It seems to me I have been trying to get rid of mortal mind altogether, which of course is equivalent to getting rid of the mortal body, as they are one and inseparable. This cannot be done while we are on this plane of thought. Instead, Truth (Science) says to the senses: "Be ye also perfect, by putting on the glory of Spirit, so God will and can dwell among men (mortals); for all mankind shall be taught of God." In other words, we must "emerge gently from matter into Spirit," through the illumination of mortal mind by Spirit; replacing the dark phantoms of material concepts, "first, in light; second, in reflection; third, in spiritual and immortal forms of beauty and goodness."* This must come gently; and as we entertain the Light and perceive the reflection, we will manifest the immortal forms of beauty and goodness. Paul says: "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." "Behold I shew you a mystery! we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed."
Do not infer from this that I think mortal mind is something real, and a necessary prelude to immortality, or the real Mind, God. But rather, as we go into a dark room to light a lamp, we do so without one thought about the darkness that envelopes us: knowing full well that when we get the light the darkness will disappear, will go out in the nothingness in which it came in,—proving that the seeming of darkness was only the mortal way we have to express the absence of light. So by demonstration, or lighting the spiritual lump in the darkness of mortal thought, we find that that which in the absence of light seemed so real to our distorted fancies, is now gone. Seeing the light, we remember the darkness only as a negation, a nothing, which the Light forever dispells.
Isaiah (xxxvii. 28) says: "But I know thy abode, and thy going out, and thy coming in, and thy rage against me;" and in the thirty-fourth verse: "By the way that he came, by the same shall he return, and shall not come into this city, saith the Lord." So the true status of the case is, that mortal mind is not in reality in "the city" at all, but is simply in the darkness of belief which only needs the light of reality to be entertained to have the darkness vanish. In the light is revealed the true man, the image and likeness of the Perfect Mind, in which there is no sickness, sin, nor death. In order to obtain this true likeness we must have the light (who ever heard of getting a true reflection of anything in darkness), for in the darkness of mortal belief in the reality of matter, how can a true conception of God's pure image and likeness, which is spiritual, be obtained? That is, how can we see what this reflection is?
