Editor’s Note: Don’t miss this book, the editor’s favorite. This serialization appears on Friday’s in Meridian.  Read earlier chapters here:  Introduction; Chapter 1; Chapter 2, Part 1; Chapter 2, Part 2; Chapter 3, Part 1 . Chapter 3, Part 2.

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All men that are in a state of nature, or … in a carnal state, are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity; … they are in a state contrary to the nature of happiness. Alma 41:10–11

Until you can govern and control the mind and the body, and bring all into subjection to the law of Christ, you have a work to perform touching yourselves. Brigham Young 1

Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks; walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow. Isaiah 50:11

Begotten in Light and reared in bliss, the premortal spirits continually beheld the splendors of eternal Beauty and Truth. In their infinite variety as organized intelligences, some perceived more than others, but all the spirit children enjoyed a vast consciousness, flourishing in the ocean of holy spirit. Still, a yet greater consciousness was needed to get them to their ultimate destiny. But, to ascend above all, they must descend below all.

And so it is that Man, trailing glory into a darker sphere, commences a course in deep impact training. The memory of his premortal powers and glories tucked away, he begins to interact with his new surroundings through a veiled consciousness. As he grows in his new world, his consciousness begins to develop anew, influenced now primarily by his fallen environment. “Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing Boy.”2 His mind is shaped by both accurate and inaccurate interpretations of the nature of things. With no memory of who he really is, he fixes on his emotional and physical survival, thus fostering self-absorption and anxiety. Flawed ideas take root in his mind which cause him to react to life in unconscious, negative patterns. Conditional love and even hatred dog him. His perception is clouded by vain imaginings and faulty interpretations. He relates to the world through the lens of his own self-talk instead of perceiving reality directly. He sins and is sinned against. Fear threads its way through his life. His confused mind fashions his perception of a confused world. That is, the Natural Man suffers from a degree of insanity.

Purposes of the Natural Mind

Of course we agreed to this imposition, knowing that these limitations would serve the purposes of the Great Plan of Happiness in order that we might come to know good and evil and to experience bitter and sweet in the full spectrum of opposites available in this world. Without the darkened mind, Man would see through life’s dilemmas to the greater reality, and his tutorials would lose their impact. Elder Charles W. Penrose explains the necessity of a veil:

We are here to learn the laws that govern this lower world; to learn to grapple with evil and to understand what darkness is. We came from an abode of bliss to understand the pain and sorrow incident to this probation. We came here to comprehend what death is. … The knowledge of our former state has fled from us. … The veil is drawn between us and our former habitation. This is for our trial. If we could see the things of eternity, and comprehend ourselves as we are; if we could penetrate the mists and clouds that shut out eternal realities from our gaze, the fleeting things of time would be no trial to us, and one of the great objects of our earthly probation or testing would be lost. But the past has gone from our memory, the future is shut out from our vision, and we are living here in time, to learn little by little, line upon line, precept upon precept.3

We must have known, even as we agreed to all this limitation, that it would try us sorely. But that Man would begin the mortal probation amidst clouds and mists, a mystery to himself, constitutes an essential part of the Plan. Yes, he must make the descent into confusion and darkness and into vanity, fear, blindness, selfishness, and tribulation, for, as the Lord told His suffering prophet, “Know thou, my son, that all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good” (D&C 122:7). Brigham Young spoke on the benevolent purposes behind the telestial curriculum:

It is the Lord’s design that His people should have an experience; … it was the will of the Lord that we should be made acquainted with darkness, and subjected to vanity. … to descend below all things, that they might ascend to thrones, principalities, and powers; for they could not ascend to that eminence without first descending, nor upon any other principle. … The Lord has designed, from ages immemorial, that we should be in darkness and ignorance, and at the same time I believe it is His will that we should receive light and intelligence in order that we may understand true principles. … It is then the design of the Lord that mankind should be placed in this dark, ignorant, and selfish state, that we should naturally cling to the earth. … He has designed all this to prepare us to dwell in His presence … to possess His spirit, which is right and intelligent, for nothing but purity and holiness can dwell where He is.4

Meanwhile, we find ourselves submersed with our fellows in these beclouded telestial opposites, “For God hath shut [us] up on all sides in disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all.” 5 For His purposes, God has insulated Man in ignorance—until the revelation of Truth.

So, if we find that we have a sturdy Natural Man, that is to be expected—that’s the Plan; we’re not surprised. The Gods themselves developed their perfected consciousness in part through a Wilderness experience of limited and distorted views of reality. Even so, as there was extended to them in the midst of their journey, so there is extended to us the invitation to burrow with our spirit in the Light of Christ (see Moroni 7:19), to “receive light and intelligence,” to find out who we are (see John 10:34, “Is it not written in your law … Ye are gods?”), and to penetrate the veils of illusion drawn before us (see Ether 4:15). And the reason for this struggle is that the very search for the Truth behind the veils is a sanctifying and consciousness expanding journey.

