Past error is blotted out into Not-being, and to keep contemplating it is to misuse our creative power by affirming what has no existence.
- The One Offering is the highest specializing of Law by Personality, eternal in principle and therefore bound to appear in time.
Troward argues that Redemption does not change our relation to the Father. It wakes us up to a relation that has always been perfect. Like the Prodigal Son, man never stopped being a son. His suffering came from believing in a power other than Love. That belief brought Fear into the world, and Fear's inverted creative force produces every form of evil. Our real liberty starts when we stop putting limits on the All-Creating Spirit. Troward points out that we always limit it in the same way: we put our own personality in place of God. This leads to a paradox. The Power needs the individual as its center of specialization, yet the individual contributes nothing to its efficiency. Troward draws on the medieval distinction between Animus Dei, the Principle of Personality, and Anima Mundi, the impersonal Soul of Nature. He places man as the link that differentiates between these two Infinitudes. Thought-power used only from individual personality ends in a conflict of wills, while thought-power used from the Unifying Personality of God brings peace. So the Delphic 'Know thyself' gives way to the Bible's 'Know the Lord'. The New Starting-point is the Divine Personality expressed in Christ and received into ourselves. Worship in the Temple of the Innermost, where Time and Space do not exist, is both reverent adoration and familiar intercourse. It prepares the soul to pass through death without confusion, and it shows that Resurrection is a principle we can begin to live now. The Communion is the symbol of the whole Creative Process. Troward ends with a warning against any philosophy that denies the Personality of God.
- Redemption is waking up to a relation with God that has always been perfect, not a change in that relation.
- Every motive is some form of Love or Fear, and Fear rests on believing in a power other than the One Good.
- We limit the Spirit by putting our own personality in God's place, measuring what is possible by what we have experienced before.
- Means come through recognizable channels, and a common mistake is fixing the particular channel beforehand, which stops up the others the Spirit could open.
- Man is the Personal Factor through which the impersonal Soul of Nature yields its hidden powers, and so the moral quality of that power depends wholly on the human operator.
- The Bible's 'Know the Lord' includes the Delphic 'Know thyself' and goes beyond it, because we receive personality from the Divine Personality and do not originate it.
- True worship of the Unconditioned Source prepares the soul for passing beyond the body and lets us live the resurrection life now.
- The bread and wine of the Communion stand for the whole Creative Process, from Divine Thought to Perfected Man.