Universal Mind

"There is an infinitely worthier subject for philosophers (to study) than all these trees and stones, and even all those stars; there is the mind of man." --Socrates

"Mind is the expression of the soul, which belongs to God." Adlai --Stevenson

Our minds have great power and untapped potential. This is well illustrated by a story told by Rudyard Kipling, the Indian-born English poet, novelist and Nobel Prize winner.

"When the gods and the earth were new and man had just risen out of the slime, he lifted his eyes to heaven and saw the gods upon their golden thrones. There was born in him the desire to reach that distant state of bliss and joy.

He cried, "O gods in the heaven, let me share your divinity."

The gods, when they heard man's cry, went to the great God Brahma and said to him, "There is a creature who demands a share in our divinity. He is an enquiring and seeking creature who will not rest until he has climbed into this heaven of ours. What shall we do?"

"I will speak to him," said Brahma.

"When the gods met again in council they asked Brahma what he had done about man's request.

Said Brahma, "I considered wisely and found that man's desire to share in our divinity was just. So I said to him, "Man, I have heard your prayer. The divinity for which you ask shall be yours but you must find it for yourself, for lo, I have hidden it."

When the gods heard this, they were frightened, but Brahma only smiled and said,

"It will be a long time before man finds his divinity, for I have hidden it where he will not think of looking for it."

"Where have you hidden it?" asked the gods in chorus,

"Within man himself," said Brahma softly.

And there it is to be found by all who seek, even to this day."

This hidden divinity is our minds.

Mind is an infinitesimal part of God in man. Just as a drop of water from the ocean has all the ingredients in the ocean, mind has all the powers of God. However, just as a drop of water from the ocean does not make up the ocean, the mind of one person does not make up the Universal Mind. All the drops joined together become the ocean, all the minds in the universe together make up God's mind.

Mind is the source of all happiness, all misery, health, and disease, abundance and lack, riches and poverty, joy and sorrow. As Milton said, it can make a hell out of heaven or a heaven out of hell. Our mind is a microcosm and creates our universe.

Like a laser beam, mind can focus its attention on the smallest atom or see the whole universe as if it is a speck. Mind can become part of the environment and the cosmos. The speed of thought is more than the speed of light. In the blink of an eye-lid, mind can reach the farthest galaxy, billions of light-years away. It is instantaneous and unlimited by space or time. For example, Mozart said that he could hear a musical work as a single event, and not successively and Professor Aitken remarked that he could run through half an hour's music in half a minute.

What mind is and where it is situated has been debated for centuries. Rarely two philosophers agree on one definition or location for mind.

Rene Descartes, French philosopher, scientist and mathematician, said that there is a total and absolute distinction between mental and material substance and that mind is situated in the pineal gland. Endocrinologist Ernest Gelhorn thinks that mind is an activity of the entire nervous system. Hughlings Jackson, a neurologist, thinks that consciousness and mind are the same, whereas Percival Bailey, director of the Psychiatric Research Institute, disagrees.

I believe mind is nonmaterial and cannot become part of a material brain, pineal gland or amygdala. We can go through every nerve cell, analyse it electrochemically, spectroscopically, mass-photographically, electronically, and, using all known tests, we will not find any indication of mind. There is no single location for the mind. The human mind is distributed throughout the human body and its environment. Every cell has its own mind and has the ability to function independently or jointly with all the cells of the body.

For example, a neuron is capable of deciding whether it will transmit information to another nerve cell and, if it will, to which of the thousands of cells it is in contact. Similarly, endocrine cells decide whether they will respond to a demand for a particular enzyme by cells in another far corner of the body.

Even sponge cells exhibit a similar capacity of awareness. When a piece of sponge is ground up and individual cells are suspended in solution, they will come together and become a complete sponge within a few hours. This indicates that each cell has a mind of its own to decide to combine with another sponge cell.

Just as each of the thousand pieces of a splintered mirror will show the same reflection of an object as the whole mirror, each cell reflects our mind and each cell in the universe reflects the universal mind. To use another analogy, mind is the current that makes every cell work like the electrical current that makes the radio operate.

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Universal Mind Copyright 2003

You may publish this article or use it in any way you find reasonable provided the resource box is unedited and the author is duly credited.

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About The Author

Dr. P.C. Simon, a retired research microbiologist, philosopher, philanthropist and author. Also by Dr. P.C. Simon, the informative, inspiring, and life-changing book, The Missing Piece to Paradise. More articles by Dr. Simon and a description of his book can be seen at http://www.interchange.ubc.ca/psimon/book2.htm

psimon@alumni.ubc.ca