This is the topic outline for our next meeting (June 3rd):

Step Two:   Intelligence

Topic:         The Higher Mode Controls The Lower.

   Last month we discussed that descent in the expression of intelligence from expanded self-recognition, as we know it in our own personality, to matter, as we know it under what we call inanimate forms.

   It is a gradual descent in the scale of expression intelligence from that mode of “being” which is able to realize its own will-power as a capacity for originating new trains of causation to that mode of “being” which is incapable of recognizing itself at all.

   The higher the grade of life, the higher the expression of intelligence, from which it follows that the supreme principle of Life must also be the ultimate principle of intelligence .

This is demonstrated by the grand natural order of the universe.   

    The grand scale of planetary evolution shows us that Life is a constant forward movement toward greater order and refinement.   From crude beginnings this majestic, unceasing, unhurried, forward movement brings things stage by stage to the condition in which we know them now.

   But it does this by creating such numbers of each kind that, after allowing a wide margin for all possible accidents to individuals, the race will still continue.      Thus, the level of reproduction of any species is commensurate with the margin of destruction imposed on the species through the natural order.

"So careful of the type it seems, so careless of the Individual.”

In short, we may say that the cosmic expression of   intelligence works by a Law of Averages.

   The progress towards higher expressions of intelligence is always in the direction of narrowing down this margin of accident and taking the individual more and more out of the Law of Averages , and substituting the Law of Individual Selection.

In ordinary scientific language this is the survival of the fittest.

   Therefore, it is reasonable to accept that in proportion with expressed intelligence, the corporal individual ceases to be subject to a mere Law of Averages, and has increasing power in consciously controlling the conditions of their own survival.

   We see that there is distinction between the cosmic expression of intelligence and the individual expression of intelligence, and that the factor which differentiates the latter from the former is the presence of individual volition .

   The purpose of Mental Science is to explore the relation of this individual power of volition, in the “I Myself Am”, to the great cosmic law, the greater “I Am”, which provides for the maintenance and advancement of the race.

   The point to be carefully noted is that the power of individual volition is itself the outcome of the cosmic evolutionary principle at the point where it reaches its highest level.

   The effort of Nature has now culminated in the production of a being with a mind capable of abstract reasoning and a brain fitted to be the physical instrument of such a mind.

   At this stage the All-Creating Life-Principle reproduces itself in a form capable of recognizing the working of the Law of Evolution, and the unity and continuity of purpose running through the whole evolutionary progression until now.

   The place of such a being in the universal scheme must be to introduce the operation of that factor which, up to this point, has been conspicuous by its absence -- the factor of intelligent individual volition .

   If man is to evolve further, it can now only be by his own conscious cooperation with the Law which has brought him to the standpoint where he is able to realize that such a law exists.   His future evolution must be by conscious participation in the ever-ongoing process of Creation, and this can only be achieved by his own individual intelligence and effort -- the process of intelligent rather than random growth.

No one else can grow for us: we must each grow for ourselves

    This intelligent growth consists of our increasing recognition of the Universal Laws , which have brought us to this point, and our own individual relation to that Law, as we ourselves are the most advanced product of it .

Nature obeys us precisely in proportion as we first obey Nature.

   What differentiates the higher from the lower degree of expressed intelligence is the recognition of its own self-hood, and the more comprehensive that recognition, the greater will be the power.

   The lower degree of self-recognition is that which only realizes itself as an entity separate from all other entities, as the ego distinguished from the non-ego.

   The higher degree of self-recognition realizes its own spiritual nature and sees in all forms, not so much that which is not itself, but that which is itself in a different mode of expression.

   Since it is this higher degree of self-recognition by which the Mental Scientist produces their results it is imperative that we clearly understand the difference between Form and Being.   Form is the mode of the relative and is subject to conditions; Being is the Truth or the Absolute and controls conditions.

   This higher recognition of self as an individualization of pure spirit must control all modes of spirit which have not yet reached the same level of self-recognition.   These lower modes of spirit are in bondage to the law of their own being because they do not know the law.   The individual who has acquired this knowledge by nature have control over them through that law.   By control here, I mean stewardship, not domination .   To understand this we must inquire a little further into the nature of spirit.

   As we have already mentioned, there is the presence somewhere of a marvelous intelligence underlying the whole.   The question is; where is this intelligence to be found?

   It is that power which, in every species and in every individual, becomes that which that species or individual is; and thus we can only conceive of it as a self-forming intelligence inherent in the ultimate substance of which each thing is a particular manifestation .

   That this perceived primordial substance must be considered as self-forming by an inherent intelligence present in itself follows from the fact that intelligence is the essential quality of Spirit; and if we were to conceive of this primordial substance as something apart from Spirit, then we should have to postulate some other power which is neither Spirit nor matter, and originates both.   This would only be putting the idea of a self-evolving power a step further back and asserting the production of a lower grade of undifferentiated Spirit by a higher.

   However far back, we may relegate the original starting point, we cannot avoid the conclusion that at that point, Spirit contains that which will be perceived as the primary substance in itself.

This brings us back to the common statement that it made everything out of nothing.

    From these considerations we see that the ultimate foundation of every form of matter is Spirit , and hence that a universal intelligence is present throughout Nature inherent in every one of its manifestations.

   This should be carefully noted because it is by the response of the Universal intelligence to the individual intelligence that thought-power is able to produce results on the material plane.

Intelligence manifests itself by responsiveness.

   The whole action of the Universal mind in bringing the evolutionary process from its beginning up to its present human stage is a continual intelligent response to the demands which each stage has made for adjustments between itself and its environment.

   Since we recognize the presence or expression of a Universal intelligence permeating all things, we must also recognize a corresponding responsiveness hidden within its very nature that stands ready to be called into action when appealed to.

   All mental treatment depends on this responsiveness of Spirit in its lower degrees to higher degrees of itself.   It is here that the difference between the mental scientist and the uninstructed person comes in; the former knows of this responsiveness and makes use of it, and the latter cannot use it because he does not know of it.

-- Victor