Thank you for your last card and enclosure. S&H 221:32-3 covers all pandering to the flesh. But, this is not actually going on, for both the flesh and that which panders to it are mortal mind’s subjective experience, and so nothing.
God’s thoughts about God constitute the one man. It is Soul’s vision, Mind’s control, Principle’s direction, etc., that make up man. Man is and has nothing of his own, but is all the effortless being of God. I love S&H 222:7-10.
Thank you for your sweet letter and enclosure. I am touched that you should have kept my early letters.
The whole discovery of Christian Science is that there is only one of anything because infinity has to be one in order to be infinite. When MBE says, “Mind is the source of all movement…” (S&H 283:4) it does mean all and not a spiritual alternative to some other kind of movement. (See S&H 283:4-12) What material sense calls moving about the place is not actually movement at all, but is simply the echo or belief about movement. This has no substance or truth in it. The only movement, even to human perception, is the divine, which cannot be hidden by the belief that bones and muscles have a job to do.
Every picture of decline, disintegration, deterioration is contained within the false view, the material sense. It is not in the thing that is being viewed. This is why your freedom cannot be impaired. In her description of God’s being, which is you, the four words to describe it are “infinity, freedom, harmony, and boundless bliss”. Being is infinite because there is nothing outside to threaten it. It is freedom for the same reason.
I find the passage in S&H 199:8-12 interesting. Mind demands the opportunity to express itself and supplies the occasion to do so.
I have been struck by the passage in S&H 493:28-4. The spiritual fact is that Mind does hold man forever intact in his perfect state. The consciousness of this fact is the Christ that comes in the highest form appreciable at any age. This Christ improves on a false belief by causing belief to yield to understanding. This is then in turn interpreted by human sense as Jesus (the human concept) awakening Lazarus from the dream. The only constant in all this is Mind maintaining its own idea, even though tired humanity appears to gain reassurance.
A similar thought is obtained from the passage beginning on S&H 27:14: “…The I—the Life, substance, and intelligence of the universe—is not in matter to be destroyed”. But this does appear to tired humanity as the reappearance, replenishment, renewal, of the human concept which itself is never harmed by the removal of the mist of ignorance that seems to hide its true nature.
We read that mortal mind constructs the mortal body out of this mind’s own materials. (See S&H 402:13-15) What are these? Simply thoughts that do not emanate from Mind, and so are not thoughts at all. On the other hand, we read that we must “Correct material belief by spiritual understanding, and Spirit will form you anew” (S&H 425:24-26). Everything is thought, and so there is nothing to put right. Mortal thought—the material, personal sense of body or anything—is illusion, mesmerism. An illusion does not have an objectification. A false sense of something is all there is to that thing. This is why we are told in this Lesson to correct the false sense, and not the things that it claims to see. (S&H 298:10-12) There is no mind to have a false sense of anything, and it is this claim of mind and not what it claims to objectify, that is the only culprit—and at that, nothing. The admission of what it claims is all there is to it. Un. 54:3-10 is helpful. That which is insensible to evil, even as a claim, is the Mind that I AM and that never knew its possibility. I do not become insensible: I AM insensible.
There is no personal life/body. This is the dream calling itself a dreamer, and does not exist.
I wonder if you know the bit in My. 167:4-10. You see, we live as that totality of good called Principle and idea; as that oneness of Spirit which is quantity and quality. This is the indivisible I AM, and is our only identity. All that would postulate objective life in matter is not anything but mental suggestion, mesmerism. It is what we are not, and so we resign it, for in doing so we are just dropping mortal mind’s upside down view of things that has no basis or truth in it.
When she says that there is something fundamentally wrong in the marriage state it is because it is built on the belief of two coming together, and the basis of division in the premise leads to division in the conclusion. So we resign the belief that any good is outside, for this is what we are not.
In the same way, the belief is that good comes to us in business, or as a result of our own efforts. But this is not so, so we resign it.
S&H 265:3 says that man understands spiritual existence in proportion as his treasures of Truth and Love are enlarged. He understands himself, for man is the structure of Truth and Love and their ideas supplant and expel beliefs, so man is seen to be what he always really is.
