The Christ Ideal · 6 of 9

Christ and Nature

We have seen that Jesus by no means accepted the doctrine which identifies God and nature. We have also noted that his ideal for the redemption of man is harmony with the divine will, consequently adjustment to the laws of nature as a revelation of God.

As this may be a new idea to some, the possibility of taking the Christ attitude toward the entire universe, it may be well to divert the discussion from the direct consideration of Jesus’s teaching, that we may more fully illustrate the Christ law at large before considering its social application.

In these days, it is indeed necessary to consider the relationship of Christ to the material world, in view of the prevalence of a certain doctrine which claims to have reduced Jesus’s teaching to a science.

The nature of the material world is, however, one of the most difficult subjects which confront the philosophical student. It is repeatedly postponed by many writers, or put off under the guise of an explanation which does not explain. The differences of opinion in regard to it are absolute, and more nonsense has been put forward as philosophy under this head than under any other.

Not to concern ourselves with the history of opinion, there are live issues enough in the world of thought to-day to furnish abundant topics for investigation. In this enlightened twentieth century there are those who profess to disbelieve in the existence of matter, there are those who deem it an illusion (Maya), those who declare that it has no qualities of its own,—not even drugs and poisons,—those who regard it as the only reality, and those who almost worship it as king. It seems incredible that in these days of exact physical and chemical science such a divergence of views can exist. Yet, from another point of view, this confusion of thought is easily accounted for by the fact that mind and matter are almost indissolubly blended; and what one man describes as matter, another very naturally classifies as mind.

In no department of thought has this confusion crept in to such an extent as in regard to foods, drugs, and poisons. In certain cases it has been discovered that the effect of drugs has been mitigated by thought. Bread pills have been known to accomplish the results of powerful drugs, when taken with powerful belief. Flavored water, under a Latin name, has proved equally efficacious.

Surprising results have followed in certain instances where people have eaten one kind of food, believing that they were eating another. Everyone has observed instances of this kind. Every doctor has a fund of such anecdotes to relate. And so has grown up the belief that the qualities of foods, drugs, and poisons, are such as the mind gives them. The belief has grown into a dogma, until one frequently hears that it matters little what one eats; it is what one thinks about it that is effective. How far is this conclusion sound?

It is a scientific fact that a powerful drug may be swallowed without effect by a hypnotised person who believes it to be water or some equally mild liquid. Does this prove that the drug has no qualities of its own, or that in certain cases the power of man’s mind is sufficient to overcome the chemical qualities, and produce a different effect upon the physical organism?

Susceptibility is, in general terms, an affair of the living organism. Foods and drugs which produce certain effects while the body is alive, produce no result after the body is dead. Obviously, assimilation and healing are qualities of the living organism only. One would not expect medicines and foods to be efficacious after dissolution. There are chemicals, however, which are effective after death, which preserve the body for many years. Is it reasonable to suppose that their preservative qualities are merely due to the suggestions of the embalmer and the “subconscious mentality” of the race? Take a more marked instance. Sulphuric acid eats marble. The effect is purely chemical, and is obviously as independent of the mind as the wearing away of the soil by a foaming torrent. Unless one believe that matter has no existence apart from man’s mind, one must admit that there are native qualities in the physical world which tend, under uniform conditions, to produce the same effect the world over. That is, that those are inherent characteristics of matter, whose tendencies are to produce harmony; they are not the diseased results which man suffers through ignorance, fear, and the varying susceptibilities which differ with each individual. It is the tendency of the soil and the sunlight, for example, to nourish the plant. According to the same principle, man’s physical organism is nourished by nutritious foods. These results are ultimately attributable, of course, to divine causation. When man is in a normal, healthy condition, the tendency of natural phenomena is to produce harmony. The ideal, therefore, is not to impose egoistic thought on nature, to project the qualities of mind into matter, but rather to remove all obstacles both in the mind and in the body, that we may know nature as it really is, as an orderly, purposive, divine manifestation.

It is clear, then, that there are many factors to be considered in an analysis of the experience called material.

First, there are the divinely implanted tendencies and qualities, governed by uniform laws, varying with different substances and under different conditions. This is the material world per se, as a systematic, progressive, purposive objectification of Spirit. What this world of nature is, apart from any particular human experience, modern science is more and more fully telling us. We must therefore turn to geology, biology, physics, chemistry, and the other special sciences for detailed descriptions.

