The question, What is joy, and what is it to enjoy? is sometimes asked, and it can perhaps be most satisfactorily answered out of one's own experience. The mortal body without the aid of mortal mind could have no sense of pleasure; hence all joy must be mental. The joys or pleasures of this so-called mind are to see, hear, feel, taste, and smell. A great deal of enjoyment is supposed to come to mortals by these channels, but how much of it is unmixed with evil, unadulterated good? Also, what proportion of this joy is lasting, substantial? None, you say. Indeed, if any of the mortal concepts could be prolonged indefinitely, mortal mind would not be in evidence, for it is as fickle as it is fleeting.
Further proof of the unreliability of mortal mind is that what is thought good by one is pronounced evil by another. So poor deluded mortal mind is found to be insubstantial, unreliable, a lie and unreal, because a lie, being ever opposed to Truth, to divine intelligence, cannot have reality. As this fact becomes apparent to consciousness, the mocking tyrant, mortal mind, gloating and triumphing in its ignorant belief in its own power, falls an unmourned victim to the two-edged sword of Truth, and man is beheld as free, the perfect likeness of God; the divine idea, the image of infinite Mind.
During the conflicts between Spirit and flesh, Truth and error, the latter has grown increasingly subtle and tyrannical, thereby destroying confidence in the testimony of material sense. Thus error kills itself. To gain spiritual joy we must overcome every false belief that matter can give pain or pleasure, and the final demonstration will be the glorious understanding of Life as God. This fact being established, material life is seen to be a myth, and if all true joy be in the understanding of divine Mind, in reflecting infinite Love, we shall look in loving obedience to the one who more than any other man taught and demonstrated the fruits of obedience and love, whose coming was the fulfilment of the law.
