One beautiful afternoon I put on my radio headset and went for a run through the hills behind our neighborhood. As I passed by houses and fields, I marveled at how the bright sun illumined flowers and accented the landscape, and how the pine trees, scattered high up along a ridge, looked like sentinels silhouetted against an azure sky.
I was enjoying my run when all of a sudden some of the lyrics from a song made me stop. The phrase "living separate lives" Stephen Bishop, "Separate Lives." Copyright 1985 Gold Horizon Music Corp. Used by permission. stood out to me as distinctly as the trees along the ridgeline, for earlier that day I had been feeling isolated from my family and friends.
Just as I was about to continue on my way, sympathetically agreeing with this, the words "life in God" came to thought. I felt a deep sense of oneness with God, divine Mind, and following this came the quiet conviction that I and everyone else were really God's ideas. At that instant the spiritual perception that we are all included in one divine realm totally obliterated fear of being separated from anyone. I then realized that the song had caught my attention not because it was true about my life or anyone else's, but because it blatantly contradicted the truth of God and man. It denied the spiritual unity of life in God. Every time I heard the song after that, it became a simple reminder to reverse the human picture of people living separate lives and to claim joyfully the spiritual oneness of being. This took away the sorrow and loneliness.
From this experience I saw that a spiritual awakening to our true identity and to the omnipresence of God's infinite, harmonious kingdom must precede our demonstration of the unity of man. The key is to understand the divinely created order of the universe, which is set forth in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science and founded the Church of Christ, Scientist, has explored the meaning of Genesis in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She writes: "The creative Principle—Life, Truth, and Love—is God. The universe reflects God. There is but one creator and one creation. This creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected. These ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity, and the highest ideas are the sons and daughters of God." Science and Health, pp. 502-503.
Order, harmony, individuality, permanency, and all-inclusiveness are implied in this passage. It clearly reveals the status of man as the spiritual idea of God and indicates that the oneness of God's creation is established and governed by one intelligent, all-loving, perfect Principle. With these facts one discovers that there is no reason for, or reality in, any kind of separation from God or from man. Time, distance, and physicality have no place in a spiritual universe of ideas. Estrangements do not exist in a realm where each idea springs from the source of all true harmony, divine Love. There really can be no cross-purposes, divided interests, or self-interest for there is only one Mind, lovingly governing all. There is no need for jealousy, rivalry, or envy, for man's unlimited source of good is God, the creator of it. There is no loss or death, because the entire purpose of man is eternally to express God, divine Love. Separation from any one of His ideas is as impossible as separation from God Himself, because all are "embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected."
By this we can see that, spiritually understood, the good in our relationships to each other points to the fact that man is forever one in God's kingdom. If we look to the human scene for evidence of this, however, we find that for one reason or another relationships are severed, and it seems as if everyone at some point goes off to live his or her own separate life. Families break up; friends leave; the need to be reunited with loved ones cries out from every corner of the world.
Does this mean that the material, mortal appearance of creation is real? No! We can turn to the Bible to find out why. Here, in the lives of great men and women, the Scriptures vividly record what even a glimpse of the spiritual order of being does for the human situation. As individuals awoke to a more spiritual understanding of God and were willing to obey Him, relationships were harmonized, families were reunited, and a more universal sense of brotherhood was experienced. To some degree, they were proving that the discord could have no real foundation, substance, or entity before the love of God.
The question then becomes: "How do you explain the appearance of separation?" But that is like asking one to explain the nature of a lie. Let's take a specific example from the Bible to illustrate this. When Jacob believed that the good he wanted came from someone else, he acted with selfishness and deceit in order to achieve his goals. This brought much suffering upon him and separated him from his home and family. But at a crucial moment in his life he began to understand God better. The discovery and acceptance of his relationship to God established his relationship to his fellowman. This led to reunification with his brother. Jacob expressed this when, after they had been apart for over twenty years, he told Esau, "I have seen thy face, as though I had seen the face of God, and thou wast pleased with me." Gen. 33:10.
Jacob's experience demonstrates the nature of evil as a deception, a contradiction of the truth. Its effects existed only so long as the deception was believed to be true. Once Jacob discerned the truth and lived according to it, the deception and its effects disappeared. In referring to the recognition of "the divine order of Science," as she puts it, Mrs. Eddy says: "With this recognition man could never separate himself from good, God; and he would necessarily entertain habitual love for his fellow-man. Only by admitting evil as a reality, and entering into a state of evil thoughts, can we in belief separate one man's interests from those of the whole human family, or thus attempt to separate Life from God." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 18. To me, Jacob's experience proves that separation from our fellow humans stems directly from a belief in separation from God. A misunderstanding of the true order of the universe was what led to the severing of Jacob's relationship with Esau; and his spiritual awakening, in a measure, to the facts of existence reestablished it.
This is why spiritual consciousness has the effect of elevating, purifying, harmonizing, and unifying our lives. The evil that appears in our experience is the result of a lie about God and His creation, including man. We find that whatever evil may appear to be real is merely the effect of false belief, and false belief (along with its effects) is destroyed by the understanding and demonstration of Truth, God, and His spiritual creation. By basing our thoughts and actions on the spiritual facts, we find our human experience more closely conforming to the true order of the universe.
Every time I heard the song it became
a simple reminder to claim joyfully the spiritual
oneness of being.
Christ Jesus gave us the most complete demonstration of this spiritual life in God. By destroying the greatest lie of separation—the belief in death—he showed us that eventually the human appearance will totally yield to the spiritual order of things. He proved beyond doubt that his eternal unity with God implies unity for all of His beloved ideas.
Where mortals saw around them a random collection of personalities, all living their own separate lives, Jesus beheld God's man dwelling in the kingdom of heaven. He understood that creation is spiritual and that God governs man. Consequently, time, space, matter, opinions of others, political affairs, and laws of physics could not prevent him from fulfilling his God-ordained purpose. And his resurrection after the ordeal on the cross allowed him to return to those he loved and those who believed on him.
Jesus overcame the belief of separation from Love, or from Love's expression, man. He gave us nothing to indicate that the belief of separation from God or man has to stand as law in anyone's experience. Indeed, he expressed this positively in his statement of the two great commandments—to love God and to love one's neighbor as oneself. See Mark 12:28-34; John 15:12. Through obedience to his commands, we can follow in his footsteps, and we can demonstrate the same certainty of God's loving presence that the people in the Bible did. And where God is, man is, for, as Mrs. Eddy tells us, "Man is the expression of God's being." Science and Health, p. 470. This indestructible relationship gives us dominion over the false belief that God's man can be cut off or separated from his Maker or from any part of divine creation.
Regardless of what seems to be going on according to the material senses, Christian Science unveils the truth. Man is not mortal, and life is not material. Man is spiritual, and we are all in and of God. To quote what Paul says in Acts, "In him we live, and move, and have our being." Acts 17:28.
How, then, could we possibly get out of His infinite kingdom and live separate lives? We can't. No one can, not even those who seem to pass on before us. We have the divine assurance that all those we meet and love are forever present in the kingdom of heaven. To prove its effectiveness in our lives, we need only to awake to this fact and to live from this standpoint.
In truth, we are all spiritual ideas living in the realm of divine Mind. Let's forsake the mortal, acknowledge the immortal, and progressively experience the freedom this understanding gives us.
