ing. We can _think_ what we please,
and if to think is to form, then we can form what we please. The whole
question, therefore, resolves itself into this: Is it true that to think
is to form? If so, do we not see that our limitations are formed in
precisely the same way as our expansions? We think that conditions
outside our thought have power over us, and so we think power into them.
So the great question of life is whether there is any _other_ creative
power than Thought. If so, where is it, and what is it?

Both philosophy and religion lead us to the truth that "in the
beginning" there was no other creative power than Spirit, and the only
mode of activity we can possibly attribute to Spirit is Thought, and so
we find Thought as the root of all things. And if this was the case "in
the beginning" it must be so still; for if all things originate in
Thought, all things must be modes of Thought, and so it is impossible
for Spirit ever to hand over its creations to some power which is not
itself--that is to say, which is not Thought-power; and consequently all
the forms and circumstances that surround us are manifestations of the
creative power of Thought.

But it may be objected that this is God's Thought; and that the creative
power is in God and not Man. But this goes away from the self-evident
axiomatic truth that "in the beginning" nothing could have had any
origin except Thought. It is quite true that nothing has any origin
except in the Divine Mind, and Man himself is therefore a mode of the
Divine Thought. Again, Man is self-conscious; therefore Man is the
Divine Thought evolved into _individual_ consciousness, and when he
becomes sufficiently enlightened to realise this as his origin, then he
sees that he is a reproduction _in individuality_ of the _same_ spirit
which produces all things, and that his own thought in individuality has
exactly the same quality as the Divine Thought in universality, just as
fire is equally igneous whether burning round a large centre of
combustion or a small one, and thus we are logically brought to the
conclusion that our thought must have creative power.

But people say, "We have not found it so. We are surrounded by all sorts
of circumstances that we do not desire." Yes, you _fear_ them, and in so
doing you _think_ them; and in this way you are constantly exercising
this Divine prerogative of creation by Thought, only through ignorance
you use it in a wrong direction. Therefore