The poet William Blake describes Man’s faulty sense of reality: “If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”6  Nevertheless, the Truth leaks through, and the fretful Seeker knows that this fallen world is not all there is; his searches make him aware of glories that lie just beyond his perception, and his restiveness drives him on to penetrate the veil.

He often finds the path obscure, fraught with conundrums, and the opposition to his transformation insuperable. Life can seem a hopeless tangle.

The scriptures abundantly describe the Seeker’s felt experience in his fall from bliss in such words as “lost” and “fallen” (1 Nephi 10:6); “awful state of blindness” (1 Nephi 13:32); “nothingness … worthless and fallen state” (Mosiah 4:5); “awful reality” (2 Nephi 9:47); “deep sleep” (2 Nephi 1:13); uncomprehending “darkness” (d&c 88:49), bitter taste (see Moses 6:55), “carnal, sensual, and devilish,” “shut out from the presence of God” (Moses 6:49). These conditions are not amenable to simple remedies.

Hugh Nibley points out the ultimate futility of earthly solutions for fallen Man’s distress: “Psychotherapy can cure you of the neurotic lies you live by to block out the real horror of your condition—we are all hiding in the broom closet. Freud said he could liberate you from that but only to face a worse horror—your actual condition.”7 So a veil has been mercifully drawn, not only to subject us to certain experiences, but also to keep us from a thorough awareness of our situation, which awareness would be unbearable were we able to perceive the full contrast. What great submission in humility and trust is required of us! (see Mosiah 3:19).

But even though God provided for the narrower consciousness for undertaking the journey in this world, He provided also the means for liberating this consciousness: “I give unto men weakness that they may be humble; … if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them” (Ether 12:27). The prophet Joseph writes of God’s promise that His covenant people would not have to remain in weakness: “He will endow you with power, wisdom, might and intelligence, and every qualification necessary; while your minds will expand wider and wider, until you can circumscribe the earth and the heavens, reach forth into eternity, and contemplate the mighty acts of Jehovah in all their variety and glory.”8

Man’s Plan of Happiness, then, includes a two-part experience; to descend below all things in weakness that he might rise above all. How important then to understand the true nature of this life and the way in which the illusion it presents may be transcended.

Impact of Premortal Experience on the Mind

The shaping of Man’s mind begins before this mortal probation. He brings with him certain dispositions. He arrives, for example, with a heightened consciousness toward that which will comprise his earthly plan. This heightened awareness in specific areas acts as a steering mechanism. A child destined to play the violin will be drawn to everything about violins but may tend to avoid sports. The girl with intellectual gifts may be drawn to opportunities to use her mind at the expense of, say, homemaking skills. So the strengths and gifts he comes with will necessarily cause him to develop consciousness in those areas, but also predispose him to be weak in others. None of us gets the whole pie in this life, only a slice or two. Therefore, we can be philosophical about some of our weaknesses, and others’, realizing that it just wasn’t given us to be strong in some areas, in order that we would focus on other particular skills during our earth life. Since we can’t do everything, our lives are necessarily full of both accomplishment and neglect.

Man brings premortal baggage and is shapeable by environment and nurturing only to a degree. Of course, attentive parents can nurture many aspects of a child’s potential and teach many skills. But each person comes with plans and covenants and predispositions already in place. As nurturing efforts go forward, parents and teachers soon reach that core of the premortal spirit that will not respond to the most skillful shaping efforts. This girl is going to play basketball no matter how many dolls we give her. It is peaceful wisdom to realize the formative power of premortal events and to recognize the validity of many different attributes, strengths and weakness in the people who cross our path, as they work out their own salvation. Since we can never be sure what the Lord is doing with a person, it is our opportunity to consider staying out of the way.

However, in each of us, no matter our premortal endowment, there remains a good deal of developable consciousness and Christness. These powers develop largely according to our relationship with Truth. Each person brings the results of some of the choices he made in the world before. He arrives here, in his infant state, innocent before God—his slate wiped clean (see D&C 93:38), but, nevertheless, also with certain tendencies. His choices in the premortal world had a shaping influence on his intelligence there and resulted in a particular relationship to Truth. To paraphrase the scripture, the intelligence that we attained to in the previous life through our diligence and obedience, we have brought with us to this life (see d&c 130:18). This thrust of our premortal spirit still shapes to some degree how we will respond to Truth as it is presented to us here. Since Truth always demands something of us, we make choices as to whether we will abandon our current practice in favor of the Truth or whether we will reshape reality to suit us. Our choices in every sphere tend either to reveal or conceal things as they really are.

Components and Characteristics of the Natural Mind

The apostle Paul writes that we see the world as reflected in a distorted mirror (“through a glass, darkly” [1 Corinthians 13:12]). Francis Bacon uses the same analogy: “All perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.”9 This carnal mirror causes Man much trouble in this world but can also serve as a potent instrument of his education.

