Barn House, 28th May 1997

In this Lesson we read on page 381:21-26 that we “…must understand your way out of human theories…” and then we find that it is the understanding that Mind (God and man) was never in matter that does the work. It is the basic fact that nothing true ever entered the arena of mortal existence that prevents experience being one problem after another. The basic problem is thinking Life was ever in anything material.

S&H 539:27-30 and 315:21-22 both show that it was the divine origin of Jesus that enabled him to do the works. This origin, of course, referred to the origin of his thinking, since in a world of consciousness there is only thinking to consider. The same divine origin allows you to do the same works, for true thought proceeds from the divine Mind. This is original innocence instead of original sin! To others you may appear as a human walking about, just as Jesus did, but his thinking never left heaven (the divine Mind) for earth, and this power of divine Mind did the work.

In daily practice this means putting a sieve over thought to be sure that only thoughts which emanate from the divine Mind are allowed to occupy consciousness. Did I, Mind, say, know, hear this? If not, then nothing has been heard or said.

Barn House, 1st June 1997

Lovely seeing you. Just to remind you of S&H 262:27-28. An origin of man means the origin of thought. Thought that claims to originate from the carnal mind is original sin. Thought that proceeds from the divine Principle is original innocence. We read that physical causation was put aside by that original man Jesus. He knew the origin of himself to be the divine Mind alone.

Note page 69:6-7. We cannot enjoy God’s conception of everything so long as we think that man, thought, is the conceiver. Thoughts don’t conceive because thoughts don’t think.

Barn House, 27th April 1997

Mortal mind, the dreamer, says to its own outpictured sense of man ‘you have this, you need that, you fear the other, etc.’ But this ‘you’ is the mortal, the finity (S&H 599:3) and so never leaves the mind of its author, mortal mind, and is simply the dreamer’s dream. This ‘you’ is as unreal as the mind that conceives it (S&H 293:9-10). It is only false education that thinks the name ‘finity’ calls itself identity, be it Tom, Dick, or Harry, or has got anything to do with identity. The only identity is ‘I’, and man lives as Christ Science, as this I in self-manifestation, and never as the ‘you’. The ‘you’ has no more to do with what identity is, than the statue had to do with King Constantine (Mis. 224:7-10).

I live outside of material body, because Soul is the I or Ego, (S&H 396:28-30) and so I am never trying to do something to or for this ‘you’ but just allowing it to give up its false claim to identity and fade out in My presence.

This fading out of illusion improves mankind because there is less illusion to hide the only kind of man there is, namely the consciousness of God. This is what is meant by Mind-healing, for the one Mind dispels the belief in another mind and the errors that it contains.

I have always lived as I, and to Me there has never been another.

Th September

As always, “our ideas of divinity form our models of humanity” (Peo. 14:10-11). That is, whatever we know about experience is incidental to what we are knowing about God. Knowing God is being man. Knowing the abundance of God is all there is to abundant man. Man is the idea of God, which is God’s idea of Himself. To know the abundance or completeness of man, you ask ‘What does the abundance and completeness of God mean?’ Then, the consciousness of God’s abundance and completeness is the idea of abundance and completeness, called abundant and complete man.

Similarly, if we want to know about the individuality of man, we do not start with effect and reason from it. “…we begin with Mind, which must be understood through the idea which expresses it…” (S&H 467:29-32). Idea does not know idea. So the understanding, or consciousness, of God’s individuality—His indivisibility, wholeness, oneness, integrity, etc.—is the idea of individuality, called individual man.

Page 201:7 (only) and 14-16 is helpful. We are not in the business of repairing tattered garments. The human concept of something is always a tattered one. But, as we pour in the sense of wholeness, completeness, onlyness, this floods out all lesser sense. The starting point is never human effort to become or see something, but with the fact that man is pure and holy. The mortal can never become holy, whole. S&H 201:20.

Un. 54:3-10 is important. Under the disguise of good, people say, ‘I know this is a false claim only, and I am faithfully going to work it out in Science’. So they accept all there is to a problem. The claim of a problem is the problem, and neither claim nor claimant are part of your Mind. ‘I know you not’. To accept error even as a claim is to plead guilty.

