For the mind of the flesh is death, and the mind of The Spirit is life and peace. Romans 8:6 [Aramaic Bible in Plain English]
The rendition of “mind of flesh” as “mortal mind” is found in the writings of Unity—and probably first appeared in Christian Science; that religion much influenced Unity in its beginnings. It was introduced in H. Emilie Cady’s most influential work, Lessons in Truth. Paul’s use of the phrase is one of the countless indicators of the difference between views of the world founded on intuition and those on philosophy. We learned the phrase during our extensive involvement with Unity in Kansas City and, beyond, in Virginia. It had a fresh flavor for us, Romans renewed, you might say. Renewal is an absolutely vital process if the genuine content of revelation is to survive the inevitable process of socialization and reification that happens over time. The phrase has survived in my memory and rose spontaneously this morning as I noted the state of my mind on waking, didn’t like it, and thought: mortal mind. Only later this morning did I rediscover its Pauline origin; I’d forgotten.
Two minds in us. It is a matter of direct experience. Both are quite real. The intuition ran strongly in Paul—but the verse is not well known in a tradition that later more or less force-fitted the total Christian feeling mode to the Aristotelian framework where the real is substance, something made of matter and form. No. The intuition doesn’t fit the substance doctrine. But it matches what we experience. The flesh will pass, but The Spirit is life.
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Unity is a New Age spiritual movement, founded in 1899, with headquarters in Unity Village, MO.