Second, there is the physical organism of man, which of course modifies in some degree all physical experiences according to temperament and the state of health. The sense of taste, for example, varies not only with the general habit of life, the kind of foods one has lived on, but is greatly altered by fever and other severe disease. It is important to note and reiterate that what we call the qualities of foods and other physical substances are due to the combined effect of matter and our organs of sense. We must have ears in order to hear. To what extent our ears modify the vibrations which we know as sound, we do not know. The fact that a man sees no colours, if his organs of vision are defective, leads to the conclusion that his eyes, and possibly the other senses, have the power greatly to modify the vibrations which give rise to all physical sensation. Third, we have the far more interesting factor of mind which transforms physical sensation into a state of consciousness. Here, again, no one knows how great a change may be wrought by the transforming medium. No one knows a physical sensation in itself; we know only the state of consciousness which corresponds to it.

On the mental side there is a wealth of thoughts to classify, not merely the subconscious suggestions of the race, but all the beliefs, fears, idiosyncrasies, and the like, which constitute our minds in general. Then there are the passing thoughts, suggestions, and fears, the changes wrought through hypnotism, the effect produced by Latin names attached to drugs, the power of the doctor’s suggestion, and a host of similar suggestions. Truly, the array is startling.

If we compare these three factors, matter, physical organism, and mind, we conclude that matter tends to be uniform, the physical organism is a very variable quantity, and the mind is subject to constant fluctuation. Thus we have a uniform quantity translated by a varying medium and interpreted by an inconstant observer.

The important fact is that matter is known only through mind. We do not know it in itself. At best, we know it only through the scientific consciousness of the race.

Yet the fact that matter is known through consciousness does not imply that it is a conscious element. There is a difference between a mere thought— for example, a prayer—and the perceptions which are brought vividly and involuntarily before the mind, e. g., the sensation of fire. Knowledge of what fire comes from is obtainable not by experimenting with thought, but by handling ponderable substances. We learn that under certain conditions wood will burn. The combustion is due to the union of a chemical substance with oxygen. The entire race, scientific and unscientific, knows that fire will burn. We know that water will put fire out. And in all this we are dealing with uniform external forces, which the mind can observe, but neither create nor control by a mere process of thought.

Again, we may illustrate by the perception of hardness. We know a thing is hard by coming in contact with it, not in thought, but with our physical organism. Matter is hard, soft, solid, liquid, or gaseous, independently of the mind of man. The sum total of physical forces, the conservation of energy, is also independent of human thought. The laws and forms of matter, the phenomena of life, and the stages of evolution among all the multiform species are equally independent.

The mind can neither destroy nor create. It can only observe, become more and more minutely conscious, and direct or modify through its physical instrument, the brain. The utmost that mind can accomplish with matter is to produce an impression on the cells of the brain. All changes beyond that are physical.

It is clear, then, that the mind does not directly change matter. Foods, drugs, and poisons are not changed by thought. Thought modifies, overcomes, or destroys the effect upon the organism.

If one wishes to free the body from the effects of tobacco, one must leave off using tobacco. It is in vain to argue that tobacco will not injure if one believes it will do no harm, although this belief may be effective temporarily. In the long run the body becomes like what it feeds on. “As a man soweth, so shall he also reap.”

One can gradually accustom the organism to take arsenic, so that a quantity ordinarily sufficient to produce death may be taken at one time. But this by no means disproves the power of arsenic to kill. A man may slacken and even stop the beating of his heart. But, if he holds it still too long at a time, death will result, as actual fact has shown. One may accustom one’s self to sleep less and less each night. But a man who reduced the time devoted to sleep to one hour, then less and less time, finally died.

There are natural limits, then, beyond which the mind in its control over the body may not safely go. Matter is not fundamentally the cause of consciousness. But, while we are linked with a physical organism, it is that which limits it, and gives rise to its perceptions.

What sort of a world we might behold, were we freed from our physical organisms, we do not know, because we lack the experience. Very likely it would be very different, as unlike the present world we see as a dream is unlike our present waking life.

But that would not prove that matter does not exist. It would not prove that the present life is a delusion. It would only prove that what we see is coloured by the organism through which we see it. Given another organism, we should have a different perceptive experience. That which gave rise to the former experience would still be there; that is, the vibrations, the manifestations of force, which through our senses of sight, hearing and touch, we knew as colour, form, sound, hardness, and the rest.

