Why Does Not Everyone Express The Life, Love And Beauty Of The Spirit Of Life?
Letters To My Son #6
Individuality is the necessary complement of the Universal Spirit of Life.
But the whole problem of life can be summed up in one question;
What is the true relation of the individual to the Universal Spirit of Life?
To find the answer, we must know what the Universal Spirit of Life is.
And we saw in previous letters that:
The Spirit of Life is Life, Love and Beauty.
And its motive is to express the Life, Love and Beauty that it feels itself to be.
And it can only create on the plane of the Particular by becoming the Particular. That is to say; It creates by expressing itself through the individual.
Now, if these statements are true,
then why does not every individual express the Life, Love and Beauty of the Spirit?
To understand why, we need to understand the law of consciousness.
It says that we cannot be conscious of anything unless the thing is related to us in some way.
The thing must affect us in some way or else we are not consious of its existence.
And depending on how it affect us, we see ourselves related to it.
This means the way we see ourselves and our relation to everything around us, is what makes up our life.
The same way, the Universal Spirit realizes its own livingness by producing centers of life that it relates to.
But to realize its livingess completely, it must produce a center of Life that has perfect liberty to refuse to express the life of the Spirit.
Otherwise, it cannot realize its livingness fully.
Why?
Lets take Love for example.
It must be voluntary or it does not exist.
It is impossible to imagine Love that is forced or mechanical.
Anything that is made to automatically produce a result without the ability to choose not to, is only a piece of mechanism.
Therefore if the Universal Spirit is to realize the Life, Love and Beauty that it is,
It can only be by relation to some being which has the power to refuse to express this Life, Love And Beauty.
The individual life needs to be able to act independently, negatively or positively, in order for the Spirit to realize its livingness completely.
Take the solar system for example.
It is a perfect piece of mechenical creation.
But the more mechanical a creature is, the lower the grade of Life.
Therefore, if the Spirit must create something to reciprocate its highest nature, that creature cannot be mechanical.
It must be able to take independent action.
And since the Universal Spirit is Intelligence and Volition,
Man should have these qualities too.
And with these qualities, he is able to place himself in a positive or negative relation to the Universal Spirit.
Otherwise he would be a mechanical creature like the Sun.
From this you can see why the Life, Love and Beauty of the Spirit are not visibly reproduced in every human being.
Even though they are reproduced in the world of nature as much as mechanical and automatic creatures can represent them.
But it takes a creature with a liberty similar to that of the Universal Spirit, to reproduce the Life, Love and Beauty of the Spirit perfectlty.
And this liberty means the liberty of negation as well as affirmation.
So why the individual make a negative choice?
See next article…