Independent Christian Science articles

Christian Science Protective Work

by



Click here to play the recording by Florence Roberts:

Also available on YouTube, Vimeo, or SoundCloud



Click here to play the recording by Gary Singleterry:

Also available on YouTube, Vimeo, or SoundCloud


In doing “Protective” work, one should take half an hour each day, and declare the truth about “malpractice.” When you do it, know that you are handling the error that is trying to keep Christian Scientists from raising the dead. Evil will always come to you as person, place or thing. When malpractice, it will come through person. Look in our Textbook, Science and Health and note the frequency that “moral idiocy,” “erring thought,” is mentioned with mental malpractice.

Mental malpractice has no law, no origin. It is a falsehood of mortal mind. It has no intelligence, no action, no continuity, no power, no mind, no matter. It does not operate, and cannot, through a belief of thought transference, nor through a belief of fear of climate or contagion or epidemic. It cannot act through any of the cardinal sins or through pride, passion, sensuality or appetite. It cannot act at all. It is nothingness, dust to dust.

Mortal mind cannot operate to bring about any poisoning effects on a Christian Scientist, nor affect his health in any way, nor disturb his thought. Mortal mind cannot act as mental malpractice to operate as law; it has no law, no action, no being, no life, no substance, no man, no woman, no child, no matter, no channels, no avenues, no mediums, no power, and no existence. It is unreal, false, untrue and impossible, for there is no mortal mind. There is only one Mind, even God, good, so of course the only Mind. Mortal mind cannot exert itself at all, it cannot do anything good, so naturally it cannot do anything evil! In other words, there is no mortal mind, so it can not do anything.

Mental malpractice may be defined as improper mental activity; it tries to make a Christian Scientist think there is a return of old beliefs. There is no law of malpractice that can itself be a law of relapse, in the return of old beliefs. If a Christian Scientist is sick, always handle mental malpractice. As a rule do not handle anything else!

When you give a Christian Science treatment, declare: “There is no law of mental malpractice that can make me forget anything that is essential to make this a perfect and complete treatment, and a successful one.” Do the work thoroughly and leave the rest to God. When a disease is cured and another seems to follow upon it at once, this is always mental malpractice; there are no so-called laws of malpractice; they are not laws. There are no such laws. God is Law, and God is All.

Declare: “Mental malpractice cannot argue anything; can not argue or suggest to me any evil things, either silently or audibly, that can have any effect on me or on my patients. It cannot operate to argue through a belief or disbelief in the power of Christian Science to heal, or save. It cannot prevent the effect of this Christian Science treatment. It cannot make a law to influence or affect or reverse this treatment, nor can I be mesmerized to doubt its power, force, effectiveness, completeness and conclusiveness. This treatment is the only power, force, activity, effectiveness, presence and substance of infinite good. It is the word of God. It is the stone the builders rejected. It always does the work because it is ‘God with us.’ (Matt.1:23)”

Some people are made sick by mental malpractice. Handling it means health; not to handle it means risk. No matter what the claim is, handle mental malpractice. You must know that it is harmless, lawless, actionless, mindless, because it has no origin, no sense, no life. The whole thing is a falsehood. Disease cannot be moved about, nor move from one form to another by malpractice. It cannot be directed toward a reader in the church, for example. The reader keeps well, but someone in his or her family may be affected. This is a false belief and can not operate as a law of rebound. Do not let it reflect on you or your teacher, because you may think it takes a particular shot at someone you know, if it cannot hit you. Handle mental malpractice through love: you will handle it until you know that Love is the obliterator of hate. Love is power and there is no other power.

For hypnotism, handle mortal mind and a false belief of life apart from God, not the man. No claim of mortal mind can dissect, detect or read your thought. Know: “My thoughts are deep in consciousness and cannot be picked out nor found by any law or effect of mental malpractice.”

Realize: “This treatment hinders, obstructs, impedes and destroys all supposed law or power of clairvoyance, numerology, heredity, material medica and gluttony. Mental malpractice has no mind, no action, no instrumental avenue of power, no government. God is government: mental malpractice is nothing. Mental malpractice cannot make a law that I cannot uncover its intention directed toward me. It is frequently directed for the purpose of doing evil either ignorantly or maliciously, so I must remember to protect myself against hate, envy, Jealousy.” A Christian Scientist who is not “working” is usually mesmerized in a state or condition of inactivity. He has a tendency to be mesmerized. Handle that, know: “There are no seen or unseen arguments that can operate as a law of mental malpractice through a belief of Roman Catholicism, to direct a law to reverse this treatment, to do anything that it is not intended to do.”

The great safety is to treat the impersonality of error silently and keep all claims out of your thoughts, remembering that there is no law that can operate as mental malpractice, no law but God’s law and that law cannot be changed.

Mental malpractice cannot handle or circulate through the peculiarities of disposition, discouragement, bitterness, and lack, nor constitutional tendencies, so-called. It cannot work as a belief of temperament, impulsiveness, nor any romantic or other feelings, such as longings, yearnings, or any other human beliefs. Mental malpractice cannot operate as a law of mortal mind to confuse or cloud your thoughts or dethrone your reason, to prevent, interfere with, or reverse the statements of Christian Science. It cannot touch or deface you because you are a Christian Scientist. You cannot be robbed of the privileges of a Christian Scientist, nor the ability to use them.

A treatment is the work and word of God. It does not return unto Him void but it is final and complete in its effects and the results thereof. Sometimes when you feel that you can not get results, declare the truth in this manner: “This treatment is the very essence, power, presence, and activity of infinite and perfect good. It does its work because it is ‘God with us,’ and it does wipe out, obliterate and destroy. It reduces to its native nothingness any mortal belief in a power apart from God. God is the only power. God is the only Life — there is no law of reversal. Mental malpractice cannot make a law to reverse, cannot act through a belief of fear, for ‘perfect love casteth out fear: …’ (1 John 4: 18), and God is Love.”

“Mental malpractice cannot operate through a belief of weather, climate, or atmosphere, to touch me or to effect me in any way; this is only mental suggestion.”

Never be afraid of fear; it is only mesmerism. Communion with God is the law which destroys the presence of seeming evil at all times. These are facts; these are truths. Truth is infinite. It has no opposition. It has no competitor. Truth is omnipotent, omnipresent, so error of any name or nature has neither power or presence. Truth is its own utterance, its own impulsion. It is irresistible. Nothing can withstand it. Nothing can delay, hinder or limit its activity, or affect its affirmations. Nothing can ever limit its capacity for expression. In fact, it is the word of God which “…shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” (Isa. 55:11)

Three Rules for Treatment

by



Click here to listen to Gary Singleterry’s reading:

Also available on YouTube, Vimeo, or SoundCloud


Self Help

Rule 1: Get a clear concept of God. There is only one infinite Mind, infinite Good, and Its infinite manifestation. There is only one infinite indestructible Life, one omnipotent Truth, one infinite and ever-present divine Principle, Love, intelligent Good, the only Cause, the only Presence — and the only Creator, Activity, and Law. Realize this. (See page 465 of the Textbook, Science and Health, ponder the answers to the question, “What is God?” link)

Rule 2: Get a clear concept of man, the image and likeness of God, the perfect reflection and expression of that infinite and perfect Mind — divine Principle, Love, Life, and Truth forever expressing health, harmony, holiness, spiritual power, and peace. (Read again, S&H 475:5-27 link) The Christ is the spiritual understanding that comes to human consciousness bringing up the real, perfect spiritual man; and it is done — it is come — the Christ is risen! I am that “man,” and every man, woman and child of the universe is that man. The Christ is the Truth about everything which comes to the human consciousness to show forth the “real” man. (Read in Prose Works, the paragraph, “Look long enough, …” My. 268:29 link)

Rule 3: Handle false beliefs only. In the realm of belief only, can the evil (so-called) be handled. There is no mortal mind; it has no sources, no origin, no power, no presence, no activity, no manifestation, and no law of enactment. There are not minds many. The false beliefs that there are, or seem to be, cannot operate to affect us in any way whatever. A false belief cannot operate by calling itself “fear,” “envy,” “deceit,” “lust,” “hatred,” “jealousy,” “lack,” “pain” and so on. It cannot act or operate through a belief calling itself “mental practice,” either ignorant or malicious or sympathetic, hiding itself under the cloak of religion, trying to get temporal power through a belief in organized prayer, or organized malpractice. A false belief cannot make avenues or channels through a belief in false theology, false “science,” false philosophy, or even calling itself “Christian Science.”

Know: ‘These beliefs cannot act or operate through malice against Truth, as operating in Christian Science, to affect me in any way whatever, or prevent my healing myself or others, through my individual understanding of Truth, or prevent my spiritual growth, development and demonstration in Christian Science, for there is only one Mind, intelligent Good; and there is no other Mind, no mental activity, or influence. God is the only power, and the Christ-man, the only man there is has dominion over all the earth.”

Summary: Clear up the thought right away in the morning. Think, “As I go on my way rejoicing in the Lord”; “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Phil. 4:13) Mrs. Eddy left Science and Health for us to amplify. Take and amplify one statement of the Textbook daily, and study it in a big progressive way, ponder it. You cannot study it today as you did yesterday because more has been revealed. The utterance of God is man. Be normal, be peaceful, be sure and let one Mind operate. Learn to let Spirit bear witness in ideas and in no other way. In reality there is no healing. You can not heal God. If patients are Christian Scientist, insist on their declaration of the Truth aloud; mesmerism is broken by audible statements. Always voice the Truth; to declare that Christian Science is difficult is not voicing the Truth! Christian Science is the easiest, the only thing in the world, in the earth, or in the heavens — for God, Good is all. Act just like God, Good.

Our Daily Bread

“… Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded. This unfolding is God’s day, and ‘there shall be no night there.’” (S&H 584:5-8 link) Day is experience in unfoldment. God the one Law, Soul, one Love, one infinite Being. ALL ONE! The Law of God to this day is oneness, completeness, success, satisfaction. There is no other Law. No mortal mind is in this day. This day is today. It is God’s day, Good’s day, Mind’s day, Love’s day. It is the unfoldment of spiritual ideas. For it, there is no fear, no disease, no belief of sin, death, nor disaster, nobody who is suffering, nobody who is poor, or seems to be, no law of deterioration, no loss of faculties or power. Spiritual man is the only experience of this day. The ability of man to exist in an environment of comfort and harmony is not dependent on the impermanent purchasing power of a material medium; and no false belief can make it seem so. It depends solely upon the degree to which the individual consciousness attains to unity with its Principle, divine Mind. Spirit is the only purchasing power. Our capital is our own individual understanding of Mind; our income is our utilization or circulation of the understanding.

God’s Law of Supply

Man lives because God expresses through man the Spiritual idea of Life. God provides for the ideas all that is necessary of sustenance, protection, and counsel. All that is necessary to sustain the idea accompanies and is inseparable from the idea. It is the spiritual status of God and man. Man exists at the very basis of all supply, and there are no human conditions, beliefs, or combination of circumstances to interfere with the flowing of that supply. Take that position, and you will see it working out in every relation. When you have taken that position, watch the suggestion that would deny your position. It may be a belief in lack of opportunity, or belief of age, or of competition, and the like. Man has every quality necessary for the achievement of success, now and forever. Opportunity is ever present. It has not gone by. It means a chance to act, a favorable chance to accomplish certain things. Opportunity is included in Mind and man is the exhibition of the one Mind.

Opportunity

Man exists at the very standpoint of opportunity — the opportunity to achieve. So he has infinite opportunities and cannot get away from any of them. Your opportunity does not come through other people but through knowing man is not bound to one small way of earning a living. Mind, man, supply, and opportunity — if we feel we have no opportunity, we are but denying Christ. Man exists at the very standpoint of all supply, of all substance. Mind supplies you with every idea that goes to make up capacity and ability to achieve. Mind indeed supplies this way, all the time. Mind is the basis of supply, man is one with it. If you think your supply can come to you through one thing only, ask yourself, “…Consciousness, where art thou?” (See S&H 307:32 link) If you think you are fitted for something better, take the stand that you do exist at the very standpoint of expressing all in Mind. That recognition places you right at the fundamental basis of opportunity and supply.

