Section 7 - Part A:

 The Creative Intelligence

Some of the best efforts of the human mind have been devoted to the problem of finding out something about God, but none of these efforts has up to now met with any measurable amount of success.

To the people of ancient times there seemed to be a number of gods, some good, some bad, each having dominion over a certain part of creation; for instance, Cupid or Eros was the god of Love and Mars or Ares was the god of War. These ancient gods were believed to be in human form, some male and some female, and were supposed to reside in regions remote from the earth, to which they made regular visits and over which they kept constant watch. They were all more or less cruel and vengeful, and the principal purpose of worship and sacrifice was to keep them in good humour, so that they would not so readily send curses and plagues upon their subjects. 

These ancient gods were patterned after the kings and queens of the time. They were endowed with the good qualities that kings and queen were supposed to have, together with the bad qualities that kings and queens were known to have. In other words, they were merely creatures of the human imagination, as all other personal gods have been, and had no existence in fact.

We sometimes marvel that the civilisations which produced such men as Caesar, Cicero, Demosthenes, and Aristotle should have had such ludicrous ideas about their gods. And yet, as we saw in Lesson Six, a great many people today still have a conception of God which is just as crude. They think of God as being in the form of a man, sitting on a throne in some remote heavenly place.  

This idea of God in the form of a man comes, as we have seen, from the early days of Judaism, when the Israelites admitted that there were numerous gods, but contended that their own god Yahweh was the mightiest and wisest of them all. The name "Yahweh" was finally changed to "Jehovah", which is a corruption of the ancient name.  

We saw in Lesson Six that several hundred years before the birth of Christ, some of the wise men of Israel began to abandon the idea that their God was in the form of a man. For instance, the Psalmist David said that God was in heaven, in hell, upon the earth, and in the remotest places of the sea; this, of course, could not be true of any god in the form of a man.  

You have also been told that Christ tried to explain to the Samaritan woman that God did not require one to go into the mountains of Samaria to worship Him, and in the course of his explanation used these words: "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth" (John iv. 24). On other occasions throughout his ministry, he referred to God as "The Father that dwelleth in me" (John xiv. 10). He said to one of his disciples: "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; I am in the Father, and the Father in me" (John xiv. 9-10).  

We also saw that St. Paul seems to have caught the idea that God is not in the form of a man, for he told the people of Athens: "He is not far from each one of us: for in Him we live, and move, and have our being" (Acts xvii. 27-28). St. Paul's idea evidently was that God surrounds us as the water of the ocean surrounds the fish swimming in it.  

The Relationship of God and Man

These ancient Jewish and Christian religious beliefs are repeated for the purpose of tempering the shock which will come to many people when firstly they are told that God is not in the form of a man sitting upon a throne, but that He is a universal creative Intelligence and Power, filling all space even beyond the remotest known star, and when secondly many of His plans and methods are made known to them.  

If you can imagine your brain and nervous system as being a radio set, and can imagine a universal broadcast of so many different wavelengths that it comes in all around the tuning dial, you will then get a remote idea of God and man and their relationship to each other. The idea gained will be crude, but it will be a start in the right direction. No radio set can be so delicately tuned to the radio broadcast as the human brain and nervous system are tuned to the universal broadcast which we know as God. No radio broadcasting station can send so many thousands of wave-lengths at the same time, and have them all come in harmoniously over the whole range of the radio. Yet in spite of this vast difference in delicacy and power, the idea that the human brain and nervous system constitute a radio set, and that God is the broadcast, is one that is close to the truth.  

I once wrote a book entitled The Science of Religion, in which I brought together all the kown and pertinent facts from all branches of science in an effort to prove, among other things, how the earth could actually be changed from the terrific heat of its early stages into the world of life and intelligence we know today. When I had pieced all the fragments of fact together into a mosaic, the picture was perfect — except that there was a blank space right in the middle of it. Nothing would fit into this blank space except a complex universal force of such short wave-lengths that no human instrument then in existence could detect it. It was also necessary that this universal force should move with intelligence, plan and purpose — the plan and purpose being finally to evolve a world of life and intelligence vastly better and finer than has ever yet been evolved, the present world being in a half-finished condition, but slowly improving as the centuries roll away.  

So, I concluded that the thing which must be true was true in fact; and I incorporated into the plan of creation the intelligent universal complex force moving with plan and purpose. The picture was then completed, and much of what I said in the book about creation and evolution was based upon the major assumption that the universal force actually exists.  