To be angry or elated over the human picture is still duality. There is one kingdom and it is spiritual. The human and divine coincidence is a half-way house. The “…coincidence of God and man as the divine Principle and divine idea” (S&H 561:23-24) is the revelation concept. There is nothing else. We have outgrown the belief of trying to reconcile Truth and error. “Error will be no longer used in stating truth” (S&H 126:2).

Never think the human has to achieve something. This is old theology. Know as Mind; be Love, Life, Truth to every situation for that is what you are. Man and God blend as one entity.

No Date

Every correct statement of the Word of God begins with I AM ALL. I AM all Life, all substance, all Mind, all that is right, upright, constant, whole, etc.

This infinite, indivisible fact of being pre-exists and pre-empts the entire mortal story. The fan that separates the chaff from the wheat separates the entirety of the mortal record from the eternal facts of being. It does not try to separate good from evil within the dream.

Nothing in your Life has ever been disturbed, threatened, depleted, diminished: so you can’t work about such errors. The inviolate Truth exists already in their place. You get out of the box by knowing you were never in it, for the box and its inhabitants is one lie.

You might like to ponder Mis. 205:16-22. The last scene in corporeal sense is the first and only scene to spiritual sense. You never did plod through the first two baptisms. You exist now as the disembodied Spirit-substance that is the ideal man. You will find the same thought in Mis. 189:28-32; 190:15-25; and S&H 116:5-10.

S&H 306:21-29 and margin shows that we are only dealing with thought-forms. A thought-form called penury has no substance because there is no mind or truth behind it. The thought-forms of divine Love, including abundance, safety, integrity, are unblemished.

Everything true unfolds as I. It is what I, Mind, Truth, Principle, etc. AM being, that constitutes the Science or understanding of being that you are.

July 2003

The whole of mortal existence is heredity because it postulates a life and an origin that are separate from God. We do not try to remove heredity from mortality, but we begin with man forever exempt from mortality itself. “Those instructed in Christian Science have reached the glorious perception that God is [the] only author of man” (S&H 29:14-16). Mind is the only author or origin of thought. Man is Mind’s thought.

Th May

I am sure the children can only gain from learning the Bible. My soldiers used to ask me why I read the Bible, and I said it was because it was the record of consciousness: the record of the whole spectrum of human thought and the effects of that thought. Thus it was not just another history book, but the chart of Life.

I know what you mean about lack of young people. If you go fishing you have to have bait. If we don’t attract, it is because we are not attractive. People of all ages crave for the true Science. I know this. But they do not want a moralistic and proscriptive religion.

Did I ever point out Ps. 81:6? It is not the burden removed from your shoulder, but the shoulder (false sense of responsibility—and being weighed down or frustrated in the process) that is removed from the burden. There is no imbalance in the male and female of His presence. I like that statement that “With a [single] command, Mind had made man, both male and female” (S&H 524:17-19).

I have been enjoying the statement “…Principle is not in its idea” (S&H 467:21-22). You are not in your reflected image. The Principle, or origin, of everything in your experience does not enter its expression and so is not touched or lost by it.

Sentences in this Lesson like S&H 285:16-17; 293:9-10; and 376:17-21 show the mental and fictional nature of the entire belief in a material body. We don’t treat illusion.

November

Thank you for your letter. Omnipresence does not have to carry a belief of flesh to a ‘sea’ point!

I like S&H 192:19-21. “In Science, you can have no power opposed to God, and the physical senses must give up their false testimony.” We do not give up false testimony because it was never a part of our consciousness. It gives itself up. Our presence makes it do this. You live as the Christ, as consciousness that comes down from heaven, and never as false belief, or thought that comes from earth. You are innocent of original sin—of the belief that anything in your experience has its origin outside of God.

There is no such origin. Mortal mind is a theoretical origin of thought, a theoretical viewpoint, and so a theoretical view. None of it is true. Mortal mind may construct its body from its materials but there is no location, outside theory, for a factory where this is going on. The eternal now of the Christ means the eternal never of the mortal.

