Jesus' ascension demonstrated ultimate salvation—the total yielding of the human conception to the divine idea, and the consequent disappearance of the human conception, leaving the pure reflection invisible to human sight. Christ Jesus was no longer conscious of matter. Human consciousness gave place entirely to pure intelligence.
Jesus' ascension was the natural and inevitable culmination of his lifework. And so it must be for anyone who fully follows Jesus' example in demonstrating the Science of Life. But ascension is not a future event. Although it does appear to take time for human thought to free itself from its own opinions concerning life and happiness, the spiritual fact is that man—collectively and individually—is now the pure reflection of perfect Mind. Man is not tied down by mesmeric beliefs but free and perfect—knowing all truth. For us, ascension is the present demonstration of present spiritual fact.
To demonstrate this spiritual ascension — to ascend now—is our daily task. And it requires daily prayer and fasting. In Science and Health, describing the freedom enjoyed by all God's creation, Mrs. Eddy writes: "Mind's infinite ideas run and disport themselves. In humility they climb the heights of holiness." Science and Health, p. 514;
Simply put, ascension is the deepening understanding of Truth, God. It is not an intellectualizing process. We sometimes try to dig out the spiritual meaning from the Bible or Mrs. Eddy's writings by picking apart words and phrases through detailed human reasoning. But this may lead only to complicated theories about spiritual truth. A deep understanding of Truth is simple, though never static. By using those truths we already understand we will have more unfold in thought; puzzling statements will become understandable, apparent contradictions will resolve into impeccable completeness and logic, and more of Truth will appear in its pure simplicity.
The first chapter of Genesis illustrates spiritual creation, from the lesser ideas up to the infinite idea—man, the image of God. It also describes figuratively the ascension of human thought—its growth into the full understanding of God and His creation. While spiritual creation is eternal (all that really is, has always been), the spiritualization of human thought seems to take time and prayer and spiritual growth. "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years." Gen. 1:14; Mrs. Eddy comments on this verse from Genesis: "This text gives the idea of the rarefaction of thought as it ascends higher." And on the same page she adds, "The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness—yea, the divine nature—appear in man and the universe never to disappear." Science and Health, p. 509;
When Jesus healed an epileptic boy whom his disciples were unable to heal, the disciples asked their Master, "Why could not we cast him out?" Jesus replied, "This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting." Mark 9:28, 29; This is an important lesson for us all. Fasting in its Christianly scientific sense has nothing to do with mere bodily deprivation. It is total and conscious dedication to God as Truth. It is the starving out of false beliefs, the daily effort to deprive human opinion—in all its varying forms of physical laws, medical laws, hatred, fear, selfishness, pride—of any foothold in thought. By accepting these modes of thought as true and legitimate, we give them a foothold; by indulging them—mulling over them—we feed them and give them power. Fasting reverses this self-imprisoning process. To fast, we firmly know that material conceptions are neither true nor legitimate, and then we refuse to indulge them or to mull over them. True fasting is constant and consistent.
Of course, fasting is inseparable from prayer—that conscious turning to the divine Father-Mother Love for the truth that is life. To pray, we turn away from the material evidence—be it sickness, suffering, or death—and acknowledge the present fact of God's allness—Life's allness, good's allness—and man's perfect identity as the expression of Life, good. Prayer feeds our thought with clearer views of spiritual perfection, and thought rises higher.
Prayer and fasting are a necessary part of the human mind's yielding to the divine Mind. As students of Christian Science we first learn to accept the truth of being, and as our understanding of what we have accepted grows, our conviction of its trueness grows. Growing conviction brings a growing ability to heal. But the yielding of the human mind to the divine Mind results in more than just a growing conviction—although this is a wonderful and inevitable result. We also find something more wonderful, though equally as inevitable, happening: human reasoning giving place to divinely inspired knowing. When one ascends, he no longer reasons about Spirit's reality and matter's unreality. He is totally conscious of Spirit, Life, and only of Life. Mrs. Eddy tells us, "Man and his Maker are correlated in divine Science, and real consciousness is cognizant only of the things of God." Science and Health, p. 276.
We needn't worry over how far along we are on the road to the ultimate consciousness of eternal Life. Here and hereafter, step by step, we will find that eternal, infinite Life is the present fact and that right now and always we are held in perfect Life, expressing perfect Life, and untouched by any lie to the contrary. Trials never interfere, but spur us higher and so help us onward. And with consistency and progress the road gets smoother. Spiritual ascension is a happy, gentle, daily work.
