Sometimes one encounters confusion in people's minds as to what spiritualization of thought means. They speak of spiritual blood, spiritual heart, spiritual bones—in fact, they may take the whole physique and try to plant it in a spiritual setting, where this same organization would function as on earth, but harmoniously.
An answer to the question "What is man?" is given in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mrs. Eddy. The answer begins, "Man is not matter; he is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements."Science and Health, p. 475. Her explanations lead us gently but firmly to the concept of man as God's idea. As God is Spirit—which has no relation to matter or material thought—so spiritual man, as His image and idea, cannot have physical elements. Material sense says that man has such elements, but spiritual, true sense declares emphatically that man has not.
Spiritualizing thought does not mean transplanting a material concept of the world into a so-called spiritual world. Spiritual reality excludes matter, because God is Spirit. We dematerialize our mentality by getting away from material concepts and forms. We recognize and begin to prove the essence of man's true nature, the immaterial idea: life as spiritual being, not as material body; love as selfless goodness, not as personal possession or interest; soul as spiritual sense, not as one's personal feelings and tastes. We discover Mind as infinitely available divine intelligence—expressing in man the capacity to perceive and understand reality—not as some kind of personal intelligence in a sort of spiritual brain. Man is not an ethereal body with its own old yet etherealized world circling around it. Man has unlimited individuality, freely and naturally expressing God's qualities.
