Don’t just THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX, Climb Out!
What is the TRUTH?
It’s what science is discovering
but can’t admit.
It’s what religion long ago forgot
and cannot teach
It’s what anyone can learn
Because it’s not about science or religion.
Our science, by its nature, believes in and studies the world we see around us. It cares not about cause. It is concerned only with what appears to be physical. Science is about studying our world, appreciating its wondrous variety and magnificence, nurturing its potential and “curing” its negative impacts on humans. It is, or has become, based on the premise or philosophy that what we see, no matter how deep we look, is all there is and it clings to the mythology that it created itself. It is the RELIGION of matter.
Our Judeo-Christian religion, in general, is man’s attempt to codify God; to study man’s relationship to God throughout history. It says, “Man is separated from God, but not to worry, God is watching over us.” It says, “God condones evil because it strengthens us and makes us need and want to be with Him.” Religion is, for the most part, group activity aimed at studying and worshiping that which created, and is outside, our world. We are to have faith that, although we are separated from God, He still loves us and we can, join Him in a place called Heaven after death.
But if God, Mind, Truth, Absolute Being is real, as Religion says, then religion would be about knowing the Truth and could be, logically speaking the SCIENCE of life.
There are those, of course, who have understood the shortcomings and irony of human thought and have taught the unifying truth that the materialism of our science and the dualism preached by religion hide the much better and provable Truth that we can learn to “see” with our minds and find that God is all around and through us right now, always.
The Bible rightly teaches that God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, but man insists that since our senses show us another, limited reality, there is DUALITY—more than one knowledge, more than one power, and more than one presence. What if the Bible is correct and there is only ONE knowledge, power and presence? What if the Bible is correct when it says, “The world was not made of things which are visible”? (Hebrews 11:3)
This would mean that what we perceive with our senses isn’t what’s real; that the real world can’t be seen with our eyes What if the “separation” Christians talk about isn’t a physical separation from God at all. What if it’s a mental or imagined separation which can be changed by, what the Bible calls, “having the Mind of Christ”? Noted physicist, Niels Bohr, famously said, “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” It’s all about perception. Jesus the Christ had a mind which saw God’s perfection rather than the world’s limited projection of the senses. Where humans perceived sickness, trouble and death, Jesus saw wholeness, harmony and life. He didn’t “heal” real problems; he showed their impossibility in a larger Truth that is perfection. Jesus said, “It is the Spirit which quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing”—nothing.
In eighteen-seventy-five Mary Baker Eddy put it this way:
There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God and man is his image and likeness. Therefore, man is not material; he is spiritual.
Mrs. Eddy understood Jesus’ teaching as science, not religion. His healings were natural to infinite spirit and cannot be written off as “miracles”. He corrected errors in perception. He said that when we understood we would do these things as well. Mrs. Eddy was healed by this understanding and taught thousands to do the same. Through relentless study of the Bible and her faith she brought this Truth to the world under the name Christian Science.
Many others have and do understand and practice the Truth of the unseen. Remember Walter Russell? 1871 - 1963. After a spiritual awakening in his youth, he realized he was not limited to worldly ideas of practical training in fields of science, arts, or engineering. He could tap into the spiritual understanding of creativity and teach “himself” quickly the command of whatever field he desired. From Walter-Russel.com:
Walter Russell’s cosmology spans both the physical 3D sensed simulated reality and the unsensed metaphysical true reality. Our task is to correctly interpret what we observe in our sensed reality and begin to learn about the true reality which we likely never knew existed.
Whether we study and comprehend the complex theories expressed in Russell’s many books, it was clear to many that he possessed understanding of a larger reality. And what of modern writer-teachers such as Marcette Chute, Charles Filmore, William Samuels, Joel S. Goldsmith, Miguel Ruiz, Eckhart Tolle, Emmet Fox and many others who express clear, consistent, and applicable knowledge far beyond that of “mainstream” scientists and theologians? The consistent thread revolves around the reality that it is our thinking which upholds and ties us to the idea of a limited material existence. All offer help in freeing ourselves from limiting thoughts and, in the case of Ms. Chute, from the limiting,
religious interpretation of Jesus’ metaphysical teaching and demonstrations, offered by Christian Seminaries. Can we change our thinking? Is the “mind of Christ” really available to us?
A Hollywood movie came out in 2018 with the unlikely title, “Don’t Worry, He won’t Get Far on Foot.” This is the true story of Alcoholic-Quadriplegic, John Callahan, who overcame what is perhaps the worse pit a human can find himself in. As a thoroughly alcoholic twenty year old, Callahan was turned into a quadriplegic alcoholic by a tragic auto accident. But before that, Callahan had a dream of being a cartoonist. After years of struggle to free himself from the mental prison of alcohol addiction, he set about to make some use of his unusable legs, arms and hands. He eventually learned if he wedged a “Sharpie” between his hands, he could wiggle his arms enough to make squiggles and later crude cartoons on cardboard. Years later he was selling his droll, sometimes crude cartoons to the likes of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. He was a successful cartoonist.
A documentary was made of his life before he passed in 2010, John was asked how he was able to rise above a seemingly hopeless situation. He answered,
“I learned to stop thinking.”
Is this not exactly what all the sages throughout history, including Jesus, have tried to
teach us? It is the human mind that generates, both cumulatively and individually, what we perceive, endure and enjoy in this world. It is this mind which, while we have each learned to depend upon it for “survival,” we must learn to get beyond to experience real peace and prepare for rejoining eternity.
We might ask, why does not the cumulative intelligence of our vast scientific and theological brain-trust not embrace the logical assumption (once proven by Kurt Gödel) that there is cause outside of what appears to be real? There is even a scientific theory as to why this occurs! It is known as the Semmelweis Reflex. This is the theory that there is a tendency to reject new evidence or new knowledge because it contradicts established and deeply held norms and strongly held belief systems.
So I am saying, the phrase “think outside the box,” might be more accurately expressed as, “think without the box.” As our friend John Callahan pointed out, if we can give up the “box,” something outside—not perceived before—becomes evidential and beneficial.
The box is, of course, the human mind. Climb out.
Jim Gleeson 2019