The Ultimate Balancing Act
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TODAY’S READING
25.1-26.5
Today is a special day of beginnings—more so for me than anyone else. Today is the anniversary of my birth. It is also the day in the scheduled daily readings that we start at the very beginning. Today’s reading begins with the first pages of the introduction to The Science of Mind.
I have frequently joked that all anyone needs to learn and understand the Science of Mind is presented in the introduction of the book, The Thing Itself, The Way It Works, What It Does, and How To Use It. That takes us through page 60 in the book… a book that continues for over 500 more pages.
It is these first pages that really changed my life.
The first part of the introduction, The Thing Itself, directly addresses the concept of God. What it is. God is not some being with whims and desires—it is the very being-ness of life. The energy of all things.
When reviewing these pages in today’s reading I am at a little bit of a loss as to where I should place my focus. These seven paragraphs could constitute many blog posts and many discussions into the deeper meaning of it all. So how do I encapsulate any of it in this one post? Well… I suggest as you read you take in what calls to you. It may take many re-reads to grasp all that is presented here; but I want to look at the very first sentence.
“We all look forward to the day when science and religion shall walk hand in hand through the visible to the invisible.”
My first thought is this: is this true? Is this something we all look forward to? What does this even mean?
In the context of the period I am driven to consider what the scientific world was like in the 1930s when this sentence was written. What was the religious atmosphere of the time? I am no scholar on the subject, to be sure, but I am compelled to address what was happening worldwide at the time. The world was in the midst of the Great Depression and the Second World War was brewing. Despite these things technology began to boom. It was during this period that synthetics came into major use, automobiles and airplanes came into wider use by the public; the machine age was really born.
Was this age of technological advance at the detriment of Spiritual sensibilities? Possibly. Church life had been in steady decline leading up to the Great Depression and despite the Depression didn’t really increase much.
It seems that at the time more faith was being placed in science rather than religion.
I think it’s possible that what Ernest Holmes is addressing is the idea that in a truly evolutionary society there would be a deep balance. I think his point of view is that one could not exist without the other. By “walking hand in hand” science and religion could reconcile the perception of difficulty that most people faced during this time.
I am struck with similarities we face today. We’ve seen major technological breakthroughs and hear all the time that religion is on the decline.
We cannot be bound by either and it is up to us to reconcile the two for our highest good. The nature of The Thing Itself is creation. That is it. It does this through Love and Law (which Holmes says is the ENTIRE teaching).
The scientific part of the Science of Mind is that we are the scientists in the universal laboratory and it is up to each of us to prove the principle of creation. We create based on the level of our faith—so we must deepen our faith in BOTH spirit and technology. Then we can expand our joyful experience of life.