SEPTEMBER,

1906

Building and Unfoldment

(An Address delivered by A. P. Barton, Tuesday evening, Aug. 21, '06, in Unity Building as part of the dedication program.) REATION consists in two steps or processes

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and only two-Expression and Manifestation. These are two terms that are often erroneously used interchangeably one for the other. They mean very different activities and are responsible to different agencies.

Expression is the work of the Universal Essence. It ever tends to put forth individual, organized entities in spirit or mind. In the first chapter of Genesis it is related that Elohim (invisible Powers) "said;" and at each word something which we know by names in nature sprang into being, until man was evolved. These were all spirit or mind organisms-not material.

This was expression, the work of universal being. Then that which was expressed began to become manifest in form. This is the work of the individual. The Universal never manifests directly, and we have made a sad mistake in our praying when we have asked God to do our manifesting for us. In fact, all our begging has been a mockery. To beg God to do things involves the assumption either that he has been unwilling to do what we think he should do and we seek to change his purpose, or he has forgotten or neglected to do it and we must remind him. Infinite Wisdom, infinitely good, can do no less than the right. But we must do the

manifesting of that which has been expressed in us from the unmanifest.

The child is first expressed as a spiritual being, and then it manifests itself in a visible body, in the image and after the likeness of the spiritual ego.

John spoke a deeper truth than we have known when he said, "Without the word was not anything made that was made." The word is the thought thing, that which is expressed from God in the mind. This always precedes manifestation. The artist has the picture in his mind before it is painted on canvas. This is expression. He therefore is able to show it forth with brush and pigments. This is manifestation. The table, the chair-all objective things-are but visible embodiments of the thought things in the minds of the makers, the word. Verily, without the word was not anything made, manifested, that was made.

We speak of the within. By this term we do not mean a place or point located in the body somewhere, as the solar plexus, the brain or the heart. We mean the spiritual or mind self, the expressed entity fresh from the Father's breath. The without is the manifest body and objective nature.

No substance was ever created. The Essence of Being is eternal, never had a beginning or a creator. And residing in it, co-eternal with it, essential to it is the law of being, not made by a lawgiver as our statutes are, but prevails as eternal principle, uncreate and forever abiding in essence.

We cannot comprehend eternity or endless extension, but we are driven to admit them as true because it could not be otherwise. It is like the geometrician's reductio ad absurdam, the conclusion cannot be proven, but must be so because it cannot be otherwise. We know, for example, that there is no end to space or extension, because beyond any supposed limit or boundary

there could be only further extension of distance.

All this limitless expanse is full of substance, or the Essence of Being. There is no vacuum. It is impossible to create a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum. Out of this essence of being all things are expressed before they become manifest in form. It is unthinkable that something could be made of nothing.

As creation consists of two steps, so does the process of growth. There is unfoldment and there is building or accretion. And these processes are mutually inter-actionary and inter-dependent. The powers and possibilities of the spirit or mind ego are infinite. We can never reach a point in growth where we may not further unfold; for the act of unfoldment stimulates the process of building, or accretion from the Infinite, exhaustless Essence of Being. And the process of building in turn stimulates unfoldment. Thus do we grow.

This beautiful building in which we assembled tonight was first in the minds of its projectors, having been expressed from Infinite Being into minds gotten ready for it through unfolding power. Then the manifest building came as a result. This step will react upon their souls for further unfoldment. We may not allow that which has been expressed within us to lie dormant or sleep. We must manifest it in order to make room for further expression.

This double process of action and reaction between the within and the without is illustrated in the growth of the trees and plants by what botanists call endosmosis and exosmosis. Endosmosis is the attraction of the gases and fluids without by the gases and fluids within, and exosmosis is the attraction of the gases and fluids within by those without. Through this process both are strengthened and kept active and the tree or plant lives and grows. One is building, the

other is unfoldment.

In education we see the same double action. We all know that the word education means the drawing out or unfoldment of the powers of the mind. How is this accomplished? By instruction, the application of facts. Facts have little value in education beyond the awakening of the perception of principle or the philosophy of facts. The teacher who is not able to draw from the facts of history the philosophy of history, is a failure as a teacher of history. The one who memorizes all the rules of grammar and yet is unable to comprehend or apply the principles of philology, has studied grammar in vain. If a man is able to speak seven languages and is unable to utter an original thought with one of thein, he may be instructed, but cannot properly be called educated. The instruction is the building, the education the unfoldment. They are, when truly united, mutually stimulative. While proper instruction draws out mind powers, this unfoldment reaches out for further instruction. The two must go together.

So is it with inspiration and aspiration. Inspiration means, literally, breathing in. The church people have supposed that the only inspired men were the writers of the Bible. They have believed that when the last one of these writers laid aside his stylus, inspiration ceased upon Earth. They thought that inspiration consisted in God's entering a man in spirit, absessing him, as it were, taking control of his brain and faculties and speaking or writing through him.

So, following this teaching, we have been getting our inspiration second hand. It was a reflected light and therefore without heat or actinism, the principle of growth.

Now we go directly to the Source for inspiration, and power is the result. There are inspired men and