The Study of Division & Decision. Let us go a little into considering why division is a necessity of creative intelligent living. If we allow ourselves for a moment to imagine the removal of dividing lines from all the things in the universe, we see at once that all the energies of which things are made would run together. There would be no world as we know it. No defined forms of things, nor order, would exist. There would simply be an infinite ocean of chaotic energies, an endless confusion of random motions.
Order – Outside & Inside
But actually we exist in a world in which some order is manifest. The planets move in an orderly predictable manner around the sun, keeping by some mysterious power in their orbits. Our earth, as one of these planets, orbits around the sun, and also rotates on its own axis to give us the measure of our days and nights.
Inside our bodies are other systems of order. Our blood leaves our heart, travels through our arteries and veins and organs and returns to the heart to complete its orderly cycle. Every organ of our body has its own cycle of activities, and responds to the action of others, and to the outer world. Everywhere we look, there is evidence of orderly process, within and without our bodies.
When we look with our physical eyes into the outer world, we see some degree of order. But we see also some evidence of disorder. In the outer world we see nations subsisting by means of some orderly system of behavioural controls, yet we see also nations at war with each other, trying to break down each other’s working systems by which they maintain their existence in a competitive world.
In the same way we can see inside our own beings a degree of order, by which we are maintained in existence; and we can see also evidences of disorder.
Order maintains us; disorder disintegrates us.
We can see that the disorders and conflicts of the outer world endanger the existence of nations, peoples, societies and families. It is easy to see internally also that disorders and conflicts of the inner world may endanger our individual existence. Conflicting ideas, emotions and impulses may seriously affect our lives. The inner battle creates tensions, stresses and strains which may have the same effect on our body and brain, that an external war between nations has on the earth. We all know what a battlefield torn with shell-fire and bombs looks like. A microphotograph of the inner organs of a human being with an internal war shows similar effects.
Definition
Apart from order, there is disorder. Disorder is chaotic energy. Where forces undefined disturb and dissolve each other there is disorder. Where order is, the forces are defined and have specific functions which relate to each other in clearly defined manners.
Without definition, order is impossible.
Definition rests upon division of forms of energy activity. This is the meaning of “firmament” in the Bible book of Genesis. “Let it (the firmament) divide the waters from the waters”. The “firmament” is the Bible word for that activity of energy which divides one thing from another, in order to create the conditions of existence without which the created world we see would not have its being.
The Principle of Order
“As within, so without; as without, so within”. The world, and all things in it, exist by means of the Principle of Order, which rests upon a function of division. This Principle of Order is called anciently ‘The Logos’ and is translated in the Bible as ‘The Word’.
How does the study of the Principle of Order help us?
If we study the laws which govern the outer world, the laws we there discover are related to laws which we discover in the human being. What we discover outside our being, we can discover also inside, and what we discover inside our being, we can also discover outside it. The same chemicals that are existent in the external world, exist also in our internal world. The same principles of electronic action that we find in the things of the outer world, we discover at work also in our own nervous system.
It is permissible for us to view the outer universe as a mirror-image of the inner world of mankind, or for us to see as a mirror-image of the universe in which we live. For every process we discover inside our own organism, we can find a correspondent function in the universe. Thus when we meditate on our inner processes, we may discover rules which govern the outer world, and when we meditate on processes we observe in the outer world, we may disclose principles inside our own being.