When you have done that, don’t settle down into a rut. You must use the abilities you have. Man is God-acting, so think of it as God-acting — not God helping man. God’s acting in man. Allow yourself to progress. Alert work is necessary. No suggestion can stand between you and progress. You can displace all these things through the activity of intelligent, right ideas. You must not dream for a moment that you can fail. It may take work to do it because of the beliefs of obstruction but do not be fooled by them. You can do it because God is the source of opportunity. You should gain all things for Christ. You don’t have to give up. “But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Luke 12:31)

You must meet the claims of mortal mind. You must not think that God will take care of it, and it will then come out all right. That is old theology! There must be activity, intelligent activity. Man is the enforcement of the Law of God. Therefore, there is no need of anyone not having, doing, and being whatever is right. Perception, reason, memory, and application are faculties of divine Mind. The spontaneity of unlimited supply is a normal fact. As Mrs. Eddy has written in Prose Works, “Know, then, that you posses sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love.” (Pul. 3:7) “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Ex. 20:3) “Love inspires, illumines, designates, and leads the way. Right motives give pinions to thought, and strength and freedom to speech and action.” (S&H 454:18-21 link)

One Soul

From The 1936 Primary Class by

In view of the fact that our textbook announces clearly that there is only one Soul, there should be no doubt about that. One Soul. No soul in any human being or in any animal. Don’t be afraid to see that. And I say to you, everybody should get rid of this old notion that you have a soul in your body that might escape. There is nothing of the kind going on. There is just one Soul — God. That is the only Soul anybody has.

Spirit is the substantial, enduring, ever-present, ever-well, ever-active, ever-harmonious substance of all creation, the substance of you, all the substance you have got. Soul indicates something else. As it is used humanly, the word Soul has a kind of a meaning a little higher than the word Spirit. Everything that is beautiful is said to be produced by Soul. It is, if you like, that particular ability of infinity to express itself in infinite beauty throughout creation. Everything that is beautiful that we know anything about, has its origin in Soul, divine Mind. That is the reason that in order to express beauty a person must be something besides an intellectual. There are thousands of people who cannot express anything in the nature of beauty, because they have no Soul. Oh well, they have a Soul, of course, but they have not awakened to Soul. Some people express it with great spontaneity in one way and lack it in all other ways.

Some can sing. Some can paint. Expressed in one direction, we call it artistic nature. But it should not be one-sided. Understanding Soul better, we do not lose anything that is legitimate or proper in the way of expression, but become more and more effective and far more helpful to the world. At one time I was a professional singer and was soloist at First Church in Chicago when services were being held in the old Auditorium Theater. I found that selecting my songs and rendering them so as to please all was a disturbing and impossible task. Then one day, as I was entering the theater, it came to me that if there was anything true about singing, then everyone was singing. This straightened everything out, because we were all singing together. That is the nature of Soul.

Beauty cannot be affected by any belief, because it has its being in God. It is all the time, forever, one with its own infinitude and perfection. It cannot be afflicted or impaired in any way, because there is no other power or presence. There is no conceivable way in which it could be injured, because there is nothing to conceive of injury. Beauty, in all its glorious perfection, is conceived by God alone as the conception of God. Beauty, regardless of any material seeking, is spiritual. Like Truth, it is eternal. So don’t criticize anyone for trying to be beautiful! We’ll all be beautiful in heaven, you may be sure!

The way of Science is the way of correct education, and it does away with that old belief that there is a soul in the body which must escape. It shows that God is Soul, and infinity cannot get into anything. All beauty exists as a quality of God, Soul. It is not material. We say, “He does not put any soul into his singing, or painting, or writing.” Then we say it is soulless. And that is correct. Soul is the very source of all we know of beauty, grandeur, all that makes existence bearable.

In healing work Soul is just as essential as Mind. It lifts us out of the rut of repeating words, and shows us that inspiration is more than a method. And let us all look as well as we can! It is quite legitimate for anyone to try to be beautiful. We can’t get into heaven without beauty! The kingdom of heaven is the kingdom of beauty.

Soul is the epitome of actual knowing, and it signifies happiness, harmony, peace, and so forth, and when one is demonstrating Soul, the beauty of Soul will be manifested in his surroundings. Soul is the substance of all beauty, the Principle and activity and law of all that is beautiful and harmonious. We may associate matter with beauty, but beauty is eternal, elevating, noble and grand. So we need not think that we can ignore the beauty of the so-called material world. The eternality of beauty will appear in the measure that we cease to associate matter and personality with beauty.

If a person gets rid of his fear and his human emotions are redeemed through Soul, he will become intuitive and have a very clear perception which will be sufficient to heal cases quickly — where a quality less loving and less beautiful would fail to perceive the good and the true. Sometimes “emotional” people are much more scientific than the placid ones. Human emotion is not altogether to be avoided. As you advance in the Science of Soul, you will see beauty where you never saw it before.

Idea

by

An idea of God is universal; it is independent of human presentation and therefore is unlimited in its scope and action. It operates ceaselessly; it is the one Mind’s unfoldment of itself infinitely. This idea is independent of external phenomena, because it includes as its being all that could appear externally. This idea is what Mind is — what Mind sees, hears, feels, senses. “Through spiritual sense you can discern the heart of divinity, and thus begin to comprehend in Science the generic term man. Man is not absorbed in Deity, and man cannot lose his individuality, for he reflects eternal Life; nor is he an isolated, solitary idea, for he represents infinite Mind, the sum of all substance.” (S&H 258:31) Man is Mind’s consciousness of itself — being the self-consciousness of itself — being the self-consciousness of God.

Our ability to reject matter as substance is based upon our ability to accept the fact that awareness, which we call seeing, hearing, feeling, is a spiritual sense or conscious Mind. Mrs. Eddy says “this spiritual consciousness can form nothing unlike itself, Spirit, and Spirit is the only creator.” (Un.35:24-26) Be fully alert to the fact that every divine idea you entertain is the presence of Mind, God, unfolding as your consciousness, present as your mind and appearing as power, presence, law, (achievement), intelligence, in the measure of your understanding.

The moment our thought becomes objective; the moment one looks to objective; the moment one looks to objects of sense, away from the ideas of Soul; the moment one thinks things are transpiring in our world externally or independent of our consciousness of God — Mind’s awareness of itself — that moment our “sense” of world ceases to be Mind’s or Spirit’s world of infinite ideas. It lacks substance, continuity, eternality and possesses the limitations of the self-destructive elements of mortal mind. What one apparently sees is what actually is, in spite of one’s present sense which gives it a finite, limited appearance. Absolute good appears as relative good; but is still good — one good. Mrs. Eddy says, “Material sense defines all things materially, and has a finite sense of the infinite.” (S&H 208:2)

As our spiritual discernment approximates the awareness of Mind, the so-called human objects of sense, which are the divine or the ideas of Soul imperfectly seen, will appear more substantial, more tangible, more beautiful, more contributive. Even with our present dim discernment which appears as “crude forms,” fleeting concepts,” we have some sense of substance and tangibility to our world. Mrs. Eddy says, “The fading forms of matter, the mortal body and material earth, are the fleeting concepts of the human mind. They have their day before the permanent facts and their perfection in Spirit appear.” (S&H 263:32 to 264:3) And also, “Even thus the crude forms of human thought take on higher symbols and significations, when scientifically Christian views of the universe appear.” (S&H 502:14) As this discernment becomes understanding, our sense of substance, the eternality of these ideas, will appear more and more with no sense of deterioration or decay. As this understanding unfolds, we will not lose loveliness, goodness, bounty, blessedness, because we are the demonstration, we are the consciousness which is Mind, God, and thus conscious forever and forever of the infinite ideas which are itself.

These divine ideas which Mind, our Mind, is conscious of unfolding as our understanding, give us a sense of health, wholeness, joy, freedom, and dominion in our world, or as our world or body, with no sense of limitation, disease or disaster. When understood — God’s boundless bliss — we are being boundless bliss. When we understand His immortality, we are being His immortality, regardless of our appearance as a human. When we know Truth — we are being Truth to every situation that could arise and this is reflection or oneness. When we know Love, we are being Love, and this wipes out any belief of human need. These impersonal ideas of God present as our understanding, are that Mind present, giving one a “sense” of ability, intelligence, wisdom, judgment, generosity, kindness, courage, honesty, tolerance. We possess or reflect all these qualities instinctively.

However, these imperishable ideas of Soul cannot appear tangible and substantial with form and activity as being or character, if there is in our sense of things any recognition of the material and human, any desire or wish to make something over. Matter-man, the dying belief, the law of which is disappearance. The human cannot be tangible — unless we see that it is the divine imperfectly seen — then then it is no longer human to us: it is divine.

We lose the conscious possession or sense of health, wealth and happiness; they vanish when we seek for them, because they do not exist as such. In seeking for them, we are conscious of the true ideas of Mind, which they are. All phenomenon, all the objects of sense, all things of which we are conscious, are in reality, Mind aware of its own substance and perfect being.

The phenomena of Mind being ideas, perfect, eternal, beautiful, any attempt to outline humanly, calling things good or bad, some things right and some things wrong, praying for things, trying to rid oneself of other things — will interfere with demonstration; because demonstration is Mind’s demonstration of itself as infinite ideas. Things are not things, they are ideas — and we have the evidence of things in proportion to our apprehension of the ideas. When we understand substance, form and tangibility as Spirit or Mind expressed as ideas — without dimension or measure — we will never lose the sense of substance, the sense of possessing all that makes for a harmonious, beautiful, complete experience. It is helpful to see that possession is reflection — but never possessive of things or ideas. We do not possess understanding; understanding is us.

Mrs. Eddy says: (S&H 505:26-28), “This understanding is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments; it is the reality of all things brought to light.” A table, an automobile, a house and all things which appear to meet the needs of humanity today, are really only a material, limited sense of what is actually present as ideas of completeness, wholeness, satisfaction, ease, that which is contributing to a perfect state of being. When understood as Love manifested as ideas and not as the material things they appear to be, they will always bless us, always add to our comfort, happiness and well-being, and always dignify us. As reflection, man reflects infinitely, which means he possesses infinitely, which means he is infinite. Accordingly every idea of God is ours, contributing to our well-being, (Suppose a yacht would be contributing to our freedom, the demand for the yacht would reveal that we had it. We possessed it before, but until there was a demand for it, it could not appear.)

Human idealism always makes suffering. In idealizing the human, we make a lesser god with feet of clay. A person has degrees of good and evil and is thereby always in trouble. What appears as the diseases of things and people, the limitations, inaction, overaction, all that is hurtful or perishable, are illusions, animal magnetism, ignorance, of what is actually occurring and have nothing to do with the ideas of Soul, unfolding as our consciousness, they have only to do with the mortal mind concept. Disease, accident, anything hurtful never has anything to do with man, even in belief, but only with mortal mind. (Whatever is occurring is good or it is not occurring.) This explains the healing of disease without the destruction of things or the human being.

When we understand that the substantiality and tangibility of the health, wealth, and happiness of every day living depends upon our conscious use of true ideas revealing Mind — that this is the only omnipresence — we will be more alert, more pure in our thinking. We will ask ourselves more frequently, “Consciousness where art thou?” Mrs. Eddy says: (S&H 307:31 to 308:4) “Above error’s awful din, blackness, and chaos, the voice of Truth still calls: ‘Adam, where art thou? Consciousness where are thou? Art thou dwelling in the belief that mind is in matter, and that evil is mind, or art thou in the living faith that there is and can be but one God, and keeping His commandments?’”

Are thoughts divine or human? This is the important question. We will not have human opinions of right or wrong, we will not think about Truth, or think truth about objects of sense, for this kind of thinking keeps us in the realm of dimensional and measurable things with their limitations and diseases, rather than in the realm of Mind with its ideas of Soul. We are just as substantial, tangible as our thoughts. We are our thoughts. The mind we manifest determines, whether we shall experience accidents, war, hurricane, floods and draughts. Mrs. Eddy says: “Every material belief hints the existence of spiritual reality; and if mortals are instructed in spiritual things, it will be seen that material belief in all its manifestations, reversed, will be found the type and representative of verities priceless, eternal, and just at hand.” (Misc. 60:28-3) All is infinite Mind infinitely manifested, regardless of what appears.

