Why is science fiction so in vogue?
Maybe because we seek a richer, more varied sense of environment. Perhaps mankind intuitively longs to see the whole cosmos as having pockets of life.
Whether this is so or not, a larger sense of being—of reality—won't come merely through letting human imagination range the universe to planets and galaxies in bizarre spaceships or time machines. It won't come just from men stepping on Mars. It will come through spiritual sense moving toward the infinite universe of Spirit. "Advancing spiritual steps in the teeming universe of Mind lead on to spiritual spheres and exalted beings,"Science and Health, p. 513; Mary Baker Eddy tells us in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
Understanding "the teeming universe of Mind" means breaking away from the small, the cramped, the finite. We learn that mortal sense is self-enclosing and confining. And this has valuable consequences on earth. It's not that the infinite is simply bigger than the small. Mind's spiritual infinitude is sizeless. The infinite is, while the small and material is not.
Christian Science extends thought far beyond the edges of the previously imagined and achieved. Mrs. Eddy's own vision soared above the boundaries of mortal thinking. She writes: "A knowledge of the Science of being develops the latent abilities and possibilities of man. It extends the atmosphere of thought, giving mortals access to broader and higher realms."ibid., p. 128;
How practical is changing the small for the infinite? Suppose financially we're not making ends meet. We may think the only need is to somehow stretch our small bank balance and make it into a large balance. Yet the metaphysical and practical road to sufficiency is not to first of all try to enlarge our funds and credit, but to extend our consciousness of substance and supply.
Man is Mind's idea, all spiritual. Hence one shouldn't think of himself as a mortal speck, as one four-billionth of limited mankind, with access (relatively speaking) only to scraps of supply. Man is not finite, with only finite good available to him. Nor is man finite with infinite good available to him. Mind's man—our only genuine self —coexists with infinite Mind and therefore with inexhaustible good.
Christian Science extends our sense of ourselves not by building on to mortal egotism, but by progressively eliminating it through a wider—a boundless—consciousness of the infinite. One who feels inferior —a very small or crushed individual—can at once begin exchanging the small not for the large but for the infinite. The following by Mrs. Eddy shows man's true state, and everyone can begin proving its truth in daily living: "God expresses in man the infinite idea forever developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis."ibid., p. 258;
Some churches are shrinking numerically. What's the need here? Changing a small number of members into a larger number? No. The spiritually scientific approach is not to try to inflate church organization by direct membership drives. Or to grow by superficially modernizing externals. The spiritually valid way is not to change the small for the large but for the infinite—to open out our sense of Church as divine Love's spiritual idea. Such a consciousness of Church is far more appealing to unhappy, needy, ill, lonely people than human campaigns rooted in finiteness and an obsession with numbers. Why? Because all human suffering is traceable to the belief that being is finite. This belief, as well as its suffering, is nullified by the realization that true being and all its elements (including man, Church, the universe) are without beginning or end.
Knowing the truth and so neutralizing whatever would mar human life is what the church thinker should be involved in. Anything less than absolute scientific truth offers to sufferers, in the long run, simply "more of the same." This is not to say that we should rush into broadcasting absolute metaphysics to all and sundry. But it is to say that spiritual growth coming out of members' awareness of the absolute facts of being is what church is about. The direction to go in is found in the Bible record of prophets and seers and above all in Christ Jesus' life and acts.
"Not enough time!" A common cry, and a common excuse for not doing what we should. There is no solution in longing to extend the hours of the day. There'd be no satisfying answer in somehow making a twenty-four-hour day into a twenty-eight-hour day, elasticizing a small day, then tugging it into a large day. But we can cultivate a consciousness of eternity that gives us increasing control over meager time and over beliefs of limited life—prompting us, perhaps, to set up better schedules.
How does changing the small for the infinite relate to business? To the controversies about consumption and pollution? Can commerce and manufacturing grow without dependence on materialistic self-indulgence and consumption? It's been argued: ". . . the evidence is far from convincing that a greater consumption of energy always results in a betterment of human life, or in a more interesting civilization. Even granted that this was the case in the past, there are many reasons to think that we are now reaching a point of diminishing returns."René Dubos, "The Despairing Optimist," American Scholar, Spring, 1975, p. 174. Certainly, the promise of Truth is for expansion—in a spiritual sense —not contraction. But the concordant solution is not in making all-out efforts to push the relatively small operation into the breathtakingly large in ways that deplete resources, scar the landscape, dirty our cities. The need is for solid beginnings in understanding what life, action, growth, substance, and satisfaction really are. The demand is for a wider spiritual sense of these and for a higher conception of purpose.
The dilemmas facing mankind today can be resolved by moving human reason to a more spiritual and metaphysical basis. In minor ways and in major we can begin changing the small for the infinite, find fresh, effective ways of doing things, and make new demonstrations of the infinitude of divine Spirit.
