By Russ Gerber
Let’s try some word association. If I say messaging, you probably come back with instant messaging or texting. In the not-too-distant past, you might have said pencil and paper. If we went back to April 1860, when the Pony Express was the fastest letter delivery service ever, we likely would have heard that name mentioned with a bit of excitement. Talk about high-speed messaging: 1,800 miles in a breathtaking 10 days!
Speedy messaging was dependent on physical horsepower and man-hours. Instant messaging was out of the question unless the sender and receiver happened to be in the same room.
Those days are ancient history in large part because of dematerialization—having less or no reliance on physical substance. Without a willingness to dematerialize the concept of communication, we’d still be taking days rather than nanoseconds to chat over long distances.
The same is true for shopping, planning travel, conducting meetings, transferring funds, reading books, publishing books, attending classes, playing music, seeing faraway places, or instantly messaging with friends living there. In so many ways, we live with less and less matter to slow us down or hold us back.
The larger story is what’s happening to the human mind. We no longer routinely let our ability to conceptualize anything be tied to matter. The mind is getting dematerialized.
We see this played out in technological breakthroughs, yet for all the remarkable advances we see in technology, there is a point before the development appears when the thought of the developer(s) is open to a new model and fresh possibilities. Then, the breakthrough: a fresh idea pierces the old material sense of things, and advancement is underway.
Dematerialization and progress are happening across the spectrum of human experience.
Take health care, for example. How long did Western medicine think strictly in materialistic terms, treating the physical body as separate from the mind? That model has been somewhat dematerialized, and we commonly think of mind and body as a unit. Today, mind-body programs are found throughout medical schools.
For the sake of better health and better lives, it’s worth asking: does dematerialization stop there, with a conception of ourselves as a mix of inert matter and a mercurial mind? Are we assuming that’s the highest model? Are we assuming that’s the healthiest one to have?
The National Library of Medicine notes that until modern times, spirituality was often linked with health care. Today, they report that spiritual practices have been shown to improve health outcomes.
Is a spiritual model of health care unrealistic? Perhaps as much so as smartphones and texting would have seemed to a Pony Express rider. Old mind-models can be as entrenched and “normal” as they are restrictive. Higher models — less material and more spiritual – expand the range of thought and open it to infinite possibilities.
The assumption should be that, in every aspect of life, we’ll keep seeking better thought models and that dematerialization frees us to have them. Mind and its ideas thrive in such freedom. So can better health and better lives.
Russ and his wife moved back home to Southern California after working in Boston as the media manager for the Christian Science church. With a background in publishing, most of his time is spent writing, reading, volunteering and grandparenting.