The Cosmic Rays

Pioneer scientist Dr. Robert A. Millikan discovered and measured what the world now knows as "Cosmic Rays". Nobody knows the range or power of those rays, nor the source from which they come — if indeed they have a source. Dr. Millikan first discovered them in the day-time, and assumed that they were a part of the sun's rays; but investigation showed that they were just as strong and abundant at night as in the day-time. He next supposed that the rays were coming from one or more of the far distant suns which we call stars. 

Later on, however, after he had improved his instruments and methods, the learned Doctor found that the rays were coming from somewhere outside of our galactic system. Now, our galactic system is a little corner of the great universe, containing only a few millions of suns, and being only a few million light years in extent — a light year being the distance light travels in a year at a speed of 186,000 miles per second.  

So, the newly discovered rays could not properly be named "galactic rays" because they come from somewhere outside of our galaxy; but the Greek word "cosmos" includes the whole universe, and so the rays were called "cosmic rays" — which means universal rays.

The Universal in Action  

You were promised earlier in the Lesson that the Creative Intelligence would be revealed to you, and that its methods and purposes in creation and evolution would be explained. In this brief consideration of cosmic rays, we are opening the way to that revelation and explanation. So, I urge you to follow these brief and simple statements very closely.  

The cosmic rays manifest the Universal Creative Mind in action. If you prefer to call it the mind of God, you are at liberty to do so; the name makes no difference. The important thing is to realize that it is MIND, and not merely blind force. It is also important to lay hold of the fact that it is EVERYWHERE, moving through all space and acting upon all things. There is plan and purpose in its movements — creating and evolving plan and purpose.  

Incidentally, it is interesting to observe that Dr. Millikan himself, after a lifetime devoted to scientific research, also said that the Universe cannot be explained without assuming a Creative Intelligence at work in it.  

The Universal Creative Intelligence performs its work of creation by forming mental pictures of the things it desires to create. To a limited extent the individual human mind has the same creative power, as has been demonstrated by a laboratory experiment.  

The experiment took place in a long laboratory room. The walls, ceiling and floors of this room were covered with matt black material or paint, so that no light could be reflected. There were no openings through which light could enter. A partition wall, also of black material, was built, beginning in one of the rear corners of the room, extending at a rather sharp angle towards the front of the room, and ending about 10 feet (about three metres) from the front of the room and about six feet (about two metres) from the wall on the side opposite to that on which the partition wall began. An electric light was hung so that its light fell upon the opening of this room, without penetrating its dark depths. It was like a peculiar photographic studio, so arranged that a light could be used for taking pictures, and so that behind a chair, when viewed from the position of the camera, there was nothing but empty darkness.  

Mental Pictures Recorded on Film  

A naturally "sensitive" person, that is to say, a psychic medium, was chosen to take part in this experiment. 'Ihe camera was first loaded and focused on the seat the sitter was to occupy. Then the room was prepared by bringing into it a portable charcoal fire and a pot containing boiling water. In about 10 minutes the air of the room was filled with carbon dioxide and water vapour. The fire and pot of water were then moved outside the room, and the sitter and the camera operator took their places and remained very still while the sitter fell into a slightly subjective state looking for mental pictures.  

When the sitter indicated that a mental picture was clearly formed, the lens was opened and a long and slow exposure was made. When the exposed plate was developed there was, in addition to the picture of the sitter, a more or less distinct picture of the mental image seen by him. These mental pictures have been of human faces, either of the living or the dead, and when they were made with a medium as the sitter they were called "spirit pictures".  

Well-known examples of such spirit photographs are those of heads "produced" by the medium Eva C. One photograph measuring roughly two inches by three inches (five cm by about seven cm) represents two female heads against a dark background. The larger one occupying the upper two-thirds of the right-hand side of the photograph is of an elderly woman looking down, with eyes screwed up, a wide mouth with lips closed and a rather large nose. The complexion is sallow. The hair is dark and straight. It is parted in a curved line down the middle and hangs down the left-hand side of the subject's face, while on the righthand side it is brushed across. In the lower left-hand corner, there is a smaller head of a woman with rounded features and a pale complexion. Her left eye is overshadowed by her hair. The mouth is a Cupid's bow. The subject is a younger woman than her companion. Another photograph is also of a young woman with a soulful expression. She has a broad, straight nose and a Cupid's bow mouth. Her eyes are rather large and she is looking on one side out of the corners of them.  

When William Hope of Crewe once photographed a friend, the developed film showed a thought picture of an extra figure of a woman, behind whom the brick wall was visible. It turned out to be a likeness of his friend's sister who had died many years previously.  

