REALITY
and APPEARANCES, How DO we tell the difference?
Today,
we are going to learn something about thinking.
One of the big ideas of Religious Science is that if we change our
thinking our lives will also change. Philosophy
has a good many terms that apply to how we think and a basic understanding of
their meanings is very helpful to us in learning how to think effectively.
We’ll go about exploring these ideas as simply and clearly as
possible today. Part of what makes life mysterious is simply our inability to
think clearly about it.
So
how do we think? How do we tell
the difference between reality and appearances?
Aesop, the great Greek fabulist said, “Outside show is a poor
substitute for inner worth.” Since
he lived over 2500 years ago, you can surmise that as a species we human
beings have had an idea that there might be some difference for a very long
time. How do we learn to discern this difference?
Let’s talk about that. In
the Bhagavad Gita, a part of the epic Sanskrit poem the Mahabharata, that was
written some time around 400 years BCE, we are told that,
The
non permanent appearance of happiness and distress, and their disappearance in
due course, are like the appearance and disappearance of summer and winter
seasons.
Some
things just seem to come and go and come again.
Most
of us think that something is real whenever our senses bear out its existence.
If we see, smell, hear, taste or feel it we generally come to accept it. In
our thinking and speaking, we tend to make no distinction at all between
reality and existence. Yet, ancient wisdom teaches us that not
everything that is real is in existence, and everything in existence is not
real. I will say that
again: Not everything that is real is in existence, and everything in
existence is not real. John
Lennon was saying a great deal when he said, “Reality leaves a lot to the
imagination.”
The
very language we use can sometimes thwart our efforts at creating a
distinction between reality, that which is, and appearance,
that which seems to exist. Commonly,
we blur these distinctions by using the terms reality and existence
interchangeably. Today, we will distinguish reality as that which is
enduring, eternal, and unchangeable, while all things that exist are
always subject to change in some way. Ernest Holmes defined change as “The appearance and disappearance of forms.”[ii]
Jesus cautioned us not to judge or
evaluate things according to appearances but to judge righteously, which is to
say use our power of spiritual discernment, to rely upon spiritual principle.
It
is said that those of us who practice New Thought are Idealists, no matter
whether we consider ourselves to be Christian or otherwise. What does Idealist
mean? In Philosophy they tell us
that Idealists believe in the power of ideas as the fundamental basis of all
that appears, or as we defined before, that which is subject to change. So, if
we think of this in terms of our metaphysics, our thinking, our ideas, shape
our lives. This also means that
we are saying that eternality is not in the thing, but in the power that
generates the thing. Ideas are the progeny of Spirit; they are the original,
primary, thought of Being.
This
is why Spirit is referred to as Divine or Creative Mind, First Cause, and
sometimes as simply Source. Ideas are made in the image and likeness of God.
God is invisible. Ideas are invisible. God is intangible. Ideas are
intangible. God is unlimited. Ideas are unlimited. God is good. Ideas are
good.
The
British author, Gilbert K. Chesterton, said:
“Facts
as facts do not always create a spirit of reality, because reality is a
spirit.”
Ideas
are formed by consciousness. In order for an idea to become tangible or
manifest, it must first be formed by consciousness. No form contains or
restricts an idea. Two spiritual faculties determine the possibility and shape
of any idea. These are faith and imagination. Faith sees and handles the idea
and says “YES!” to its possibility of manifestation and imagination shapes
it into a form that is acceptable to the thinker.
In Religious Science, we sometimes refer this to as Love and Law.
Now
here is an interesting thing, no thinker in the past has ever exhausted any
idea! That is why we have an ever rising spiral of spiritual progress and why
the greatest demonstration in any area of life has yet to be achieved.
Consciousness and its expression continue to develop.
We are clearly not done yet; the perfect evidence is that we are still
here experiencing something outside of our selves, still developing.
Idealism
is the polar opposite of materialism. Materialism has nothing to do with how
much stuff you have. Most people
erroneously label wealthy people as materialists. The fact is that more poor
people are materialists because they think that the answer to their problems
is in acquiring more and “better” things.
There
is an old story told of a man who heard that there was a holy man who could
initiate him into the mysteries of life. He traveled a great distance to meet
with him. When he arrived, he was thoroughly disgusted by what he saw. There
were lavish tapestries, silver and gold articles and other things that seemed
to exhibit crass materialism. When he was granted an audience with the Great
Teacher, he began to berate him about his lavish lifestyle. The teacher
remained silent. In the midst of his tirade, smoke began to pour from another
room. It was obvious that something was burning; yet, the Great Teacher
remained still and silent. However, the seeker became anxious and wondered why
the master was not trying to save the valuable items. The teacher understood
that the value was not in the tapestries and silver decorations, no matter how
expensive they were. For he knew that his supply was not dependent on their
existence. The student who pretentiously regarded the things as a hindrance to
spiritual mastery was upset when their existence was threatened.
