Independent Christian Science articles

Love Individualized vs. Animal Magnetism Collectivized

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“WATCH lest you accept the common notion that the small power represented by David’s little stone, overthrew a great power, called Goliath. David, as the visible representative and manifestation of the omnipotence of divine Mind, was the invincible giant, equipped with infinite power that overthrew Goliath, whose power lay wholly in deception through size.

“The trick of the mesmerism of sense testimony, is to reverse everything, magnifying the nothingness of error so that it seems like a giant, and belittling the power and presence of Spirit.” (Carpenter, Watching Point 153)

The name “Goliath” means “passage, revolution, heap.” As he stepped onto the battlefield every morning and evening, Goliath presented himself as a mountainous heap of intimidation.

Morning and evening, day after day, Israel listened to Goliath proclaiming himself as the way, the truth, and the life of Israel, as the supreme leader of a revolution not only against King Saul and his army, not only against the nation of Israel, but against the God of Israel Himself.

The picture of Israel’s king and army demoralized by fear demonstrates how an entire nation can fall under the collective, apathy-inducing spell of animal magnetism.

David, on the other hand, had spent many hours, days, months set apart, alone in the wilderness, tending sheep, practicing the presence of God, learning to listen to the still, small voice of the Spirit; learning that there is no presence or power apart from God; learning that the presence of anything unlike the Presence of Omnipresence, even the presence of a ferocious lion or bear, is not presence at all, but absence.

So when David, aligned with God, came out of the wilderness to Israel’s encampments in order to bring cornbread to his misaligned brothers, it was like the meeting of two opposing weather fronts. Yet David prevailed. The cringing collective consciousness of Israel’s army could not drag David into the bottomless foxhole of fear and apathy that they had dug for themselves.

“You must realize that harmony is the only reality, and that it has no opposite” — no Goliath. (Carpenter, Watching Point 125)

“One with God is a majority.”

Two Kinds of Evidence

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The word “evidence” is derived from the Latin evidentia, from video, “to see.” The word “idolatry” is derived from the Greek word meaning “thing seen.”

Mrs. Eddy’s allegory, “The Trial” (S&H 430-442), deals with attorneys battling over two kinds of evidence, both sides vehemently contradicting each other: mind versus Mind, the former presenting evidence of things seen, and the latter presenting evidence of things not seen, also identified in Hebrews 11:1 as “the substance of things hoped for” or “faith.”

At the beginning of the trial, in the lower court of the senses, the accused (a critically sick patient) allows the prosecuting attorneys and a flood of witnesses to dominate the court — without a single “I object!”

During Hitler’s reign of terror, the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda successfully employed the technique of “the Big Lie” — the mesmeric repeating of a self-evident falsehood via party, press, and pulpit: radio broadcasts, newspapers, motion pictures, billboards, public notices, speeches, sermons, tracts and handouts, educational materials for children and young adults, with great urgency and emotional force — along with government censorship of any opposing viewpoints — all for the purposes of mass “enlightenment,” — which was nothing more than mind-control.

In the court of lower consciousness, the show-trial ends with a conviction — the death penalty! — without a peep of protest from the attorney-deprived convict, paralyzed, speechless with mind-monopolizing fear.

But on appeal, as he finally comes to his spiritual senses, the convict allows his attorney, Christian Science, to hold court and present evidence in the Supreme Court of Spirit, ultimately proving that all the lower court’s “evidence” gathered by the physical senses amounted to nothing but a Big Lie.

At this point, the evil accusers of the lower court of mind cry out, declaring that “Christian Science was overthrowing the judicial proceedings of a regularly constituted court” (S&H 437:25), but the higher court of Mind quickly dismisses this contempt-of-court claim.

At last, the lower court of sense and all its occupants are silenced, vanquished, dispersed like a wisp of smoke in a windstorm. And one Mind prevails.