We are here to take away the sin of the world, and not patch up the sinner. The sin constitutes the sinner. The false viewpoint constitutes the false view. We do not tinker with the false view but we see the impossibility of the false viewpoint.

December

I have been interested in Ret. 70:20-22 and Science and Health 35:10-14. “The second appearing of Jesus is, unquestionably, the spiritual advent of the advancing idea of God, as in Christian Science.” “This spiritual meeting with our Lord in the dawn of a new light is the morning meal which Christian Scientists commemorate. They bow before Christ, Truth, to receive more of his reappearing and silently to commune with the divine Principle, Love.” The tendency is to bow before the first appearing, and so partake of the last supper and the cup of Jesus with all its self-denial and condemnation. The truth is that we bow before the re-appearing and so partake of the morning meal of promise in a new Life. This means Christ’s cup.

We do not try to drum sense into a mortal. The mortal is the so-called effect of a viewpoint outside infinity’s focal distance. So it is not true. There is One creator, conceiver, generator, and this silences all other generation. There is no new re-creation.

The beginning signifies the only. The only source, origin, generation, is with everpresent Love: so the only effect is the loveliness of your own being.

Human misconceptions give themselves up over many generations. You live as the I AM, which is eternal Life, and you have nothing to do with belief that gives itself up because of you either here or hereafter.

I am so enjoying Mis. 167:1-168:2. We are leaving all mortal sense for the spiritual idea.

December 1984

I may have mentioned the passages on pages 533:26-7 and 484:28-4.

I recognise error to be impersonal. I, Mary, as the mother of Jesus, put to silence material origin, and the result, or offspring of this conception, is interpreted in both human and divine terms. I, Mary, at the Sepulcher, rise to see somewhat of the everpresence of God, but my mortal sense reverses this. I, Mind, am no longer ascending, but My idea comes forth from Me, as a bride wedded. I, Mind, is where we start. It will appear as each of the earlier stages, but this is incidental to I, Mind.

I raise all up because I know no fall. I restore because I know nothing that was taken away.

We are forced to live at the highest level we can see, and the fretting of mortal belief subserves the purpose of Truth in forcing us to rise to the zenith of demonstration.

Soul

No Date

Educated belief has taught that every form of expression has a private identity of its own. This is particularly so in the case of humans who, unlike the animal kingdom, claim to be self-conscious and capable of initiating thought. Thus they are taught to believe first, in a private, personal identity, and then, that they have a responsibility for maintaining, sustaining, protecting, preserving, and prolonging a personal capacity to say ‘I’. They have, so to speak, accepted a mortal ego as the terms of reference for their existence, and then acted within these terms in a way that constitutes human personal history.

The one fundamental problem is the acceptance of a mortal ego, a capacity separate from Soul to feel, speak, hear, move and know. This basic mistake distorts everything that is done within its terms of reference.

Hence the importance of the sentence, “Give up your material belief of mind in matter, and have but one Mind, even God; for this Mind forms its own likeness” (S&H 216:30-1 and margin). Note that the belief of mind in matter is ‘your’ belief, the belief of the ‘you’ (599:3). It is not My belief. The margin here says “personal identity.” There is no personal identity. The rhyme is well known:

“I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.”

Personal identity is the shadow: it no more touches man than the shadow on the wall touches the wall. Living within the supposed terms of reference of the mortal ego is existence in the shadow. Thus we find:

“…the material body which you call me, is mortal mind…” (S&H 416:16 only).

“This so-called mind and body is the illusion called a mortal…” (293:9-10). Note the mortal does not suffer from the illusion but the illusion constitutes what appears as the mortal.

“The ego is not self-existent matter animated by mind, but in itself is mind…” (Peo. 5:23-24, noting lower case for ego and mind).