When we see that the improved belief is really a divine fact more perfectly understood, and not an improved belief, we will meet the claim that an improved belief can retrograde . . . . When one is healed, nothing has really happened to that one; there is just less of the mist of mortal mind and more reality revealed. There can be no improved mortal mind, no better mortal mind, here or there — there can only be less mortal mind, because less ignorance or less absence of Mind. Mortal mind does not disappear until understanding appears. In this connection it is important to study Science and Health, p, 115:19-5:


“SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION OF MORTAL MIND


“First Degree: Depravity.

“PHYSICAL. Evil beliefs, passions and appetites, fear, depraved will, self-justification, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin, sickness, disease, death.

Unreality


“Second Degree: Evil beliefs disappearing.

“MORAL. Humanity, honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith, meekness, temperance.

Transitional qualities


“Third Degree: Understanding.

“SPIRITUAL. Wisdom, purity, spiritual understanding, spiritual power, love, health, holiness.

Reality


“In the third degree mortal mind disappears, and man as God’s image appears.”


We cannot be comfortable in the realm of the unreal. It is good that is going on, not evil or error; but unless one sees it as good, suffering continues. Suffering is not a necessity of awaking, but it is a better belief than not awaking at all. Sometimes we will learn through suffering what we refuse to learn through education, and these experiences are not to be regretted but apprehended for what they are. Science and Health, p. 196:6-9 says: “Better the suffering which awakens mortal mind from its fleshly dream, than the false pleasures which tend to perpetuate this dream.” The destruction of error is painful only, because we give reality or identity to the error, only because we struggle with it . . . the only reason that destruction appears as “famine and pestilence, want and woe,” is because of our apparent inability to accept Spirit as Mind. Mrs. Eddy says: “the breaking up of material beliefs may seem to be famine and pestilence, want and woe, sin, sickness and death, which assume new phases until their nothingness appears. These disturbances will continue until the end of error, when all discord will be swallowed up in spiritual Truth.” (S&H 96:15)

Mind, conscious of its infinitude, reveals or discloses itself as infinite ideas which are identity or body, and this is its creation, man including the universe.

Truth is the isness; it is absolute — it is law. Truth is never doing anything to anything, but is itself infinitely being. Let the errors of belief which are uncovered give you a sense of satisfaction, instead of the dismay and condemnation which mortal mind usually experiences when some phase of error is revealed. The error then disappears for lack of a witness; we reject it and let it destroy itself.

Awakening from a false sense, from the illusion of life in matter, is a blessing, not an affliction — even if it may be painful. It is always a blessing to be undeceived. The belief that one can suffer is there, before one suffers; but one does not do much about that belief, until the suffering comes (also a belief of age, etc.) as a result of the uncovering — then we get busy; our awakening goes on and the suffering ceases. The seeming reality of human suffering makes one appear to suffer until he knows (learns) better.

Evil, disease, sin are never destroyed in the usual meaning of that word, because evil, disease, sin are never something. They appear to be destroyed by the scientific perception that good is the only entity and error — whatever its name or nature — is a false sense or ignorance of good. To deny evil as evil, to make statements of truth which one thinks will do something to an error, is to build it up. We deny evil, because there is no evil.

Denial

Evil is a false sense, animal magnetism. All is good imperfectly apprehended. Denial is not an argument between Truth and error. It is analysis, reason, logic. It is in its true nature and accurate thinking: “Begone, I never knew you.” It is wearisome and futile to try to get rid of something, because there is nothing to get rid of, and the effort gives identity to error.

What appears as a change in conditions or things, is simply that we are perceiving more of Truth and reality — the only something that was anywhere at any time.

Healing

Healing is the increasing awareness of perfection rather than the eradication of disease. It is Christ, or the spiritual idea of sonship, oneness, unfolding as our consciousness. Recognizing spiritual unfoldment as the healing process will result in more instantaneous healings. There is an old saying that “a watched pot never boils.” Thinking of health as the eradication of disease only perpetuates disease. There may be a so-called cure, ease and comfort in matter may appear; but there can be no permanency to health unless divine ideas are unfolding as our consciousness. We learn in Christian Science that we do not restore health by the eradication of disease; we restore health by the apprehension of Truth. To heal means to give a wholeness, or purity; to cause a cure. So Christian Science heals, it does not cure, except as it heals. Healing is the curing, but curing is not healing. Mrs. Eddy says: “Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew. You will never fear again except to offend God, and you will never believe that heart or any portion of the body can destroy you.” (S&H 425:24) With a cure, the last state of man might be worse than the first, the patient might be buried beneath the love of ease in matter, and not question but what this is the ultimate.

The practitioner or patient who wants an instantaneous healing, will never think of results in the usual meaning of that term. The results have nothing to do with either practitioner or patient. To acknowledge Truth or God, is to consciously be, and this is the result or effect, which the world calls healing. Expectancy is not expecting something to come to pass; it is acknowledging everything to be what it is. Mrs. Eddy speaks of the “correct view,” the one Mind present beholding the infinite expression of itself. “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy.” (S&H 475:32-6) This is omnipresence — this Mind, present as the Mind of both practitioner and patient. This Mind has nothing to do with the phenomena of personal sense. It could not be conscious of healing a claim. See No 37:27-9, “predestinates.” Here Mrs. Eddy says: “What God knows, he also predestinates; and it must be fulfilled. Jesus proved to perfection, so far as this could be done in that age, what Christian Science is today proving in a small degree, — the falsity of the evidence of the material senses that sin, sickness, and death are sensible claims, and that God substantiates their evidence by knowing their claim. He established the only true idealism on the basis that God is all, and He is good, and good is Spirit; hence there is no intelligent sin, evil mind or matter; and this is the only true philosophy and realism.”

Human Footsteps

We hear much about human footsteps; this one scientific or that one unscientific. Yet Jesus said: “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” (Matt. 6:25) Do no human thinking. A human footstep is humanity’ s highest concept of what is true or best to do at a given moment. It is never scientific or unscientific as a human footstep. As Truth unfolds — becomes clearer — as divine ideas take the place of human consciousness, our so-called human means and methods improve. When we work from the altitude of Mind or Principle, the oneness of Mind appears as guidance and direction in human affairs — termed improved human footsteps.

An improved human footstep or belief is not the demonstration — yet, divine ideas unfolding as consciousness demonstrate their presence as improved beliefs. If we recognized that divine ideas appearing as improved beliefs are divine ideas and not improved beliefs, there could be no relapse, nor would we question in any way the form or outline of the improved belief. When through better apprehension of Truth, certain means and methods are outgrown, one no longer uses them. This is not human abstention, or repression, or prohibition, or human will, it is growth spiritward, it is unfoldment, the reformation which comes as the inevitable result of Truth unfolding as the one and only consciousness.

The Human Mind

It is impossible for the human mind to correct itself or to rid itself of self-imposed bondage. All that is wrong, is the belief that there is a human mind that can hate, that can fear, that can be unhappy, or that can lack.

Let affirmations and denials be an intelligent procedure, ultimating in understanding and realization. The actual treatment is Truth or Mind, itself, affirming its own presence, excluding practitioner and patient and claim. A treatment in which the practitioner is seeking a cause (mental or otherwise), for a claim, or one who is reviving the error periodically in order to deny it, is not the treatment of Mind. One cannot be “I Am” and at the same time think there is something to be done. In the process of so-called treatment, we must beware that we do not think of Mind over matter or Mind controlling matter. There may be statements in Science and Health that would give one the impression, unless intelligently read, that this is the case. Long ago when universal thought called matter something, it was important that humanity be shown that Mind was supreme. And the only way in which it could be shown, was along the line of Mind controlling matter. As thought unfolded, universal belief regarding matter has changed to agree with what Mrs. Eddy has said “There is no matter,” so the method of Christian Science practice has basically improved. The basic error is mortal mind’s ignorance, the belief of a mind other than God.

Mortal mind does not control its body; mortal mind and its body are one: therefore the so-called human body cannot be treated. The only body there is and ever will be is the co-ordination and activity of the ideas of Soul. Body is not a thing; it is being, activity, it is identity. It is not something controlled by Soul, but it is the identity of Soul. Man does not possess a body; it is his identity. An improved belief is not the result of correct thinking — It is the true idea of itself, appearing through the mist.

Malpractice

If everything is transpiring as consciousness, then all malpractice, as far as each individual is concerned, is at the point of his consciousness. Malpractice is wrong practice. Because Christian Science is the Science of one Mind, malpractice as understood in Christian Science is the acceptance of the belief of two minds and thus a belief of matter-universe and matter body. This is the malpractice which is common to all. We are not a law unto ourselves and thus exempt from this universal malpractice, until we “leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind,” (S&H 424:6-7) realizing that man is spiritual, not material. Arguments against arguments themselves constitute malpractice; constituting the beliefs of two minds is the malpractice; acquiescing with suggestion, agreeing with this belief, but accepting or consenting to it is the malpractice.

There is nothing external to consciousness. If one seems to be ill, that one has consented, consciously or unconsciously to the belief that he has a mind apart from God, He may not have consciously accepted the beliefs going with a mortal sense of existence, but if he has not consciously assumed, or is not consciously assuming the attitude of the one omnipotent, omniscient Mind, maintaining that attitude of Mind through accurate scientific thought, he is not a law to his own experience, and everything which mortal mind believes may claim to be his belief.

There is no outside world; everything exists in our experience or to us as our sense or consciousness of what is true. Our understanding of God is man to us, and our world. An evildoer is no more the evil-doer than the one consenting to or cognizant of the evil. If we are to handle malpractice effectively, we cannot malpractice. We must not personalize mortal mind. When we say to ourselves “O Lord, how long,” the answer will come back “Just as long as you deny my omnipresence.” To whine or complain as if something were doing something to us, unbidden or unbeknown to us, is only to add to the confusion. We are victims of our mistaken sense or of the mistaken sense which we accept as ours.

The power and presence of God are humanly evident only as they are divinely realized; and spiritual ideas, they are the only substance and tangibility, appear humanly as the experience or things we need. Right and wrong are relative terms and do not really belong in the vocabulary of a Christian Scientist.

Material self-indulgence in any form is a denial of our God-being and while human discipline and human will are not Christian Science, they are a lesser evil resulting from a degree of spiritual wakening to the unreality of the matter-man. The only sin is the illusion of life in matter, and if we continually indulge this sin by catering to it, we delay our demonstration of dominion. There is never dominion in matter. It is always subjection. Looking to matter for anything takes away our dominion and freedom and self-respect, which discipline returns to us. In Misc. 161:14-18, Mrs. Eddy says: “He who gains self-knowledge, self-control, and the kingdom of heaven within himself, within his own consciousness, is saved through Christ, Truth. Mortals must drink sufficiently of the cup of the Lord and Master, to unself mortality and to destroy its erroneous claims.” If through mental discipline, human effort, will power, blind faith and emotional or religious ecstasy, one overcomes apparent hate, envy, worry the basic error has not been touched and a sense of health has been obtained only because of change in emotional balance.” (See S&H 242:1 to 243:3)

We want a thing because we already have it. We could not want what we do not have, and we do not have what we do not want. Mortal mind alone suffers, never man. All suffering, all inharmony is a state of belief.

Rejoice

Rejoice in the ever-present Love that will not allow you to remain separated from itself; then the claim and suffering will cease. The Christ-consciousness unfolding as the consciousness of the prophets — to their vision a Jesus, “the Word made flesh” — the Christ consciousness unfolding as our consciousness, has produced for us a Science. This is Christian Science.

Christian Science shows us that an abstract truth is concrete evidence as Mind, expressed as Idea. We sit in judgment on our neighbor, forgetting that our neighbor is our own sense of God and forgetting that Mind can demonstrate its presence only as ideas or thoughts.

Church

No church in the world can give proof of its utility as long as there is no scientific Christianity. As an idea of Truth it is eternal, unshakable, steadfast, pure. As an idea of Love it is all-embracing, all-sustaining, all-protecting, all-guiding. This is our Church!

Business

What we call business is always contributing to our joy, our ease, our freedom. It is never labored, never burdened, never hampering. Man being a mental spiritual being (man being the thoughts he thinks) can no longer labor by the sweat of his brow. If we are not realizing our spiritual, mental selfhood living as Mind, Spirit, we come under the disintegrating beliefs of matter and our business fails. Man is activity, is reflection, his presence is reflection. Mind could find no delay in itself; therefore man as reflection or what Mind is knowing could not express or manifest fear, inactivity, reversal, delay. The whole secret of a perfect, joyous occupation is to let the one Mind be our mind, unfolding as our understanding, or its ideas as our occupation — settled, arranged, remunerative, ever satisfied. But unless we see that this is so, our task whatever it seems to be, will be labored and unprofitable.

