Mind and Matter.

 

 Mind and Matter.

Growing up on a remote farm with nature, I developed an interest in the subject of mind and matter early in life. I had little religious instruction, so I developed my own. Being in Israel amongst all the ruins of religious buildings convinced me that there was something unseen that was more powerful than the physical world I was existing in. All the religions left a mark on my environment. All had their religious leaders dressed up to be distinguished from each other, and all explained that the others were wrong in how they worshipped God. There was one common denominator to them all. If we could go through the adoring crowds which always surround them, we discover they are nice people, regardless of their faith. They had one goal: to save souls by teaching them the right way to worship God. Their ways were not the same.

In the last century and going on till now, some serious schools took on studying the human brain. Neuroscience became a respectable field of study, employing the latest and most advanced tools. In the nineteen twenties, doctors were doing lobotomies and using electric shock therapy to alter human behavior, and now they use powerfully crafted mind medications to do the same. Scientific research reveals that we can change things in the human brain to obtain what we call the desired outcome. It is most noticeable when used in marketing, which is used to make profits and often to gain political power. For example, people can be addicted to some substances and controlled to some degree. Pay attention to the advertising of coffee or alcohol. Sugar and cocoa are other options.

The latest research reveals some truths that the ancients knew. We have two minds within us. One could be the mind of God. It counts our heartbeats, makes digestion work, grows and discards cells, causes reproduction, and a million other things we can’t do using our current knowledge. It has a mind greater than mine and doesn’t listen to me. The other mind deals with morality, love, making choices, and sadly jealousy, hate, greed, and amongst others, a need to investigate the universe, develop medicine, and unfortunately find ways to kill each other. The first, the sub-conscience, is out of our control and the second is operating according to our feelings. That one, which I call “my mind”, has the ability to create. It is in the image of God.

Don’t expect it to make you win the lottery or let you walk on water just because you want to. The world wouldn’t survive 24 hours if all people had that kind of power. Yet we learned that what we most think about is capable of materializing. The easiest to observe are things to do with a person’s health. Ample cases show that faith or belief influences physical health. So many of them that scientists working on the development of drugs always use control groups. If the control group is given what is not the new medicine and recovers at the same rate as those treated with the drug, we view it as a drug incapable of making a difference.

Also, a significant amount of research is invested in studying the “placebo effect.” We have indisputable evidence that people who believe that something will help them show a remarkable level of healing. Since we cannot repeat it at will, it doesn’t get the attention that it deserves. I visited a location where a significant amount of faith healing happened, yet they do not mention it in medical journals.  

We know feelings cause thoughts and thoughts have an influence over reality. How remains unanswered since there are so many variations. People can confidently say that it is the hand of God, but that hand works through changes in chemicals, the behavior of internal organs, and so on. If it didn’t, people would riot demanding miracles on request. The rich would want to buy miracles and drug companies would sue churches. It is a complicated world.

In the last quarter of the century, we expanded our knowledge into the quantum field, but a lot more can be done. People must slowly accept that there is a universal mind greater than our rudimentary knowledge of science even while we develop new knowledge. It is a combination of our material knowledge with spiritual discoveries that will be most effective. We need to trust science and God, whatever we think He is, at the same time. We need to accept that there is a lot more to the universe than what is visible. It’s a decision that each of us makes and all of us live and die by.

I believe in training ourselves to control and regulate our thoughts. We change thoughts thousands of times every minute we are alive. We can’t have any time, awake or sleeping, without thinking about something. However, a human can replace some thoughts with others and learn how to do so efficiently. The thoughts, at least to some degree, create reality, which brings about more thoughts. The whole craze about positive thinking was built on that idea but not investigated to its depths.

We can’t all live on a lonely farm without electronic screens and build a database of philosophical theories, but we can improve on what there is. There is no time like now.