It is obvious that if sickness is to be destroyed, it must be understood. Christian Science explains sickness as wholly mental. This is true because mortal existence is a dream, as Mary Baker Eddy found when she discovered Christian Science. This fact is illustrated by the "deep sleep" that fell upon Adam, who represents mortal man in the allegory of the Garden of Eden related in Genesis (Chapter 2). Surely we can see that every aspect of a dream is mental and that in it both cause and effect are illusions.
Mrs. Eddy proved that she had discovered the scientific method Christ Jesus used when she healed the sick and sinful with marvelous success. She says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 417,) "To the Christian Science healer, sickness is a dream from which the patient needs to be awakened." Since "sickness is a dream," as our Leader explains, it must be approached and dealt with as a dream, not as an actual experience. Efforts to heal sickness must be directed toward awakening the patient— oneself or another—from the mortal dream, in which sickness seems to take place.
It is as foolish to attempt to diagnose sickness physically or to turn to material remedies in the Adam-dream as it would be to do so in a night dream. The only actual cure for sickness is to awaken to or become conscious of the man God makes, the Christly man, who is as incapable of sickness as is God. In Christian Science we learn that man is neither a dream nor a dreamer, but is the forever-awake idea of divine Mind, God.