These pictures are not spirit pictures, but mental pictures. The heads produced by Eva C. were later found to be identical with pictures which had appeared in a French magazine.  

Dr. Fukurai, Professor of Kohyassan University, in experiments with Mrs. Ikuko Nagao discovered that if this medium concentrated upon Japanese alphabetical symbols, they were found imprinted on photographic negatives.  

The air of the laboratory room filled with carbon dioxide and water vapour was physical matter of a very attenuated mass and highly reflective of light. This attenuated mass of matter is said to be "psychoplastic" — that is, capable of being moulded by mind. The eyes of a bystander could not see the picture, but its effect on the photographic plate is cumulative, so that the "extra" appeared when the plate was developed. 

The Secret of Creation  

If we can imagine the weak creative mental power of the sensitive sitter being indefinitely multiplied and increased, we may get some idea as to how the Universal Creative Mind goes about its work of creation.  

Let us imagine some remote past age in which the whole universe was empty - filled with nothing but the Universal Creative Mind. Then let us imagine this limitless Creative Mind filling the empty universe with mental pictures of suns and planets. Let us imagine these pictures as having creative power, somewhat as the mental pictures of the sitter modified the movement of the air, gas and water vapour in the laboratory. We then get a fairly good idea of how the created universe could have been produced out of apparently empty space.  

In the beginning of creation there may have been only suns countless billions of suns, all spinning, revolving and whirling through the immensity of space like a swarm of giant bees in flight. The impact of their coming into existence was terrific beyond imagination, and in the process of forming the suns incalculable amounts of energy were produced, so that each of the suns became a roaring atomic furnace, with a boiling and seething interior, covered thousands of miles deep with fiery gases and with incalculable millions of atomic reactions constantly taking place.  

These suns were separated from each other by many millions of miles, but they moved so that one occasionally came relatively close to another. Upon this too close approach the tremendous attraction of gravity between the two suns raised tides millions of miles high in their envelopes of white-hot gases; and at the nearest point of their passage each lapped at the other with giant tongues of these fiery gases. As the suns pulled farther apart in their respective journeys these giant tongues of fiery gases were caught between the two opposing pulls of gravity, broke into huge fiery cloud-balls, and sped back towards the suns from which they had sprung. But they were caught in the whirling force of gravity produced by the revolving sun, so that they moved in a curved line around the sun and never reached its surface.  

This may have been the beginning of planets — huge fiery cloud-balls which had broken away from their sun, and which in their efforts to return to it had been turned aside and doomed for ever to fly around it in a vast orbit, their weight giving them a tendency to fly off in a straight line and leave the sun, and the sun's gravitational pull upon them holding them in their curved courses or orbits. In this way our earth was formed, and so it swings around the sun. In this way all the other planets were formed. These are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Between Mars and Jupiter is a mass of minor planets, probably the fragments of a larger planet which at some time or other disintegrated.  

If we were to make a scale model of the solar system, representing the sun by a ball over two feet (about 60 cm) in diameter, the earth would be represented by a pea placed at a distance of over eighty yards (about 73 metres) from it. Even the huge planet Jupiter, which is 86,000 miles in diameter, would look merely like a child's rubber bouncing ball, while the smallest planet Mercury, which is only as wide as the distance from London to New York, would appear about the size of a pin-head. Pluto, the most distant planet, would be placed more than two miles from the large ball representing the sun.  

How the planets gradually cooled and became largely solid; how the Universal Mind could have moved upon them with its mental plans and pictures of teeming life, and how these mental pictures gradually took physical form, must be reserved for the next Part of this Course. For the present it is enough to have raised the problem of God and creation. We have barely scratched the surface, however. There are many wonderful things about the Creative Intelligence which have not yet been mentioned, but which will be treated fully before we have finished.  

To the average man and woman this Part of the Course will be the most difficult. I have tried to use plain and simple language which anyone can understand; but it is an immense subject, and most minds will feel more or less lost in the vast reaches of time and space we have considered here. Yet if you really want to know yourself and grow into the free, happy and successful man or woman that you are trying to become, it is necessary to begin at the beginning. I have tried to explain that beginning in as simple a way as the nature of the subject will permit; and I sincerely and strongly urge you to read it over and over again until you fully comprehend it all. We are here at the very beginning of wisdom, and the foundations must be laid strong and deep, so as to give adequate support to the beautiful, happy and more abundant life that we are later to build upon it.