Unity of Heart and Mind

When God made us he gave us a body, mind and spirit. Because of our western way of viewing the world, inherited from the ancient Greeks, by way of the church fathers and thinkers such as Thomas Aquinas, and others, we tend to separate them from each other. We find it easier to understand things if we can take them apart and examine the separate components.

Of course, just like a small boy dismantling a wind-up gramophone to see how it works (which I once did), we are unable to put them back together again (as I wasn't) because, while examining the parts we have neglected to study the relationships between them.

So, we agree we have a body, mind and spirit, but we don't know how they go together, nor how they function in harmony. This is ironic, because none of those three parts can even exist (alive) without the others, let alone function!

The Hebrews, unlike the Greeks, understood a human being to be a whole, not a collection of parts.

Remember what happened at Pentecost - the Holy Spirit was poured out on a group of Jewish followers of Jesus. What was their response? Did they say, "Hey, this is different! Something physical just happened, tongues of fire fell. My mind can't understand it, because I've never seen this before. But something changed in my spirit. I'm no longer afraid like I was a moment ago, and I am filled with a desire to praise God!"

No, I doubt if this is what they did. What it says they did do, was to go outside and praise God. And as people heard them tell of what happened they asked questions about it. So Peter, full of courage, told them that this fulfilled what Jesus, who they had murdered, had promised. And many believed in Jesus and joined them.

What was it Jesus had promised? Read John 14: 15-27 and 16: 5-15 to find out.
What does Jesus mean when he says he is in the Father and the Father is in him? And, he is in us? And, he and the Father are one? And, we will be one with each other and him and the Father?

Jesus is talking about a real joining of our spirits, both with his Spirit, with Father God, and with each other's spirits. Our minds have difficulty with this, mainly because of all the things in this world we understand the nature of spirit least.

Is this surprising? Does a rock or a tree understand the nature of an animal? Does a man or woman understand the nature of God? No, the lesser does not understand the greater; rather the other way around. Neither does the mind understand the spirit any more than the body understands the mind.

God made humans in his image. And God is a Spirit (John 4: 24). So, it is reasonable to suppose that our being made in God's image has to do with our spirit. This is how we are distinct from the rest of creation.

Can the part of us made from the dust of the ground understand the part of us breathed in by the Spirit of God? (Genesis 2:7)

In our Friday fellowship meeting at Beth Tephillah we looked at the relationship between knowing and doing, believing and acting, doing and being. To the Hebrew, to Jesus, to James, to the early Christians, these are the same thing! Believing is acting. Knowing is doing. Having faith is the same as obeying.

In a book by James Sire that I really enjoyed, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual Life As a Christian Calling, he says:

Heart and mind are already together in the way God has made us, Whatever we are,
we are in fact one in our being ... Being brings together knowing and doing, belief and obedience, for good or ill; for Christ?s disciples it will be eventually for good, of course. For when time shall be no more, our perfected, glorified being will bring
together in a perfect harmony a perfected heart, mind, body - and every other aspect of our human nature. We would do well to get on with it now. Such integration is a major aspect of seeking first the kingdom of God (p 162)

The whole point of Pentecost was to begin something. And that something is still continuing to be born and shaped - it is not completed yet. Jesus is building a people who are gathered together to be one with him and the Father and each other, and who will only do things the father is doing, and will not act in their own strength but in the power in the power of the Holy Spirit. We call this the Church.

And, as James Sire says, we would do well to get on with this form of living now! It is for now, not in heaven. "The kingdom of God is among you!" Jesus said.

Mysticism and Mathematics

I am a mathematician at heart. I say this for a number of reasons.

When I was in secondary school mathematics was one of my worst subjects. Until 5th year that is. Then I had the best maths teacher I have ever encountered. In one year he transformed my struggle with maths into a delight. I went on to do a bachelors's degree in mathematics, not because it offered good job prospects (it didn't). Rather I did it because I wanted to be an electronic engineer. For many years I had been a licensed radio amateur, and found that I easily learned about electronics and radio, but the maths was a deterent. So, the obvious solution, to me, was to study maths. On the strength of these studies I eventually became a university lecturer in electrical and electronic engineering, and did a Master of Engineering by research into artificial intelligence and computer speech recognition and understanding.