More than ever before, Christian Scientists must refuse to allow thoughts from the lower court to kick Science out of their thought-life! “Thought passes from God to man” and only from God to man, not vice versa, “that man may have audience with Spirit” alone, not with fear, but with that which casts out fear, “the divine Principle, Love, which destroys all error.” (S&H 284:30, 15:12)

Therefore, with the flaming sword of the Word of God protecting the Tree of Life in every direction, it’s time, as never before, to strike at the head of the phantom paper dragon of the Apocalypse that “deceiveth the whole world” (Rev. 12:9); time to turn whatever consciousness remains of its “reality” into dust and ashes!

Problem-Consciousness or Solution-Consciousness

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Psalm 25, verse 10, is another example of the conditional nature of God’s promises. It says, “All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.”

Each and every challenge calling for watching, prayer, spiritual warfare always involves movement of my mentality from problem-consciousness to solution-consciousness. Dwelling on the problem is error. Dwelling on the solution to the problem is Truth. These two states of mind are completely opposed to each other: one is covenant-breaking and the other is covenant-keeping. Victory is assured when I go up higher, orienting my mind (and mood) toward the solution, refusing to sink into the depths of the problem.

Of the twelve spies sent out to report on the lay of the promised land, only two were solution-oriented and brought back a good report. The rest of the spies were problem-oriented to the point of despair.

As Churchill declared, “Fear is a reaction. Courage is a decision.”

“[T]he Master bade his students be wise as the serpent, i.e., never allow the belief of Life and sensation in matter to put to silence the opposite, science of being.” (Science and Health, 1st edition, p. 250)

Ten of the twelve spies “put to silence the science of being” with disastrous results. Fear puts to silence the voice of the angels that hold the key to the solution of every problem imaginable to humankind.

“We saw the giants … and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.” (Numbers 13:33.) Thus, as the ten spies fixed their gaze on the false testimony of their five senses, their despair doubled: not only did they see themselves as utterly squashable insects, but imagined their enemies viewing Israel as easy prey as well.

A similar example of such misuse of imagination occurs in the Apocalypse of John, where mortal mind has magnified the serpent of Genesis into a dragon of monstrous proportions.

As the saying goes:

“Two men looked out through prison bars: One saw mud, and the other saw stars.”

Two Israeli spies saw “stars” — namely Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omniscience, and Omni-Activity — and the problem of “giants” made a swift getaway: into its native nothingness.

Daniel: “Among the Captives”? Hardly

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“I have found a man of the captives of Judah, that will make known unto the king the interpretation.” (Daniel 2:16)

To the fives senses, Daniel was taken captive in a land filled with strange gods and occultists honoring them. But through persistent, devoted striving, Daniel overcame his circumstances — praying fervently toward Jerusalem 3 times a day. Mrs. Eddy’s Key to the Scriptures defines Jerusalem as “Home, heaven.” (S&H, p. 589:12)

By such commitment and devotion, Daniel was able to throw off his identity as a “captive”. Putting off “the old man” (Ephesians 3:23, Colossians 3:9), Daniel became one with the one Mind that is God.

And so the real captives in Babylon were its own citizens, most especially the king’s magicians and occultists, while Daniel established himself as a citizen of heaven (harmony); Jerusalem (called “New Jerusalem” in the Book of Revelation), his true home.

“This material sinful personality, which we misname man, is what St. Paul terms ‘the old man and his deeds,’ to be ‘put off.’” (No and Yes, 27:20.)

Mrs. Eddy stresses that this “old man” does not exist in the Mind of God, therefore does not exist at all, and that it’s a lie to identify any man, woman, or child as sinful, sickly, or mortal: “Therefore it required the divinity of our Master to perceive the real man, and to cast out the unreal or counterfeit. It caused St. Paul to write, — ‘Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds; and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.’” (Christian Science vs. Pantheism 10:30, emphasis added.)

“The blood of Jesus”

by , from the October 29th, 2017 Forum

“And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb . . .” (Rev. 12:11) Quote re “the blood of Jesus” from a pamphlet issued in 1885 by the Massachusetts Metaphysical College:
“DEFENCE OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE Against Rev. Joseph Cook and Dr. A. J. Gordon’s Religious BAN.” by Mary Baker G. Eddy
CS Journal, March 1885
[Compare this with Mrs. Eddy’s No and Yes, page 33.]