Within this ego-mind there are degrees of thought, where spiritual light penetrates the shadow more or less, but nothing thought or done from this basis can ever be absolutely right. There is in reality no mortal ego. The Ego-man is the self-reflection of the Ego-God. Spirit is the only Ego, the only capacity to say I AM. The mortal ego is only real to itself, not to Me. (See S&H 301:5-16)

Man does not have an identity. Man is the way in which Mind identifies itself in multifarious forms. (See S&H 71:5-7; 477:20-22; 513:19-21) Identity is never in the form of expression but always in the Mind that does the expressing. The people, events, characters, places, and circumstances of mortal experience are mortal mind’s own dream. It never becomes real. (S&H 491:22-23 and margin, and 29-32) It just never was because unknown to Mind. Truth cannot be brought into the dream to manipulate it into the shape mortal mind would like. “Even Christ cannot reconcile Truth to error…” (S&H 19:5) for one is true and the other never can be. The dream is to be disproved, not improved.

No Date

Thank you for your good letter.

Progress is in the fading out of the dream, not an improvement of it. It fades out before the consciousness of Truth. So we see Truth, and it takes care of what is not true. The fact is that “Every function of the real man [thought] is governed by the divine Mind” (S&H 151:20). Mind controls because Mind constitutes the thoughts or ideas that express Mind. All else is dream, mirage.

There never was any material vision. Soul, the one I or Ego, discerns the beauty of holiness. You will note that the wonderful declaration beginning at the bottom of 252 has in the margin on 253, “Testimony of Soul”. In the First Edition, MBE said many times, “Remember, the I is Soul, not body. God not man.” The only real sense of vision is given in the statement, “Dwelling in light, I can see only the brightness of My own glory” (Un. 18:4). It is only mortal thought that is blinded by Truth because it cannot see it!

This Lesson makes the point about not taking thought for the body. This is because man, as the embodiment of God, is not a thought taker. God takes thought, and God’s thoughts constitute man. Body cannot think about body! And thoughts never leave the Mind that thinks them, or depart from the nature of that Mind, which is Love.

November 2003

I am glad you had a happy birthday visit. In the work it is important to remember that mortals “…never had a perfect state of being, which may subsequently be regained” (S&H 476:14). A mortal is a term for a collection of beliefs and these can never become understanding, however hard you work, but do yield to the understanding that, as man, you already are.

The indestructible faculties of Spirit cannot lapse from Spirit and they exist solely in Mind and not matter. There are no other faculties. A human concept of these faculties is a myth which you cannot work about or improve. It is Soul, the one I, that alone exercises the faculty of awareness, and what it is doing outshines belief. Because God is all-seeing the problem never lies in the function of seeing but in the belief that seeing could possibly be a human faculty. Whether this belief calls itself by your name or that of another is not relevant.

Th October

Now we pick up and resume Life where human history has never recorded. The level of consciousness where these things occur is the dream, and this is one with the dreamer called mortal mind.

The level of consciousness which is Soul, and where there are no trials, is your true experience, and there is no accuser nor accused. I, the one I, never behaved like this.

This is not an easy let out, but the demand to identify with that which never knew a mistake. Then you will be stronger for it.

Barn House, 21 September

As always, we cannot start from within the dream picture. “…we begin with Mind” (S&H 467:30) and what Mind knows of itself instead of what one person believes of another. This is because there is one source for all thinking, feeling, action.

Activity is a quality of Mind, and as such is infinite, indivisible, universal, and eternal. Only the belief about activity as human would suggest it is located in space or time, is personal, or is dependent on external circumstances. So the work is not to try and see an active or satisfied or fulfilled person, but to feel Love’s own sweet sense of activity, peace, and joy in its place.

Then, from the same standpoint, we begin with omnipresence as the verity of Spirit. This spiritual truth does not know the absence of itself, it does not know an intrusion into itself, it does not know anything that it would like to be absent because there is no outside to omnipresence. So any feeling to the contrary could only be fictitious personal sense believing there is something outside of itself that can either compete or intrude.

But there is no other power nor presence but omnipotence and omnipresence. There is no cessation of omniaction. There is no personal sense in your Mind’s knowing, and there is no other feeling but that which feels the power of the Word, which is I, Soul, and not person. There never was any personal activity, and so there is no personal inactivity.

