When on trial in Athens for challenging some of the entrenched beliefs and attitudes of his time, Socrates said in his defense: "If you put me to death, you will not easily find anyone to take my place. It is literally true, even if it sounds rather comical, that God has specially appointed me to this city, as though it were a large thoroughbred horse which because of its great size is inclined to be lazy and needs the stimulation of some stinging fly. It seems to me that God has attached me to this city to perform the office of such a fly, and all day long I never cease to settle here, there, and everywhere, rousing, persuading, reproving every one of you."
Today Christian Science similarly challenges mankind's entrenched false beliefs, its lethargic dreaming, which this Science calls mortal mind. Christ Jesus described this pseudo mentality graphically when he said of the devil: "He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."John 8:44;
The Master overcame the lie and liar by by forcefully rejecting them and turning to the Father, divine Truth. On these occasions all sorts of wonderful things happened. People who thought they were sick or dying suddenly became well. Those who believed themselves deranged became sound in mind. In other words, Jesus woke his listeners up. Just before he raised Jairus's daughter from death, he said, "The maid is not dead, but sleepeth." Matt. 9:24; And he said the same thing of Lazarus before he went to him and raised him.See John 11:11-13; In both cases the people around Jesus failed to realize the significance of the word "sleepeth" as he used it. They took it literally, thinking he meant normal sleep instead of a delusive dream state.
The most stubborn and basic conviction Christian Science challenges is the belief that matter is fundamental substance. Mrs. Eddy describes this mistaken premise in Science and Health: "Through false estimates of soul as dwelling in sense and of mind as dwelling in matter, belief strays into a sense of temporary loss or absence of soul, spiritual truth. This state of error is the mortal dream of life and substance as existent in matter, and is directly opposite to the immortal reality of being." Science and Health, p. 311;
True consciousness and Life are God, Mind. This Mind is unlimited, benevolent—the source and substance of all real life and intelligence. It is our Mind, our Life.
Mortal mind doesn't belong to God or to man. It is simply false belief, material consciousness, without a cause or agent. It formulates destructive laws about its own conceptions; irrational and pessimistic, it expects and experiences evil at every turn.
Mortal mind tells us we have no life except that which appears to inhabit a frail body, a brief existence between two mythological time points—birth and death. And it trivializes even this brief time allotment, fussing around with scraps of false information, pointlessly ruminating over a supposed material past. It relies on illusory material sensation for its data and easily becomes obsessed with its own fancies. Mortal mind is the discourager, the spoiler, the scoffer and fearmonger. But, worst of all, it represents itself as our consciousness.
Half the battle is to recognize mortal mind as an impostor. Much of the other half is to want to get rid of it. Sometimes, like the horse in Socrates' allegory, we prefer dreamland. It's such an effort to wake up!
Yes, it is an effort. But instead of supinely accepting mortal mind's stereotypes of men, women, children, work, environment, health, of birth, aging, and dying, we must question their validity. We must reject the senses' untrue and often cruel observations, replacing them with ideas based on Spirit as cause— ideas that come from God.
The transitional stage in which we learn to abandon mortal mind for the Mind that is God is accompanied by false concepts, wrong actions, and shameful thoughts; but we must remember that these thoughts and actions take place only in the realm of dreams and that our real identity and consciousness are always perfect, always intact, to be expressed in truthful living. As we begin to awake, we find ourselves entertaining thoughts that are more creative, problem-solving, intelligent. Our lives become more active, unselfish, productive, colorful.
God is not an abstraction. The Father has a close relationship, an inseparable relationship, with man. Knowing this gives us power over our thoughts, our bodies, our world. Expressing the qualities of God that we possess as His spiritual reflection—love, intelligence, energy—can bring something of heaven into every day. As we give up the false beliefs of mortal mind, we become capable of a deeper, wider affection, of a precious tenderness toward the whole world.
While we are relinquishing our dreams, we can share the Psalmist's hope, "As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." Ps. 17:15.
We shall awake—completely some day —to life in God!
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves
to think any thing as of ourselves;
but our sufficiency is of God;
who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament;
not of the letter, but of the spirit:
for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
II Corinthians 3:5, 6
