Is there an intelligence beyond the brain? What does it mean to say this? And if there is such an intelligence, can it be related to A Course in Miracles? Will A Course in Miracles introduce us to this intelligence?
When I sit quietly and give attention to what can be observed, I see that another energy is sustaining life and that it has nothing to do with me. The trees are not growing because of what I do. The birds are not flying and feeding and building their nests under my direction. The movement of the sun and the moon, the falling rain – it is all so consistent, all so beautiful and all so perfectly independent of my self.
All that does not rely on the brain at all. Long before our brains were inventing language and monetary systems and governments and agriculture and so forth, the flowers were simply growing and going to seed and growing again. The seasons were emptying into one another. The stars were shining, the ocean rising and falling
I am not playing word games: you can call it evolution, or biology or chemistry or whatever you want, and I am still going to ask you: is it not a form of intelligence? Is there not an order to it? We don’t have to leap into theology, which is just another abstraction. We can just stay with our observation of how simple life is, and how orderly, and how little it asks of us. It’s not about science and it’s not about narrative. It just is. And giving attention to it is a very liberating, very empowering gift.
If we discern between the activity of the brain and the action of life, then we are beginning to see that there is in fact another intelligence and that we are related to it. A Course in Miracles, like plenty of other spiritual paths, will point us in its direction but it cannot take us there. It is like the old adage: you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. We have to recognize our thirst. We have to make the decision to slake it.
Giving attention to what is relieves our unfulfillment and restores to our mind the fact of its wholeness.
What A Course in Miracles calls the mind is not the same thing as the brain. It is something else. When we look into it, we see that mind is not readily measurable. It is not confined. It has qualities of the eternal and the infinite. Again, we don’t need to go into God and Heaven and all of that – that abstraction, that philosophy, that theology. All of that is fodder for conflict. But we can make contact with this intelligence, this energy, flowing through mind. It is the easiest thing to do because we are that intelligence. We are that flow.
“Flows” is the right word here. Mind is not an organ; it is not an instrument. It is more in the nature of a movement, a flow. It has tidal qualities, reflective properties. It is not concerned with survival or improvement or status. It is not ambitious or greedy. It wants nothing because it has everything.
These are just words, of course, and words are just symbols. They are not the thing itself but only relative approximations, always subject to error. It’s okay. We are not really trying to anymore to explain anything or even to understand anything here. We are trying to know the experience of peace and joy which naturally inheres in Creation and so naturally inheres in us.
We are moving beyond words, and beyond learning, in favor of experience. We are atoning. We are letting go our attachment to separation.
When I mentioned earlier the energy – the life – that infuses the sunlight which infuses the lilac bush which lights up my mind . . . That life or energy is not external to me. Nor, really, is it internal. Rather, it is me. And you, too. There is nowhere this life and energy is not. Its currents enfold everything and all things unfold out of it. Call it “ground” or “God” or “Brahman” or “flux” and what it is doesn’t change one bit. What a gift to know such stability and grace, to no longer perceive oneself as apart from it!
A Course in Miracles cleared a space for me in which it became possible to learn how to give attention and thus perceive that which lies beyond language, that which lies beyond form, and that which lies beyond perception. It related me to the intelligence that underlies the flow of life, teaching me that I am not separate from that life but rather flow with it and through it as it flows through me. You too.
So I am grateful, indeed, and my gratitude keeps me close to awareness of God. Nothing is disturbed, nothing is disgraced.