Th May 2003

Thank you for your good and positive letter. I do not remember if I drew your attention to S&H 210:11-16. The fact is that Soul and its attributes are forever manifested. All faculties are attributable to Soul. The scientific action of the divine Mind on human minds and bodies is seen when the belief of the latter is so imbued with the Truth that it fades out. The unscientific action would lie in the attempt to use the divine Mind to alter the picture of human minds and bodies, and this cannot be done.

The lesson is that we stay with the spiritual fact because nothing else is real, and this reality dissolves in its presence the physical sense of things which would claim to deny it.

Th February 2003

You cannot reach the third degree of Reality by starting outside it for you remain in the arena where person is at war with a personal sense of self. Start with God and you find that the other two degrees are obsolete.

There is no personal advertisement or medium for God. “…Soul is never without its representative” (S&H 427:4). But this is not person; but is always the qualities that infinite Soul is expressing and knowing of itself.

Barn House, January 26, 1998

In this Lesson we have, “Bring my soul [the sense of being] out of prison…” (Ps. 142:7).

The divine sense of being, which constitutes man, has never been incarcerated in the prison of mortality. The belief that he has leads to a finite sense of life seen through the restrictions of prison bars, and appearing as limited health, finances, strength, freedom, and lack or obstruction in every form. But there is no prison. It is always a “vacant domicile” (S&H 478:5 margin note).

The only sense of anything emanates from the divine Mind, Soul. The mortal cannot embrace the infinite but the infinite dissolves all belief in the mortal. This is why ‘you must begin with God’ as the only I. See S&H 275:10. I never knew a mortal sense of anything, so was never imprisoned by lack or limitation of any kind.

“We must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind” (S&H 424:6).

Barn House, 6 May 1996

S&H 171:31-2 is interesting. If this defines the fundamental error, then the fundamental truth does not lie in man cognising through the spiritual senses. Man is not a cogniser. Idea does not have spiritual senses, idea is the spiritual sense of being that Spirit (the one I or Ego) is enjoying. Man is divine awareness: Mind’s awareness of itself. There has never been an entity outside this Mind that can be aware of anything. That is why the attempt to associate idea with knowing, cognising, being aware, is a non-starter.

Within the dream, the publican and Pharisee are only marginally different, for they are the two ends of personal sense. The Pharisee is self-righteousness and the publican is self-condemning. One thinks it is good: the other wants to be good. Mind never thought in either way. Mind never said, ‘How do I get closer to Myself?’ or ‘How can I feel this oneness with Myself?’ That which thinks it is separate from Mind makes such remarks, and so by definition, is part of the problem. It is part of error’s conspiracy to present man as other than perfect now—or with a capacity to feel separate from Soul, the one Ego.

The two sons in the story of the Prodigal were the same. Mind does not have two senses of Son: just one, which is perfect as the Father. When the Prodigal came to himself—identified himself correctly—he was welcomed by his Father, the Principle of being, that never knew any deviation from itself. And the Prodigal did this, not by labouring as a servant, but by letting a false, divided sense of life prove itself so unacceptable that it gave itself up in the presence of what he truly was.

Have you noticed in Genesis 2:9 and 3:3 that there is only one tree—one centre of the garden, or consciousness? There may claim to be a misconception of the Adorable One but there is no alternative.

No Date

Again I have been dwelling much with the Lord’s Prayer. It is the prayer of Soul, and not of a mortal. It is prayed in the sanctuary where we plead God’s allness and the door of material sensuousness is shut. It is the prayer where all information is gathered from Mind as we have audience with Spirit. We hear what Spirit alone is saying.

First, is the statement that the only author or origin of man is Principle, Love. This annihilates all sense of past. Your present origin is the one Father-Mother, showing forth perfect balance, all the qualities that make up your nature.

