Question 204: About Materialism
Question 204: What is the Gospel of Oneness view on Materialism?
Materialism is the view of atheism in that it doesn’t allow for the unprovable or unfalsifiable existence of Spirit beyond the forms and energies that we can measure in some way. Because we can’t measure Spirit, it is open to speculation, opinion, and subjective analysis, Nobody can replicate an experience in Spirit. Nobody can say this is what Spirit is. It would be like saying, “This is God.” No linear description will be enough.
If one of the early European explorers landed in what is now New York and another landed in Florida, they would return with quite different ideas of what the new world was like. The Spirit realm is infinitely larger than the North American continent. The Europeans eventually explored and mapped the North and South American continents, but the spiritual realm has hardly been explored at all. However, we have had reports from the explorers of Spirit who have experienced existence beyond forms and energies. You can be a strict materialist and reject those claims, or you can be open to finding a way to experience those claims.
The Gospel of Oneness says that Spirit, though undefinable in a scientific way, is the reality behind all forms and energies in the universe. Spirit produces consciousness and creative mind power. Every form has an intelligent pattern and has a coherent organization and a niche within its environment.
The building blocks of matter are the atoms and sub-atomic particles and waves of energy. They do not act without intelligence influencing them. The Gospel of Oneness says that an intelligence of Spirit creates the idea for every form in existence. In the Christian world, this intelligence is called Christ Consciousness. In India, it is called Kutastha Chaitanya. In China, it is called the Tao. Nobody can prove it, so it remains hidden, yet we can experience it one by one.
God is the mind that imagines physical reality. We are each like a cell in that mind.” —Peter Shepherd
“Only in quiet waters, things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is the adequate perception of the world.” — Hans Margolius
