DIFFERENTIATIONS
Daniele Cortis
The Gleaner
Vol. 15, No. 3
Divine Science Publishing Assoc.,
New York, January 1924.
THE World is
a repository of events. Experience, the
watchword for human existence, is made up
of events.
To select
the issue of greater importance from the
multitudes which have had their unique
place in the contingency that has gone to
make up human experience, would be
difficult, were it not that the value of
any event depends entirely on its effect
upon mankind in general.
This
establishes a standard by which an issue
may be judged - History is a chronology
of fateful events woven into a whole; a
stupendous drama which, if it were
understood, would reveal the future.
The story of
Man is the history of God. This is a bold
statement; nevertheless it is true. In
this Drama mere people as we know them
judging from their actions, seem but the
supernumeraries upon its boards; its Hero
is God; its plot His triumphal
manifestation through the individual
mind, by the individual's struggle upward
out of chaotic ignorance.
For
unmeasured and immeasurable centuries man
lived on the plane of the beasts of the
field, a creature so little removed from
them, so slightly superior, that he left
no more decipherable record of his
presence on this planet than they. The
dawn of civilization, despite the fact
that it was a civilization characterized
by no greater incident than that man had
learned the method of artificially
producing fire and how to use it, was the
first act in this majestic Drama.
Everything that had happened until this
event might be regarded as a mere
interlude through which an irresistible
and insistent urge towards mental
expression forced its way. Man's
conscious use of the mental endowment
which differentiates his superiority over
the beasts of the field, was the first
act in the splendid Drama destined to
close with the meeting of Heaven and
Earth or the Birth of Jesus Christ.
The Christ
child as the offspring of Mary differed
slightly, if at all, from any child
conceived in love and brought forth
through the triumph of woman's love over
the agony of death. He was a holy child
but all children are holy. The
differentiation was not between the
children. It was between the mother of
Jesus and the mothers of other little
ones. Like these she had suffered; like
them she adored the babe kept warm by the
sweet breath of the kine; but unlike them
she did not see in the tiny Son the
consecrated tie that binds flesh to
flesh; the sacred bond that unites a wife
to a husband more closely. This woman saw
in the birth of Jesus the realization of
her UNITY with the Christ Consciousness.
He was the bond between herself
and Her Maker, and thus by a purely
mental process, the offspring of Mary
became to his mother the Son of God.
For
centuries men had been dreaming of a
meeting between God and man; it was the
golden thread in the dark design of
heathen worship. Always in the heart of
mankind a dim hope had lurked of a time
when God would meet with man, a time when
the divine would take on human shape;
when the immortal would become
recognizable in the mortal. Never had it
been even dimly prophesied that the
meeting between heaven and earth would
take place as a result of the ascent
of the terrestrial rather than a
descent of the celestial. Yet it
took place in precisely this way, when
the consciousness of the woman chosen to
become the Mother of God, in a moment of
spiritual exaltation, transcended the
limitations of the senses, by which
supreme dilation her intellectual grasp
of the unity of Cause united itself with
the divine consciousness, and twain
become one.
It has been
said "the spirit shall make him of quick
understanding." The mother of Jesus
possessed the true intellect which is
that perception by which the things of
Spirit are apprehended. It was the quick
understanding of this woman which enabled
her to apprehend through the Spiritual
consciousness the truth of Being. It was
this supreme dilation of spiritual
understanding which reached the heaven of
conscious unity. "The Glory of the Lord"
was revealed to Mary; the spirit of God
was poured out upon her, and the woman
saw that salvation of God which
established man as the tabernacle of the
living God!
The coming
of the Son of God in the flesh
established the unity of cause of which
the human and divine are but two aspects
of one substance, and as inseparable as
the sun and its rays.