As an aside, this reminds me of a post I just made to Mal’s Meanderings about the great effects small unselfish acts have in the lives of other people. I doubt that Charlie green (the maths teacher) knew what he was getting me into.

Back to the subject in hand. On other reason I like mathematics is undoubtedly explained by my Myers-Briggs personality profile - INTP. On the first test I did, many years ago, I was high up the corner of the Analyser quadrant - not quite Mr Spock from Star Trek, but getting there! I’ve moved a long way towards the centre since then, but I still enjoy knowing about things and seeing how different areas of knowledge relate to each other.

But, what is the main reason I like maths?

There’s something mystical about mathematics - the way it can describe nature using symbols, and then those symbols be manipulated to predict things that are not yet known. These things are almost invariably found to exist when we go looking for them. Good examples are the prediction, and eventual confirmation of the existence of black holes, electromagnetic waves, trans-uranic elements, gravitational lensing, entangled electrons, etc.

I love being able to look at the sky and see in the cloud patterns a map of the weather. Then, looking at an actual weather map and seeing in the highs and lows, the poles and zeros, the same mathematical equations that I would to design a feedback control system, or an electronic filter for a radio receiver.

The natural world is so wonderfully interconnected, with an economy of use and reuse of concepts, that one can not go past the idea of it being designed by an infinite mind that also loves mathematics, even more than I do.

Mathematics is a descriptive and predictive language that has no physical existence of its own - it is simply an organizing principle, a completely abstract human construct. Except, it has a perfection which makes me sure that it is not simply human, but comes first from the mind of God.

There is much more to be said about this, another day.

Imagine That! - Part 2

We finished Part 1 by saying that the human mind already has a faculty that appears to fulfill all of the functions needed for spirit to spirit communication. It is called the imagination.

For some kinds of communication, e.g. thoughts, words and visions, the imagination is already able to place the information into the mind, with one of the only difficulties being for the mind to know where the thought, etc. came from. For things like physical or emotional feelings, the imagination needs to affect the body. However, such an ability is already well established, as evidenced by the abreaction of the body when a past trauma is remembered, or the rising up of fear, hatred or love when we learn of something happening to someone else, even in a fictional context such as a novel or a movie. We can even conjure up in our imagination details of something that never happened and feel what would be appropriate emotions or sensations as if it was a real event. Psychosomatic illness and many phobias are cases in point.

So, the human imagination provides all of the faculties that are needed for spirit to spirit communication, and I am convinced that this is an important function of the imagination, perhaps even its primary purpose. Yes, it is the faculty by which we create original ideas, but that is not surprising if creativity is actually a function of the human spirit, not the mind alone.

If humans are created in the image of God, who is infinitely creative (in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth with a word), and given that God, by definition, is a Spirit, then it surely follows that spirits create!

In one sense, spirit to spirit communication could be considered as a creative process, whereby one spiritual being creates a "message" directly in the imagination of another spiritual being.

Those of us who believe we have heard God’s voice, who have prophesied, seen a vision or "picture", or received words of knowledge or wisdom, know that it just appears in the mind out of nowhere, and it takes experience to discern that we did not just imagine it or ‘make it up".

So, when someone says, "You didn’t really hear God (or see an angel or demon, or have a vision), you just imagined it," then they are partly right. You did imagine it, but that does not mean it didn’t really happen. It is extremely difficult for someone steeped in a tradition of intellectualism to grasp the possibility that the mind is not supreme.

