Creative Process
in the Individual in the
Philosophy of Thomas Troward
Thought is one of the greatest forces
in the universe. Troward is even more explicit than this.
It's the greatest of forces, directing all others. Suppose
he's on target about this. Then I have a few questions.
What makes thought such a powerful force?
How does it operate? Are there laws governing its
operation, regulating its usefulness to us? Can you imagine
yourself unable to think? What would your life be like?
Does thought indeed make us unique among
all creatures, as Troward would have us believe? We do
consider ourselves special among the creatures of earth.
Our accomplishments do seem limited only by what we think,
or believe, or believe is possible.
Along with this ability to create with
our thought, we also seem to have the will to create. Our
will gives thought the energy to create. Apparently, we
not only want to act as we do, but we also want to think as we
do. Others may influence our thinking, but only if we let
them. Their influence would be limited only by our own
willingness to let them influence us.
Some people, I'll admit, can control
the minds of others. Propaganda does work sometimes.
In all cases, however, even in the case of propaganda, the individual
ultimately has control over his or her own mind.
To program another's mind is to destroy
it as human. To be human is to be a person able to choose
our own thoughts, to will our own acts, creating our own world
as we live. We are not and never can be totally preprogrammed
automatons and still be, in any real meaning of the word, human
beings. I will develop this idea later.
For a moment, imagine life the way Troward
describes it: an unending vista of possibilities. Look
at life as ever-expanding through the possibilities presented
to us by our thoughts themselves. The most challenging
possibility is to make ourselves better than we now are.
We can do this most easily by changing our thoughts about ourselves:
who we really are, what we really are.
What is the self we refer to when I speak
of myself, or when you speak of yourself, or others speak of
themselves? It's simply that which is us, that which is
directly accessible to us and to us alone. It is the me
or the you capable of receiving impressions, forming ideas; the
me or you which decides what to do and does it.
I am describing the inventive mind as
thought it were the only most powerful force in the universe.
To be sure, it's a powerful force. We have only to consider
the terribly awesome innovations of modern technology to know
this. Is there not any other equivalent force in the universe?
If there is, then it would have to be something that is
non-thought, that exists completely distinct from thought, yet
not wholly apart from it nor independent of it. What could
this be?
That other force in the universe, other
than thought itself, would have to be something which thought
is about. It would have to be something not only capable
of being activated, but also capable of being active. What
could this be? Surely, it would have to be something of
cosmic proportions.
We already have a word for it in contemporary
science. It's called energy: something at once infinite
in magnitude, eternal in origin, and present everywhere.
It's principle of movement is mathematical sequence; whereas
for thought the principle of movement would be free will.
Notice, one principle is impersonal; the other is personal.
Law and personality, these seem to be
two great principles of life: law operating according to principles
of mathematical sequence, personality according to principles
of free will. Mathematical sequenced law seems to complement
and parallel self-willed thought.
In Freemasonry this fact is represented
by the symbolic pillars of Jachin and Boaz. The pillar
Jachin, so-called from the root Yak meaning One, points out the
mathematical and impersonal nature of law. The pillar Boaz,
called from the root Awaz meaning Voice, points out
the personal nature of free will. The laws of nature seem
to apply to all nature, the symbolic meaning of Jachin. The law
is One, constant throughout the variety of conditions found in
nature. There are no exceptions.
The personal will is free, its freedom
limited, if indeed this is a limitation, only by that other force
in the universe we have called cosmic energy, which embodies
in its actions the principles of mathematically sequenced law.
Within this framework of mathematically sequenced law, we take
this energy and create a new world for ourselves with a free
will directed by our thoughts and desires.
We are now admitting that the world is
a unity with great variety and seeming exceptions. Scientific
study has established the fact of great variety in our world.
We now know that material substances vary in atomic structure.
Each substance seems to act like a collection of particles carrying
positive and negative charges of electricity. The negatively
charged particles are pictured revolving around a center composed
of positive electricity. Elements like iron and hydrogen
differ simply in the number of these particles and their rate
of motion.
These particles seem to pervade all space,
meaning by the word space a primary, undifferentiated substance,
everywhere the same. Some call this substance the etheric.
Here now is a puzzle: how did the motion originate to start differentiating
the etheric substance? How did creation begin?
Hertz makes a suggestion. Electromagnetic
waves did it. The nature of energy is electromagnetic.
Differences in nature are differences in movement; differences
in movement may be noticed as differences in vibration.