Jesus, as
the Son of man, established the unity of
man with God. The son of Mary was the Son
of God and this established the corollary
between the finite man and the Infinite
God. The unity existing throughout the
universe which the scientists have
established by the evidence of the
similitude of "the vegetable and the
animal and of the beast and the human
creation" proves that what we mistake for
new things, are nothing other than
"rearrangements and interactions," and
reorganization of one shape to form
another. There is no new substance. All
that is has been from the beginning. Not
a link is lacking in the chain of
intergradation which establishes that all
living partake of the one and only life -
the life which is God.
What science
had not done was to establish the
correlation between mind and matter - God
and Man. Yet that is precisely what Jesus
did. He was Jesus the Son of Mary and he
was Christ the Son of God, and thereby
established that correlation between the
finite and Infinite or Man and God. "For
he is our peace, who hath made both one,
and hath broken down the middle wall of
partition... for to make in Himself of
twain one new man, so making peace; And
that He might reconcile both unto God in
one body."
In nature
one form of existence grades into another
imperceptibly; thus the categories which
are unknown in nature are peculiar to the
minds of human beings. The Son of Mary
was the finite extension of the Infinite
- for "From the Infinite the finite
extends." This on the principle that the
light which you see is merely an
extension of the electricity which you do
not see.
Mind and
Matter never separated; hence can never
be united. They are two aspects of one
substance. Turn off the light and you
have not destroyed it. Neither have you
separated it from its source, for light
and electricity are one and its aspects
are inseparably commingled forever.
The Son of
Mary was a projection of the Son of God.
Hence one essence in a twofold
appearance. "He who is within is without"
and the mind of God was within the mind
of Christ, as manifested without
in the man Christ Jesus. "And his name is
called The Word of God." "And the word
was made flesh and dwelt among us."
Although
categorizing is unknown in nature, it is
a specialty of the human mind and one
that ofttimes makes it necessary to
delineate the difference between one form
and another of not only secular but also
religious schools. A demand met daily in
this instance is, "What constitutes the
differentiation between Christian Science
and Divine Science?" To differentiate
between schools having the same goal is
difficult, if possible at all when at
best, the difference may be merely a
difference in terminology.
Christian
Science, which owes its existence to Dr.
Quimby's discovery of the application of
the power of mind over matter, is
indebted to Mrs. Eddy for its enormous
propaganda which was largely due to the
executive ability of this remarkable
woman who founded the school of Christian
Science after having been a patient of
Dr. Quimby.
As is
generally understood, this religious
school admits the existence, if
not the reality of two minds; the
Divine Mind, essentially good, and the
'mortal' mind, necessarily evil. The
Divine Mind is synonymous with God;
therefore incapable of the knowledge of
iniquity. The second or mortal mind,
essentially evil, is at "enmity against
God" and not subject to the law of God.
The Divine Mind being all in all, nothing
is apart from this Mind and Its ideas.
Carnal mind, absolutely evil, is
necessarily non-existent, and this on the
basis that if God is good, and good is
all, there is nothing else. In other
words, all being Infinite Mind, there is
no matter.
The
proposition is simple and irrefutable. It
is equivalent to saying that if one holds
everything in the right hand the left
hand is empty. Reasoning from the
standpoint of one mind -- all-inclusive
good -- and the other enmity against
good, of necessity extinguishes the
reality of this opposing factor, and the
matter would end there if it were not for
the fact that the question presents
itself as to how the method of healing
employed by the Christian Science
philosophy is accomplished. The
difficulty which introduces itself here
is that if the Divine Mind does not need
healing and the other mind "is not
subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be," what remains that is subject to
this beneficent power as the fact
demonstrates itself that that which is
insubordinate cannot be subservient. The
healing, therefore, by the school
founded by Mrs. Eddy is accomplished by
the influence of that which is called
mortal mind acting on another mortal
mind, rather than by the interaction of
the Divine with the human mind. The
important thing is not HOW healing is
accomplished but that it IS accomplished,
and the application of the philosophy of
Christian Science undoubtedly heals the
sick. That the basic principle of the
healing is mesmeric by no means
invalidates it. On the contrary it
accounts for the doctrine of malicious
animal magnetism which has become an
important factor in the doctrine of
Christian Science. This factor admits the
possibility of sewing seeds of evil by
purely mental processes and teaching the
unlimited possibility that anyone
initiated in the teaching of this
philosophy may wield for evil in the
affairs of others. It is by no means a
new doctrine. Rather it is as old as the
ancients. What is new is its introduction
as a part of a religious teaching. This,
however, is understandable when one
considers this philosophy's denial of
matter and its admittance of two opposing
minds -- minds that are irreconcilable --
as a fundamental principle which leaves
no other method of healing than by the
influence of one mind over another. The
danger of being influenced for evil by a
high-minded person is slight, but the
possibility of low minds influencing
other minds for personal reasons at
variance with the welfare of the person
influenced, is very possible and might
under certain circumstances be not a
little dangerous.
