“The Cyclopean eye figures a reality of life referred to by our Lord when he said: “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” (Matt. vi. 22.) For purposes of concentration upon one subject, the physical eyes and the eyes of the mind become one—physically upon the book before you, mentally upon the thought under consideration. And when concentration is upon material things, the eye sees nothing else. The Cyclopean eye of today has its development in the specialization of the intellectual world. Therefore the education of modern times, conforming the mind as it does to its present channels, is in itself necessary and good, notwithstanding the fact that it narrows the range of the intellectual vision.
A phenomenon of mind, before referred to, is that inspiration takes place when the entire attention is focalized upon one subject to the exclusion of every other. But in order to obtain this condition of concentration, it is necessary to repel—which is a combative attitude—every thought but the one sought. In our educational institutions we find this necessary repulsion carried to an extreme of an intolerance which condemns and rules out the higher faculties of the human mind, the faculties that lie at the very root, the foundation of consciousness, and with them is excluded the spirit of devotion or recognition of God.
The accepted training of the mind is good in that it teaches the use of the perceptive faculties, to formulate orderly thought in regard to observable facts of physical nature, and gives control of the external mentality, but, sad to say, the present methods array the entire consciousness against God, the Spirit, and destroy the ability to reason from cause to effect, training the mind to reason exclusively from effect to cause, while, strange contradiction, cause is at the same time ignored.
Some of our able men have noted the fact, that it takes but a year or two in our theological institutions to eradicate the habit of religious devotion, and in its place to imbue the mind with the spirit of infidelity—infidelity to one’s own highest attributes of mind and soul consciousness, and infidelity in regard to the validity of Bible Revelation.
If this is the course of instruction given by religious teachers, is it surprising that the religion of Christ is at such a low ebb in the world to-day? The vital thought-currents of the race are despised, condemned and repelled, and only those faculties recognized which have unfolded through the struggle of animal existence from its lowest form up to the present highly developed animal part of human nature. Then we are asked: If the things of which we are about to write are true, why have they not been known before? The reason is obvious in the fact that we, as civilized nations, have been working so diligently to close the door to all approaches from the cause-side.
These conditions have grown out of fear—perhaps justifiable fear; for, in the absence of a mind that has surveyed the whole road and is capable of grasping the problem of life and putting in order before the people the broader outlines of truth—the great scheme of growth and development—the prevailing materialistic intolerance has been the protection against the grossest superstition and error. Under existing circumstances the best thing possible has been done. Throughout can be traced the general plan of the great Creative Mind that formed the world and man upon it.
It is a well-known fact that a man can do but one piece of work at a time. Therefore the Creator—or, if you please, the creative-forces working in the growth of the different races in different periods of the world’s history—developed first a consciousness of the unseen and cause world; but, as we have said, the incapacity of the brain correctly to interpret causation made it necessary to take the race into the external activities, and round out to completeness the capacities of the gray matter in its relation to the physical world.
These capacities have been developed, and does not the time, the stage of development, the need of the people, cause the crying demand of the day for other and higher revelation—a demand that we go back, pick up, and carry forward that faculty of instinct that lies at the very foundation of our being, that we take hold upon it by the matured brain-power, and develop in the race the intuitional power that will enable man to become more like his Creator—with a right hand to grasp the material universe and its workings and a left hand to grasp the spiritual forces and laws of causation, and thus blend his spiritual nature into a well-rounded and complete manhood.”
Hiram Butler
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 