One of the illusions in the writer's repertoire as a professional magician was known as "the blue room." In this illusion a person would come on the stage and, remaining within full view of the audience, would appear gradually to change into a distorted image of himself.
Needless to say, in reality he did not change. A large piece of window glass was placed diagonally across the stage. On either side of it was a set of lights capable of being made dimmer or brighter. A person made up to represent the distorted image was on one side of the glass partition, unseen by the audience, and his reflection on the glass was arranged to fall exactly on the spot where the first person was standing. When the lights were up on the first person's side of the stage, the audience could see him, but as the lights slowly dimmed on that side and grew brighter on the other side, the reflection of the distorted image gradually blotted the first person from sight. Yet he was right there; he had not changed or moved, and all one had to do to see him again was to reverse the process described.
The view of man which we get from reading the first chapter of Genesis reveals him to be spiritually created, in the image and likeness of God. When the light of spiritual understanding is undimmed, man is clearly seen as the expression of his creator. "But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground" (Gen. 2:6). Here the dimmers are being applied, and a distorted material view of God and creation appears. To deluded consciousness this false view of man seems to be right where the man of God's creating exists. But Christian Science reveals that in truth this man has no more reality than the deflected image appearing on the glass in the magician's blue room, and that the real man is still there.