If we want a thing, the moment we stop wanting it, we prove we have it, because we have stopped denying its presence. Our very being includes the right idea of all we could wish for or want. As the Truth unfolds, there is no more wanting or seeking. We realize that wanting and seeking deny having. There must be no human desire, no wanting, no outlining, no planning. The moment there is voluntary desire on our part, we deny omnipresence — the voluntary action of Mind. The path of non-pursuit is the scientific path; remember Truth is always active, bringing to light improved concepts. The more we can rest in inevitableness of what is appearing in consciousness as what we are rather we shall experience “thy kingdom come.”

There must be a respect for our present perception of activity, no matter how dim. We must remember that it is the divine imperfectly seen through the lens of personal or material sense, and that as this material sense, this animal magnetism, is dissolved, more and more of the divine is revealed. This dissolving process is continually going on when we disregard the human appearance, the testimony of sense and turn solely to the evidence of Mind — which is evident to us ceaselessly by ideas or thoughts. This is our business. The only business is Mind unfolding its infinite nature. This unfolding or omniaction is the ceaseless, universal, uninterrupted, unlabored flow of ideas, which appear to us relatively as things we seem to need and which come to us through what we call a profession, employment, vocation.

In the measure that we let this Mind be our Mind, regardless of what we call our business, it is Mind’s business of being itself — so our business, the only business we could possibly have is Mind’s (our Mind’s) business of being aware of the perfection of its ideas. And thus, what we call our profession, our business, is always joyous; it contributes to our freedom, dominion, our ease; it is never labored, never burdening, no delay in itself, no inaction in itself.

Supply

The problem of supply instead of being unimportant to those who seem to have plenty, is most important, because at this stage of our experience no one is exempt from the subtle arguments of materiality, the law of which is “dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”

We can never rest on the appearance of matter-substance as being substance; it may seem to be, but our only surety that it is real substance and not an illusion lies in the abundance of ideas of God which we are including in our consciousness. Our sense of substance must be Spirit or it could be replaced at any instant by a sense of loss. He whose resources appear the greatest, has the most need to be alert. This is also true of health, happiness and all that works for perfect being. It is so easy to rest in the realm of what appears as an improved belief and thus be fooled.

Substance

Substance therefore is not a crowd of hard particles, but substance is the aliveness, omniaction, omnibeingness which we call Spirit, Mind. In the degree that our awareness approximates the Mind which is Spirit, what we call our “senses” will make us more and more aware of the “creation” which “is ever appearing, and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source.” (S&H 507:28-29) More and more we will have the “sense” of a visible, tangible, spiritual universe with no sense of deterioration and decay, no sense of disease. Mrs. Eddy says: “When it is learned that spiritual sense and not the material senses convey all impressions to man, man will naturally seek the Science of his spiritual nature, and finding it, be God-endowed for discipleship.” (Misc. 188:26) Therefore, we turn from the temptation to pay attention to the so-called material senses which we have become accustomed to think of as making us aware of our world, because we are learning that awareness is spiritual and that our “sense” of things in not materially seeing, hearing, and feeling things. All sense testimony is our perception of Truth and is a materially mental concept.

Limited in our education, visible has meant to us what the eyes see and tangible that which the hand feels. So when we are told “There is no substance in matter,” we have an uncertain sense of what is going on as our world. Spirit has been something vague to us, shadowy, without form, outline, color, solidity and tangibility; and yet we have a sense of substance, form, order, outline and beauty in our world which we cannot deny. If awareness is spiritual and mental, then what our eyes apparently see, our ears hear, our fingers feel, must be a limited vision or perception of Truth — the dim discernment of something with substance, form, identity, or we have no sense of seeing or feeling anything.

The Term MAN

by

A Christian Science treatment is not me thinking about you, or for you — or to heal you of something. It is the Truth of what you really are NOW and forever, and this Truth blots out the suggestion that claims to be you and blots it out forever.

The term “man” includes all that is called “mankind,” man means all men, and every creature individually. God is Life — Truth — Mind — Love; man exists in and as Life, Itself; Love, Itself; Truth, Itself; and Mind, Itself.

Man is the manifested presence, and expression of Life, Mind, Truth, Principle. Existing as perfect presence, expression and activity — including all — man is wanting nothing to beautify, glorify, or purify his existence. Co-existent with God, he is the very presence of eternal Life Itself, and indestructible substance. Existing as the manifested presence and expression of the Father, man is a state of complete possession of infinite Mind including within Itself all ideas.

Man’s characteristics are: love, harmony, dominion, accomplishment, clear discernment, and perfect, accurate action in everything he thinks or does. Man and his activities are the full and normal presence and expression of infinite Principle — incapable of even the slightest variation from absolute perfection. Man being the presence and expression of infinite Mind, man has within himself all that constitutes completeness and harmonious being — he does not desire — he is in possession.

The Practice of Christian Science

by



Click here to play the audio as you read:

Also available on YouTube, Vimeo, or SoundCloud


The first part of our practice is going to be, waking up in the morning in the conscious realization of our oneness with God. “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it:…” (Ps. 127:1) If you do not bring God consciously into your experience right with your first waking moment, you may have lost the opportunity for quite a while, to have God with you on every occasion. Right here, someone is thinking — “Oh, but God is omnipresent, God is always with us.” That is one of the clichés, one of those “quotations.” That is true but only in proportion to our conscious awareness of the presence of God as God available in every instance.

God is present certainly. Electricity was present through the ages when people were using kerosene oil, and whale oil — of what benefit was electricity to them? None! There was no conscious realization of the presence of electricity. Our task is the unfoldment and revelation of spiritual Being — God appearing as individual being and the universe.

We do not seek health in what Jesus called “this world” because, “…My kingdom is not of this world:…” (Jn. 18:36); that is, the Christ world is not in the realm of human concepts. We understand health as a quality and activity of Soul that is always expressed as perfect and immortal body. Even a harmonious human body is not necessarily expressing health. Health is more than the absence of disease. Health is the eternal state of spiritual being. Human goodness is but the opposite state of human badness, and is not the spiritual state of being we must realize and achieve in our approach to life.

Please remember that God is clearly defined in your thought; that is, you do not make the mistake of believing that a patient comes to a practitioner — who goes to God — Who then comes to do the releasing; or that the patient comes to the practitioner, and the practitioner sends “something” over to the patient — that is all wrong! God and the practitioner and the patient are all really ONE INDIVIDUAL. They are not three nor two. They are but ONE and the more clearly we realize that I AM is God, and I AM is Life, and the Soul and the Mind and the Spirit of every individual, the sooner will you realize that we are not dealing with a lot of people, but with God, infinitely and individually expressed as people. But still the one and only God. When we have that understanding, we have the teaching, the pedagogy. We are practitioners and we have a discipline to impart. It is not original, but certainly it is true, and it is only an individual approach to an age-old truth that GOD IS ALL.

God literally is All. God constitutes the individual being and body. Now the next question comes, “What is God?” When we think of God as a creative Principle, infinite, eternal, omnipresent without beginning and without ending, then we can see without question, that a cause must be a cause to something, and that “something” we call “an effect.” CAUSE and EFFECT IS ONE — co-eternal and co-existent, and of the same substance.

Now we arrive at the Truth, that God, as creative Principle, is the cause of Its manifested Being, appearing as effect. A cause and effect that bind together — like 2×2=4, not separate from each other, but always in one place. Wherever the problem is, the answer is, and if the problem is in your thought, the answer is there also. They never get separated from each other — no problem here, and an answer somewhere else. Always they are ONE — NOW — back to God.

All we know, we know because we are a state of consciousness. Take away the state of consciousness, and we would have no awareness, no knowledge. We would not know that we exist. In philosophy Descartes said, “I think — therefore I am.” In the same way we say, “Only because I am consciousness itself, do I know that I exist, and do I know there is a universe existing.” If we can understand ourselves, understand God as Consciousness, we can understand this universe as consciousness formed. We can understand this universe, including our body, as a formation of consciousness, incorporeal, spiritual, eternal, co-existent, self-sustained, as 2×2=4 maintains itself into eternity!

Thus, when we can see that consciousness is the reality of our being, that is causative Principle, then we can say that consciousness forms, or becomes evident to us, as infinite variety of forms, and is therefore eternal as ourselves. Let us, as far as we can, dwell on the idea — “What is God?” — because only in the realization of what God is, do we know that to which God is God to, and that is the effect or the universe. The importance of that is this: we have taken up the thought — “…seek ye first the kingdom of God, (the awareness, THE CONSCIOUSNESS of God), and His righteousness; and all these other things shall be added unto you.” (Matt. 6:33)

Try to get silent in the center of your being, and FEEL THE CHRIST. That is taking part in the ONE HEART of GOD, which is the heart of you and me. That is why we must feel conscious oneness with God. Why? Because God is all-inclusive. You must be included in that God-Being, so that when I am at one with God, I am at one with you. My oneness with God constitutes my oneness with you, and with the form with which we translate. Just as your body is a spiritual body in God, neither a male body nor a female body; when you are the center of your being, touching that Christ, and that Christ is the individual, there is only pure Love, pure Spirit. We, because of our human sense, interpret the qualities of God into both male and female.

We translate the idea of transportation into a donkey or an airplane or a streetcar or an automobile. These represent only our false concepts of the idea of transportation. The truth about transportation is in one word – SPONTANEITY. I am everywhere, here, there, and everywhere. That is the truth of transportation. That is why it is just as easy to sit here in San Francisco and heal someone in Chile as it is to heal someone right here.

The moment we touch within our own being the center — the divine essence of being — we have contacted not only with God, but the Life of individual man. We have contacted the Life of the one calling himself, for the moment, a patient. It is not necessary for us, in our treatment, to send our thought out to a person “out there.” On the contrary, that is enough to prevent the healing, and in some cases make it impossible. Where healing does occur with thought-healing, it is because the spiritual consciousness of the individual is so much greater than the ability of that false treatment to stop it.

The CORRECT TREATMENT from the standpoint of Spirit or Soul, is to go within, touch the center of one’s own being. Never take the name of the patient there. Never take the so-called disease, the claim, whether it be unemployment, insanity or sin. Take nothing there but God, and God is there already. FIND GOD. And then when that little “click” comes, that little release, you will soon get word from the patient that he, or she, is healed! That is my word to you after years and years of practice. Do NOT take the name or the identity, or the picture, or the thought of the patient into your treatment! Leave these completely outside. You have nothing to do with them. They are illusion to begin with, and if you take them into the picture, you do not believe they are illusion but think they are something that you must do something about.

It is true perhaps, that because you have a patient, you are fooled for a moment that there is a presence or power apart from God, and so you go within for the illumination — for the light that will dispel the illusion. Let’s leave the problem outside! It does not concern you whether it is mental, physical, moral or financial. It has nothing to do with you. This treatment is your relationship to God, and when you have become “One with God,” you have found it. You will find the release. The presence and power of God will dispel the illusion!

Where do your patients come in? Because of the fact that they were brought into your consciousness; in-as-much as the universal Mind, God, is the mind of the practitioner and the mind of the patient; therefore, there is no transfer of thought from the practitioner to the patient. There is no need for the transfer of thought, no need of getting the idea across. It is the word of God, which is already in your consciousness. All that is happening then is that this Truth, that is already your own mind or consciousness, is being consciously unveiled to you, within you.

Please remember the practical application of the Truth is when you are called upon for help — that is, do not feel that it is necessary to convey a statement of truth to your patient. Any “truth” that reveals itself within your consciousness of the person appearing as your patient — and you have all seen this in the treatment of cats, dogs, birds and the like — this metaphysical truth does not have to be repeated audibly. The fact that you know it within your own consciousness makes it evident and manifest instantaneously in the experience of animals, plants, crops, and of course, your patient.