The teaching
of Mrs. Eddy is contrary to science.
Divine Science coincides with science.
This is the fundamental difference. It
admits but one mind -- the Superior Mind
or the Mind which is God. What the
Christian Scientists call matter or
nothing, the Divine Scientists call an
extension of the One Mind. The healing as
accomplished by this school is not the
influence of one mortal mind over
another, but the interaction of the
Superior Mind of God with the Divine Mind
of the individual. It is the "letting be"
in man of that Mind which "was also in
Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of
God, thought it not robbery to be equal
with God." This interaction of the static
Divine Mind with the active Divine Mind
of man corrects the disturbed appearances
which are merely phenomena. There is a
unity in mind as there is a unity in
numbers, and, as the quality of the unit
is extended through numbers, so the
character of God is extended through
Man.
God is the
unity of which man is a projection and
from which he is as inseparable as the
light is inseparable from the sun.
Matter, as an extension of mind, is a
something to be reckoned with instead of
being relegated to the limbo of
nothingness. Herein is the principal
differentiation between the teaching of
the two schools under discussion:
Christian
Science abandons matter and leaves it to
its own destruction, forgetful of the
fact that while matter permits itself to
be changed from one form to another of
the same substance, it refuses to be
destroyed. The parallelism on precise
correspondence "of psychical phenomena in
man and change in matter," are set forth
in a current magazine showing that tin,
for instance, which is 'a simple,
indivisible element, has two forms, the
stable and the meta-stable' one forms
powder, the other 'common metallic tin.'
By 'a shock -- this is heating -- the
stable form may be changed suddenly into
the meta-stable, and then during a long
period of rest, into the stable
form."
It is
inconceivable that that which is possible
in the way of interaction between
chemical elements can be considered
impossible to mind. The difficulty in the
teaching of Christian Science is that
Mrs. Eddy has tried to apply a psychical
explanation to Mind and a physical
explanation to that extension of Mind
which is called matter. In reality what
Mrs. Eddy calls "matter" is "Mind in
Motion" and is as inseparable from mind
as light is inseparable from the sun. A
supposition contrary to this brings a
confusion of thought which results in a
division between Mind and matter, a chasm
which does not admit of a bridge -- and
leaves the student everlastingly puzzled
as to how to get out of where he is, into
where he is not, knowing full well that
he cannot be as mortal mind, which is
enmity to God, in tune with the Infinite.
An argumentative student of Christian
Science, on asking a Christian Science
teacher to which category he belonged,
the mortal or immortal mind, was assured
it was not to the immortal! The question
was then put as to how a correlation
could be established between the Divine
Mind and the mortal mind, by which he
could approach the latter. "You cannot
join something to nothing" was the
natural, if not enlightening answer, on
the supposition that so-called matter is
non-existent. "If I am material and
matter is non-existent then I do not
exist, and if you say that matter cannot
be reconciled to mind, nor mind to
matter, then I see my finish, even if I
cannot see where I can get off," said the
student and he left the class. If this
teacher had been a student of Divine
Science he could have explained to the
student that so-called matter could not
be correlated to mind inasmuch as it had
never been separated from that of which
it was merely an extension. In this way
the student would have realized his unity
with God and felt the moral obligations
to manifest his own divinity.
