Open a box. Pick up a stone. Turn a doorknob. Eat a sandwich. Input a number on a phone. Put on a shoe. Pat a dog. Each of these things, and all physical actions, involve acting within the context of matter, necessitating a manipulation of matter.
Anywhere on earth, it doesn’t take people long to figure out that moving and manipulating matter is essentially all there is to life—or, at least, that’s how it appears. This discovery comes early. Just consider how a baby’s first act, even before birth, may be to move a hand and put it to the mouth. Spatial relationships and sensitive matter become early, weighty impressions.
Yet it’s curious how, for centuries, many people have been thinking deeply about how there is actually more to existence than the materiality that meets the eye (and hand, mouth, ear, and nose). “The soul, which is spirit, cannot dwell in dust,” said St. Augustine, about 1,600 years ago. The Apostle Paul of biblical times said, “We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal” (II Corinthians 4:18). And more recently, theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking stated, “To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.”
What were they talking about? Why wouldn’t they believe that matter is the entirety of existence?
In her pioneering work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy explains: “In Christian Science, substance is understood to be Spirit, while the opponents of Christian Science believe substance to be matter. They think of matter as something and almost the only thing, and of the things which pertain to Spirit as next to nothing, or as very far removed from daily experience. Christian Science takes exactly the opposite view” (pp. 349–350).
That may be fine and good, but eating an apple, opening a book, applying medicine to a cut, and hearing rain fall are plainly material events. How could an apple, a book, a cut, or rain possibly have a nonmaterial side to them? They can’t, and they don’t. So, is it reasonable to question what is there right before our eyes?
Mankind encased and operating within physicality is a perspective that certainly seems unquestionable. Yet there are many things about life that seem unquestionable and that we take for granted until certain events and discoveries cause us to reexamine everything. I’ll never forget a sweet, innocent, humorous example of one such discovery I made in childhood. Sitting on the floor in my parents’ room, I asked them about the tooth fairy. I said that I recalled my father peeking into my room before I fell asleep, and that made me suspect that my father, not the tooth fairy, had replaced my first lost tooth with the money I found under my pillow the next morning.
When I said this, my mother admitted this was the case. Within the next ten seconds, my whole world began changing drastically. Reasoning forward, I asked if that’s how it worked with Santa Claus and the Easter bunny, too, and was told that, yes, it was. All I could do was stare blankly into space. Like most American children, I’d been introduced to entities such as the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny, and Santa Claus when I was quite young. I’d even seen Santa Claus in person a few times at department stores and in parades. These were things that I believed in so strongly—they were entities that my own two eyes told me were absolutely real—and now they were evaporating! My little world was shaken, though it makes me laugh to think about it now.
I was similarly stunned about a year or so later, when I inadvertently caught my finger in a closing car door. I was clearly injured—at least the sight before my eyes and the feeling of pain indicated so—but as my father immediately began to pray for me, I not only was abruptly free of the pain, but there was not even evidence of an injury! Again, my world was shaken. All of a sudden, the spatial and temporal material laws I’d believed in so thoroughly became big question marks. I walked away from the car asking myself, “What is really going on in this world?” The so-called “rules” of me manipulating matter, and matter manipulating me, just weren’t applying as I had expected.
That opened the door to a discovery of spiritual substance. Later, as I explored the Bible, I imagined how people must have felt when they saw Jesus heal. No doubt, many were blown away by his disregard for so-called laws of disease, sin, mental illness, and even death.
Jesus taught his followers, “No man can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). I realized this is true. It would have been impossible for me to believe that the one who replaced my tooth with money was simultaneously the tooth fairy and my father. It was one or the other. Similarly, it’s impossible to perceive that spiritual existence is real and simultaneously to believe that matter, Spirit’s opposite, is all.
The truth and presence of spiritual being, many have found, is discovered and proved step by step. Using the five physical senses, people still eat apples, pat dogs, and turn doorknobs, yet they also sense spiritually something of the world around them—spiritual existence recognized in acts of true, unselfish love, in physical healing, in utterly surprising and earth-shattering insights.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “To the five corporeal senses, man appears to be matter and mind united; but Christian Science reveals man as the idea of God, and declares the corporeal senses to be mortal and erring illusions. Divine Science shows it to be impossible that a material body, though interwoven with matter’s highest stratum, misnamed mind, should be man,—the genuine and perfect man, the immortal idea of being, indestructible and eternal” (Science and Health, p. 477).
For you and me to be indestructible and eternal—and to be able to prove it through healing—there must be much more going on than meets the eye. Yes, it turns out that actually “the things which are not seen are eternal.”
That’s a big idea. But it’s not too big of an idea to begin to explore its implications. What you discover will shake your foundations. But that’s a good thing. To understand and experience more of true existence is a substantial victory. Each forward step, each progressive act, each inspired thought is conceived in God, divine Love. Love is constantly impelling you from materiality into reality.
As you go about your day, you can look for the spiritual substance behind everything you do. For example, if you see a dog who wants you to pat it, you can do so with a smile. Yet, don’t stop there. You can then recognize that the joy, spirit, tolerance, and devotion the dog is revealing to you hints at its spiritual nature. Spirituality is the real substance of its identity. If you can sense divine Spirit’s substance and expression in a dog, then you can sense Spirit’s substance and expression in yourself. Experiment, look for Spirit’s substance in yourself, and in the world around you, and find out to what degree this heals and reforms.
Mark Swinney is a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, who teaches his classes in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He’s also a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship.