Mrs. Eddy: “‘The blood of Jesus speaketh better things than that of Abel.’ The body and blood of Christ were not material offerings: the blood of Spirit never flowed from human veins. Jesus said, ‘Spirit hath not flesh and blood.’”

[In other words, man is created in the image and likeness of God, that is, the image and likeness of Spirit. “Therefore, man is not material; he is spiritual” (Scientific Statement of Being). And therefore, the blood of Jesus was not a material offering, but spiritual.]

Mrs. Eddy’s continues:
“The sacrificial atonement by which Jesus’ struggle and triumph pointed man his way out of sin, sickness, and death, is too great, too glorious to be comprehended [in human terms, but] only as we love the Father, and sacrifice human affections to the divine. Not to appease the wrath of Love, but to destroy the human sense of hate and sin, Jesus suffered and gave his body a sacrifice for mortals. A human sense of love sees no farther than to die for a friend, but divine Love includes its enemies; and Love so great destroys hate, blessing itself in blessing its enemies. Any other than the spiritual signification of atonement removes its efficacy from Spirit to matter.

“The merit of Jesus’ atonement was increased instead of diminished, was more to me than you [clergymen attacking Christian Science, intent on banning it], when I learned in Christian Science it revealed the way out of sickness and death, as well as sin.”




From 1936 Primary Class, by Bicknell Young, page 111:

Question (by student): Is blood an idea?

Answer: Blood is the idea of Life. The claim that blood is a thing, is a false claim. Life is the only thing. The idea, then, is that Life is and is perfect.



From Watches, Prayers, and Arguments, given by Mary Baker Eddy, page 51:

WATCH — Blood is thought, and your blood is pure thought, a health-giving, life-giving thought, and nothing impure can enter into that thought; it is perfectly pure.

Joseph

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“Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” “the perfect law of liberty” — and, thus, Joseph set the mighty wheels of the metaphysical law of liberty in motion, through his refusal to complain about his seemingly limiting, imprisoning physical circumstances, and his refusal to bear a grudge against anyone.

Apparently Joseph knew that “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” centuries before that scripture was written, and yet his story demonstrates that he was not focused in the least on the subject of visiting vengeance, human or divine, against anyone personally. His words to his astonished brothers after revealing himself to them demonstrate how effortless it was for Joseph to offer a statement of simple kindness, knowing intuitively that “a soft answer breaketh the bone,” centuries before Solomon wrote it: words without a trace of vindictiveness, which can be a greater rebuke than paragraphs shouted in righteous indignation. And it’s pretty obvious that Joseph wasn’t even thinking about rebuking them while speaking those words.

It is noteworthy and fun to read how Joseph was not your typical jailbird, but in fact experienced liberation, even while serving his unjust sentence in an earthly dungeon. The Bible tells us that within a very short time, the warden trusted and respected him so much that he was appointed assistant to the warden(!), who was so convinced of the integrity of his appointee that he didn’t even bother checking on any of Joseph’s activities in that arena. Genesis 39:21-23: “But the Lord was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. And the keeper of the prison omitted to Joseph’s hand all the prisoners that were in the prison; and whatsoever they did there, he was the doer of it. The keeper of the prison looked not to any thing that was under his hand; because the Lord was with him, and that which he did, the Lord made it to prosper.”

To love God with all one’s heart, mind, and strength is to maintain steadfast consciousness of God, not man, in every minute detail of one’s life. Thus, Joseph was focused on God only, not his brothers, and not Potiphar’s wife. It appears that he knew that spending even the least amount of time thinking about the evils and injustices done to him personally was a moment of breaking the First Great Commandment, centuries before it was written. In Genesis 50:20, when replying to his brothers about any supposed evil done to him, he is quick to change the subject — “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” What good? — “this present result, to preserve many people alive.” So Joseph’s great love for God gave him the instinctive understanding to follow the second great commandment, also, centuries before it was written: “thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Thus, in the end, God made the wrath of man — the wrath of Joseph’s brothers and the wrath of Potiphar’s wife — to praise Him!

