This idea of an active, creative Will, at work in the Universe, building up; tearing down; replacing; repairing; changing—­always at work—­ever active—­has been entertained by numerous philosophers and thinkers, under different names and styles.  Some, like Schopenhauer have thought of this Will as the final thing—­that which took the place of God—­the First Cause.  But others have seen in this Will an active living principle emanating from the Absolute or God, and working in accordance with the laws impressed by Him upon it.  In various forms, this latter idea is seen all through the history of philosophical thought.  Cudsworth, the English philosopher, evolved the idea of a something called the “Plastic Nature,” which so closely approaches the Yogi idea of the Creative Will, that we feel justified in quoting a passage from his book.  He says: 

“It seems not so agreeable to reason that Nature, as a distinct thing from the Deity, should be quite superseded or made to signify nothing, God Himself doing all things immediately and miraculously; from whence it would follow also that they are all done either forcibly and violently, or else artificially only, and none of them by any inward principle of their own.

“This opinion is further confuted by that slow and gradual process that in the generation of things, which would seem to be but a vain and idle pomp or a trifling formality if the moving power were omnipotent; as also by those errors and bungles which are committed where the matter is inept and contumacious; which argue that the moving power be not irresistible, and that Nature is such a thing as is not altogether incapable (as well as human art) of being sometimes frustrated and disappointed by the indisposition of matter.  Whereas an omnipotent moving power, as it could dispatch its work in a moment, so would it always do it infallibly and irresistibly, no ineptitude and stubbornness of matter being ever able to hinder such a one, or make him bungle or fumble in anything.

“Wherefore, since neither all things are produced fortuitously, or by the unguided mechanism of matter, nor God himself may be reasonably thought to do all things immediately and miraculously, it may well be concluded that there is a Plastic Nature under him, which, as an inferior and subordinate instrument, doth drudgingly execute that part of his providence which consists in the regular and orderly motion of matter; yet so as there is also besides this a higher providence to be acknowledged, which, presiding over it, doth often supply the defects of it, and sometimes overrules it, forasmuch as the Plastic Nature cannot act electively nor with discretion.”

The Yogi Philosophy teaches of the existence of a Universal Creative Will, emanating from the Absolute—­infilled with the power of the Absolute and acting under established natural laws, which performs the active work of creation in the world, similar to that performed by “Cudsworth’s Plastic Nature,” just mentioned.  This Creative Will is not Schopenhauer’s Will-to-Live.  It is not a Thing-in-itself, but a vehicle or instrument of the Absolute.  It is an emanation of the mind of the Absolute—­a manifestation in action of its Will—­a mental product rather than a physical, and, of course, saturated with the life-energy of its projector.