If we are seeking healing, a good question to ask ourselves is, "Am I looking for healing to appear in the body or in consciousness?"
Is the aim of Christian Science treatment to heal matter or to heal thought? This Science explains that a discordant or diseased condition is always the manifestation of erroneous or fearful thinking, a false concept of life. Scientific healing cannot, then, result from treating the physical discord. Our need is to deal with the mental error. Whether we succeed in demonstrating health or not depends basically on where we are looking for healing to appear.
We have the promise of the Master, Christ Jesus: "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32; And we have Mrs. Eddy's reminder: "We must recollect that Truth is demonstrable when understood, and that good is not understood until demonstrated." Science and Health, p. 323; How important, then, to gain not only spiritual understanding but also a correct appreciation of what demonstration really means.
Understanding and demonstration, the two great essentials for progress in bringing out the perfection of spiritual being as God established it, and as Christ Jesus illustrated it, are inseparable, for "Truth is demonstrable when understood" and "good is not understood until demonstrated." They go together. One naturally unfolds into the other, and unless demonstration naturally follows understanding, we have not completely understood.
A right apprehension of what demonstration is in Christian Science is gained by a correct appreciation of what it is we are required to demonstrate. If we have the notion that we have to demonstrate a change of conditions in the body, we will get nowhere.
The first essential is to understand the facts of true being, to gain the spiritual view of what Life and man really are, as revealed in Christian Science. In Genesis we read that "God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament... And God called the firmament Heaven." Gen. 1:7, 8; The mistaken human beliefs and false conclusions that life is based on matter, which might be represented figuratively by the waters under the firmament, are relinquished as spiritual understanding—the distinguisher, the firmament —reveals the glories of true being in Spirit, and this is heaven.
The understanding of the Divine Being, God, and our unity with Him requires of us an earnest, sincere desire before we can attain it. When we become tired of the false, illusive claims and attractions of the material sense of existence, along with its self-inflicted suffering and discord, we turn away from it; and looking upward, we earnestly strive to gain a better understanding of life in and of Spirit. Then we begin to discover our own true identity in the Father's plan as His expression, the manifestation of perfect Life. Our need is to get understanding rather than try to get a healing. The verse in Proverbs "Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding" Prov. 4:7; indicates the vital importance of getting a workable understanding of Life itself.
The word "understanding" means knowing, comprehending fully, having a correct apprehension of that which is true. In Christian Science understanding is a scientifically correct knowledge of what Life really is, the acknowledgment of man and creation as the expression of the one Mind, God.
Demonstration, on the other hand, is the consciousness of this divine Life and Mind as tangible reality, in face of which any evidence of discord or evil becomes nothing. A clear understanding of the facts of true being gives power to the demonstration of these facts in our experience.
The truths of being, if they are to be of any practical use to mankind, must be demonstrated.
Demonstrated where? In consciousness and in its effects on the human picture.
Demonstrated to whom? To oneself.
What is to be demonstrated? Spiritual facts.
Demonstrated how? As divine ideas, spiritual facts, coming to human consciousness through the Christ, Truth. This spiritual understanding inevitably affects our human experience in the direction of harmony, freedom, and dominion in proportion as it transforms consciousness.
One of the most vital points to be understood in successful healing practice is that demonstration is a bringing to light of the facts of spiritual being, an activity that takes place primarily in our own consciousness. Whether we are engaged in treatment of ourselves or of another, if we work primarily from the standpoint of demonstrating a change in the body or in material circumstances, we severely jeopardize our healing work from the outset. This approach also may lead us to take on a burden of personal responsibility for the healing, and perhaps make a fruitless attempt to mentally manipulate discordant material conditions into harmonious ones, thus holding firmly in belief to the very discords we are trying to dispose of.
It is important to realize that our primal concern is not to correct a discord but to awake to the presence of spiritual harmony. Demonstration involves the cognizing of the things of Spirit in consciousness, the certainty of their reality and presence, and the tangible experiencing of them. Mrs. Eddy indicates this in her statement about being "thoroughly persuaded" in thought: "You may vary the arguments to meet the peculiar or general symptoms of the case you treat, but be thoroughly persuaded in your own mind concerning the truth which you think or speak, and you will be the victor." Science and Health, p. 412.
We need never doubt that whatever we clearly understand as real in our own consciousness—whatever we perceive of the holiness and perfection of life in Spirit— will inevitably be externalized in human experience. As a natural consequence of the activity of the Christ, healing and harmonizing of human and physical conditions will appear. This is a well-proven law.
That demonstration follows the consciousness of spiritual perfection was evidenced during an epidemic of Asian flu. A number of my office staff were absent from work with this condition. One day, while going about my duties, I found myself suffering from the symptoms of the disease.
Only a few days previously I had been much inspired by the thought of the Christ —"the Son of God," in Bible language— as expressing the one and only real selfhood that includes all identity, the nature of the divine Mind or Life, which is God. I had identified myself as at one with this divine nature and selfhood in all its perfection and holiness.
In the predicament in which I found myself, I recalled this inspiration and stopped in my tracks, saying to myself, "Why, I am not a mortal! In my true being, I am an individual expression of the one divine selfhood. What on earth has influenza got to do with divine selfhood?" The possibility that God could know evil or disease was completely absurd. In that moment the purity and perfection of divine Spirit flooded my consciousness, and was tangibly felt and experienced.
Although to human sense at that moment I was still aware of the physical symptoms of the disease, yet I knew without any doubt that the condition just hadn't a chance with me. I knew I was healed. The light of the Christ, Truth, had dawned in consciousness. Inevitably, within only a few minutes, all trace of the condition had vanished. The demonstration was complete.
In Christian Science we are in the glorious business of demonstrating spiritual ideas, awaking to the multitudinous ideas of God that throng the realm of divine reality, and proving they are ever available. Spiritual ideas can only be cognized and experienced in the realm of consciousness.
When we are faced with a seeming physical difficulty, what are we really confronted with? Not a physical condition but a distorted, mistaken sense of being, a belief in the absence of some divine idea.
What do we do about it? We turn away from the material evidence, the human picture, refusing to be impressed by it, and become conscious of the specific divine idea needful in the case. We cherish it, hold to it, rejoice in its presence. We demonstrate as a tangible reality the actual presence of this divine idea, which God in His abundant love has made forever available; we bring it into conscious experience as healing.
To entertain spiritual ideas in consciousness and to tangibly experience the reality of them is to demonstrate them, and harmony inevitably follows in the human scene.