Idealism
leads to monism, which is the belief in one power and presence in the
universe. When we understand the
power of ideas and our ability to handle ideas, we have just been given the
key to becoming a person who knows no envy! Such a person recognizes that
nothing is being held back from them, nor would it ever be! No one can delay
you from succeeding when you know that you are some part of God. Your
conscious contact with God is your connection to all of God’s ideas.
Materialists
look at what has already been manifested and demand to get their fair share.
They see the fruits of abundance as if these objects of desire are on someone
else’s tree, and think that they ought to be given some part of the harvest.
From a spiritual point of view, this is absolutely ineffective. If we have to get
what we want from outside of ourselves, it isn’t ours in the first
place! What we really need is not
for someone out there to give it to us, but the wisdom of truly understanding
the power that is innately ours. From James 1: 5-8:
"If
any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and
ungrudgingly, and it will be given you. But ask in faith, never doubting, for
the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind;
for the doubter, being double —minded and unstable in every way, must not
expect to receive anything from the Lord."
So
we might ask then, if God is so good, so generous, why is there suffering in
the world? In fact, why do we suffer? Traditional theologians answer this with
what is called theodicy. This is a defense of God's goodness and
omnipotence in view of the existence of evil, and is often answered with the
concept of dualism. In other words, there is a good power and an evil one.
The collective consciousness is brimming with the idea of a contest in
which the forces for evil often wins. There is no power in opposition to God,
there is only God, and all exists within God.
As
idealists who believe in the One Power, there is another way to process our
experiences. We can use the dialectical method, which was developed by Hegel.
It validates the scripture for today, which states that all things work
together for good. We noted earlier in the lesson that the major
characteristic of all appearances is that they are ever-changing. All
appearances are effects that change continually. In the Eastern traditions,
this is often referred to as illusion or Maya.
Never
try to avoid changes in your experiences. You are not your experience. Your
experiences reflect your consciousness at any given time. Yet, your
consciousness is divinely intended to expand or grow, and such development will bring about
changes in your experience.
Whenever
a person strives, by the help of dialectic, to start in pursuit of every
reality by a simple process of reason, independent of all sensuous information
-- never flinching, until by an act of the pure intelligence he has grasped
the real nature of good -- he arrives at the very end of the intellectual
world.
Plato
Because
it is so useful in our coming to know ultimate reality, and ourselves, let’s
discuss briefly how the dialectical method can be summarized in three equally
essential parts. Whenever we
begin to think about anything, we begin with an idea.
In dialectal method, we call that idea a thesis.
1.
A
Thesis can
be defined as the least adequate point of your development. This is the
untested idea, which you seek to explore or prove, and it provides a place to
begin. In a personal way, this is
where you are now, which is not your final stage of development in
consciousness.
2.
The Antithesis is the place, where you encounter resistance or
opposing ideas that are in conflict with your thesis.
You might say this is the part we don’t like sometimes, because it
causes us to move from the passive entertainment of an idea into the final
part of the dialectical process, synthesis.
3.
Synthesis is the dialectic combination of thesis and antithesis,
and arrives at a higher stage of truth than either position could have alone.
It requires seeing the truth and falsehood in both positions and all the ideas
associated with them. Georg
Hegel’s idea was that each dialectical process results in the synthesis of a
new thesis, and the process continues until one arrives at the point of pure
being.
Now
let’s look at this process and see if it properly belongs in our New Thought
Idealism. We in Religious Science
have a catch phrase we quote from Ernest Holmes, “Change your
thinking, change your life.” Right
off the bat we can see that this dialectical method may be extremely useful in
making a change in our thinking that really does stick!
While
studying and trying to find illustrative quotations for this talk, I found
this quotation from Abraham Lincoln, one of my heroes, “Every person is
responsible for his own looks after 40.”
Thinking back to that Aesop quotation I shared with you earlier,
“Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth” It seems to me that we
must then reap the appearance of the choices we have made and if we are at all
fortunate, we will have within us the knowledge of reality.
We will know the truth of our being.
“It
cannot be too plainly stated that Spirit, or Conscious Intelligence, is the
only Self-Assertive Principle in the universe. "Spirit is the power that
knows Itself," and is the only power that is Self-Knowing. Everything
else is subject to Spirit. The sole and only operation of Spirit is through
Its Word. The Word, acting as Law through Substance, produces Creation.
[iii]
This we find at the end of the first lesson in the 1926 Science of Mind
text, and from it, we begin to learn how to think in a manner that truly does
change our life!
Thank
you for being here today!
[i] THE SCIENCE OF MIND
A Complete Course of Lessons in the Science of Mind and Spirit
By ERNEST SHURTLEFF HOLMES
COPYRIGHT, 1926.
[ii] Ibid
Emerson
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