Similar to a previous book, I bought this book (1945) from the same Church, and in this blog post, I’ll write a short summary of the read. The author of the book is a medical doctor from the Russian Empire.
The book is a quick read, has about 140 pages, and reads very easily. It has a total of 9 chapters. It contains various verses and then explains them in medical layman’s terms.
Chapter 1: What can we conclude from natural sciences
This chapter starts with an explanation of classical physics and then moves to quantum physics, explaining the need for it when we work at the atom level. The author also notes how there is no universal truth and that depending on the situation, different systems may be applied.
The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
The author proceeds by talking about electromagnetic fields and other types of energy (in detail). Then proceeds by arguing “Where is the basis for denying the truth of our faith and the claim that there is purely spiritual energy?”. This energy is the almighty divine love. The very same God’s love created the world and reason.
The heavens were made by the word of the LORD and all the stars by the breath of his mouth.
The fact that we find cannot perceive many shapes of energy is a result of our poor senses. Not only we should develop our senses to be sharper, but we must also place our heart in the center as an organ for our revelation.
Chapter 2: Revelation through the heart
The author starts by explaining how the heart connects to everything else in the body (in medical terms) and then proceeds to analyze paragraphs from the Bible and other books, which speak the same about the heart.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God
A person’s spiritual status can be determined by whether they feel joy, calm, peace (light) or worry, cold, or unrest (dark).
At one point the author goes meta and talks to the reader “the reader must not rush to close this book” when he talks about how the heart is also responsible for thinking, knowledge, and revelation. In the brain we know the centers of motor or breathing, but not of feeling such as joy or anger, or religious feelings. There is a difference between sensing (smell, taste) and feeling. The heart is the seat of feelings and of will. There are feelings of higher order (other than the basic smell/taste which the heart feels from the brain), and the heart can also feel those.
Wisdom rests in the heart of the wise
The heart has its own reasons, unknown to the mind
Chapter 3: Brain and Spirit
The reason is an expression of the spirit. The spirit is more general than reason, though we tend to see the “whole spirit” in reason due to our intellectual conception. When two persons engage, one person’s thoughts/traits may transfer to the other (I’d read about this in GEB).
God is Spirit. God is love and His love spills over on everything. Love creates.
A deep connection between spirit and (material) form: spirit creates form, and form expresses spirit. Not only are the eyes the mirror of a spirit, but also how a person moves, behaves, etc.
It is natural for a woman to enjoy flowers – it is an honor for their hearts.
Chapter 4: The spirit of plants and animals
Plants also have spirit, and they clearly rejoice in the light, the wind, and the rain. Plants have a much deeper sense of the soil than animals with their roots. Plants don’t have a nervous system like humans, but they can still breathe, eat, and grow.
No specific boundary can be defined between the plant and animal world, because among the simplest unicellular organisms there are many, almost exactly the same forms, from which the plant world develops, and from others the animal world, and it is impossible to distinguish them. […] It is perfectly clear that all plant and animal life possesses the lowest of the gifts of the Holy Spirit – the spirit of life.
A large number of naturalists find senseless the vitalists’ teaching of lifeforce. The author gives a few examples of scientific experiments (e.g. temporary death of the seeds doesn’t stop their rebirth) to claim that this is only possible with the energy of the Holy Spirit. Even though plants have life, they don’t necessarily have a soul like humans, perhaps plants have just an unconscious will for life.
Chapter 5: The soul of the animals and the humans
The author starts by explaining the widely accepted concept of neurons as to how the brain works.
The soul (душата) can be understood as a set of organic and sensitive influences, traces of memories, thoughts, feelings, and acts of the will, but without the obligatory participation of the highest properties of the spirit. The spirit (духот) determines and directs the state of consciousness in the brain. The spirit is immortal and can exist independently of the body and the soul.
And the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Ecclesiastes 12:7 ESV
In human life, the spirit and the soul are united in a single essence. Compared to The Spirit, the human soul has a limited and embodied spirit. Self-awareness comes from the human spirit, reason is a subset of this spirit. Only the person’s spirit knows what’s inside the person.
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? Even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
1 Corinthians 2:11, KJV
For the spirit as the highest power, many testimonies can be found in the Bible.
The spirit of a man is the lamp of the LORD, searching all the inner depths of his heart.
Proverbs 20:27
Spirituality is the highest possible achievement of the human soul.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23
The lower the degree of the zoological scale of development of the form on which animals are found, the lower the degree of spirituality. Animals lack the highest qualities of spirituality: piety, morality, philosophical and scientific opinion, and taste for art and music, but they can still feel love (not divine love but family love).
Chapter 6: The spirit is not unconditionally bound to the soul and body
The spirit creates material shapes/forms, but the spirit can also be materialized. Talks about the limits of science and how some phenomena cannot be observed or measured. Gives some logical arguments to conclude that the spirit is not bound to the body, e.g. a child inherits morals/etc. characteristics from the parent but not memories etc.
Chapter 7: Transcendental spiritual capabilities
Many important subconscious activities can take place in waking states. What is called inspiration often comes in a state of greater or lesser obscuration of awareness of reality. As Schopenhauer once said that his philosophical postulates appeared by themselves without his influence in moments when his will was as if asleep and his mind was not directed in advance in a certain direction.
Similarly, as Richet once said: the spirit can work without the knowledge of consciousness about its work; many complex intellectual operations bypass our consciousness, and a whole world of unknown ideas trembles within us.
The author gives some examples, e.g. how some people smoking hashish get to experience events that seem to last for a very long time (ages in some cases). He also says that it is well known that impulses travel across nerves in some finite time and that if we sum these during a person’s lifetime we will get a large number. But they haven’t really happened that long (due to hashish e.g.), so it must mean that these events happen somewhere outside of the brain: the human spirit.
Chapter 8: About the inner man
In nature there are unknown “actions” that move the human mind and that reveal to man facts and phenomena, that his senses cannot detect
To most people, everything is simple and clear – for them, only science is an unconditional authority, although its axioms and hypotheses, under the pressure of the new and unknown, often collapse like a house of cards.
The heart is the organ of the highest knowledge, the organ of communion with God and the whole transcendental world, and it never sleeps. The most important mental activity takes place outside of our awareness and never stops. This thought is also found in Leibniz. The author also touches briefly on Kant’s thoughts that the human soul is bound to the immaterial beings from the spiritual world.
A person can reach the highest knowledge when he understands the love of Christ, love that surpasses all human reason, for by faith Christ will dwell with him
Chapter 9: Immortality of spirit soul and body
The human spirit is from the breath of The Spirit. The human spirit can develop beyond the boundaries of the earthly world. Immortality is a necessary postulate of our mind.
And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?
John 11:26
What right do we have with our limited senses […] to claim that in the immense cosmos only man is a rational being? The author relates to Immanuel Kant’s writings on free will, in the following summary: the human spirit is free, the Spirit goes where it wills, and the sentient soul obeys the laws of reason.
The mind is part of our spirit and therefore our brain must be immortal. The immortal heart will be the center of the new, pure and deep feelings.
All creatures would live in light and joy if Adam’s sin had not changed the fate of the world. In the new creation of the world, there will be nothing impure and the new creation will receive the ancient justification and sanctification of the Word of God:
God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.
Genesis 1:31 NIV
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And it has been said, God is the Master Physicist. Science is spirituality and vice versa, I believe.
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