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CHAPTER IV

 

Creation and Redemption

 

            THE process whereby Spirit, which is the Energy or Will inherent in Substance, operates to produce that molecular or material condition of Substance known as matter is one of rotatory motion. By an impulsion of centrifugal and centripetal force, a movement vertical and spiral, Spirit differentiates Substance first into what may be termed the subjective self or archetypal essence of ether, subsequently into the universal ether of space – that astral fluid of various grades of tenuity of which science now apprehends one or two of the lower – and finally into matter; this last state being the one in which motion culminates in such intensity as to produce what appears to us as the condition of rigidity or solidity. Matter, therefore, is a condition of Substance, and thus of an inherently spiritual nature. It appears temporarily as matter or phenomenal existence only by reason of an infinite activity of Spirit, and whether as molecule or planet it must on the return of Spirit to a state of repose become indrawn or re-absorbed into Substance.

 

            Now although matter is a mode or manifestation of Spirit it is this only at the expense of a certain veiling or limitation of Spirit, due to the density of the medium, and hence arise conditions which we, surveying them from without only, define

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as evil. Yet creation cannot occur save by such limitation of God’s Self – namely, the projection of that Self into grades and degrees which are relative to It as Being. God must be contrasted with that which relatively is inferior to Himself, else existence were not. So that while the essential Idea underlying all things is ever good – for it is God – a particular and temporary sphere or translation of that Idea into action and embodiment may necessitate a state of things relatively evil. Evil comes from materialisation of Divine Substance, and limitation must originate as a seed along with the primal Will to create.

 

            Matter is the goal of that aspect of the Thought of God which eventuates in Creation, but it is also the starting or turning-point for the operation of that other aspect of the same Divine Thought which completes itself in Redemption. Thus Creation is the formulation or manifestation in ultimate of that which always is subjectively – God’s Substance; while Redemption is the return to a subjective state of that same Substance, but with all its inherent attributes of divinity perfectly unfolded and eternised through complete individuation.

 

            What, then, is the purpose of creation, the answer to the riddle of the universe and man? The solution leads from the universal to the particular, and involves the application of that fundamental doctrine of correspondence which is a master-key to many mysteries: –

 

            “As above, so below; as is the outer, so is the inner; as is the small, so is the great: there is but one law; and He that worketh is One. Nothing is small; nothing is great, in the Divine Economy.”

 

“All Life Is a Burning”

 

            The object of creation is to produce and perfect Soul as a containing element or entity for what would otherwise remain abstract Spirit. God seeks a medium wherein a flame from out the

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fire of His Divinity may burn concentered and concentrate, and finds that vehicle in a purified and perfected Soul. For the tremendous cycle of Life, with its two vast arcs of Creation and Redemption, or outgoing and ingathering – a cycle whose echoes reach down even to the day and night of our solar system and the life and death, the outbreathing and inbreathing, of our bodily system – does not end in the identical state in which it began, though Spirit is its first and last term; else it had little meaning. But in the process Soul is generated as a certain new condition of Substance in which Spirit may be individually enshrined; for Soul is at once the lens, the burning-glass, and the light enkindled in Substance of the Divine Sun. And although nothing can be either added to or subtracted from God we may conceive that during the “Day” of manifestation some portion of His nature is by means of soul concreted and individualised, while during the “Night” of absorption the idea of further individuation thus engendered slumbers potentially in Him.

 

In one primal and supreme act of self-sacrifice or limitation on the part of Deity – “the Lamb (or Spirit of God) slain from (and for) the foundation of the world” – the Universe has its birth; for it is put forth in order that through æonian cycles of unfoldment there may be engendered many Souls or Individualities who shall ultimately return into conscious union with that bliss which is indeed the very life-principle and essence of Deity. Thus all existence is for the purpose of bringing many Sons unto God, “that His joy may be full.”

 

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