Handling Weather Broadcasts

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At first glance, the 24/7 Weather Channel seems innocent enough, along with other television networks weather broadcasts. But as for so-called “superstorms” and other extreme-weather events, I always change the channel because such things are no different than presenting a physician’s detailed, drawn-out, description of the symptoms of some dreadfully “incurable” or “progressive” disease before an audience of hundreds of millions.

First of all, the use of words that are constantly, unconsciously breaking the first commandment creates, almost instantly, a great number of malpracticers obliviously viewing the storm as malicious mind (personal sense) views it.

Secondly, the idolatry of force-feeding satellite images and computer-generated “models” constructed by “experts” looped (for dramatic effect) depicting the size of the storm, obstinately (and unnaturally) stationary: more audience-titillating emotional binging on the “reality” of the storm’s Goliath-like proportions. Adding to the aggressiveness of the hurricane suggestion are the climate-change believers, who always appear to be so desperate to see their apocalyptic dreams come true.

While we can certainly be thankful for this technology, its overuse is simply wrong because it is malpracticing on planet Earth: technologically enabled malpractice — unprecedented in the history of broadcasting until only very recently — and, through the law of attraction, it only serves to strengthen storms (such as Sandy a few years ago). This is the additional, supplementary evil that goes far beyond the simple reporting of a storm — mass-mesmerism — and it needs to be thoroughly neutralized.

From Watches, Prayers, Arguments — “When I work for the weather, everybody wants fair weather, only they believe there will be bad weather, and I only have to overcome that belief; but when malice comes in and declares there shall be storms, then I have a task to overcome that. Now make real to yourselves: There is no envy, malice, hate nor revenge. God is Love, and Love is All. All is health and holiness. There is no opposite.”

Watching

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In Collectanea, Mary Baker Eddy gives the following two instructions in regard to Watching:

“WATCH — . . . sit down and first get yourself into a consciousness of your power with God, and then take up the Outside Watch. Sit until this is clear, — if two hours.”

“WATCH — . . . take up the Watch every two hours as long as you live or until you can make the right side real to your consciousness.”

Why the Inside Watch is More Important than the Outside Watch:

The Bible story of Esther tells of a young Jewish woman who marries the Persian king who had conquered the land of Babylon. As queen, assisted by Mordecai, her cousin and guardian, she saves the remaining Jews from a plot to destroy them.

When Mordecai refuses to pay homage to Haman, a high official, Haman becomes infuriated and plots to destroy all the Jews. Mordecai reports this plot to Esther. Esther tells him to “Go, gather together all the Jews in Shushan, and fast ye for me, three days: I also will fast likewise; and so will I go in unto the king, which is not according to the law: and if I perish, I perish.”

After the three days, Esther goes to the king to reveal Haman’s plot, and Haman is hung on the gallows. Esther’s faith and courage saves her people.

Esther had to overcome the initial shock of receiving the information about Haman, and this took her three days to do: this was her inside watch. Only then was she able to fulfill all the requirements of a good outside watch, directly influencing the outside world for good, informing the king directly in his presence (that is, exposing error boldly and effectively in the Presence of God, not by letter alone but by Spirit-inspired letter).

It is not difficult to imagine that when Esther first heard Mordecai’s warning concerning Haman, she had to resolve in her own mind not to make the problem so big, so overshadowing, that it became foremost in her consciousness, screaming for attention to draw her thought away from the true God. She had to rebuke this great error directly, “You are not God! You cannot draw my mind away from Mind. Neither are you a god, for there is none beside God! I am the image and likeness of God; and as there is none beside God, there is none beside me either, except the Presence of God. You are not even a thought, because only God’s thoughts have substance and reality.”

But it took Esther and her handmaidens three days to get it right: to cast off personal sense, to starve it out (God’s chosen fast), to refuse to be overwhelmed by error and to align completely with Mind, to render irrelevant in her own mind the subject of Haman’s genocidal intentions, his seeming unlimited power and freedom to act upon them. Three days to render thought of Haman as nothing, three days for it to be miniaturized, then micro-miniaturized, then finally annihilated into absolute nothingness as she obeyed the First Commandment to “have no other gods before Me.”