Another
phase of this teaching is that this
see-sawing between something and nothing
permits the student to live in "no man's
land" when circumstances render it
convenient. The supposition that mind and
matter are opposite planes of thought
results in considerable tinkering on both
planes and no constructive work on
either. It also has another and more
serious aspect amounting to a species of
mental juggling which not infrequently
ends in a kind of mental irresponsibility
boarding on idiocy. For example, whether
or not an event happens depends upon
where it takes place. In the Divine only
good can occur. On the mortal mind plane
nothing can take place, inasmuch as there
is no matter. All evil being part and
parcel of the realm of nowhere, there is
no evil. Hence a person may perpetuate
any sort of criminal act and
conscientiously prove an alibi, declaring
himself innocent, inasmuch as what
happened on the mortal mind plane never
happened. At the particular moment at
which he committed the crime he was on
the plane of mortal mind, the no man's
land in the kingdom of nowhere.
Matter is
only a name for the medium through or by
means of which the static force called
Mind becomes manifest. It is mind in
activity or mind in motion and is
inseparable from Mind. Suppose it to be
possible to separate mind and matter and
there results a kind of mental
pandemonium which leaves such as labor
under the delusion lost in a bewildering
maze, as one without a country. There is
only one substance, call it Mind or
matter, out of which, as Milton says,
"Angels and men are all made," and the
body as an extension of mind nourished by
the same substance. Believing this,
Milton wrote, "And from these corporeal
nutriments perhaps your bodies may at
last turn all to Spirit." Might not
Milton have been right?
Lau-tsze,
the Chinese philosopher, who was a more
profound thinker than Confucius, had no
notion of Spirit as a substance distinct
from matter. To him, Being and
Manifestation was One! Existence and
non-existence the same. That it has been
said that he "strayed from common sense"
is no proof of his inferiority in the
realm of uncommon sense; the sense which
sees humanity as an extension of
Divinity.
Lau-tsze
believed in One (Mind), this one
producing two (Mind and Idea); the two
producing three (Mind, Idea and
Manifestation) from which all that
exists, is an extension or aspect of the
One Universal Substance. The electric
light is an extension or manifestation of
the electricity which you do not see, and
who would think of separating electricity
from light. One does not deny the
principle of mathematics on the theory
that he cannot see it. The visible
manifestation of the principle through
numbers satisfies the most skeptical of
its existence. We accept much that may
not be discerned by the eye; and life
will take on a new aspect when matter is
accepted as an extension of mind. This
will take place in the proportion that
human beings discover the limitations of
the sense of sight, an astonishingly
limited sense upon which to depend for
spiritual discernment.
Another and
more serious aspect of the doctrine of
the nothingness of matter is that it
lends itself to abuses that have a far
reaching effect on society in general. To
a certain extent it does away entirely
with the sanctity of marriage and looks
on maternity with opprobrium. This is not
the fault of the adherents of this
philosophy but rather that of its
doctrinal heresy as to the nothingness of
matter. Neither did this idea originate
with Mrs. Eddy. Its founder was the Rev.
T. R. Malthus, a political economist who
two centuries ago held that the trend of
the population to multiply faster than
its means of subsistence increased would
inevitably lead to poverty unless birth
control was exercised. Malthusianism met
with an ignominious defeat and was well
nigh forgotten until resurrected by this
nineteenth century school. Malthus as a
political economist would have destroyed
that which in his erroneous opinion
tended towards poverty. Adherents of this
latter day heresy would destroy that
which in their erroneous opinion tended
towards an increase of materiality. It is
needless to rehearse the unhappiness
which has come into homes through this
Christian Science heresy. Whatever
strikes the home jars the nation. Hence
the wide spread peril of the far-reaching
doctrine of the nothingness of matter.