Second, in the holiness of Thy nature, we see that the Adorable One, “Principle and its idea…” (S&H 465:17), means that we live inseparable from the Father-Mother. This is the one Ego, “…Father, Mother and child…” (Mis. 18:19) and it means that everything that is resident in the Mind that is God is present as your experience. “The maximum of good is the infinite God and His idea…” (S&H 103:15).

Third, this kingdom of His Christ, the Adorable One, is present now without delay or obstruction. “Thy kingdom [is] come…” (S&H 16:31).

Fourth, this presence is enforced by the benevolent law of good in the words ‘Thy will be done’ (see S&H 17:1).

This is your prayer, for God and man, cause and effect, sing in a duet sung with One voice: ‘All the earth is My glorious temple, body, and its nature is whole, holy.’

The Old Testament accounts for the way people used the power of Truth to deal with human problems. The New Testament teaches our identity with Truth, in the presence of which problems fall away for lack of a foothold. This is how the scales drop from your eyes: they have no place in your present divine vision.

September 1997

The human is not an alternative to the spiritual fact but a misstatement of it. Therefore we do not deny or abuse it, but we translate it by seeing it correctly from the mount of vision instead of through the lens of the human mind.

See Miscellaneous Writings 87:3-14; S&H 208:2-4, 573:6-9, 277:24-32.

There is only one infinite. The kingdom of heaven within you is within the correct perspective which allows you to see heaven instead of earth.

Barn House, April 21, 1997

Since we accept S&H 293:9-10 we do not stay with the picture of the mortal suffering from this or that illusion, but recognise that the one illusion is the belief that you are a mortal. This mortality is a false sense of what you are, and has no mind, substance, location, identity, history, or anything else. It is mirage, and it dissolves in the conscious presence of that fact that I, Love, constituting all the Life there is, form of Myself, in every detail, every experience of being.

There is nothing else outside of the infinite I AM to embody a thought that is unlike God. Every function, every movement, every experience, every feeling is constituted of Love. (See S&H 151:20) Soul is the Ego that feels, and man is Soul’s state of satisfaction. No good, no nourishment, no satisfaction, no anything comes to you from without. All is included within the glorious being that I AM here and now.

No and Yes 33:18-20 (only) has a lovely definition of blood. The blood of the Lamb, which overcomes the accuser, is the innocence and purity of being. It is your innocence of the entire mortal story.

February

I think we have to remind ourselves often that His work is done and it does not require a partnership between the human and the divine to bring good about. The darkness does not cooperate with the light in the dawn. It has no say in the process! So it is that infinite, irresistible wisdom enforces its own conditions, and all we do is to get out of the way and know that God does God’s will.

There is an interesting bit in S&H 321:19-29. Not only did Moses recognise that the dread disease of his period—and so the dread disease of any period—is but a phase of mortal belief, a mental picture, but he realised that the inward voice was the voice of God, and not of a human thinking about God. Therefore it had the power and enforcement of God Himself. Your inward voice, to which you listen, is the same, and so carries the power and presence of God.

“Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9). God speaks and enforces the words of God, and God does not transfer a portion of good to man to express.

Thus we find that no human act or omission can have the slightest effect on the stately unfoldment of good in your experience.

No Date

The Son of God is the consciousness of God, and this is the only sort of Son that Mind could have, for Mind cannot know physique. Moreover, Mind only knows one full manifestation of itself as its own total presence, without a single element unlike good. (See Mis. 164:23-29)

This Mind is defined in Science and Health as the only I, and so this means that it has to be your Mind now and the standpoint from which you look and understand now.

It follows that any thought of yourself as a patient trying to understand Truth from a standpoint outside of Truth is going to be frustrating and ineffective. The only capacity to know is that of Mind. S&H 485:4-5. This means departing from the cherished belief that you have a mind of your own doing its best to know Truth, and it means that what is called the patient is simply some aspect of mortal mind coming to you as the Son of God, the Christ, to give itself up in your presence.

The Science of Soul means the Science, or understanding, of the one I or Ego, and unless this is the starting point, it is not Science. Hence the statement that “…we begin with Mind” (S&H 467:30). We do not begin with the human concept, which is never other than the finite illustration of the divine idea. The Bethlehem Babe never becomes the God-idea but fades, as does any shade, before it. The fading out of the finite human concept of things is called healing, but it is just the finite sense yielding to eternal Truth.