Back to our question: how do these vibrations get started?
This seems to happen in the form of sudden, sharply defined electrical
discharges. At least, this is what Hertz reported, and
what others have subsequently verified.
What does all this talk about atomic
structure and vibration have to do with thought? Perhaps,
thought itself is an etheric vibration, a sudden, sharply defined
electrical discharge. Mental activity, then, may be mediated
not just by the physical body alone, but also through an etheric
medium, independently of the physical body. Presumably,
as persons, we are substantially both physical and etheric.
This suggestion has great possibilities.
Remember, the vibrations of sound travel through the atmosphere
at approximately 750 miles per hour; impulses through the etheric
travel at 186,000 miles per second.
In the light of this fact about
the physical and the etheric, what may we now say about the place
of thought in nature, and its power to influence nature?
Apparently, from what I have just said, the influence of thought
can go far beyond the limited influence of a merely physical
body. Extraordinary psychological phenomena may not be
so extraordinary after all, just unusual for most of us.
Notice that two modes of psychological
activity are possible: one physical, the other etheric.
In one, a person would be mentally projecting phenomena, deliberately
or unconsciously, with physical sensations corresponding to what
is happening in the etheric.
Put simply, there is nothing physical
out there to be experienced except what the psyche puts there.
The experience is etheric and somehow translated into the physical
by a process we do not yet fully understand.
In the etheric mode, a person would actually
be experiencing what is there in the etheric, not simply projecting.
When projecting, we would have to say that what is there is simply
in our heads only. Not so in the instance of an etheric experience.
Here the case is quite different: what is there is not there
simply in our heads as an hallucination, nor there in any other
way physically, but there as genuinely and uniquely etheric.
You may recognize what I'm describing
as precisely and scientifically possible are experiences sometimes
classified as psychic, a word I find at once too vague and too
restrictive to be useful. Experiences usually classified
as psychic are clairvoyance, telepathy, ghostly apparitions,
pre-sentient phenomena, visions, prophecy, and so forth.
Electromagnetic theory seems a plausible
way to approach an understanding of mental phenomena, both physical
and etheric. I base my reasoning on the assumption that
everywhere nature is one in its laws, without exception.
Our feelings may be conceived as a kind of electromagnetic phenomenon.
People often do experience spontaneous feelings of attraction
or repulsion towards each other. Troward describes them
as a kind of syntony, a term he borrows from electrical engineering,
meaning tuned to the same rate of vibration. Some may want
to call it rapport, charisma, empathy, sympathy, or vibes.
The vocabulary has changed; the idea remains the same.
Now I want to return to the question:
how did life originate? Quite honestly, I don't know.
I don't know anyone else who knows either. We have merely
theory and speculation about this. I do know what my reason
leads me to conclude. Whatever the source of life, it originated
from something living. I like Troward's statement: whatever
we consider the life which characterizes organized matter, or
the energy which characterizes inorganic matter, we cannot avoid
the conclusion that both must have their source in some original
power to which we can assign no antecedent.
This Life-giving Power has sometimes
been called the All-Originating Spirit or Holy Spirit.
These names, as I understand them, are ways of describing the
activity of the Almighty (the Most High, Allah, God, the Blessed
One, and so on).
The word Spirit comes from the Latin
word spiro, "I breathe". In the words
of Job: The Spirit of God has made me, and the breath of
the Almighty has given me life (33:4). Here's another way
of expressing the same idea: the Living Power of Energy has made
me, and the movement of the all-encompassing energy has somehow
formed me out of itself.
Life and energy, logically speaking,
seem to originate from a Primary Life and Energy. About
this we seem able to say, within the limits of logic, only that
It Is. It has always
been. For example, when do you suppose twice two began
to make four? When do you suppose it will cease to make
four? Logically speaking, never. That twice two make
four is an eternal principle, independent of time. It's
also independent of particular conditions. Twice two makes
four apples, as well as four of anything you can name.
Recommended reading
To explore the seminal thinking
of Thomas Troward I refer you to his other works in addition
to The Creative Process in the Individual, among which
are:
The Edinburg Lectures on Mental Science
The Dore Lectures on Mental Science
Bible Mystery and Bible Meaning
The Law and the Word
The Hidden Power
For more about Troward go to my
article on New
Thought in America. More information about Troward
and his influence on the New Thought movement in Great Britain
and the United States may be found at the following Web site:
http://www.new-thought.org/trowd.html
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