One would hardly call electricity nothing
because he is unable to define it; yet
science proves that matter in its final
analysis is electricity. No one can
define electricity, but what scientist
would repudiate its existence?
Admit the
principle of mathematics and repudiate
the existence of numbers, and what avail
is the principle? Or admit the existence
of mind and deny matter, and what is left
through which mind can find
expression?
Mind and
matter, as the terms are understood in
Christian Science, are extremes
that never meet, the chasm between the
all and the nothing, which may not
be bridged; but when the relationship
between mind and matter is admitted to be
precisely the same as that which exists
between electricity and light, it is seen
that they are one and indivisible. Mind
is dependent upon matter to the extent
that the speed of light is dependent upon
the properties of the medium of its
transmission. It is only in the
proportion that mind is seen to be the
all-inclusive unity that "nothing" will
be realized to be non-entity. Many are
asking with Renan "when will it be worth
while to live?" It will be worth while to
live when man realizes the unity of cause
and its effect. Then he will see
existence merely as an opportunity to
live to the glory of God, in the house
not made with hands, the tabernacle made
from mind. Looking for a thing where it
is not will never reveal it. Matter is a
fact, and it is not in disdaining facts
but in explaining them that a teacher
demonstrates his superior wisdom. Mind is
the cause of which matter is the effect.
Mind is "the former of all things and he
formed it to establish it. The great God
formed all things. He formed thee. He
that formed the eye shall he not see?"
Man is the extension of mind, of whom it
is said, "I have created him for my
glory." "I have formed him; yea, I have
made him."
[Jer. 10:16, Deut. 32:18, Prov. 26:10,
Ps. 94:9]
In the
proportion that ignorance is overcome,
the jewels of enlightenment will be
revealed in the splendid iridescence of
God-like acts. As dense clouds high
mounted in the air, obscure the face of
the sun, so pride, envy, avarice and
passions hide the form of Spirit which,
like a candle in a lantern, though
shining cannot be seen. Bank notes
representing gold may be forged notes.
Likewise man, made in the image and
likeness of God, may be a negation of the
Divine. Such is as dead fuel but when
struck by the lightning of intelligence,
he shall be kindled of Spirit.
Actions are
the offsprings of thought, and the body
is the perfect instrument of the mind.
Any idea held persistently in mind
becomes visible in the body. A change in
mind produces a mutation in the physical
realm and demonstrates a form recreated
after the pattern of the type of thought
dwelt upon. Physical healing by purely
mental process is the art of imagining,
and, in the proportion that the image is
divine, the body will reproduce the
picture of that divinity. Realizing the
truth of this fact, Paul besought that
men "present their bodies a living
sacrifice, holy acceptable unto God." He
told them that to do so was "a reasonable
service," because their bodies belonged
to God.
Motion is a
mental impulse. Mind is the motor which
sets the universe in motion. It is said
by Isaiah that the spirit shall make man
a quick understanding. True intellect is
that perception by which things of spirit
are apprehended. Ignorance is the absence
of this faculty in operation. By
abandoning the intellect, man consciously
or unconsciously embraces ignorance, and
by yielding himself to this root of
misfortune he at last incurs his own
enmity to understanding.
In the
proportion that the intellectual
faculties in man are dormant, he becomes
a mere organism, instead of an individual
intelligence, expressing universal mind.
Intelligence does not require that we
reconcile the image of God with the
apparent disorders of man's moral and
physical government, which is neither
necessary nor possible. What is essential
is the apprehension through intellect
that Man is the manifestation of Spirit,
in spite of the ignorance which causes
him to appear "half dust, half deity,
alike unfit to sink or soar."
It often
occurs that chestnut trees whose wealth
of last year's leaves, which have
withstood the ravages of the winter
winds, cling brown and sear to the
branches from which Spring is coaxing new
foliage. Thus the branches of the tree
are budding and disleafing at the same
time. Humans are like the trees in this,
that they may be spiritually germinating
while as yet cumbered with the dead
foliage of ignorance. Man is the infinite
conjugation of the verb "to be." He is
ever in the ecstasy of becoming.