Become aware of the Truth that God, which is the individual Mind of this universe, is the one and only Mind. All that is necessary for the Truth to express Itself is to be received in the consciousness of one individual, and it immediately takes effect in the consciousness of all who are attuned! Even if they are not directly your patients — somewhere persons in a hospital, prison, on a desert island, individuals who are reaching out to their highest concept of God, reaching out for help, are healed! Though they do not know how or why, and you do not know who they are, — still it is true, since God is the Mind of me, and God is the Mind of you — because there is only that ONE MIND!

None of our work includes the transfer of thought from one individual to another. None of our work depends on whether or not the patient understands. None of our work has anything to do with mental suggestion. It has to do with only one thing — and that is REALIZATION, in the consciousness of the one calling himself, or herself, the teacher or the practitioner.

Most practitioners at some time or another are so lifted up in consciousness that when people come to them, the error drops away, and without their having any conscious thought about anything. The practitioner elevates himself to such a state of spiritual consciousness that he is no longer conscious of what is presented to him. It is not necessary for you to always make the statement, “Oh, this is hypnotism, and it is neither person, place, or thing,” or some similar remark. Get it into your consciousness that any form of error is only a suggestion — and stop giving treatments to people and conditions. Then it does not make any difference if you never think of it again. But train yourself that you will never have a “sick” or “sinning” person to deal with. You will never have a “disease” to deal with. All you may have are the universal beliefs to “deal with.”

For that reason, you need never worry about malpractice, suffering from other people’s thoughts. There is only one Mind, and that Mind is Spirit or God. Mortal thinking never goes further than the person in whose thought it takes place. If I were sitting here saying 2×2=5, your mathematical sense would be a protection to you, and you would not get my erroneous thought. I could say, “You are dead, you are dead,” but your sense of life would be a protection, and you would not be bothered by my illusory thinking. Why? Even in some experimental forms of mental practice that have been performed, it has been found that they cannot make an individual do anything that violates his own integrity. When you do wrong, it is because you yourself are violating your own sense of right. It lies within your own being.

Do not try to reform the outer picture. With your inner God-given Spiritual sense, look at the heart and see the Christ. You will find the Christ. You will find the most wonderful healing force there is in the world. Look not at drunkenness, thievery, violence, et cetera, but through it. Do not look with the eyes. Close the eyes physically, or at least turn away. Then let your feeling guide you. Get a feeling of Christ sitting right there in the center of individual being. You will have an instantaneous healing when you reach that Christ feeling and awareness.

Healings are not brought about by the power of thought, or through suggestions, affirmations and denials. Healings on that basis are like healings with medicines or surgery, as mental and physical power are the same. Mental power is not spiritual. That will come later. Right now let us remember that to bring healing about, of sin or disease, do not try to set up a human being or body. Get silent within your being. Find the presence of God — the presence of Good. Feel some sort of divine or inner sense; then you will have had a healing. Then you will not think of some individual. You don’t have to think of his name or his form or his claim. The all-knowing Mind knows. You feel a sense of Soul which takes him in.

To try to go to God with some finite problem would be against the teachings of the Christ: “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?” (Matt. 6:27) When you sit down to take thought of adding something to your supply, or your health, you will fail.

We must believe in doing right thinking, holding the right thought, sending out the right thought will do something for us. All this time we are working against the very teaching that we claim to be following when we quote, “…Take no thought for your life.” (Matt. 6:25) Thoughts are things. Thoughts are on the level of things — just two different strata of the same belief — one a little more coarse than the other. It is only when we get away from “thought,” that we get away from things and come into the realm of “idea,” and idea is not a thing. IDEA IS THE ACTIVITY AND QUALITY OF MIND — but of the divine Mind and not the human mind.

As long as you have a sense of money as supply, you are not going to demonstrate spiritual freedom or supply. YOU ARE SUPPLY. Your consciousness, your life, your mind, is supply; and that is omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient.

Every evil circumstance in your life can be prevented. Nobody is a victim of anything but his ignorance of the laws of life. God never intended we should know old-age, or any of these related errors we are seeing. God never intended that we have cripples, or drunkards, or dope fiends; and there is no reason in the world why we do, except that we have never learned how to meet them in human belief. We have laws of heredity — all the ills of the fathers visited upon the children — but we must rise higher than that. We can make a beginning by understanding that there is a law of God in operation in individual and collective being — in us as individuals; as groups, races and nations. This is a law of God, but we have to begin to bring that law into operation first, by giving up egotistical beliefs that any kind of thinking we can do is power, or taking a statement and drilling it in, so to speak, will finally make it come true. This may be hard work, but it is not permanent, it is not spiritual, and it leaves something missing in the mentality — first, because it permits others to dominate our thoughts; and then because it takes away from us our realization of the only one real power there is, which is God, whose kingdom is within us, within All.

Reciting that 2×2=4 won’t make it true, though it may help us to remember that it is so. An affirmation repeated in thought will help to impress us with the truth that is true, but in doing so you really give up a good deal of freedom. It would be much better to hear a truth, or read a truth, and let the truth do the work, since Jesus said, “…I am…the truth…,” and Truth is a synonym for God. (Jn.14:6) Why let your manipulation of the truth be the agency? Why not let the truth do it alone? The reliance you will build up, is the confidence that truth IS!

How many really and truly believe that God is? We accept it and talk about it, but how many still cling to a medicine, or to a thought? In reality neither the medicine or the thought can ever be God. God is not thought. Thought is not Godpower, but thought is an avenue of awareness. You can memorize that statement, not to make it come true, but when you are attempting to manipulate thoughts. Remembering that may give you a good laugh.

Let us forget that heaven and earth are two different places, they are the same place. Earth is our mortal concept of heaven. Heaven is our real awareness of the earth; in other words, HEAVEN IS THE EARTH CORRECTLY UNDERSTOOD.

Never forget that this life of yours is God, and if it appears to be young or old, sick or well, evil or good, that is just God appearing falsely to you — and you are the one who must reinterpret the scene. Now we get to “things.” RIGHT IDENTIFICATION, which means God appearing as individual life. Sin, disease and death are nothing more or less than God being wrongly interpreted by us. So the next word right after the word “Identification” is RE-INTERPRETATION. Right identification means the One appearing as many — or God, Life, appearing as individual being; and then Re-interpretation, which means looking right at sick, sinning, human, dying men, and re-interpreting that to see how, in-asmuch as God is All, this is part — a phase or aspect — of the Allness of God which is being mis-seen, coming to you as false suggestion, and that you must re-interpret.

Now two things you must carry with you from morning to night, and night to morning, are the words; RIGHT IDENTIFICATION and RE-INTERPRETATION. Re-interpret everything you see, hear, taste, or touch and smell. Reinterpret it all back to its original state, that is Godhood. Be sure that you practice right identification, knowing that all that appears to you is God appearing — God appearing as the individual man, woman or child, God appearing as the plant, animal, crops, and then knowing what the human eye sees, what the human ear hears, is the false picture presented by this thing I call “hypnotism or suggestion.” The same that presents the two train or car tracks coming together, or presents the sky as hitting the mountains. Be sure you realize and are willing not to go so absolute that you won’t reinterpret what is appearing to you on the scene.

The disciples knew little of Jesus’ mission. Jesus had been predicted and prophesied for centuries. But the Jews thought that the Messiah, when he came — and remember they expected it to be a man, not a teaching or a divine idea — would lead them into freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from bondage to the Roman Caesar, freedom probably from some of the wrong practices imposed in their own religion. No doubt they were looking for a physical freedom — a temporal freedom. They thought the Messiah would be kind probably, but of course they were disappointed. The whole of Jesus’ mission was not of this world.

Thus the disciples were not ready for it. No! They were looking for a human emancipator, and they failed to understand the mission of the Christ. For that reason only a few in that day caught the vision, and were benefited by it. The rest, regardless of the tribe to which they belonged, have been wanderers on the face of the earth ever since, still seeking economic and political freedom.

Jesus came with the divine idea of spiritual freedom. He hoped that by setting them free in their consciousness from the slavery to person and thing, they would be free in fact. But alas, they did not catch the vision.

We must not mistake the mission of this message. This has nothing to do with a human person called a teacher, but only with the teaching of Revelation. It is not primarily concerned with the healing of human bodies, so that we can have a host of testimonies. That is not its purpose. Its purpose is not to add ten or a hundred dollars a week to our income. It has nothing to do with temporal improvement. It has to do with the mission of the Christ which is to set you free, to set you free spiritually — from what? — from your belief in your bondage to person, place or thing, circumstance and condition!

Preaching without practice is the most deadly of sins, for we must practice what we teach. The first thing that we, as metaphysicians, preach is that without God there is nothing, and we exemplify that with; “Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it:…” (ibid.)

We do not use quotations in this work as “quotations,” and we now break the habit of using them as such. You have heard at times someone say, “I do not feel well”, then another replies, “Oh, now you know there is no illness.” This individual, usually a Christian Scientist, did not mean that he or she did not know it, which indicates that we should be more careful what we say in such matters. The one who made the statement was “sick” in-so-far as his sense and yours were concerned. If you had had the consciousness of the truth that he, or she, was not sick, you wouldn’t have said a word — but you would have just smiled. He, or she, would have said, “I am well, and I know it.”

The same with the aforesaid quotation, “Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it:…” — a beautiful quotation, but it remains a quotation until you understand it. Here is what I mean by using quotations with understanding. Unless God is the Mind of us, there will be no Truth expressing Itself through or as me. Unless God is the Mind of you, you will not understand the Truth that is being voiced. Since God is the universal Mind — since God is my only Mind, — the only thing that will be voiced in this room is Truth expressing Itself — God expressing and revealing Itself.

Since God is the Mind of you, God will be revealing Itself unto Itself. Mind will be expressing Its Truth unto Itself. Truth will not pass from me to you — it will pass from God to you. The entire activity of Truth will take place in the One Mind — the Mind of us, which is the Mind of you.

There is not a “new” truth in all the world. In the kingdom of God there are no such things as newborn babies, or elderly people. “The mortality of man is a myth,…” wrote Mrs. Eddy. (S&H 545:32-1) Every one of us must express the fullness of our Father-Mother God. All that the Father has, is ours. When we are dealing with cases, we are not dealing with persons, places or things. On the positive side, we are dealing with God appearing as individual being, and it is just as much God at one-hundred years of age, as it is at twenty-two years of age. God appearing as individual being. And on the negative side, we are dealing with appearance — with mortality, with a myth, with a suggestion of a selfhood apart from God.

Therefore, do not let yourself be trapped into treating a person, or a so-called disease, and then watch the “miracle” that happens to your healing work! Heretofore, we have believed that we were dealing with sick people, or sinful people. Now look! Stop that, and watch the results. Remember, this must prove itself in your practice because it is a universal truth.

There is no such thing as error, and there is no use of trying to account for error, as it is a temptation coming to you to believe in a selfhood apart from God. But whether you choose to say, “Oh well, this is just a suggestion, or this is hypnotism, suggesting what appears to be a white poodle, or this is a temptation to believe in a selfhood apart from God,” — whether you find other terms that you like better — so long as you get the essence of what I am saying, and that is, never will you be called upon to heal a sick or sinning person. There is no such thing in the kingdom of God.

Error isn’t a thing but an appearance, when it appears as person, place or thing, or condition, and should be so understood. If only error would appear as error we’d all be free. If it would only say to us, “Let’s steal a diamond ring!” Oh! we would then be safe from it. We’d never give in to that kind of suggestion! If it would only say to us, “Let’s commit adultery.” Again we’d be so safe from it. But it doesn’t “appear” that way. It appears as a beautiful diamond attracting us, or a handsome man, or a beautiful woman, tempting us. All that we see is that beautiful form that it appears to be, and presents itself as. In the same way, disease appears to us as some kind of localized condition, and that is what fools us. We go to work on that “condition,” and thereby we almost become one with it. At the least, we make it a reality. The very thing we should not do.

The metaphysician who is really alert, will recognize every time he sees a form of good, like a person, or as a generous person; and the wise metaphysician will instantly declare, “You can’t fool me! That is God.” He, or she, knows these are the qualities of God appearing in or through this person. And so you will not get tangled up in attraction for a person so completely, that the loss of that person, or the disappearance of him, will cause you much grief or unnecessary distress. Or, that individual’s failure to measure up to expectations, his or her fall from grace, might so disappoint you, it could cause undue heartbreak. The wise metaphysician, even while appreciating a “good” person, will at the same time look behind the form, and say, “Oh yes! But I happen to know that it is God appearing as you. It is really the presence of divine Mind — the presence of Love — expressed as you.” You don’t of course, say this out loud, but that is your thought, and that is the consciousness you live in. Saying it in another way: that everything of a good nature, appearing to you, you should immediately translate and declare, “I recognize you. It is God appearing to me as GOOD.”