So we watch thought, and let the ideas of Truth and Love instead of the objects of sense, which are but mortal mind’s false thought about things, occupy consciousness. There is nothing outside thought.
Pursuing our last talk, one can only be angry at objectivity; that is, at the belief that there is an external world to thought. But all that comes to our experience does so at the point of consciousness. Do we permit the external pictures—even of a world we want to put right—to occupy our consciousness that we have accepted to be the divine Mind? I am not angry with Myself. A woman cannot right the wrongs done to woman: only, as I said, the male and female of His presence, the innate self-completeness of your being, already established and safe, can do this, for it is what you are that precludes what you are not.
Christ Jesus taught and proved the Fatherhood of God. Divine Science has revealed the Motherhood of God, and thus completes the revelation that the only Parent, the only origin, of man is our Father-Mother God. To reject this is to reject your true selfhood. The world’s hatred of Truth is the resistance of the so-called human mind to the truth of being. I do not resist Myself. Does this say anything?
I like S&H 162:5-11. I bring to My experience the sunlight of Truth. This causes the human mind, and the problems it contains, to change its base: that is, to give itself up in the presence of what is true. Thus mind ceases to be human.
With love and all support, and remember we are only dealing with mental pictures and thought, not physique.
We never try to deal with any problem from within the dream of material existence, since this itself is the problem. It begins with the suggestion of a life and mind that is separate from God and then tries to correct what this so-called mind and life experiences. In Science “…we begin with Mind” (S&H 467:30), and this really means that God begins with God since there is nothing else. We read that “God’s thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance and Life” (S&H 286:21-22), and it is God’s thoughts about God that constitute the Life and substance of the universe, and so all that appears to be yourself.
Only that which is true from the standpoint of God is true. So we can readily see that there is no ‘retirement’ from Life manifest as all activity. There is no diminution of the resources of Soul, the one I or Ego, since ideas are unchanging. There is no setting sun, because noontide glory is the fact of being. These are facts and they antedate any mortal story, and they are the qualities that “Being possesses … before they are perceived humanly” (S&H 247:19-21). The apparent human improvement is simply the limited, human perception of something fading out before the light of Truth and thus no longer obscuring what already is.
We are told when the illusion tempts us, to “cling steadfastly to God and His idea” (S&H 495:14-15). That is, we recognise what the illusion claims to be (see S&H 293:9-10) and then we turn right away and let what is true from the standpoint of God—God’s idea of everything—occupy consciousness. That does its own work.
Every mortal picture is just the mirage. We do not conform to a mirage, but we do let it dissolve in the light of true perspective.
The truth of being, the ideal of God, is only beheld from the standpoint of the Mind we call God. This Mind is forever saying to all it sees, “‘Thou art the Christ, the Son [or consciousness] of the living God!’” (S&H 137:17-18) The ideal of God is Mind’s idea of activity, completeness, abundance, etc., and it has no material element. The illustration, called job, companionship, supply, etc., is not the ideal but comes under the heading of ‘other things added.’ We let the ideal, not the illustration, abide in consciousness.
This is the importance of S&H 325:26-2. The divine Science, or understanding, proceeds from Mind and is concerned only with Mind’s ideal. It ushers the highest human concept of anything into human presence by melting the human concept that actually hides the ideal, and not tinkering with this concept. This is scientific demonstration. Unscientific demonstration is to pursue the human concept which actually hides the ideal.
The belief of personal existence objectifies itself as the inadequacy, frustration and penury of mortal existence, but this is not your belief. Neither the belief, nor its believer (mortal mind), touches conscious existence for both are aspects of the dream. Mortal mind’s objectification of its own myth is no more true than mortal mind.
Truth purifies mortals of the belief of flesh and this dissolving of belief exposes the purity of being that already is. “The supposition that life, substance, and intelligence are in matter, or of it, is an error” (S&H 287:24-25). Everything that Mind, your Mind, knows is one, indivisible, universal, and omnipresent. There is nothing partial in Mind-knowing.