According to
Emerson, the circle is the highest emblem
in the cipher world, of which the eye is
the first circle, and the horizon which
it forms is the second. It is the symbol
of Mind - the Mind which circles the
universe, within which all reality
abides, of which man is a radiation, and
therefore mental, not material. Mind is a
sea of Being; the center and
circumference of existence. As the
horizon is greater in compass than the
eye which forms it, so Mind infinitely
transcends the capacity of man to define
it. Man is a part of all the changes
through which he has passed. His vision
is colored by the sense stain on the
glass through which he is gazing with his
physical eyes; organs to which
God-effulgences are invisible. He is a
victim of time and space, illusions which
the eye of mind pierce in order to glance
into the realm of eternal realities.
The earth is
the Lord's. He has peopled it with his
own substance. He is that ardor,
patience, tenacity and sovereign
intelligence which creates good and
dispels its seeming opposite, that
transmutes what seems to be inert
energies into vital forces. It is He who
raises from the ashes of death the
celestial beings who people the stars,
throbbing with teeming life. Ignorance is
a kind of spiritual paralysis, even as
sin is an aridity of the soul. Therefore
it is possible that when a mortal is so
sin-stained that he is unrecognizable as
a man, it may be but the metamorphosis
state preparatory to the change of
ignorance for intelligence; of shape for
form; a discarding of a mask to reveal
the original character.
As the
wounded eagle is making for its eyrie, so
the hunted creature of sin is turning by
instinct towards his birthland of spirit.
If you cannot help him, turn away from
his travail pains that he may be born
alone with God. In the very marshes of
ignorance, the fire-flies of reason are
lighting those who are lost in the subtle
illusions that there is aught but
suffering in sin; towards their goal in
that intelligence
"whose omniscience everything
transcends"
and who
"The heavens
created,
That every part to every part may
shine,
Distributing the light in equal
measure."
The light of
the sun is one and is derived from one
source, but it is appropriated by the
diverse bodies that attract its
munificence according to the particular
virtue of that body's capacity to receive
light. Certain objects, by reason of the
clearness or transparency inherent in
themselves, under the rays of the sun
multiply its luminosity by this
refulgence in themselves, thereby
enabling them to send out an
extraordinary trasplendence. Likewise,
the Life which is God is one, but it is
appropriated by the different existences
which attract its munificence according
to the particular virtue of that person's
capacity to objectify spirit.
The goal of
intelligence is the union of the ALL with
the ALL; of man with Spirit.
You ask, "If
mind and its manifestation is all and is
good, what is the Maelstrom in which we
live and breathe and have our being? What
is this monotonous cadence of sorrow,
this undertone of despair that beats on
the human ear as the surf breaks upon the
shores? What is this chant of rage with
its mutterings of war?" There is only one
answer. Everything or anything opposed to
righteousness is merely the misdirected
force that registers in so-called evil.
Of itself nothing is evil. Coupled with
ignorance nothing seems good. What is the
panacea? It is the overcoming of
ignorance by the intelligent realization
that mind is the only power and potency.
The first step toward overcoming
ignorance is the establishment in one's
mind of the unity of mind and so-called
matter. The light does not control the
electricity; instead electricity controls
the light. On this principle, the control
of mind by the phenomenon which physical
conditions present, is madness, and when
people who say they believe this act
as if they did, they are generally
transported to an insane asylum.
In the
Excelsior Hotel in Rome in one of the
large salons there is an enormous cut
glass chandelier. In front of it is an
immense mirror in which one sees a
perfect reflection of the chandelier and
another reflection of the chandelier's
reflection and yet another reflection of
that reflection, and so on until you may
count nineteen reflections of
reflections, every one perfect in its way
as to detail but each smaller until the
last one is as minute as it is possible
to be and still be true to the
original.
