The mirage graphically illustrates several important facts that are pertinent to an understanding of Christian Science and to the application of this understanding in human experience. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 300), "The mirage, which makes trees and cities, seem to be where they are not, illustrates the illusion of material man, who cannot be the image of God."
In the mirage the unreliability of material sense is clearly shown. Although there seem to be trees, cities, or water in the distance, the fact is that they are not there at all. What appears to be substance is only illusion. If one is to be informed by what the eyes behold, it would be impossible to deduce the fact from the appearance. Likewise, if we make material sense the basis of our reasoning, there is no possibility of arriving at the true facts of being, or the Science of being. The experienced traveler, or the alert inquirer, upon the appearing of the mirage does not trust the material sense to give him the facts. He takes into account the unreliability of this sense and understands it to be nothing more than illusion—nothingness. In the same way, evidences of error would deceive travelers in the journey of human experience. And just as the mirage in the desert is entirely without substance, so are the errors which appear in human experience.
One learns early in his study of Christian Science that the testimony of the material senses is not to be credited. He learns that the belief in the reality of this testimony is the bondage from which he is to be freed. In applying the truths taught in Christian Science to the problems of human experience he is steadily gaining freedom from the deception of the senses. He is learning that the facts of true being cannot be deduced from the basis of physical sense. Each demonstration of the healing truth dispels the illusion of error's mirage. and exposes the fallacy of crediting with reality the illusive testimony of the senses. In her Message to The Mother Church for 1901, Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 14): "Our faith takes hold of the fact that evil cannot be made so real as to frighten us and so master us, or to make us love it and so hinder our way to holiness. We regard evil as a lie, an illusion, therefore as unreal as a mirage that misleads the traveller on his way home."
