Christian Science teaches that healing and regeneration take place through a process of awakening. When the fact that man and the universe are spiritual replaces in the individual's awakened consciousness the fable of a physical man and universe, healing and regeneration are inevitable. Coincidentally with this awakening comes the impelling fact that the testimony of the material senses is not reliable and must be challenged and corrected with spiritual understanding if progress and healing are to be made evident.
For the most part Christians accept the allegorical account of Adam and Eve in the second chapter of Genesis as the beginning of human existence. In this tale, man is depicted as being created out of dust. We read: "There went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul."
But is this a true picture of man's beginning? No! It is from this false concept of existence that mankind must be awakened. To the degree that each individual accepts the false selfhood as his real being is he subject to the myriad forms of evil associated with material existence, such as age, accident, disease, sin, and death. Christian Science detects and exposes this lie about man and accepts only the spiritual facts of man and creation as clearly set forth in the first chapter of Genesis: "God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. ... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him."
