Who is Jesus?/Book 2/Chapter 3

by Walter Brown Murray

III. THE HUMAN PLANES OF LIFE
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THE first step in order to perceive how Jesus is God and man is to understand first what man is, and then to understand, so far as we can, what God is. It is better in the very beginning of such a discussion to make clear the meaning of the terms we use. We shall proceed, first of all, to a consideration of man, or the human nature.

It is perfectly obvious, first of all, that man is a creature. We do not make ourselves, nor do our parents create us; they are simply instrumentalities through which we come into being.

The simplest classification of man is as follows:

Above	SOUL		of		SPIRIT	= CREATED MAN
Below	BODY		of		MATTER
Diagram 1

The soul is of spirit, or spiritual, and the body is of matter, or material, and the two together, soul and body, make created man.

The body denotes simply the material part of man in the plane of nature or matter. All that our natural eyes ever behold of our loved ones or friends or neighbors is the material body that they inhabit.

Yet the real thing that distinguishes those we know from one another and causes us to like or dislike them is not the body chiefly, but the spiritual part of them that we cannot see with our natural eyes. We recognize that the spiritual part is the part that really lives, and acts through the material body. This part we perceive with the eyes of our mind or our spirit.

Let us make the distinction very clear and marked between the material and the spiritual. They are totally distinct in kind, although acting together as a one.

Matter has in itself fixedness or immobility. It is perceptible to the senses. It is subject to the limitations of time and space. It is capable of being weighed and measured in very material ways.

Affection and thought, which constitute the quality and expression of the spiritual part of us, cannot in themselves be perceived by the five senses; their effects upon the material body may be observed, but not the things themselves. Affection and thought are not limited by time and space. They cannot be weighed or measured by any material standard.

Spirit and matter are distinct in kind. We cannot justly think of spirit, or the spiritual, as refined matter,——etherealized matter,—matter so attenuated that it is only a finely diffused mist or essence.

Matter and spirit, we repeat, are distinct and on distinctly separated planes. Even if we think of two of the most etherealized forms of matter, gravitation and electricity, we cannot think of them as on the same plane as affection and thought. This is clearly shown by applying material standards of weight or measurement to spiritual things. We cannot say that an affection or thought weighs so many pounds or ounces, or is so many inches or yards long, whereas the attraction of gravitation can be so weighed and electrical current definitely measured. The physical energy or atomic displacement caused by affection and thought may be measured, but not the things themselves.

In speaking of spirit we have purposely thus far included mind with spirit, for the mind is also spiritual, but it will be more illuminating if we distinguish between them, and call all that is spiritual back of the material body by the word soul, referring in this way to the body's interior life. A new diagram will elucidate our idea:

SPIRIT MIND	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	SOUL	REALM OF THE SPIRITUAL
BODY		BODY	REALM OF THE MATERIAL
Diagram 2

Now let us go a step further and define mind as the natural mind, a part of the natural body by association, similar to the mind of an animal, both belonging to the realm of the "natural" (a new term), and yet the body belonging to matter and the mind to spirit, the body perishable, and the mind and spirit immortal and capable of continuance apart from the body. "Natural" and "material" are not wholly identical or coincident, although "material" belongs to the realm of the natural. We would better record this new phase:

		SPIRIT	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	Constituting SOUL	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	Existent in the REALM OF THE SPIRITUAL REALM OF THE MATERIAL	$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\\\ \\\ \\\ \ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$	= MAN
NATURAL	$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$	MIND BODY		BODY
Diagram 3

We do not like to be diffuse in this analysis, but without it we cannot understand our subject. We are arriving somewhere.

Let us now take up the third division which we have indicated on our diagrams as "spirit." By spirit we refer to a still higher plane of man's being, which all men refer to and yet think of variously.

We are all sure that man has a distinctly marked plane of his nature—or faculty, at least—above the merely natural or animal mind. It is known from its manifestations. The natural mind is the "carnal" mind, to which Paul refers. The spiritual plane we also know from him. "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." (Romans 8:6.)

The mere animal, and the animal man, the man of the carnal or fleshly mind only, is guided by selfish motives altogether—motives of self-protection, self-preservation, self-indulgence, self-enjoyment, self-exaltation; in a word, by self-love. This operates with the material body in the realm of the natural (here plainly recognized). "The carnal mind is enmity against God." (Romans 8:7.)

The man in whom the spiritual plane is opened acts from superior motives. The mere animal may indeed forget itself in the protection of its offspring, but that is in itself a natural or selfish motive—it is its own life by perpetuation and extension that it is protecting.

The spiritual man, or the man in whom the spiritual plane is opened, can forget self for those who are not related to him by ties of blood or selfish interest. He is willing to lay down his life, if need be, for those who need his aid and have no other claim upon him. He is capable of renouncing self-indulgence, self-enjoyment, self-exaltation, for the sake of others and for his God.

It would seem that we are entitled to call this the plane of heavenly life, or "eternal life," as Jesus called it, into which we come by regeneration, or the "new birth," or by being "born from above." It represents a new life, capable of being opened in every man by his acceptance of its governing principles, which are those enunciated by Jesus. He accepts those principles in theory, first of all, when from his spiritual plane he is enabled to acknowledge them as true and worthy of his obedience. He accepts them in fact when he brings them down by the coöperation of the Divine power to dominate his natural mind and body.

We can never understand the Incarnation until we perceive the correctness of these classifications of man's life into these planes; therefore he who would understand it should be patient.