Contributing editor comments on a book that explores an issue of importance to all who value spirituality.
I've seen a film of a metal ingot being taken out of a furnace. It threw off sparks while it glowed a fierce white and orange.
What caused this light? The intense heat. But what if we became absorbed in a study of the metal itself, and stopped thinking about the interaction between the metal and the energy that caused it to glow? What if we took the ingot away from the heat and made an analysis of it—probed it right past the molecular level into its atomic and subatomic components? We could end up with a Jaz drive full of information and a lump of cold, dark metal. The information might be rated as brilliant, but the awe inspired by that shimmering, radiant ingot would be gone.
The Secular Mind by Robert Coles aptly illustrates this point. It deals with the exploration of the human mind and its divergence from the sacred over the past two centuries. It traces the growing influence of secularism, and provides an intellectual history of the modern study of the secular mind, from the field of psychiatry to today's study of biochemistry and neurophysiology.
Nothing is more intimate to our sense of being than consciousness. So it's not surprising that many people will feel a chill in the modern study of the secular mind as it is pictured assuming dominance in our culture—as it becomes more rigorously defined as a mere mass of chemicals and neurons, having at the end no significant difference from the subatomic activity of our cold metal ingot.
Mr. Cole's book illustrates a point made in Bible: "The carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Rom. 8:7. The secular mind and what the Bible refers to as "the mind of Christ" I Cor. 2:16. are opposites. The origin of one is, by definition, in matter; the origin of the other is in God. One is self-directed, the other is God-inspired. One is self-absorbed, the other is God-centered. To be more precise, "the mind of Christ" isn't an entity separate from God; it is, in fact, God Himself, the divine Mind.
Since this age is not only one of stirring spiritual renewal, but is often aggressive in asserting that the spiritual is irrelevant, it is helpful to see how secular influences have frequently waylaid the sincere spiritual thinker and liver. It's easy for the spiritual thinker to be against the secular mind. But does he or she know enough to detect its influence? Mr. Coles raises this question in The Secular Mind.
He relates, for example, this conversation he had with the professor and theologian Paul Tillich: " 'Church attendance for us can become a weekly social rite, a boost to our morale.' Is that the secular mind in operation? I ventured to inquire. A smile from the professor: 'Yes, you have it, there.'" Robert Coles, The Secular Mind (Princeton University Press, 1999), p. 5 .
And Mr. Coles offers another example of how subtle the influence of the secular mind is. The poet and physician William Carlos Williams told him about a grandmother who said: "It used to be I prayed to God, that I would learn what He wanted from me, and how He wanted me to behave (I wanted His help to be that kind of person, the kind He wanted); but now I pray to God that He help us with this problem, and the next one—to be a Big Pal of ours!" ibid., p. 103 .
It can be startling to see how far we may have strayed ourselves from praying, "To serve Thee is my choice." Christian Science Hymnal, No. 136. Jesus' prayers "Not my will, but thine, be done" and "Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven" Luke 22:42 and Matt. 6:10. quickly set us back on the right track.
The life that is lived conscious of its oneness with the divine is like the ingot glowing from the fire. As the Journal's founder, Mary Baker Eddy, writes: "The heart that beats mostly for self is seldom alight with love. To live so as to keep human consciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 160.