But on the other hand, we must be equally alert when error does seem to appear. Now, error is not a person. Error is never a person, as you know well. So to immediately work on an “evil person,” so-called, is to get yourself so mixed up in it, that you will have a hard time bringing about a healing. In the same way, error is never a “diseased person.” It appears that way, but it is not that, and if you work on the so-called “disease,” or that person, ultimately you are going to find your healing “work” is not very good. It isn’t instantaneous — it isn’t even quick. In fact, it is not satisfactory at all.

When you are confronted with a seemingly evil person, a sick person, or any kind of an untoward situation, you must learn that just as you translated the good person back to God, you must translate the evil person or condition back into impersonal error in this manner: Think ILLUSTRATION — STREETCAR TRACK. You see in your mind, the tracks coming together, but you immediately translate that, knowing there is no such evil condition, but just merely the appearance due to finite eyesight. And so you have wiped out the fear of the wrong condition of the tracks, and you have wiped out any sense of danger that there might be because they seem to come together.

Once you have seen that God is the substance, the law, and the form of ALL being, then you must agree that sin, disease, and death, lack and limitation, unemployment, homelessness, et cetera, all that, is illusion.

When you see a person in sin or disease, immediately lift your thought and declare, “I can not be fooled!” That is the appearance, but actually it is nothing but a hypnotic suggestion, or a universal belief that is appearing to you as a “sick” person or condition. When you can understand this for what it is, “see” through the seeming picture presenting itself, then you will have an instantaneous healing!

In conclusion, I reiterate the importance of carrying with you constantly, the words RIGHT IDENTIFICATION and RE-INTERPRETATION; and urge you to make good use of them in your practice of Christian Science.

God Is Individual Consciousness

by



Click here to play the audio as you read:

Also available on YouTube or SoundCloud


God is individual consciousness. God consciousness is individual consciousness when the fear or hate or love of error is overcome. To the extent that we consciously realize that God is unfolding as our daily experience in infinite form and variety and activity, we will enjoy outwardly abundant life, health, harmony, peace, joy, success – without taking thought.

Never can you find God, because that which is engaged in the search for God, is God, Himself. Let us remember that regardless of the name or nature of any physical claim, the actual claim is always the same. There is only one claim that we are ever called upon to face, and that is the mesmeric suggestion of a selfhood apart from God. Whenever any sense of discord appears to you, meet it quickly with the understanding that it is a suggestion, that is, a universal belief being presented to you for acceptance or rejection. And because you have been given dominion, because you have God-given dominion, it lies within the realm of your being to forbid entrance to your thought of any suggestion of a selfhood apart from God, or of any condition that is not a part of God’s infinite and eternal spiritual Being.

We must continue forward. And by going forward I mean this: Right now you are as much in the kingdom of heaven as you will ever be. Nothing can be added to you, and nothing can be taken away from you. Then it would seem that all that is necessary toward the realization of this, is a willingness to relax and acknowledge, “Father, all that Thou art, I am.” Nothing to accomplish, nothing to get, nothing to be. “All that Thou art, I am.” And rest in this Truth. Rest in this spiritual awareness of I am-ness. This is not too difficult. It is not difficult at all. It only seems so at the beginning. But gradually as we take this attitude toward life, as we assume this identity, it becomes the only reality of our being.

An important thing to remember is that you unfold from within; you are not to connect it up with some experience in the outer. On the contrary, your development and inner unfoldment is to set you free from all concern in that which appears as the outer world. This does not mean that we will not have harmony, peace, joy, abundance, fruition in what appears as the outer world. It means, however, that as we find ourselves living in the sense of inner being, this inner unfoldment appears as the harmony of an outer world. That which we find and discover within our own consciousness, we find as the outer appearance. We do not then, in any way, try to fix or patch up the outer experience, but center all our thought in the development, unfoldment, revelation and realization of all that consciousness is. Then, we find this consciousness appearing outwardly as harmony in our so-called human affairs. The Christ-consciousness is your consciousness. When persons and things in the so-called outer world no longer disturb us, no longer set up within us a sense of hate, fear, or love, then we are approaching the universal sense of Love and Life and Truth, which constitutes Christ-consciousness.

For the moment we grasp the point that God, the divine Consciousness, is individual consciousness, my own consciousness and yours, and his, and hers, then we begin to understand the words of the poet: “God is closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.” (Author unknown) God is our very own consciousness and therefore, an ever-present help. Indeed, it is the divine Presence, Itself, which I am. Whether we have been conscious of it or not, we have been “consciousness unfolding” since the beginning of time. Whatever we are in this so-called human experience, we are as the direct result of all that we have been since “before Abraham.” Beginning with your realization of God unfolding, disclosing, revealing Himself as your individual consciousness, you are being admitted to a higher unfoldment of Truth, and, as this Truth is assimilated, it will appear as a greater degree of unfolded consciousness. Actually, Consciousness is infinite, but this does not change the fact that we manifest and express, or show forth, that infinity only in the degree that we are able spiritually to discern and to assimilate.

So it is with healing. Healing is not really the overcoming of disease, or the changing of certain conditions of body. Healing, rather, consists in opening our consciousness to the inflow of spiritual Truth, and as this Truth fills our consciousness, It manifests Itself as an improved body, as improved conditions, as improved health.

When Jesus stilled the waves, his only words were: “…Peace, be still.” (Mark 4:39) Isn’t this a wonderful treatment? “Peace, be still.” It becomes necessary for us to realize a “Peace, be still” to every disturbance, to every disturbed thought, and therefore, to all discordant and inharmonious outer conditions. When Jesus said, “Peace, be still,” he was not directing his thought to the troubled waves or to the storm. He was not addressing disturbed thought, the disturbed mind of the disciples, of those on board the ship. Nor was he addressing them as person, but rather to the universal belief of a disturbed thought, to the universal belief of a mind apart from God. To the universal belief of inharmonious inner and outer conditions, he was declaring: “PEACE, BE STILL”!

It is through our understanding of the Truth of Being that we become possessed of our dominion. In other words, through our understanding of the Truth of Being, we see that the power is never something “out there” in person, place, thing or condition, but that all power is in our own consciousness, in our consciousness of that which is appearing to us. Do not believe that the dominion is in human beings. Do not believe that the power is separate from consciousness and is “out there” in person or circumstance. Lift thought above such beliefs and realize that God alone – divine infinite Consciousness, which is individual consciousness – is all authority, is all power, and through this realization harmony is made manifest. Remember that the dominion is God’s, acting as individual consciousness. It is not personal dominion. It is the dominion of God, acting as individual consciousness.

In the same way, let us assume that there is a discordant organ or function of the body. Here again, we turn within and ask ourselves; “Is health, activity, power, in any organ or function of the body? Or is the body in its entirety an effect of Consciousness? And is not Consciousness that which governs and controls? And is not Consciousness – God? Then, has not God all control over that which appears to us as person, place, thing, organ or function?” The moment you have realized that Truth, you have proven dominion over the diseased or discordant action.

All power is in God, which is my individual consciousness; therefore, my experience, whether it is the experience of my health, home, companionship, business, supply, all of it is my own state of consciousness unfolding. As all power is given unto me, all power exists at the standpoint of God. If I entertain this Truth in consciousness, this consciousness manifests itself as what appears to be improved person, place, thing or condition. No experience can come to me, except as the unfolding of my own consciousness. When I realize that all is God unfolding and disclosing Himself, then the experiences I attract to me are on the level of this realization. There is no use in blaming people for any error in my experience; there is no use in blaming any circumstance or condition, or thinking that it was something over which I had no control. The real blame is at the door of ignorance of this Truth, so there is not much excuse to go on year in and year out allowing the domination of person, place or thing.

Everything that happens in our experience is the direct result of our own consciousness. When we feel “out of tune,” we are not bringing harmony to any one or any body, but when we have the sense of ONENESS, we are a law of health and peace for everyone who comes within range of our consciousness. Let us learn to stop blaming someone else for our troubles. That which goes on in consciousness must be manifested outwardly. That which appears as the activity of consciousness, appears as the harmony without. Our work is done when we attain our sense of ONENESS with God.

Today is the day of CONSCIOUS ONENESS WITH GOD, and our whole life can start anew from this period. Let us take today as our day. Age has nothing to do with it; past experience; lack; – none of these have anything to do with it. Let today be the day of “Conscious Oneness with God.” Ask yourself: “Do I know God as the Consciousness of individual being?”

It is only through this realization of God as the Consciousness of individual being that we can awaken others. We should never try to convince another of Truth, because no appeal to the human intellect can convey Truth. Our Principle is that God is the Mind, Soul, Intelligence, Life and Substance of individual being. This is a universal Truth, and as we abide in this Truth, all who come within range of our thought will be spiritually attracted to it. Let the Truth touch all those who are ready for it. Our interest is in this as a universal Truth, and as we embrace It as such, all those who come in touch with us are healed. Then, our thanks is not for the healing, but our joy is for the PRINCIPLE shown forth.

The entire secret of harmonious living is in the realization of God as individual Consciousness. We are going to “get home” only when we realize the nature of God as individual Consciousness. When we really understand that, then we see that we can trust every idea to the government of the one Consciousness – we can “loose them and let them go” so to speak.

For the benefit of those who want to help others, please learn to let them alone. Do not take them into your thought at all. But, rather, turn and realize that you are dealing with a Principle – a Principle that will heal or save or reform anyone, if you will only leave the individual out of your thought and realize this Principle, that God is the Cause, the Law and the effect of all there is. Let the individual alone in Truth!

Now, in regard to the opening of consciousness to the specific good that seems to be needed: If the question is one of supply, we turn away from the appearance, but we do take up the subject of supply. We may think of God as the Consciousness of the individual and that, that consciousness, is the supply. If it is a question of illness, we turn away from the person or condition and turn to God. We realize that God is the Consciousness of the individual, is the Substance of the body, of the organs, and therefore, harmony must be an ever-present law. If the question is one of separation, there again we must turn from the appearance and realize God as ONENESS. All being present in God, we end that belief of separation.

So, we see that we do open consciousness in specific directions in our meditation, but remember, we are not teaching a system that is to bring good in some miraculous manner to your individual experience, separate and apart from the universe as a whole. Our interest is in Principle, and in showing forth of that Principle. Let us accept this Principle, that God is the Life, Soul, Mind, Substance, and Form of each individual being. Let us accept and realize this – that when we say “God,” we are talking about the Consciousness of individual being.

Then, this God, this Consciousness, is a law unto the body, harmony, health, wealth and happiness of all. This must be accepted as a “principle.” When we accept this as a true principle, then we revert to that principle whenever we are faced with any erroneous picture or claim. It is then that we can remember that we are not interested in the claim. Our interest is in the principle.

Remember that the persons asking for help are not our consideration. They are merely the ones who are going to receive the benefit. Our business is: what is the principle involved here? And if we are sure enough of what the principle is, those will be healed who come for it.

Treatment

When there is a belief of error, it is mesmerism and nothing more. Deny it from the standpoint of perfection. Our denial is of its power, instead of its existence. Man is not a point in space; he is an inclusive consciousness – he knows; he is “the knowing.” That is the divine man; it is also, as far as you are concerned, the healing Christ. In Christian Science, Christ is the only thing that has anything to do with the human being. Our understanding of Christian Science is the healing Christ.

MAN is the evidence of divine Being. Stand there! Let us stand in the mount of revelation! Let us be that mount. That state of natural being is coming to realization. Assume all the rights and prerogatives of divine Mind. Think as Man, and then you are “Man.” This is the healing Christ; that is the aim of “I AM.” “…I am alive for evermore.” (Rev. 1:18) Stand as the light of the world! “Hail, Son of God.” All that is needed is the Son of God, or Science of Being. Continue to “see” the Son of God, insist that he is present, no matter what the evidence of the senses says.

The treatment: Know there is no disease – this disease so-called, is not in substance – no substance in which disease could appear or be manifested.