To define the term, carnal comes from the Latin and simply means “of the flesh or of the body”; that is, it is the Carnal or Natural Mind that develops as one experiences life in a physical body. This mind is laid over and veils the Spiritual, disabling many of the functions of the Spiritual Mind. For example, this Natural Mind does not process miracles or perceive realms beyond its own and is not inclined to spiritual things. Brigham Young describes this mind’s affinities:

How difficult it is to teach the natural man, who comprehends nothing more than that which he sees with the natural eye! … Talk to him about angels, heavens, God, immortality, and eternal lives, and it is like sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal to his ears; it has no music to him; there is nothing in it that charms his senses, soothes his feelings, attracts his attention, or engages his affections, in the least.

This mind wants empirical proof, contending, as Korihor did, that “ye cannot know of things which ye do not see”(Alma 30:15), but even with proof may go into denial in self-protection against uncomfortable truth: “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

Paul identifies some of the characteristics of the Carnal Mind: “For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal and walk as men?” (1 Corinthians 3:3).

The Carnal Mind develops as an alternative to the mind and will of God. When in the early stages of Man’s existence on the earth Satan came among men to recruit them to his worship, they accepted his lies and loved him more than God: “And men began from that time forth to be carnal, sensual, and devilish” (Moses 5:13). It was departing from the mind of God that created the thought-world of the Natural Mind and fostered its development. These men made a conscious decision. We, on the other hand, must become conscious of the diabolical lies we accept.

The Natural Mind necessarily reflects Man’s telestial environment, which means that it tends to run in paths of negativity, such as the strife, envy, and division that Paul mentions. Unchecked, it produces various degrees of misery as this mind attaches to anxious or self-seeking thoughts. In fact, in the ongoing experience of the Natural Man there flows an underlying irritation and even suffering which he often tries to keep from his awareness through various attempts at escape. This undercurrent in his mind blocks his perception of the Infinite, disrupts his sense of wellbeing, and often causes him to treat others roughly. But the important thing to remember is that the Natural Man deals in illusions that do not represent reality nor the truth of his being.

We see then that this Natural Mind will run Man rather than serve him as his tool if he does not understand its limited spiritual scope and potential. He can begin to subject the Natural Mind to his spiritual purposes through discerning the characteristics of the two minds. Here are a few instructive examples of scriptural references to these two minds and their respective content:

1. Remember, to be carnally-minded is death, and to be spiritually minded is life eternal. (2 Nephi 9:39)

2. But now mine own eyes have beheld God; but not my natural, but my spiritual eyes, for my natural eyes could not have beheld. (Moses 1:11)

3. And I would not that ye think that I know of myself—not of the temporal but of the spiritual [mind], not of the carnal mind, but of God. (Alma 36:4)

4. You do not remember the Lord your God; … your hearts … do swell with great pride, unto boasting, and unto great swelling, envyings, strifes, malice, persecutions, and murders, and all manner of iniquities. (Helaman 13:22)

5. It is your privilege, and a promise I give unto you … that inasmuch as you strip yourselves from jealousies and fears, and humble yourselves before me, for ye are not sufficiently humble, the veil shall be rent and you shall see me and know that I am—not with the carnal neither natural mind, but with the spiritual. For no man has seen God at any time in the flesh, except quickened by the Spirit of God. Neither can any natural man abide the presence of God, neither after the carnal mind. Ye are not able to abide the presence of God now, neither the ministering of angels; wherefore, continue in patience until ye are perfected. (D&C 67:10–13)

We learn from the foregoing scriptures that living in the easy drift of the Natural Mind promotes spiritual death with this mind’s jealousy, fear, and pride; but, on the other hand, by stripping oneself of the characteristics of the Natural Mind, and quickened by the Spirit, the spiritual eyes begin to open and a new consciousness begins to operate.

Of course the Light of Christ is the very foundation of the Natural Man’s living and breathing and functions as a continual monitor of right and wrong in his soul. Nevertheless, without a conscious awareness of the Light of Christ or the Spirit, or an understanding of his choice between the two minds, Man will necessarily live in his Natural Mind, tainting his experience with its distortions.

In studying the Natural Mind, we soon see that our thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and behavior profoundly affect our ability to perceive spiritual things. In order to unveil the Spiritual Mind, it becomes necessary to discern the nature of thought and feeling so as to bring sharply to our realization that we can choose by which mind we will experience life.

To be continued…Chapter 4, Part 2 will run next Friday.

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1. JD  3:249.

2. William Wordsworth, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.

3. JD  26:28.

4. JD 2:302–3.

5. This is a more literal translation of Romans 11:32, which says in the KJV, “For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all,” where the word for concluded means shut up or imprisoned.

6. From The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, an illuminated book by William Blake (1757–1827).

7. Brother Brigham Challenges the Saints, vol. 13 of The Collected Works of Hugh Nibley, ed. Don E. Norton and Shirley S. Ricks (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book and farms, 1994), 396–97.

8. TJPS, 163.

9. Novum Organum (1620), Book 1, Aphorism 41.

10. Discourses of Brigham Young, ed. John A. Widstoe (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1941), 260.