Mind And Nature

IN Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy often speaks of the apparent obscuration of Mind, Truth, by mortal belief, under the figure of clouds obscuring the light of the sun. By carrying out this line of illustration, some of the points in the philosophy of Christian Science which are considered difficult by beginners may be cleared up.

Let us suppose that there were an island in the Pacific ocean far removed from all other land, inhabited by a people who had never had communication with people from any other country. Let us assume, further, that the conditions were such that the sky over this island was always overcast with clouds,—not clouds of uniform consistency, but with clouds always drifting, and somewhat broken; never thin enough in any place to permit the outline of the sun’s disk to be visible, but thin enough in places, now and then, to permit the sun’s light to be manifest in golden spots in the clouds, otherwise comparatively dark.

Naturally the people of this island, never having had direct sense perception of the sun, would have no word in their language with which to speak of it; nor would they have any knowledge of the sun, unless they had reasoned out that there must be such an object. They would have a word signifying light, and they would probably think that the clouds were the source of this light. Seeing light spots in the clouds, here and there, they would exclaim, “Oh, how beautiful!” and they would very much desire to keep these light spots from fading or drifting away, but they would be unable to do so.

As a matter of fact, they would be mistaken in almost all their conclusions with regard to light. Instead of light being a property of the clouds, as it would seem to them, the clouds, in their very nature, are opposed to light—the more cloud, the less light. They would see light, not because of the clouds, but in spite of them; and they would see light far more perfectly and enduringly if the clouds could be utterly swept away. They would think that light is in the clouds; but the light would be no more in the clouds than everywhere else,—less so, if anything; and the light would never be in the clouds in the sense of being a property of or inseparable from them. They would think that the fading or drifting away of the spots of light was a change in the light; but there would be no change in the light,—merely a change in the obscuring medium. They would probably think that the different light spots in the clouds were different lights, and so they would speak of many lights; but in fact they saw only one light, the light of the sun. made to appear to them to be many lights by the conditions of the obscuring medium.

Mind, God, manifested in all true intelligence, all genuine love, all real beauty and harmony, changelessly and eternally, is omnipresent, even as the sun’s light is omnipresent in the solar system. But Mind, God, is more or less concealed from the apprehension of human beings by a changing, drifting condition of general false belief, named by Mrs. Eddy “mortal mind,” named by St. Paul “the carnal mind,” and named by Jesus the one evil, or the devil. The apparent obscuration of Mind, God, by mortal sense is so constant in human experience that mankind have questioned the complete and unclouded perception of God realized by Christ Jesus. This obscuration is so continuous and dense that many human beings find it as difficult to believe that there is a God behind all the phenomena of human experience as the islanders might find it difficult to believe that there was a sun behind the clouds, when no one of them had ever had a clear perception of it. Christ Jesus, being born of the Spirit on the one side, and of a human mother on the other, was on the border between the clouds of mortal sense and the clear sky of Spirit above; that is, he was above the clouds, yet near enough to them to be in touch with them and with those below these clouds or those enveloped in them. He was thus able to gain an unclouded vision of Spirit, God. All others know what they know about God by a process of learning, by a process of intellectual and spiritual effort, thus coming into a mental apprehension of God which is valid, certain, and valuable, but which in most cases is not full and unclouded apprehension. The islanders would never know of the sun directly: they might know of it through a process of reasoning, and thus know it only mentally, if at all.

At one point, the illustration cannot be made to apply; to the subject under consideration. The best way for the islanders to apprehend the sun would be by direct and unclouded sense evidence, if possible; but God cannot be known at all by sense evidence, for sense evidence is itself the obscuring cloud which prevents the full apprehension of God. The only way that God can be known is spiritually; so that, in proportion as human beings learn to know God through spiritual perception, in spite of the obscurations of sense evidence, in that proportion they come into direct knowledge of God in the only way that He can be known, and the clouds of sense no longer exist for them.

One phase of the condition of false belief named mortal mind is the belief named matter. As the islanders, speaking in terms of our supposition, would never behold the sun’s light except through the clouds, so human sense has never outwardly beheld the manifestations of Mind, God, except through the obscuring veil named matter. Hence, unless we have learned to know God through the mental and spiritual faculties within, we are never able to perceive the manifestations of Mind as they really are. In fact, those who depend solely on outward evidence are apt to be skeptical about the existence of the all-creating and all-ruling Spirit; while, on the other hand, they are apt to think that such intelligence and harmony and beauty as they see manifest in connection with matter is a property of the matter itself, just as the islanders would be apt to think that the light they saw was a property of the clouds.