Mind, infinite All powerful – ever present – Divine – self-existent – Consciousness. Truth, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Life, Intelligence, Being, Principle, Love, the only Cause – the only Presence or action – all action, omni-action, the very appearance and enforcement of all law; the one infinite God – the only Consciousness.

Know there is not a false claim in the whole universe of Infinity. There is no disease and there is no cause for (name of disease), no sense to it, no substance where it is manifested or made evident, no Mind in which it originated, no power, no action, or law, no place, space or occupancy for it. Nobody who thinks it or thought it, nothing and nobody through and in which it could be manifested or appear. This so-called “disease” is a lie, or false belief, in that there is no truth in it at all.

You must know the perfection of God and man. God is power, man is the evidence of this infinite idea which is one with Principle. He has no disease, he never gets any. He could not know how; no life in which he could contract or appear to manifest disease.

Man is well and not sick and this divine fact is made manifest through the treatment, and by means of this treatment, and its evidence is absolute and unimpeachable. AFFIRM the Truth, prove that only God is, and error is not. The divine Mind is all there is, and of course you and I know what to do – and we do it. Declare the perfection of being – perfect God, perfect man, perfect function in every particular.

Know: Fear has no effect, fear cannot produce any evil, nor can there be any penalties, belief or substance, or law; and without the possibility of effect or penalties for the so-called belief of influence. Don’t hesitate to cover the ground so that you know the surrounding fear has no effect on the case. It makes no difference how many people mortal mind may say are there. What you KNOW offsets all claims of fear and its so-called consequences.

Know: There is no place, nor law, under which, (name of malady), could ever be evolved, or begun, or have place or continuity. It is wholly false, and my treatment is a law of expulsion and exclusion to it. GOD WITH US – does the healing work. Work with the absolute confidence of Mind. Handle as though God has descended from heaven and said, “I will heal this case,” – realizing your rights and fulfilling your mission. “He that descended is the same also that ascended up…” (Eph. 4:10) What you know is greater than fear. The presence (belief) of fear as a claim does not give any excuse for a disease. Neither fear, nor disease can cause a relapse. See that Truth dissipates error. If there is a claim of resentment, you know that it cannot do anything to the patient. Break its power. Know it cannot do anything. Old theology cannot make a man sick and cannot keep him from getting well in Christian Science.

Mortal mind has no law. It cannot produce any effect for it is not cause. Anger or resentment could not make man sick, for GOD MADE HIM WELL! We have the dominion of God. The divine Mind takes hold of the situation. It changes the condition. It is the Christ which comes to the flesh and thus leaves consciousness free to reflect Science. The perfection of man is the safety of man. Doing a good thing in the right way is Principle. It is perfection. You have a right to it. Demand it, and it is yours. It is on all sides, above, around and everywhere. Put up a good defense. Do not admit you have much “to meet,” as many Christian Scientists like to say. You have nothing to meet except God. As for gossip, and curiosity, know there is no such thing. There is no mortal mind, yet mortal mind claims to have presence, personality and gossip. Dominion is the perfect freedom of infinite Mind. There is nothing to constrain your dominion. There is only one Mind.

Law is a mandate of Mind. “…the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” (Phil. 4:7) Quiet assurance in the realm of Mind. God is Principle, and man lives that Principle. Man’s dominion is knowing God. The contentment, joy, of God’s creation. There is nothing outside of Infinity to make any trouble. There is no possibility of His own creation being troubled by anything unlike His own nature, nor mere suggestion of evil in God’s creation. One in being, One in law, One in plan, One in purpose, One in action, substance and in Science. Know that man is doing just the right thing, at all times, under all circumstances, and is always in the right place. Evil effects have a cause only in belief. No ideas can take in, or take on, any destructive thing. Divine Consciousness is the consciousness of man. There is nothing but the eternal fact of infinite perfect Mind, which expresses infinite perfect ideas. A Christian Scientist’s progress is a continuous triumph – a continual ascent through all eternity, growing in understanding of God, Good.

Let us as Christian Scientists isolate ourselves with God and stand as a “high tower” of unchanging Truth, where those who need healing and understanding may come, but we cannot come down nor be moved. In our Textbook we read “There is no disease.” (S&H 421:18) And whenever disease seems to appear, it is false material sense. The same is true of sin, vice, sorrow, want, woe, war, and death. All these so-called human experiences are illegitimate and unreal. They have no scientific reason for seeming to be, and in the light of pure reason which coincides with revelation, there is no Principle or truth in them or to them, and no law by which they can seem to operate, continue, or exist. It is essential to establish the understanding of true being and the law of it, – by so doing, the false picture of a human being mesmerized by sin, or afflicted by disease, is overcome. Our Textbook also says, “It is mental quackery to make disease a reality – to hold it as something seen and felt – and then to attempt its cure through Mind.” (S&H 395:21-23)

In the same way to see man, woman, child, any body or anything as an actual patient needing healing is also “mental quackery.” Just as we understand that what appears to be a human being is really the Son of God, divine in being and divine in all his attributes, so we must see whatever appears to be a patient or a disease is a mere deception that seems to hide a divine reality – the reality being the divine body, the real identity of the real man.

From the Press

From the October 26th, 1918 Christian Science Sentinel, featuring a letter to the editor of The Boston Herald from

Services were conducted in accordance with the usual order, both morning and evening, yesterday [Oct. 6], at The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. The appeal of the emergency health committee of Boston that the churches of the city be closed, in accordance with the desire to prevent large assemblages of people was referred to briefly at both services when the following announcement from The Christian Science Board of Directors was read from the pulpit:

“In her volume, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany (p. 116), Mrs. Eddy writes, ‘At a time of contagious disease, Christian Scientists endeavor to rise in consciousness to the true sense of the omnipotence of Life, Truth, and Love, and this great fact in Christian Science realized will stop a contagion.’

“This church is maintaining its services to-day as a most effective way in which its large congregations can continue to be of help to the community by attaining through the church services a clearer sense of the omnipotence of divine Love and the impotence of aggressive evil at a time when disease is being so industriously promoted as it is through the common avenue of mesmeric fear.

“True Science unveils the fact that the mortal mind is the source of contagion and that the ailments evolved by that so-called mind can infect and contaminate only as its dis-eased images are held before the thought and paraded before the excited imagination preliminary to having them outlined and expressed on the body through fear and apprehension.

“It is the solemn duty of every Christian Scientist to enter at once the active service of his country and of humanity, to stop this drive of the ‘enemy’ intended to destroy health and life and to paralyze progress and righteous efficiency in this vital hour of the world’s history.

“Mrs. Eddy has said (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 229): ‘A calm, Christian state of mind is a better preventive of contagion than a drug, or than any other possible sanative method; and the “perfect Love” that “casteth out fear” is a sure defense.'”

The attitude of the church in this and similar instances also is explained in the appended letter to the editor of The Boston Herald from Bicknell Young, First Reader of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in which he comments upon the present epidemic and the angle that has been taken toward it as to church services:

“It is most extraordinary and ironical that in a Christian country whenever there is talk of doing away with public gatherings the churches and saloons are invariably mentioned together. Whether they are classed together or not depends, one may suppose, upon the point of view. But at any rate there is nothing to show that the health of the community would be either conserved or improved by such methods. On the contrary, according to the views of the best physicians, people are no more safe cooped up in their dwellings than they are in commodious and well ventilated theaters, halls, or churches, and from the standpoint of those who seek to find the real root of disease, anything which tends to alarm the public serves to spread disease and to increase its violence.

“One only needs to travel about the streets of Boston these days to see how fear has gripped the whole community. If one were disposed to perpetrate a very bad pun one might truthfully say, ‘Fear is the grip.’ The fact is that influenza breeds in fear and feeds on fear. To some extent the doctors and nurses see this and urge people to be courageous, but with little effect, seeing that there is little faith in a fountain that sends forth both sweet waters and bitter. After fear of influenza has been promulgated for weeks in advance, it is found that in some instances the sick are neglected by their relatives through fear of contagion; and then the demand is suddenly made upon them that they be fearless, and they are assured that simple precautions will make them safe, and it is even hinted that the influenza is not necessarily contagious. Why so late with these assurances? Why were they not given out beforehand, instead of the flood of suggestion whereby the public mind became prolific soil for the mental germs of influenza?

“A letter from a friend in a training camp near Chicago says that one day the camp physicians had minute descriptions of the symptoms of influenza, and warnings as to the danger from it, given out to the camp. Prior to that time there had not been a single case. Next day there were several cases, and before long several hundred. Clearly this is a mere suggestion, and it looks suspiciously like enemy propaganda, to which the doctors lent themselves, unconsciously of course. Is it not possible that this so-called epidemic is just that very thing? If the community could see it that way, how long would they be afraid? If people are to get rid of influenza, they need to have something to think of other than influenza. The fact is that influenza is primarily a mental disease. The prevailing material methods will make headway against it only in the measure that they inspire faith and confidence. The utterly helpless attitude of the health authorities and physicians generally seems to indicate that they are hopeless to overcome the disease, and are convinced that it must run its course and wear itself out.

“Those who look beyond matter for the cause and cure of disease see that the great need of the hour is pure Christianity, and yet at the very time when the gospel of Christ in all its practical strength and helpfulness is most needed it is proposed to close the churches.

“Among the clergymen whose opinions have been sought, to say nothing of thousands who have not been consulted, are consecrated men who have devoted their whole lives to the Christian religion as they understand it. They number among their congregations thousands of devout men and women. Is there no healing unction in all this? Is it possible that the services in these churches and the prayers of these people are so remote from God that these churches must be closed and these pentecostal petitions made to cease because of the fear of germs? Which is greater, God or germs? ‘Choose you this day whom ye will serve.’

“The irony of the situation is sufficiently obvious; but without further comment, if it be true that the churches at a time like this are so dominated by the fear of matter that they close their doors and refrain from their customary Christian mission when the need is greatest, let them be closed not for a Sunday or two, but forever.”

Electricity

by



Click here to play the audio as you read:

Also available on YouTube, Vimeo, or SoundCloud


Mrs. Eddy, in the third edition, speaks of the “electricity of mortal mind” and calls it “the essence of mortal and erring mind that counterfeits that essence of the unerring and eternal Mind, termed Holy Ghost,” S&H 293:17-30 (present edition). Criticism, condemnation, censure, etc., are all claims of destructive electricity – and you should handle the claim of electricity in all of your thinking.

All claim of conflict and opposition of what we call malpractice, can be recognized as a claim of destructive electricity – but the fact remains that there is no destructive electricity, because every cell, fiber and substance expresses within itself all the qualities of the Father-Mother God, existing as God’s own identity. There is no electricity in God’s identity, the one and only man there is, you, I, and everybody. All of mortal mind is a claim of electricity – because it is all a claim of two, a claim of opposites, a claim of good and evil, mind and matter, love and hate, etc., a claim of positive and negative, acting and reacting, a claim of magnetism, attracting and repelling, a claim of anti-Christ, of resistance to Christ, a claim of a positive evil and a negative good, all of it a claim of magnetic power or electricity, “therefore,” as Mrs. Eddy is quoted as saying, “operating in the individual, it claims to attract evil to that individual and to repel good, and when through treatment the claim refuses to yield to treatment, it is because the repelling force of electricity claims to be greater than the attracting power of Truth. In the claim of supply the so-called power of electricity repels the manifestation of the affluence of good, attracts fear or limitation and its seeming manifestation.” Mrs. Eddy says also that electricity works as sex attraction, or by reaction or reversal as sex friction.

This is the foundation for hate and malpractice of all kinds, including sin, sickness, and death. The denial of electricity as presence or power destroys the root of evil, and man is free to manifest the truth and the infinite forms of good. “I cannot be negatively electrified.” S&H 97:5-20; 536:11-29. So-called electricity is only a so-called state of mind. S&H 161:5-10.

Aggressive mental suggestion claims to function as destructive electrical influence. All there is of the claim of so-called destructive electricity is conflicting mortal opinions and beliefs. S&H 273:29-3.

