Mind and Thought

George Shaw Cook

It has been said that at one time people believed the stomach to be the seat of intelligence. The ancient Hebrews are said to have believed that certain human emotions were resident in the kidneys and liver. Jeremiah wrote, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" And in Proverbs we read, "Eat thou not the bread of him that hath an evil eye, neither desire thou his dainty meats: for as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Scriptural passages such as the foregoing from Proverbs indicate belief that human thoughts resided in the heart. In more modern times the brain has generally been considered to be the seat of human intelligence. However, the brain is no more intelligent than the stomach, liver, heart, hand, foot, or any other part of the physical body. The fact is that matter does not originate thought, for the simple reason that matter is nonintelligent.

Recently a press dispatch quoted a Harvard professor as saying, "I don't know where thought is." And one who is looking to the material body as the seat of intelligence might well have reached that conclusion, and probably would be compelled to do so, sooner or later. Christian Science teaches that thought is not to be found in the body. On the contrary, what is called the human body is but a material concept of the so-called human mind. Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, writes in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 208), "You embrace your body in your thought, and you should delineate upon it thoughts of health, not of sickness."

Again, our Leader says (ibid., p. 88): "How are veritable ideas to be distinguished from illusions? By learning the origin of each. Ideas are emanations from the divine Mind. Thoughts, proceeding from the brain or from matter, are offshoots of mortal mind; they are mortal material beliefs. Ideas are spiritual, harmonious, and eternal." Ideas, then, are in no way related to the evanescent beliefs of mortal mind, which are supposed to proceed from brain, or matter. Ideas are spiritual, eternal, changeless, perfect, divine. They have their origin and existence solely in divine Mind. These spiritual ideas are never to be found in the material body, nor do they originate in what is called the human mind. Human concepts are but counterfeits of the divine ideas which constitute the universe of Mind, Spirit, God. Man reflects these ideas and is cognizant only of God's thoughts. There is no limit to the number of these thoughts or ideas: they are infinite. And the Psalmist must have discerned this fact when he wrote, "Many, O Lord my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered."

So-called brain-thinking involves the belief in the existence of many minds. Each person is supposed to have a mind of his own—entirely apart from divine Mind—presumably located in a pulpy substance under the skull, called brain. Upon the belief of minds many depends the belief of thought transference, hypnotism, mental suggestion, mental manipulation. On the other hand, upon the understanding of the oneness and allness of divine Mind as the only source of real thought or consciousness, depends one's ability to defend oneself against the different phases of mesmerism or animal magnetism.

An individual who is fully conscious of the fact that there is but one Mind, and that this Mind "which was also in Christ Jesus" is the only Mind of man, cannot be hypnotized or otherwise mentally manipulated. And the many kinds of mesmeric propaganda put forth for the purpose of influencing or controlling people's thought make it most desirable that this fact should be more generally understood and more fully demonstrated. Our Leader has said (Science and Health, pp. 103, 104): "In reality there is no mortal mind, and consequently no transference of mortal thought and willpower. Life and being are of God. In Christian Science, man can do no harm, for scientific thoughts are true thoughts, passing from God to man."

George Shaw Cook

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