The islanders might argue, “No clouds, no light; therefore there can lie no light where there is no cloud.” We can see how foolish such a deduction as this would be, and equally foolish is the deduction of the modern materialist, who reasons in this wise: “In human observation, where there is no brain, there is no mind; hence there can be no mind or intelligence where there is no brain; therefore mind is a property of the brain.” As a matter of fact, the mortal embodiment and experience is but a projection of general mortal belief, through which, here and there, the one omnipresent Mind shines more perfectly, perchance, than it can shine through the more material conditions of mortal belief. The clouds of mortal belief are thinner at these points, yet dense enough and sufficiently opposed to Mind in character to obscure more or less largely and pervert the true characteristics of Mind, when beheld through this veil even in its thinnest parts. The more intellectual, moral, and spiritual a human being is, the thinner the veil of mortal belief at that point. Where little or nothing of intelligence is manifest, as in earth and water, there the cloud of mortal belief is thickest. Intervening conditions of density are manifest in the appearances named plants, trees, animals, manifesting varying degrees of intelligence; and highest of all. as already indicated, are human beings, culminating in Christ Jesus.

Flowers, for instance, are such organizations in general mortal belief that, while they do not permit Mind to shine through and be manifest as sentient life, as in the case of men, yet they permit much of divine beauty and harmony to be manifest for a time. When we see a perfect flower, we exclaim: “Oh, how. beautiful!” and we would like to keep it in its beauty and freshness; but we say that its beauty will wither and fade away. As a matter of fact, the beauty of the flower no more changes or withers than does the sunlight; the fading and withering are incidents of the obscuring medium, named matter. If we could sweep this obscuring medium out of the way, as we shall some time be able to do through the power of Christ, Truth, we should behold beauty and harmony far more perfectly than they are ever manifest in a rose or a lily. We should thus have uninterrupted experience of beauty and harmony, forever.

Mind, God, is all intelligence, all beauty, all harmony, omnipresent and eternal. He is no more in matter than sunlight is in the clouds. The clouds lessen the amount of sunlight received, even as Mind is less manifest in connection with matter than it is anywhere else; and this is perceived to he a fact by those able to apprehend Mind and its manifestations as they are. Such apprehension is possible only through spiritual discernment, and never through sense perception. Said Jesus: “God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

God, the sole creator, is Mind: and the creations of Mind are necessarily mental; that is to say, ideas. Only those who are able to apprehend ideas, and to think in terms of ideas, wholly apart from any material manifestation, are able to apprehend the things of God as they really are. Mind has created a heaven and an earth, and plants and animals and man. and known as they are, these are all universal ideas of Mind, and are never in or of matter. They are apprehended in a very imperfect and perverted manner through the obscuring veil of false material belief, which is no better a medium for beholding these things as they are than are clouds for beholding the sun’s light as it is.

Under a slightly different figure Mrs. Eddy has brought to us this same line of illustration. She says: “The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle, but as matter the glass is less opaque than the walls. The mortal mind through which Truth appears most vividly is that one which has lost much materiality —much error—in order to become a better transparency for Truth. Then, like a cloud melting into thin vapor, it no longer hides the sun.” “There is neither growth, maturity, nor decay in Soul. These changes are the mutations of material sense, the varying clouds of mortal belief, which hide the truth of being.” “How little light or heat reach our earth when clouds cover the sun’s face! So Christian Science can be seen only as the clouds of corporeal sense roll away” (Science and Health, pp. 295, 31O, 548).

As already indicated, the islanders, in terms of our supposition, would be apt to think of the light manifest in several spots in the sky as many lights; but they would see only one light, the light of the sun, which would be manifest equally everywhere, if the clouds were swept aside. So human beings, owing to the varying conditions of the obscuring medium, perceive Mind manifest in spots, as it were, through the veil of matter, and they speak of men as being, or as having, many minds. But in truth there is only one Mind manifest, which would be manifest in all individualities, and far more perfectly, if the beliefs named matter and mortal mind could be swept away, as they are being swept away more and more through the application of the teachings of the Bible as they are interpreted in Science and Health, and as they will be swept away completely by the continued application of these teachings.

Likewise in flowers, and in trees and in the other forms of so-called nature, we do not really behold many beauties and many harmonies, but we behold more or less imperfectly, more or less transiently, the one imperishable and perfect harmony and beauty,—the harmony and beauty of Mind. Tennyson wrote,—

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies; —
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand.
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

In these beautiful words he expressed a great truth, for he who can correctly discern the Life, beauty, and harmony manifest in a little flower, is sure to find God, and man in His image and likeness.

By maintaining the understanding which has come to us through the teachings of our Leader, and by exercising a rightly discriminating sense, we may know that God is in a degree manifest through what men call nature; that He is never manifest because of matter, but always in spite of it. Then we may read with both profit and pleasure, and at the same time, without perversion of understanding, the many beautiful passages in the Bible where God is represented as being manifest in nature, such as the following, from the Psalms:—

“Praise waiteth for thee, O God, in Sion: and unto thee shall the vow be performed. . . . Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it: them greatly enrichest it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn, when thou hast so provided for it. . . Thou crownest the year with thy goodness; and thy paths drop fatness. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness: and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys also are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing.”