All there is of so-called physical ills is the consenting on our part to be mesmerized by these conflicting mortal opinions, so-called destructive electricity, until our disturbed thinking claims to objectify itself as some discordant phenomenon. Our protection from this influence lies in taking the offensive against the suggestions, which claim to act as a positive evil upon some so-called negative good, and in being the Christ-consciousness – the harmonious deific thought-force

– the spiritual discernment of what we scientifically know. There is no negative good and there is no positive evil, no negative God acted upon by positive evil suggestions. Your spiritual discernment is the infinite positive, which acts upon every false claim as its negative – “mere negation.” S&H 102:3-8. Mrs. Eddy says, “Spirit is positive.” S&H 173:13-16. So, do not be negative, be positive to false suggestion. Handle the claim of sex antagonism by first denying it and then translating it into the spiritual counterfact – the male and female of God’s creating, masculine wisdom and feminine love, which coexists as the two-fold nature of the infinite God reflected as the individual man – not a positive male and a negative female person – nor a positive female and a negative male person, for each individual exists as the complete unfoldment of the two-fold nature of the Father- Mother God. Handle the suggestions of sex antagonism by discerning the equality of masculine wisdom and feminine love in the Christ-consciousness. There is no superior male or female, for the male and female of God’s creating, wisdom and love exist as the all-harmonious one in the individual consciousness – the Christconsciousness – scientific understanding and spiritual discernment.

A student of Christian Science worked out a beautiful healing of so-called kidney trouble (passing of blood, pain, etc.) by handling the claim of sex antagonism, by discerning there was no conflict, no antagonism, no friction between the male and female of God’s creating – masculine wisdom and feminine love – scientific understanding and spiritual discernment – to set up any irritation, as there seemed to be between husband and wife. She discerned that the manhood and womanhood of God – masculine wisdom and feminine love, had never been separated from or antagonistic to each other, but that man expresses God’s true nature of Truth and

Love – masculine wisdom and feminine love – scientific understanding and spiritual discerning, and is the complete manifestation of the divine idea. The healing was accomplished in one treatment. The wife manifested more of the scientific reasoning than she did of its spirit, and the husband (who manifested something of the spirit of Christian Science but very little scientific reasoning) felt greatly irritated because his wife so often urged him to do more. Was that not a beautiful healing of a claim of electricity, a claim of a positive and negative, claiming to operate as sex friction, sex antagonism? The kidney trouble was only the so-called phenomenon of the conflicting beliefs entertained in consciousness. Then don’t you think that any claim of error would be met for Christian Scientists by handling the claim of electricity?

The claim of electricity is only some electrifying belief objectified – fear, suspicion, greed; therefore, translate it back into its own counter-reality, the spiritual discernment of the one harmonious spontaneous power – the spiritual discernment of Truth and Love. There is no friction, no conflict, no magnetic curse, no opposing force, because there is only the one great infinite Mind-power, one limitless thought-force of Love, the force of Spirit, the spiritual discernment of Love, Life, Truth, unfolding, embracing and constituting its perfect harmonious identity, and you and your Father-Mother God are one – the all-mighty one of spiritual discernment, the infinite I AM. Has the unfoldment of the day’s work we have had here together made it clear to you that everything has to be translated back into Spirit, its counter-fact? S&H 209:16-24.

And now that divine Science is taking away the world’s belief in matter, its next great demonstration is to take away the world’s belief in evil; and it is because divine Science is doing it, that the claims of evil are so aggressive today. It is the unfoldment of Truth in the world that is stirring up all this resistance which we recognize as painful chemicalization; and now that Christian Scientists must demonstrate the mastery over it – must handle it for themselves and the rest of the world, must “maintain law and order” (S&H 97) and “hold crime in check,” must demonstrate its nothingness. This responsibility rests upon Christian Scientists and must be fulfilled and they must “cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection.”

How shall we meet the demands this age is making on us? By denying the claims of an evil mind-power and discerning the spiritual counterfact, the irresistible Christ-power, the one infinite Mind-force operating as all power, all presence, omnipotent Love, constituting all consciousness and determining its own outward harmonious phenomena.

If Christian Scientists are discerning daily the powerlessness of so-called evil mind-power to determine an outward phenomena, the chemicalization will be less severe and it will shorten the days of error, and this is our great necessity. The uncovering and upheaval of so-called evil thought in the world is only evidence of what divine Science is doing to bring these claims to the surface; then do we need to stand aghast and wonder what is going to happen next? The unfoldment of Truth and Love which has brought these evil suggestions to the surface will melt them away if you and I are faithful to our unfoldment, to deny these aggressive suggestions until their powerlessness is recognized in our spiritual discernment of the irresistible Christ-power – in the one infinite God-power – the power of our scientific denials and the spiritual discernment.

Do you feel the necessity of standing your test and demonstrating your ability not to be mesmerized by aggressive mental suggestions, and to maintain your firm stand and balance as the Christ-consciousness? Our great work is to demonstrate the powerlessness of evil suggestions to do anything as a claim of an evil mindpower to determine phenomenon, and thereby to demonstrate God’s allness. (S&H 233:28-29.

Christian Scientists must first demonstrate for themselves that nothingness of error, if they are going to demonstrate its nothingness to the world. The sign the world is seeking after, is the freedom from suffering; and if Christian Scientists can demonstrate to the world, – and they must – the nothingness of its misery, then the world will be eager to hear all that Christian Science has to say about the all-ness of God and the nothingness of error, that will enable the world to demonstrate for itself the allness of God and the nothingness of error by way of its own spiritual discernment. Read Message for 1900, 3:29-1.

The Oriental concept of God would separate the world from Christ – the spiritual idea, or idea of Spirit. It claims that what is called matter is spiritual substance, and that the so-called mortal mind is the divine Mind or Spirit – not knowing the difference. It is the claim of spiritualizing matter, calling material sense spiritual, a claim of an Oriental taint that has appeared in all religious teaching and in all human thought – a claim of an inherited taint. And does it not claim to be objectified as so-called material or inherited taints? I was told that Mrs. Eddy once said that the claim of “catarrh” should be handled as false theology. All scholastic theology is a claim of man’s separation from God. But there is no taint of Orientalism in our discernment of our oneness with God. There is no taint in God’s self-hood, therefore none in ours, because there is only one selfhood. It is as Mrs. Eddy said (Un. 35:23-9) only “an outlined falsity of consciousness,” an outlined belief that man is something separate from God. Isn’t that the taint of belief that Jesus and the early Christians had to dispel in their time? Isn’t that the taint that Christian Scientists have to dispel – that false concept that man is separate from God – from Spirit – spiritual discernment? Would the spiritual discernment of God as man’s identity, as both noumenon and phenomenon, the infinite One, the one God, the one Being, the perfect and only I AM, dispel all suggestions of taint? There is no taint.

Spiritual discernment is the infinite I AM, the infinite One, both God and man, both noumenon and phenomenon. John 10:30 (Read My. 253:28-3).

“I and my Father are one.

“Let the creature become one with his creator, and mysticism departs, heaven opens, right reigns, and you have begun to be a Christian Scientist.”

Orientalism is all of it a perverted concept of Truth, Christ, divine Science, but parading not only as anti-Christ outside of Christianity, but also as the very vicar of Christ, as Christianity itself – not only as opposition to Christian Science outside of its ranks, but also as opposition and conflict within its ranks, as Christian Science itself – all of it a claim of destructive electricity?

Mrs. Eddy once said, “Know that electricity cannot convey poison to you through the pneumogastric nerve, for conflicting mortal opinions act as poison.” In other words would you say conflicting mortal opinions constitute the claim of electricity? Then would you also say that all of the world’s error can be summed up in this claim of Orientalism, and that it should be always thoroughly handled? And would you say that all error should be handled as a claim of destructive electricity – a claim of positive and negative? A claim of dividing, disintegrating, destroying – the three D’s? We classify beliefs as good beliefs and bad beliefs, but when the bad beliefs claim to be good – when the worst claims to be the best, we have a claim of perversion, but this stage of error is the final or last stage of error and ripe for destruction; because claiming the Christ-power, but lacking it – lacking the power of spiritual discernment, the power of oneness with God, it cannot demonstrate its claims, but as Mrs. Eddy says, destroys itself by making its claims. S&H 286:27-30.

Spiritualism

From the Association Address of 1938 by



Click here to play the audio as you read:

Also available on YouTube, Vimeo, or SoundCloud


Spiritualism is a mortal claim which needs to be detected and cast out. It is not uncommon, although it frequently escapes detection as the cause and effect of baffling conditions. In the case of a man I know very well, the uncovering of spiritualistic influence solved a long standing combination of difficulties. He was the only son in a large family. Without being aware of it, he was idolized by his mother to such an extent that he was deprived of his individuality. Unlike his sisters, he was rather sickly, had a difficult time growing up, was diffident, bashful, without initiative, and matured in his late twenties. From his early years he had suffered from an ailment which the family doctor diagnosed as an enlarged kidney. Eventually he found Christian Science and a measure of freedom, but the kidney condition persisted. Ten years after the passing of his mother a Scientist uncovered the claim of exaggerated mother love and also opened his eyes to the spiritualistic influence of his mother, although she had been gone for a decade. This man treated himself and was entirely healed in ten days.

Although his mother had passed on, the universal belief in human motherhood — in mortal mind — had in no wise changed and it constituted a channel through which he was controlled by the impersonal evil called “mother love.” When he saw that human birth, motherhood, sonship, human love, human relationships, domination and so on, constituted a belief of mortal mind which had been aggressive in his experience, he was then prepared to destroy the claim of spiritualism or spiritualistic influence. He real­ized that his unconscious admission of a mother who had passed on, opened the way for the mental trespass to be continued. In other words, he became aware that the error was of his own making in that he ignorantly acquiesced in the seeming reality of the mortal sense — the power and the claim of spiritualism to maintain a control over him, because of his belief that his mother had died. As it grew clear to him that “Death is but another phase of the dream that existence can be material” the spiritualistic influ­ence no longer had place or power in his thinking and the physical inharmony disappeared. (S&H 427:13)

Spiritualism presents in a subtle way an insistent and persistent sense of domination and control. The victim may not be aware of the mental influence, and therefore may not be able to establish the mental integrity which can successfully cope with the situation. It often happens that the victim suffers greatly from the loss and separation, and so quite unwittingly opens wide the door to spiritualistic control. Nor need the relation be a family one. I know an instance in which a practitioner was involved with a patient. These two women were very dear to each other. A day after the patient had passed on, she appeared to the practitioner as she had looked in life, and pleaded with her friend to follow as soon as possible. There were other experiences, varying in nature, before the case was completely healed.

Inasmuch as the phenomena takes place in the individual’s thought, there need be no confusion or apprehension when the claim of spiritualism is uncovered. Rather should the individual rejoice that a very subtle error has been disclosed. Spiritualism could not exist were it not for the belief of material life and death, and the belief of many minds or personalities. In my practice there has been no appearance of any apparition with the one exception of the practitioner mentioned. In her case, there had been, years before, very definite manifestations of ghostly experiences with several members of her immediate family and it is probably true that she was unusually susceptible to phenomena of this character. But I have found spiritualism to be a not in­frequent claim with patients. Sometimes it is wise not to dis­close the influence; at other times it is most helpful.

Sometimes a deep human attachment is present, in which case the belief of mesmeric human love must be destroyed. In all cases the influence, control, government, of divine Mind must be exercised to the annihilation of the despotic control of the mortal mind. The same selfish desire to dominate, which is often manifested by parents toward children upon the basis of knowing what is best for them, and that, too, even though the children have reached the adult stage and need to order their own lives, that too is met with in the claim of spiritualism, which is essentially selfish in its nature. A woman about forty years of age, whose father had been of an exceedingly dominating nature and had exercised control over the brothers and sisters, but was not permitted to dictate to her, came under spiritualistic control after his death. Ignorant of this influence, her affairs for five years subsequent to his demise became more and more involved. With the claim uncovered they began to improve at once. The desire to dominate humanly is one of the commonest in the en­tire list of human fables, a circumstance which allows the in­fluence of spiritualism to enter unseen and unmolested into hu­man affairs.

Spiritualism is always concerned with the past. We are told in the Bible, “… God requireth that which is past.” (Eccl. 3:15) The time element is an essential factor in the suf­fering imposed by spiritualistic influence. Time is one of the commonest sins. It is defined in the Glossary of the textbook as “…Mortal measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge;…” (S&H 595) Without one’s acknowledgement of the reality of a human life lived in the past, spiritualism could have no power.

Love is the liberator.