If the role of imagination is as I have described above, then many otherwise esoteric subjects lose some of their mystique. In particular, consider prayer. True prayer is revealed to be an intimate, two-way communication between two persons, rather than the hit or miss, impersonal, ritualistic uttering of formulaic words so often practiced in and out of the church. Spiritual gifts such as prophecy, word of wisdom, word of knowledge, and interpretation of tongues become a natural outworking of the ability of the human spirit to listen to the Spirit of God. You can learn more about the practicalities of this at Listening2God.com where you will find a complete course on hearing God's voice, prayer, intercession, spiritual gifts, and more.

Even some human to human interactions become easier to understand, such as the bond of love between husband and wife, and the knowledge we often have on first meeting someone that they are, or are not, a person with whom we wish to have a relationship.

Given all of the above, we can see how important it is to develop and nurture our imaginative and creative abilities. Is it any wonder that children, until they become burdened with the knowledge and responsibilities of adult life, are so much more spiritually in tune with God and creation. This is especially so if they have not yet been told that they should put aside their childish fantasies and "grow up".

We will have more to say about all of this.

Imagine That! - Part 1

Those with an interest in exploring and understanding how the human brain operates, and the relationship between brain and mind, generally operate with an overriding assumption – that the human mind is alone, isolated from all other minds except for communication processes relying on the five physical senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste, and the ability to speak, write, draw, gesticulate, etcetra.

Some enthusiasts also posit extra-sensory perceptions, human to human, human to animal, and sometimes human to other entities. Such investigations are not held in high regard by the general scientific and medical community, I believe largely because of their assumptions that other entities do not exist, and that all processes are determined entirely by operation of the physical brain.

Leaving out, for now, speculative ideas like ESP, five physical senses would be enough for simple communication and interaction. However, this neglects the possibility that a considerable amount of human interaction is of a much more direct, though largely unconscious nature. Such neglect is one result of another common assumption – that human beings do not have a spirit that is not merely a function of the mind or the brain.

Let us put all of that aside for now and examine a hypothetical scenario. Just suppose that:

1. humans have a spirit,
2. there exist other entities that have, or are, spirits, and
3. spirit can communicate directly to spirits.

The question I now want to ask is: what type of faculty within a human being would be needed for such spirit to spirit communication to take place?

Because a spirit does not have a physical form, the physical senses are not likely to be of much use. Rather, I suspect that some form of direct transfer of information would be more likely. In other words, what one entity "sends" to the other would simply "appear" within the receiving entity’s mind.

Note, I am not talking about what is usually called ESP. Most of the explanations that I have seen for ESP ability assume some form of brain to brain transfer, perhaps by means of electromagnetic waves. This is analogous to normal human thinking being enhanced by some form of radio system controlled by the mind, allowing the thoughts to be transmitted to another person. What I am considering here is a more basic ability, but it might also provide a better explanation for what has been thought to be ESP phenomena as well.

Most understandings of the nature of spirit allow it to be unconstrained in some degree by time and space, so a physical transmission medium would not be essential. Rather, two spirits might simultaneously occupy a single conceptual space for the duration of their interaction. Again, here "space" is not necessarily physical relativistic space. If it is actually physical space then an alternative possibility is that spirits might have access to relativistic dimensions apart from the normal Einsteinian space, such as are commonly drawn on in current attempts by physicists to reconcile quantum mechanics and general relativity. This is a subject I will write more about another time.

Let us now go back to our question of the nature of the faculty the human mind would need to support spirit to spirit communication and to provide a spirit/mind/brain interface. From the perspective of a person receiving such a communication, the "message" would simply appear in the mind as a thought, picture, memory or emotion, or by the impression of a sound, smell or physical sensation as the body responds to the information.

Similarly, transmission would occur by simply thinking, visualizing, feeling, etcetera, the content to be communicated. Interestingly, visualization has become a popular technique among some New Age and humanist groups in the attempt to try to change reality. Such use and abuse of visualization is something else I will write more about later, but suffice it to say that even in its misuse the principles remain the same, only the motive or the intended recipient has changed.

The human mind already has a faculty that appears to fulfill all of the functions described above. It is called the imagination.

In Imagine That! - Part 2 we will explore further the role of the human imagination in perceiving the spiritual realm.