PERSONAL POWER (Complete 12 Volume Edition). William Walker Atkinson
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(in this sense of the term) is: “An ultimate and essential cause, source, or origin, from which all derivative effects, events, or things of any and all kinds, proceed or flow.” As we have said, all philosophical and metaphysical speculative thought has for its end and aim the explanation of all separate and particular activities by some one common, Ultimate Principle. All theology, likewise, postulates a Supreme Ultimate Being as the common source and origin of all manifested and created things. Whether Ultimate Principle be thought of as Spirit, Matter, or Energy—as Person, Substance, or Force—the basic and fundamental conception of it as “Ultimate Principle,” is found to be essentially the same.
Whatever else the various schools of philosophy, metaphysics, and theology hold that Ultimate Principle must be, and must not be, they will be found in tacit agreement upon the point that POWER must be an essential attribute of its being—an attribute of which it cannot be divested. This, because unless Ultimate Principle is POWER, or else possesses POWER as an attribute, then it never could have manifested, expressed, or created the Cosmos and its activities. A powerless Ultimate Principle would be merely a passive, inactive Something or Somewhat, and there would be nothing to “flow or proceed from it”—in fact, it would not be a true Principle at all.
Theology, beyond question, conceives the Supreme Being to be possessed of Infinite Power as an essential attribute of which it cannot be divested, and without which we cannot think of it. Without Power, the Supreme Being could not have created the world, nor have brought anything into existence in anyway whatsoever. Again, the very essence of religious feeling is that concerning the existence of a POWER upon which the worshiper may safely depend, and upon which he may rest: take away this conviction, and the very spirit of religious feeling would fade into nothingness. God without Power, would not be God at all, according to the accepted theological conceptions of God. There is no escaping this basic fact of theological teaching.
But, outside of theology and religion—even among those who do not accept either—we find an equal certainty that POWER must exist in the Something or Somewhat which is held to be the Ultimate Principle of the Cosmos. Philosophers, metaphysicians, scientists—even the most materialistic thinkers—hold as thoroughly as do the theologians that Ultimate Principle must be, or else must possess, POWER, whatever else may be asserted of it. This, because without POWER, the Ultimate Principle “could not perform work”; without Cosmic Power, there would and could be no Cosmos at all. Hence POWER is held to be selfevident, and a necessity of thought on the subject of Ultimate Principle, or of Cosmic Activities.
Herbert Spencer indicated the spirit of his own philosophy, and also pointed out the path over which other thinkers have since traveled, when he made his famous statement affirming the existence and the power of “That Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed.” John Fiske, in his great work entitled “Cosmic Theism,” presented the Following formula as a full and complete basic statement of his theory of the Cosmos:
“There exists a POWER, to which no limit in space or time is conceivable, of which all phenomena are manifestations.”
Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University, sums up the conclusions of modern philosophical and scientific thought, as follows: “A strong, and in my view, the dominant tendency in philosophy, powerfully supported by the results of scientific knowing, is that which sees Totality as ENERGY, which is Will.”
Authoritative statements, similar to those just given, might be multiplied almost indefinitely—but the above will serve to illustrate the general conviction on the subject. In whatever direction in the field of human thought we may look, whatever else we find, we are certain to find this report of the necessary presence and existence of POWER at the very centre and heart of things—as the common fount, source, and origin of all things—in the Ultimate Principle of Being, or the Ultimate Cosmic Principle, call it what we will. Setting aside all the points upon which the varying schools differ concerning the essential nature of the Ultimate Principle, we find remaining the constant element of POWER—this cannot be reasoned away, nor can it be discarded from the problem or proposition of Ultimate Principle.
Be Ultimate Principle conceived of as Spirit, as Substance, as Energy or Force, or as Matter, the element and attribute, or the essential fact, of POWER must always be ascribed to it. After the conflicting claims have canceled each other out of the calculation—or else have been reconciled—we still find POWER uncanceled, impossible of cancelation, needing no reconciliation, the one undisputed and indisputable factor of the calculation: it is that which remains when all else has been eliminated in the attempt to reach an absolutely essential factor—the one factor which, if omitted or disregarded, destroys the meaning and value of the whole calculation.
In view of the above facts, we feel that we are justified in employing the term “POWER,” in this instruction, to indicate that Something or Somewhat which we find termed Ultimate Principle of PresencePower, Ultimate Cosmic Principle, etc., and “from which all manifestations of Power directly or indirectly proceed.”
In following with us this conception of Ultimate Principle as POWER, you are not asked, nor are you required, to discard your other conceptions of the nature and character of Ultimate Principle. Hold fast to these if you prefer to do so, but do not intrude them into the instruction: for there are other students, equally earnest and equally clear of thought, who hold fast to other and possibly contradictory conceptions concerning those other elements. For the purposes of the present instruction, we ask you, with them, to lay aside those points upon which all of you cannot agree, and to confine yourself to these particular points upon which all of you are in common agreement and mutual harmony: those points are discovered to be represented in the present conception of the element of POWER as an essential fact, element, and factor in the final conception of Ultimate Principle, which, accordingly, in this instruction is termed “POWER.”
All philosophical, metaphysical, theological, and scientific thought concerning the ultimate nature of the Fundamental Principle of Presence and Power eventually reaches a point where it is confronted with an Ultimate Mystery—the mystery of the “why and wherefore” of Ultimate Being or Existence itself. This Ultimate Mystery may be indicated by the question which has come to each and every great thinker who has pursued the quest of knowledge to this point—the question which may be stated in these words: “How and why is there Being and Existence at all? How comes there to be Something or Somewhat instead of Nothing?”
Philosophy, metaphysics, theology, and science each has wrestled with this problem, and each has been compelled to withdraw from it in confessed or implied defeat. Each has “come out the door in which it went.” The deeper the thought seeking to plumb the depths of this Ultimate Mystery, the greater is the mystery perceived to be. As a great thinker has said: “Not only is this Ultimate Mystery insoluble, but the degree and extent of the mystery itself is almost inconceivable—the average mind does not even begin to comprehend the nature of the problem, nor the unsurmountable obstacles confronting those who dare to approach it in the spirit of rational inquiry.”
There have been countless theories and hypothesis advanced, it is true; so many, in fact, that it has been said that philosophical, metaphysical, and theological thought along these particular lines cannot be regarded as logical and exact thought, for the reason that no two of such thinkers have ever come into exact and perfect agreement concerning these ultimate questions. Some cynical observer has said that the search for the answer to these ultimate questions is like the task of “a blind man, in a dark room, hunting for a black cat—which isn’t there.” Some very careful thinkers, indeed, hold positively that “the black cat isn’t there,” for the reason that not only is the question beyond the limits of the human reason, but that, also, from the very nature of the case, there can be no answer.
It has been pointed out that the human reason, understanding, and even the human imagination, being the products of the power of the Ultimate Principle of Being, and being finite and limited in their nature, cannot be so employed as to solve the secret of their source, or to express Infinity in the terms of finite thought or imagination. They point out that Thought, which is the result of Causation, cannot be expected to explain the Causeless Cause: that Thought which is temporal cannot be sufficient to explain the Eternal; that Thought which is produced by, and which manifests Change, cannot