The human
race is the mirror in which mind is
reflected in a way similar to the
reflection of the chandelier in the
mirror at Rome. The system of education
has been such that each man's mind is a
reflection of another man's mind -- until
man's mind has become as far removed from
the original as is possible on this
plane. The mind of man is the creator of
the world in which he lives, and it
depends upon his intelligent
consciousness of his unity with the
original mind as to what kind of world he
lives in. Just as sound is not in the
air, nor the color in the sky, but
instead is an interpretation by the mind
of a succession of shocks, so the world
becomes to us just what we interpret it
to be. If we realize the unity of mind
with its extension, all that we see will
be a manifestation of the mind of God
operating in and through man. If, on the
other hand, we believe in a separation
between mind and matter or God and man,
all the harmony of the celestial realm
will not mitigate the hell of man's
state, for it is by "virtue of what the
mind has supplied to things that they in
turn effect mind."
Strike a
barrel which contains water on the
outside and the effect of the blow
demonstrates itself in the circles which
form at the circumference of the water,
and proceed towards its center in ever
diminishing compass, until they reach
their destination only to disappear. If
the process be reversed, and a pebble is
dropped into the barrel striking the
water at its center, the circles which
form move from the center, towards the
circumference of the water in steadily
increasing compass, until their action is
restricted by the confine of the barrel.
The water is the same. The direction is
different. Individual existence, as water
set in motion from without, its energy
spent, passes from sight at the center
where it is met by the water of Life
receiving its impulse from within and
reanimated into newness of purpose; its
course changed, it is sent out once more
in ever enlarging circles of divine
usefulness, whence it proceeds from glory
to glory until the infinite shore is
reached; there the finite is seen as the
Infinite and man appears as God. It has
been said that the true philosopher
stations himself in the middle of Being
or Mind which controls existence and is
ever at work transmuting misdirected
energy into divine force.
We are told
that the transmutations which are brought
about in applied chemistry are the result
of the orderly combinations of materials.
Is it not possible that the malformations
brought about in the world of mental
chemistry are the result of disorderly
combinations of thought forces? If the
grouping together of two or more
molecules create a new individuality
possessing characteristics not possessed
by either of the elements which gave it
birth, might not 'thought combinations'
act likewise? You ask, "Where does the
thing we call evil originate?" It
originates in thought.
"Man is mind, and evermore
He takes the tool of thought
And, shaping what he wills
Brings forth a thousand ills.
He thinks in secret and it comes to
pass.
Environment is but his looking
glass."
It has been
said that the order and harmony that
pervades throughout the universe is due
to the operation of one law, one
controlling principle. Let us suppose the
universe is at the mercy of a diversity
in laws of motion and forces in separate
systems, all in motion. What would ensue?
The result would be confusion and
destruction. The world in which man lives
is as much a projection of his thought as
the universe is a projection from the
Divine mind.
Every man's
world is a projection of his thought and
notwithstanding the immutable,
unchangeable perfection of the mind which
is God, the mind of man may lend itself
to such an arrangement of mental energies
as makes for discord in his world. If he
wishes he may set every brain cell in
such a diversity of motion as will put
the whole mental system in a state of
siege. All that is, is a result of
thought. All that ever will be, will be
because of thought. When this is
understood and the relation of mind and
matter re-established, the race will
commence to distinguish between thoughts
that make for weal and those that make
for woe, with the result that the latter
will be promptly discarded in order to
preserve so-called physical harmony. As
long, however, as a differentiation is
admitted between mind and matter, man
will turn to matter for that which Mind
alone can supply, and the result will
continue to be the mental confusion which
will end in physical destruction.
Man is
master of his fate by reason of his
God-bestowed ability to think, and by his
thoughts he will be justified or he will
be condemned. It is the power of his
thought which demonstrates the
immortality which he has in common with
God. It is the story of man as a thinking
entity which demonstrates the history of
God as Mind from which emanates all that
is. Verily,
"On earth there is nothing great but
man;
"In man there is nothing great but
Mind."
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(Formerly at
Northwoods Divine Science Resource
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