If, then, you accept the conclusions of certain idealists, and declare that matter has no existence apart from mind, that, if all men were absent, no world would be seen, you sweep away the divine manifestation which is the real cause of this our world of sense-experience. For what we call matter is ultimately the diversified power of God in causative action.

We know this activity according to the deliverances of our present organism, interpreted by consciousness. How it might appear if known through a more refined organism, we do not know. How it might affect us on Mars or some other planet, we do not know; nor are we aware of its nature as perceived by our spiritual senses, except so far as our present very imperfect experiences permit.

If God’s life or spirit is the foundation of things, all force, life, motion, substance, is ultimately spiritual. In order fully to know what these are, we must discern them spiritually, just as we must interpret the gospel of Jesus by the spirit, rather than by the letter.

Spirit known in its most objective form of manifestation is matter. Known through the intellect, it is thought. Known through conscience, it is the right; through the heart (spiritual intuition), it is love; through reason, it is truth.

There is intelligence in matter, because God, or Spirit, is there as its reality, its life, power, purpose.

Our senses do not deceive us, as the thoughtless idealist affirms. It is thought that is deceived. Our senses translate for us the vibrations of Spirit in its most objective form. They are trustworthy, when rightly used by the mind, because they are gifts of Spirit.

The conservation of energy ultimately means the eternal conservation of Spirit. When this law is thought of in relation to matter alone, it plunges the mind into numberless difficulties. But, when regarded from the point of view of Spirit, it is obvious that there is no break in the continuity due to mental and physical interchange.

Matter, then, is far more real than the subjective idealist believes; it is lifted many planes above the low level to which it has been relegated by mystics, pessimists, and believers in Maya.

It is not as real as unthinking common sense seems to prove, when it strikes against a wall. When subjected to analysis, all that this experience means is that force has met force, while a greater force may be brought to bear to destroy the wall. Forms are transient; it is only Spirit in changing forms that abides, God and his republic of human souls.

Matter is not a “shadow”; it is a real embodiment of Spirit. It is therefore to be understood in all its phases in relation to Spirit, by seeking first the Kingdom of God. Thought has limitations; it is only Spirit that is free. To know matter in its truest sense, man must harmonise with it as a beautiful harmonious revelation. He must think of the living presence within it, beating in the heart, evolving through the struggle of the fittest, manifested in all the grandeurs of stellar and planetary space.

The highest function of thought as related to matter is therefore right understanding. Instead of imposing its own suggestions upon matter, thought should seek more and more to know matter in itself, to set self aside. “Not my will, but thine, be done.” Only the Christ truly knows what nature is.

What thought cannot do, God or Spirit can. Seek, therefore, the way of Spirit, and harmonise with that. If it be a part of God’s ideal for all individual souls to control animals and the phenomena of nature, God will declare the way, he has revealed the way through Jesus. When such power is attained, it will be spiritually gained and spiritually applied by exalted souls, whose motives are too pure to permit unrighteous use of the great power thus granted them. It is futile for selfish thought to seek such powers of command.

Likewise, in our present practical endeavours to conquer disease and master the flesh, suggestions and affirmations have decided limitations; only the Spirit, only the Christ attitude, is all-availing. He only shall attain perfect health who, ceasing to affirm merely egoistic thought, adjusts mind and body to the divine upwelling.

Through God we can do all things that are in harmony with the ideals of God. Only in this highest direction is the way freely open. There the soul can create. There the soul can triumph.

In all relations with matter, therefore, ask what God is accomplishing there. Look back of pain to the power of God restoring equilibrium or carrying forward the processes of growth. Follow the promptings of God, and seek those surroundings which harmonise with the organism in a normal condition.

Do not be bound by the flesh, but seek unison with God as revealed within it, the laws which govern it, the ideal end which it serves.

Remember that Jesus identified sickness with sin, a lack of harmony with the divine law, the divine tendency; and so seek freedom from it by becoming unselfish, by moderation and equanimity, through the peace of the Spirit,through personal communion with the Father in the Christ spirit.

Remember that ultimately matter is the continuous causative activity of God, and so learn to look at life as a unit, as really spiritual. Thus shall the soul rise to the true dignity of matter. Thus shall it become progressively free. Thus shall nature be understood at last as Jesus understood it, in the Christ spirit, as a part of the Christ world.