The belief that you do not have control over your body yields to the fact that all control is vested in Mind, and man, as Mind-manifest, moves in accord with Mind. There never was any power or control vested in image. See S&H 240:10-14, and 26:19-23. This is really saying that Jesus’ sacrifice was the giving up of the belief he was the musician, or in your case, an artist. God is the musician: man the music. God is the singer: man the song. Love is the painter: man the painting. You are the “‘smile of the great Spirit’” (S&H 477:28), but not the smiler! “This divine Principle of all expresses Science and art throughout creation…” (S&H 507:25-27) and you are not the expresser but the expression.

Before Abraham was I AM: and so there is no mortal record or history, no young or old man; just coexisting with his Maker. The new birth is consciousness that comes forth from Mind as the Son of God and so takes place where time and history have not recorded.

Th April

Jesus is defined as “the highest human corporeal concept of the divine idea” (S&H 589:16). All that was true of this concept was the divine idea which could not be hidden by the concept. “There was no incorporeal Jesus of Nazareth” (Mis. 162:22). This is why “the reward for his [Jesus’] faithfulness, he would disappear to material sense in that change which has since been called ascension” (S&H 34:26).

The Science, or understanding, that the only origin of manifestation is not in the human concept, but stays in the Mind that is God, appears as the highest human concept of the spiritual idea at any moment. It may appear as a home, a body, a washing machine, or anything else that is useful, worthy, beautiful and normal. The divine origin of everything as it really is puts to silence the material order of generation—the belief that anything other than Mind generates the idea. But the scientific demonstration is not the appearance. It is always that which has its spiritual origin in Mind as idea, with Mind showing it forth (demonstrating it), not because of the human presence but because to Mind, there is no human presence.

A false sense of life, substance, and mind constitutes the dream of material existence. To try and demonstrate some humanly desirable condition within this dream is not scientific, for it is trying to manipulate the dream and so perpetuate it. It actually hides scientific demonstration, which is “Truth, unfolding its own immortal idea” (S&H 325:7) despite, and not because of, the human appearance. This appearance never leaves the realm of supposition. The purpose of Science, or understanding, is not to tinker with the supposition, which is shadow, but to outshine it with Truth’s idea. The true conception of being is always the Christ, and never the highest human concept. The Bethlehem Babe fades out in the presence of the God-idea.

No Date

The purpose of Science is to sift Soul from sense. This means that we are learning through every experience that the one spiritual fact is all that is real and is our only concern. “Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind” (S&H 60:29). With what are you identified? With mankind or with Soul, the only Ego? If you identify with a person at the receiving end of any good, not only will you limit your perception of good but you separate yourself from its source. The correct reading is from the standpoint of Soul itself, which is forever saying to its own conception of being “All that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31).

Finite belief means every thought that begins from a so-called personal mind instead of the one divine Mind. By definition, it is a limiting thought. It would try to compress the infinite of Mind and its infinite resources within personal apprehension.

It cannot do this, because it is not possible to comprehend the infinite from any standpoint outside it. You know the infinite as the infinite. This means letting thought ascend to the infinite perspective, instead of trying to bring the infinite into the confines of personal sense and thereby divide the oneness of Soul, the only Ego, into a myriad of personal minds and experiences. Personal sense is the prince of this world.

Human opinions try to sway us. They cannot, since the Christian Scientist is alone with his own being. Your self-completeness precludes the possibility of anything else entering your consciousness. You are not a mortal contending with other persons and ways of thought.

Personal sense will try everything it can to retain itself—it will try to do better this or that, to understand more, etc. But understanding is a quality of God, not man. So is demonstration, a word that means showing forth. God, infinite Love, shows forth. Man is the showing.