  1. As thoughts of God’s omniscience became more real to Esther than all of Haman’s schemes, voiced and unvoiced, all of Haman’s thoughts dissolved into oblivion, as well as all thought of Haman himself.
  2. The more real the thought of God’s omnipotence became to Esther, the more powerless and helpless Haman became.
  3. As thoughts of God’s omnipresence became more real to Esther than Haman’s presence in the palace, Haman’s absence became more real than his presence. By dwelling only in the secret place of the Most High for many hours, crying silently, “‘Be Thou exalted, O God, alone in my consciousness,” all Haman-consciousness fell into insignificance, like Dagon falling in self-destruction before the ark of the covenant.
  4. Queen Esther refused to speak the slightest word or take the least human action to try to “steady the ark” by human effort. Instead, she chose to prostrate herself at the throne of God, like Mary Magdalene at the feet of Jesus. And, by getting out of God’s way, she released the Infinite, omniactivity of God Almighty. Thus, all the intricate gears of Haman’s murderous plot ground to a halt, then reversed their direction: to destroy all her enemies, as no activity exists in opposition to God.

The “Star Spangled-Banner” As You’ve Never Heard It

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This brought tears of astonished appreciation for all the people who died to prepare America for so many great things, the greatest of which was the revelation that Mary Glover received. Were it not for the sacrifice of so many forgotten soldiers who died discerning the rights of man, that revelation would have been suppressed for possibly centuries, deferred by error’s despotism, silenced by the noisy distractions and cravings of personal sense.

Let me never forget what these warriors went through!

Exodus 4:2 “…that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them; that ye may know how that I am the LORD.”

Deuteronomy 4:9 – “Only be careful, and watch [!] yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them fade from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.” [This gives me a new perspective on what it means to “watch”!]

Would God that American schools would teach American history in a “new and living way,” instead of making it such a dull, sleep-inducing recitation/regurgitation exercise so devoid of life, truth, love!

“They That Make Them Are Like Unto Them”

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“Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not:
They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not:
They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat.
They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them” (Ps. 115, RR).

Imagine that! All the bustling nothingness of uninspired, human sense-driven activity trying to solve problems that only God can solve; all the uninspired words pouring out of uninspired mouths and throats trying to answer questions that only God can answer, to win arguments that only God can win; uninspired tongues trying to put out fires that they themselves started, or those started by other uninspired tongues, for “the [uninspired] tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell” (James 3:6); uninspired eyes, ears, noses detecting problems, magnifying predicaments, mulling over dilemmas arising from previous uninspired words and activities; uninspired hands trying to lift weights and remove obstacles that only God can handle; uninspired hands fashioning weapons to fight in battles that are not theirs to fight, “for the battle not yours, but God’s” (2 Chron. 20:15); uninspired hands compounding medicines to heal diseases that only God can heal; uninspired feet taking uninspired action trying to escape from some blunderingly imagined misfortune; uninspired footsteps on uninspired pathways unpaved by prayer, leading treacherously nowhere.

Yet think of Mrs. Eddy, speechless and (to human sense) apparently inactive, at the bedside of the hopelessly sick; sitting at the feet of Christ like Mary Magdalene, not daring to take the least human action or speak the least human word or think the least human thought, but allowing Infinite Intelligence alone to pour through her — all her attention, love, and appreciation focused only on the omni-action of God, the ever-active Hand that formed the galaxies and stretched them across unfathomable immensity, shaped the planets and hurled them into orbit, all in perfect harmony with one another, holding to the Love that regards the sparrow’s fall and numbers the hairs of every head, knowing that “I of myself can do nothing,” nothing at all except to allow the Presence of that Power and Intelligence to speak in Its own way and to take action in Its own way:

“When I have most clearly seen and most sensibly felt that the infinite recognizes no disease, this has not separated me from God, but has so bound me to Him as to enable me instantaneously to heal a cancer which had eaten its way to the jugular vein. In the same spiritual condition I have been able to replace dislocated joints and raise the dying to instantaneous health” (Un. 7:12-17).

God help me to follow her example, always!

Love is the liberator.