Occasionally I hear the arguments from atheists, “There is no proof of God.” And yet, a glance around us demonstrates an intelligence so monumental as to convince any open skeptic. The idea that the universe, the earth and the biosphere of the earth could all happen by random mutations and chance, even allowing for billions of years of evolution, really cannot explain the complexity of design that goes into a flower, an animal or human being.
The human body is demonstration enough. In the human body a hundred trillion cells (estimates vary, 37 to 100 trillion), imagine that, a hundred trillion cells, and ten times that many micro-organisms (good bacteria) operating in the gut that some call the “forgotten” organ, are all working in an efficient manner that keeps a heart pumping, and a series of organs that are performing uncountable functions all the time. Could human intelligence design and make such a body? While we are busy mapping the body, and describing many of its functions, we are light years, if ever, from being able to make one from scratch. And yet that is what this universe has done.
And the human body is just a fragment of all creation around us—the atomic and sub-atomic functions that sustains and surrounds us, the unmeasured stellar systems, look in any direction and you see miraculous life self-creating, refining and improving. It is quite a lot to take in. And yet, in its colossal nature, this physical creation is but God’s footstool. (Isaiah 66:1)
And for all the magnificence of this creation we see all around us, it is merely reflected intelligence. When you look at a building, you see the reflected intelligence of the architect, not the intelligence itself of the man or woman who designed the building. If we want to know that intelligence itself, it would help to have a conversation with the architect, and you will see the nature of his or her thought, what went into the design and the construction—there is so much to be learned. Add another layer to that of having a conversation; if, in your time with the architect you could actually experience his mind at work, get a glimpse into his inner intelligence? Experience his thoughts in your own mind.
Then we consider once again the creative intelligence that has gone into bringing forth life, all of life–imagine being able to glimpse that mind! Albert Einstein, the great physicist, famously said, “I want to know God’s thoughts – the rest are mere details.” What a wonderful concept. And this is what mystics and yogis have claimed: in stilling the human mind you can be illumined with the way of knowing things even as God does.
This is quite a statement, yet, what if you saw this world as God sees it? When Jesus picked up a simple lily flower and said, “Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these (Luke 12:27). What was he seeing in that lily? Was he seeing it as God sees it? I think, “Yes.”
I have seen this world transform into a living expression of Divinity. I think, “Yes, this is how God sees creation, perfect, blissful, an expression of purity and such beauty.” And when we look out and fail to see the world with those qualities? Perhaps it is because we do not see this world as God sees it. Perhaps we insist on our own interpretation of what we see, and perhaps we are only insisting on our own ignorance—our own limited vision of what truly is. Indeed, as Jesus said in the Gospel of St. Thomas, “The kingdom of heaven is spread upon the earth, but men do not see it.” It is time to know the mind of God, to awaken to an entirely new way of seeing this world.