We get tempted to try and deal with phenomena and so we keep them. Man lives above “earth’s din” and is at peace. The one criminal is mortal mind. There is no such mind. It has no embodiment, makes no conditions, can have no substance, no identity, no history, no location. I know it not. It is never what mortal mind is saying that matters: we dispute its right to speak. “Who art thou that repliest to Spirit?” (S&H 181:4) Who are ‘you’ talking to Me? (See S&H 599:3)

Life does the living of Science, understanding. There is no outside to knock on the door. Physical sound is mental impression only. That which hears the glad sound is divine Mind, Soul, enjoying the consonance of being in which divine Love and its own manifestation is a duet sung with one voice. The marriage feast in which your lap is piled high with immortal fruits is the inevitable consequence of Life as Principle, Soul and its idea: the Bridal state wherein man is wedded to all good and includes all good in his own being. This is the meaning of God and man, Mind and its own self-awareness, correlated in Science. The myth called mortal identity is a state of deprivation for it cannot be satisfied. This is why Science involves the renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man and the acknowledgement of what man is. The result is that the flood-gates of heaven are opened. You live as the I or Ego of the one divine Life and your consciousness of its unlimited resources is your only experience. Nothing else is going on.

No Date

Thank you for your card and all good wishes for the new year.

The only sight is a faculty of Mind and it is spiritual discernment. This discernment is defined in the definition of Elias (S&H 585:9), and as we let this occupy our attention, we are literally seeing with God’s eyes. There is no human sight. The human faculty is never anything other than the divine capacity to discern, not wholly hidden by the belief it is human. The ability is divine and true. The belief about it, called limited vision and inadequacy, is the mirage. Evil is not mentality: it is not another mind. It is mirage, and as such is nothing.

Don’t apply Truth to the human. Your identity with Truth is instead of the human and causes the human problem to fall away for lack of identification. It is never ‘my’ problem. It is impersonal error trying to masquerade as my thought. But my Mind is God.

Mortal mind is the fictitious dreamer, and the characters and events of material existence are its dream. You are not one of its characters called Tom, Dick or Harry, for your name is ‘I’ and thus you live outside the dream and do not dream the dreamer’s dream.

*Elias: Prophecy; spiritual evidence opposed to material sense; Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold; the basis of immortality (S&H 585:9-12).

No Date

Many thanks for your letter. There are no material senses. The capacity of seeing is the divine capacity and is exercised by Mind despite and not because of eyes. “The realization that all inharmony is unreal brings objects and thoughts into view in human view in their true light…” (S&H 276:12-14) and they are then found harmonious and eternal.

You see, the inharmony is contained in the mist of mortal mind, the mirage, just as the appearance of a distorted landscape is contained in the mist and not in the landscape. We experience normality humanly because our present divinity in every detail is the fact. There is not a human and a divine. The divine is the fact, and living as the divine, as the Christ, you become the law of normality to everything that appears as your humanity. Just let your divinity embrace your humanity, just as light embraces darkness without being aware of the darkness.

No Date

Mortal mind, being terminology for a false and really non-existent viewpoint, can neither be instructed nor improved. What appear as the three baptisms (see Mis. 203 to 205) refers to the dissolving mist that appears to cover the spiritual facts. We are identified here and now with the third baptism only. Hence the reference to “the last shall be first” (Mis. 189:1). The last stage is in fact the only true one. Thus you will note, at the end of the second baptism which lists many desirable human qualities and results, that “this practical Christian Science is the divine Mind shining through the mist of corporeality…” (Mis. 205:3).

The second baptism is nothing in its own right, but refers to the state where the mist is less opaque thus allowing the divine Mind to shine through more clearly.

We see also in the ‘Translation of Mortal Mind’ on pages 115-116 of Science and Health, the second degree has many fine qualities, but the belief of good on a human basis always carries with it the duality of bad on the same basis.

Soul, the one Ego, is not in any state or stage of development but exists now in all its perfection as the I AM. Our identity is always with Soul, and never with any stage of mortal mind’s disappearance.

“Jesus’ true and conscious being never left heaven for earth.” Nor does yours. (No and Yes 36:6)

Дата добавления: 2015-10-23