WHEN THE LIGHT OF THE REAL SHINE.
Scientific experience inculcates us that in the measure human thoughts seize clearer and higher conceptions of God and man, experiences in the daily life are harmonized.
‘There is no…substance in matter’ (Science and Health, p.468). Matter has no reality except within the thought that believes in it. Its nothingness is revealed under the spiritualization of the human thought, and through spiritual understanding of the Allness of the Spirit. Spirit, God, infinite good, is the only presence and potency.
God’s man, is wholly spiritual, the divine Mind’s idea. Man as God’s image and likeness sets forth the enlightenment this infinite Mind. His home is entirely mental as well as his identity and his experience, totally included in his consciousness. This fact was demonstrated by Daniel once in the den of lions, and three young Hebrews in the fiery furnace. As individual ideas of the only creator of all, divine Love, we are all in the security within the peaceful Mind. (Daniel 3 :25-26 ; 6:22).
What about the belief that man lives in the flesh or matter ?
‘Matter and mortal mind are but different strata of human belief. The grosser substratum is named matter or body ; the more ethereal is called mind. This so-called mind and body is the illusion called a mortal, a mind in matter. In reality and in Science, both strata, mortal mind and mortal body, are false representatives of man’ reads Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 293).
Beyond the kingdom of the visible, Science declares that the individuality created by the supreme Being, God, must be considered from the point of view of Understanding, and not of matter.
Christ is the true identity of man. ‘This idea or divine essence’ (…), as writes Mary Baker Eddy, ‘must needs come in Christian Science, demonstrating the spiritual healing of body and mind (…) ‘[He] was, and is, forever about the Father’s business ; heralding the Principle of health, holiness, and immortality’ (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 163).
Many years ago, the author found himself in a situation where lack and hunger kept him going for months. He couldn’t eat enough, constantly receiving visitors and friends who asked him to solve the same problems he was suffering from.
In his prayers he kept asking God to lift the veil of illusion and let him see the reality of Things. One day something happened. The country’s economic situation had not changed. His income had not increased even iota, but the experience had become peaceful, harmonious. Darkness disappears within a room when light shines. Indeed, the effects of Truth impact upon human existence when spiritual inspiration starts to illuminates our consciousness.
Those many visitors and friends who visited him before came no longer as if they had found satisfaction elsewhere. Himself was no longer suffered from that same kind of intense hunger. He even managed to save money. What exactly happened during that period of change? Our textbook, ‘Mind regulates the condition of the stomach, bowels, and food, the temperature of children and of men, and matter dose not’ ( Science and Health, p. 413).
He had long been suffering from bulimia without being conscient of it, and God healed him ! Some weeks later, he met one after one his former visitors. Their problems of starving and lack was also solved.
Was it possible that apart from closing the lions’ mouths, the lions’ stomaches, mental molecule, and starving could be regulated so as not to attack Daniel? God’s Almightness is supreme, holding the control over all, the seen kingdom as well the unseen.
In Science, any effect is only a mental phenomenon. Both the material and its inharmonies of material existence are products of erroneous thoughts. Disease, likewise the illusion, is in the thought. However, ‘An improved belief cannot retrograde. When Christ changes a belief of sin of of sickness into a better belief, then belief melts into spiritual understanding, and sin, disease, and death disappear’ (Science and Health, p. 442).
When we are conscious that this same Mind – Infinite Mind – is in us which was also in Christ Jesus, we find in Mind Infinite “dominion” which the Supreme Being had given to all His sons and daughters, and then we can be in our Father’s “business” – to “heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. “
