The Dore Lectures on Mental Science

ALPHA AND OMEGA.

Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last. What does this mean? It

means the entire series of causation from the first originating

movement to the final and completed result. We may take this on

any scale from the creation of a cosmos to the creation of a

lady's robe. Everything has its origin in an idea, a thought; and

it has its completion in the manifestation of that thought in

form. Many intermediate stages are necessary, but the Alpha and

Omega of the series are the thought and the thing. This shows us

that in essence the thing already existed in the thought. Omega

is already potential in Alpha, just as in the Pythagorean system

all numbers are said to proceed from unity and to be resolvable

back again into it. Now it is this general principle of the

already existence of the thing in the thought that we have to lay

hold of, and as we find it true in an architect's design of the

house that is to be, so we find it true in the great work of the

Architect of the Universe. When we see this we have realized a

general principle, which we find at work everywhere. That is the

meaning of a general principle: it can be applied to any sort of

subject; and the use of studying general principles is to give

them particular application to anything we may have to deal with.

Now what we have to deal with most of all is ourselves, and so we

come to the consideration of Alpha and Omega in the human being.

In the vision of St. John, the speaker of the words, "I am Alpha

and Omega, the First and the Last," is described as "Like unto a

son of man"--that is, however transcendent the appearance in the

vision, it is essentially human, and thus suggests to us the

presence of the universal principle at the human level. But the

figure in the apocalyptic vision is not that of man as we

ordinarily know him. It is that of Omega as it subsists enshrined

in Alpha: it is the ideal of humanity as it subsists in the

Divine Mind which was manifested in objective form to the eyes of

the seer, and therefore presented the Alpha and Omega of that

idea in all the majesty of Divine glory.