Part 12

As another illustration of idea coming before form, I spoke of plants and seeds, how in the seed is the possibility, the idea of an infinity of trees.

Virginia said: “In them spirit seems to be asleep, for it must be there.” She said all things slept sometimes, and while they slept the spirit worked in them.

Ruth was not in the least convinced. Indeed, the thing was not overclear. She said: “I still think matter is something to be overcome, something that binds us. Surely we will sometime be spirits without matter, altogether spiritual.”

I tried to show them that spirit without expression would be unthinkable, that though expression might not be what we call matter, it would still be some expression. I said: “Expression frees us.”

That was puzzling, and needed more explanation.

I asked Henry: “What is the object and aim of life?”

He answered vaguely: “I suppose it is spirit.”

“Now, what do you mean by that?” I asked.

He answered: “I suppose we don’t know what it is until we reach the truth.” Evidently he did not, but all the others did. They all spoke at once to explain to him that the object of life was complete understanding and love.

I said: “That is what expression is to get for us, for we express ourselves in form and thought, so that we may understand and be understood. And that is what I meant by freedom. I meant understanding, love and perfect adjustment. In one sense matter is binding, because we want more freedom. Matter, so called, is the physical condition which our will made in the past, and which we want already to surpass. Suppose that a man wrote a book in which he put all his ideas, and that when he finished the book he was forbidden to write or speak again; his ideas would grow afterward, and as he could not express them, he would think himself limited and bound by the book he had written. So material conditions are binding only because we want still more freedom, though they themselves were freedom at the time of their creation. In that sense, Ruth, you might call the body something which the spirit constantly wants to leave behind, because it is creating new forms for itself.”

Marian said: “It is as if there were a house with many rooms, and we thought we wanted to go only into the first; but each door made us long for the next room, and the next, so that we could never be satisfied.”

“And if one door were locked,” I said, “we would consider ourselves sadly bound, though we had thought we wished to go only so far. Suppose a man made a statue, that statue would be an expression of his spirit. But if the next instant he wanted to change it, to make, say, the lines of the arm more perfect, he could not do so by willing. He would have to make a new statue.”

“But that is different,” said Ruth. “The stuff he works in is still matter.”

I tried to explain how all creation is an inter-change of form, a flowing and influence. I tried to show them how all things whatsoever, even thoughts, are forms, and all form an expression.

Virginia said: “Those who write books, or do any great work, are immortal in that, because of their influence.” I answered her that all of us were immortal in this sense, that each thing had endless influence.

Marian asked the one unanswerable question, and I was delighted. She said: “Why was the Divine Self ever divided? How did we ever happen to need bodies and expression? Why did it not all grow together?”

She saw that contrast was needed for recognition. But why, she wondered, was anything at all? I answered her: “We said the other day that it did not matter whether the search for good were infinite or not. Neither does it concern us to know the unknowable, whether or how the awaking world began. But we do know it is awakening, what is the direction, what is the aim and desire of life. To me no more seems needed. We know how to go forward.”

“That is true,” she said. She spoke of old age and mental decay. She said she did not see why people lost, for no reason, the progress they seemed to have made. I answered her that I did not think they lost it, unless they did not try to keep it; that it is a thing one must work for at each moment.

“But why do they stop trying?” she asked.

“I don’t think they stop,” I said. “I think they never did try, but in youth such people merely had more stimulation from without.”

“Now, my grandfather,” she said, “was an intelligent man, and he is losing his memory.”

“Is he losing the valuable thing? Does he love you less, understand you less? Are you sure the memory he is losing is the thing he still needs?”

She saw what I meant. She was struck by it.

I went on: “One might lose the ability to do mathematics, when one had gained all there was to be got out of mathematics.”

She said: “I think you are right. I understand that.”

Now when Ruth insisted again that matter was something binding, something to be left behind, Alfred said:

“I don’t think it is binding.”

“Neither do I,” said Virginia.