Friday, August 21, 2009

7. Knowing Is Being

The previous article explains how spiritual under-standing provides infinite stability at all times. This article will take it one step further and will look into the meaning and conditions of spiritual understanding.


In order to understand something, one needs to first know the element that is understood. Without knowing there is no understanding. How could it be otherwise? Whatever is unknown is consequently not understood. Understanding indicates our knowing.

Then what does it mean to know something? Can we know something unlike ourselves? Can the sun know cold and darkness? No, the sun can only know what the sun is, and the qualities that come forth out of that being, like heat, energy, and light. Everything unlike the sun is unknown to the sun, and moreover, is destroyed by it.

And so it is for God. God, which is omniscience, all-knowing, can only know what God is, for God is “of purer eyes than to behold evil” (Hab 1:13). Indeed, if God is good, how can it see and know anything less than good? How can the pure eyes of good perceive evil? How can divine Love know any hate? And who can convince eternal Life of death?

God, good, can only know and see good, because it is good. Love can only know Love and its tender warmth, because that is Love’s nature and being. The same for Life; Life explains itself because its being defines itself. And by doing so, Life describes that all unlike itself must be dead and non-existent.

Therefore, knowing the qualities of God requires being them. That, which knows the divine, is the divine. Consequently, that which would know or see evil and things that are not of God cannot be the divine. Then what is that mind which knows or experiences evil? Mary Baker Eddy describes it as mortal mind. It is not an existing mind, but the seeming lack of the divine Mind — the suggestion that there are minds and “gods many” (I Cor 8:5) — the suggestion that we have a mind our own, separate from God.

Spiritual understanding and knowing are positive qualities of being, not the result of human study and mortal thinking. Intelligence is not dependent on electric pulses traveling in the brain. Celestial insight cannot be achieved or increased, simply because spiritual being cannot be achieved in the first place. God is all knowing and causation of all knowing. And we can all realize that God needs no brain to do so! This is so plain, that we are not aware of knowing it. Our knowing is dormant, in a sense.

Accordingly, writing and reading this article will not enhance understanding; but rather, writing and reading it is the exercise of being that knows and understands itself — in the degree the article is written and read in the light of Truth.

In the Blue Book we find a letter that Mary Baker Eddy wrote to the Christian Science Board of Directors: “Be strong and clear in your convictions that God . . . is influencing your actions. In order to be this, you surely must pray daily that God, good, divine Love . . . be lived by you” (DCC 128). “In order to be this,” she stated, instead of the expected: “in order to do this;” a significant choice of words. Doing something means being it. Being expresses a higher level than doing. Mrs. Eddy also shows here how good and divine Love are requisite for divine direction. Because God is good and God is Love, good and Love are indispensable to knowing and doing right.

All is connected and positioned into one line; knowing, understanding, thinking, realizing, perceiving, doing, loving, all stem from the first and foremost essential part, namely, divine being, God. Just as the ray of the sun, every successive piece in the ray is lined up straight. When we trace the line, it will lead us straight to its origin, the sun. Without the origin, there can be nothing coming forth. The way is straight and narrow, because the line to trace back to God goes to one point only, namely: God is All.

So we must stop thinking it is up to our thoughts and actions. When we start form the divine being that is God, that is “I AM THAT I AM” (Ex 3:14), divine thoughts and actions will follow naturally. And since God is good and perfect, its manifestation is inevitably good and perfect. The ray of the sun does not think: I must shine harder or stronger, because I am not perfect. When it would think that, it no longer is a sunray, since it is not sunlike. The sun’s being is the center that brings forth its infinite manifestation of energy and light.

Now, turn away your thoughts and efforts to work things out humanly. Start gently from the center of divine being, and be naturally godlike and perfect, made in Her “image and likeness.” “And God saw every thing that [she] had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31).

From the center of Love,
the Hanna


Abbreviations:
DCC: ‘Divinity Course and General Collectanea of Items by and about Mary Baker Eddy’ compiled by Richard F. Oakes.