"Chaos" has lately become a field of lively scientific study. As a result, some long-held beliefs are turning topsy-turvy.
For example, astronomers have studied the mysterious "great red spot" in the atmosphere of Jupiter for centuries and had always thought it to be the work of stable and orderly forces. Now computer models suggest it is expression of chaos masquerading as order, not order at all. In other research, scientists studying computer models of motions long thought to be a jumble of indecipherable disorder suddenly find, on their computer screens, endlessly branching patterns of simplicity and beauty interweaving with bursts of random turbulence. Chaos in stability, order in turbulence!
These new "chaos" theories, described for the layman in books such as James Gleick's Chaos: Making a New Science, may well prove useful in illuminating some scientific and engineering problems. In the final analysis, however, chaos theory shows mankind as entrenched as ever in the grasp of discordant material structures, uncontrollable material forces, and calamitous events. In fact, chaos theory suggests that matter is inherently subject to chaos. And if you and I are subject to matter, as is generally believed, you and I would be inherently subject to chaos. Not a comforting thought!
As I reached the end of Mr. Gleick's book, I thought of the Bible's account of Job and the calamities that swept over him. Job's calamities certainly portrayed the presumed liability of humanity to suffer from unpredictable, uncontrollable, disruptive forces and events, suggestive of those I had been reading about. In the end, however, Job's experience illustrated that God and the harmony of His cosmos could be made manifest where chaotic events claimed to have taken an irremediable toll.
In Unity of Good Mrs. Eddy writes, "The chaos of mortal mind is made the stepping-stone to the cosmos of immortal Mind." Un., p. 56. After thirty-odd chapters of chaos and controversy, the story of Job moves from chaos into cosmos: God reveals His full might and majesty, humbling Job's suffering sense. Job exclaims, "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee." Job 42:5. And his human well-being is restored to overflowing. Commenting on this in Unity of Good, Mrs. Eddy writes, "Job's faith and hope gained him the assurance that the so-called sufferings of the flesh are unreal." Un., p. 55.
Where do the chaotic forces or events, such as originally overwhelmed Job, come from? In the story of Job, they are attributed to Satan, a supposed power apart from God and opposed to good. Christian Science defines the devil, or evil, as mortal mind, the false consciousness that says matter is an objective reality and that material forces originating in chaotic matter control us. Christian Science challenges and denies this entire premise.
You and I have no evidence for the actuality of matter except as relayed by the physical senses. Put another way, matter exists in the mentality that perceives and describes it. This mentality, or mortal mind, is self-assertive, claiming its own existence in the product of matter. But divine Science shows why material existence is deceptive. The following postulates describe the true nature of God and His cosmos: God is All, infinite; nothing exists outside of His allness, and nothing unlike Him exists within His allness. God is Mind; as there is but one God, there is but one Mind, one intelligence, and any other mentality claiming to exist or to be intelligent is an impossibility. God is the only creator, and He is Spirit; He made all that is made, and all that He made is spiritual and good. His forces are the forces of Soul and Love. Here we see the actuality of God's cosmos; there is no trace of chaos in it.
From a spiritually scientific standpoint, man exists in this cosmos of God as the very reflection, or idea, of God. You and I can acknowledge the fact of that cosmos right here in our human experience. That is the only way you and I and all the rest of mankind can escape from living by random chance—in relative harmony, security, and health, or in disorder, disruption, and disease, all at the whim of blind material forces, or mortal mind.
Is it practical for us to expect to do this? Let's consider an analogy.
Does the availability of light depend upon the absence of darkness? No. We all know that light eliminates darkness. Similarly, stability and health do not depend upon the absence of disorder and disease. Order, stability, and health have affirmative force derived from their origin in the cosmos of divine Mind. In their presence, disorder, or chaos, dissolves, just as darkness dissolves in the presence of light.
Christ Jesus, of course, provides the supreme example of this divine power to destroy chaos with divine harmony. Consider his healing of the epileptic boy. The child was subject to unpredictable fits. As his father said, "Ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water." Unpredictability is the sign of chaos. Then Matthew records, "And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour." Matt. 17:15, 18.
As explained earlier, Christian Science equates the devil with mortal mind, and considers disease, regardless of its name, to be a derangement imposed on the human consciousness by the inharmonious activity of mortal mind. Whenever we're presented with this supposed mind's chaotic tendencies, we can realize that man's spiritual selfhood is forever enfolded in the cosmos of God, divine Mind, and therefore uninterruptibly governed by the stability of Mind. When our prayer rises from truths such as these, Christ, Truth, opens the human consciousness to reflect the unvarying stability and harmony of Mind's cosmos, and healing follows.
Chaos may suggest its unpredictability as sudden danger, chronic confusion, or organs and tissues acting out of control. But we are not locked into such scenarios. We can realize the spiritual fact that each of us is indissolubly at one with Mind, reflecting Mind's harmony. As this truth fills human consciousness, destroying fear, the human body and human experience visibly resume normal, orderly function and expression. Our thoughts, our bodies, cannot be used to portray error's chaos. The order of Mind's cosmos is irreversibly expressed throughout all creation, and this truth will harmonize all that we perceive as substance and life.
Will mere belief in such statements lift humanity above the complexities of chaos and all other errors and evils? No. Belief will not do it. You and I must spiritually understand the specific laws of God's cosmos and apply them to forestall or eliminate the effects of chaos in our individual experience. The laws of God's cosmos, to the extent they are universally recognized, will reduce the effects of chaos upon humanity as a whole. Chaotic events will continue, however, until collective humanity reverses its ongoing tendency to attribute more and more power to matter, and to misunderstand or minimize the power of Spirit.
Chaos, expressed in "the fury of nature" or political or economic events "beyond our control," claims to disrupt the natural harmony of being. As humanity advances Spiritward, we will come to understand the interrelationship between collective mortal-mindedness and chaotic events that impact large segments of mankind. But understanding more of divine Mind's absolute control of the universe will ultimately prove the truth of Mrs. Eddy's statement in Science and Health "There is no vapid fury of mortal mind—expressed in earthquake, wind, wave, lightning, fire, bestial ferocity—and this so-called mind is self-destroyed." Science and Health, p. 293.
We can all learn how to see through and beyond the chaos to the security of God's cosmos—learn to see the actual presence of God's kingdom here on earth. Step by step, we can demonstrate that we are equally secure in the fixity of divine Mind's cosmos, where the ultimately illusory fury of matter or matter forces—alias mortal mind—cannot touch us. Through demonstration of divine Science, the chaos of mortal mind can truly be made "the stepping-stone to the cosmos of immortal Mind."
