A number of years ago, as a young artist working in Paris, I found myself yearning for a glimpse of the spiritual reality underlying art. Isolating color, line, and form, the three primary elements of visual expression, I felt I should understand their spiritual nature. Referring to "form, color, quality, and quantity," Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy says, "Their spiritual nature is discerned only through the spiritual senses." Science and Health, p. 512. Accordingly, I began to look to God, Spirit, to take my first small steps in grasping their infinite nature and profound significance.
Of the three elements, line was the one that intrigued me the most. I was in awe of the incredible purity of linear expression in, for example, the paintings of Botticelli and the drawings of artists like Rembrandt and Matisse. And I asked God to show me what I would need to perceive about the idea of line that would enable me to express it in a unique way, but with those same qualities of continuity, resolution, and purity.
It wasn't long before I had my answer. The mental line-element I had so earnestly been seeking was the firmament, the idea of spiritual understanding that is central to the practice of Christian Science. And the purer linear expression that gradually developed in my art was simply the natural result of exercising this understanding in daily life.
"And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," Gen. 1:6. we read in the first chapter of Genesis. And with these words the firmament idea makes its appearance in the spiritual creation. Science and Health explains: "Spiritual understanding, by which human conception, material sense, is separated from Truth, is the firmament.... Understanding is the line of demarcation between the real and unreal." Science and Health, p. 505. And the Glossary of Science and Health further clarifies "real and unreal" by defining firmament as "spiritual understanding; the scientific line of demarcation between Truth and error, between Spirit and so-called matter." Ibid., p. 586.
It is thought-provoking to note that the very last and very first act (respectively) in the ministries of the prophets Elijah and Elisha—the two great healers of the Old Testament—was to take the symbolic mantle of spiritual power and divide the waters. Figuratively speaking, I sit up straight every time I remember that our Leader affirms that the reality of Truth and the unreality of error are, first and last, the most important point to understand in Science. See Science and Health 466:15–18 . This was certainly the most thundering point communicated by our Master, Christ Jesus.
The very manner of Jesus' birth drew what must be the sharpest, purest line in history between real and unreal. Mary's conception of Jesus was completely spiritual, proving spiritual causation, not physical causation, to be the reality of man's origin and existence. Coming to humanity in this way, as divine Truth and Love manifest through man, Christ Jesus represented not only the divine and real but its complete embrace of the human experience. He illustrated the allness of good, separating evil from humanity's concept of man and then casting it out as unreal. He exemplified the line of demarcation—lived the spiritual understanding—that distinguishes between unreal and real, between the sinful Adam man and the innocent Christ-man, between mortal personality and spiritual individuality. He embodied the idea of Spirit's allness operating on the human scene to expose the nothingness of matter.
There was no shadow of dualism in Jesus' thought or life. He recognized only a single reality—good—because he acknowledged only a single Mind—God, or good. And he openly declared his unity with that Mind—"I and my Father are one," John 10:30. and "I can of mine own self do nothing," John 5:30. he said. He knew that Mind was knowing all that could be known, and the meteoric speed of his healing work proved that however sinful or tragic the material evidence, it was not real.
In fact, Jesus' instantaneous healings deliver the remarkable message that spirituality isn't the power to change or fix anything but is actually the unmesmerized thinking, or spiritual sense, that simply sees everything as it really is—as divine Love causes and knows it to be. And this undeluded consciousness of perfection heals. "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters" is divine Principle's perpetual demand, and this firmament element in consciousness, this spiritual understanding, rejects the supposed reality of evil.
Could just separating right from wrong, good from evil, accomplish this? Must we carry the mental action through to seeing that right is real and wrong is unreal? Yes. To allow ourselves to consider good and evil as separate but still distinct components of consciousness allows only for the suppression of discord without true healing. Healing is the resolution of discord, not a temporary patching of it. Christ is the divine influence in human thought that reveals the presence of God's allness—the saving Truth that destroys error, the light that dispels darkness. The so-called human mind is by nature dualistic, the very mentality symbolized by the accursed tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It can never escape belief in conflict and is incapable of healing—of bringing the allness and unifying power of divine Love to bear on discord.
The development of the spiritual idea in individual and collective human consciousness does, indeed, appear first as morality, the ability to discern, as King Solomon did, between good and bad, right and wrong. But as Jesus said of himself, "a greater than Solomon is here" (Matt. 12:42). The individual whose thought has been awakened to draw the moral line must keep pace with the spiritual idea as it continues its natural development into the spiritual understanding that heals—into the revelation of the eternal perfection of Mind and man.
To resist the power destined to carry us beyond the merely human into resurrection and ascension is to deny the Holy Ghost, divine Science. And it is this divine Science that, through the powerful and exquisite line of demarcation drawn by the Master's resurrection, proclaims forever the unreality of material identity and the reality of spiritual identity.
We can be said to truly understand only when we unconditionally deny the evidence of the material sense and humbly declare the universal reality of Love's likeness right where, for example, an offender and an offense appear to exist. "If ye salute your brethren only," Jesus admonished in the Sermon on the Mount, "what do ye more than others?" Matt. 5:47. "What do [we] more than others" if, having first discerned sin, we position ourselves on the same level of belief as those who think that sinfulness is the reality of man, that man is really conceived in matter instead of Mind? As those who accept as real all the miseries and mistakes that derive from this fundamental error of belief in material life and intelligence? To see the right and wrong, to recognize the very deep need of mankind for healing, is of course vital. But then to go forward attempting to turn an evil reality into good is what Mrs. Eddy calls "mental quackery." She says, "It is mental quackery to make disease a reality—to hold it as something seen and felt—and then to attempt its cure through Mind." Science and Health, p. 395.
The issue of right and wrong can enlist the human mentality impressively; the human logic behind the labeling and condemnation of sinners can be brilliant. While there's no question that a great need of humanity is to recognize sin as sin, we need to guard against the false intellect phase of the mortal ego that, in order to preserve itself, will not—and cannot—rise above moral indignation into the Christly simplicity of sin's unreality. Yet it is only at this point of spiritual understanding, where the unreality of material life and intelligence is admitted, that we can be said to be practicing Christian Science.
It is useful to recall that John the Baptist's work in the realm of pointing out sin and urging repentance was the heralded and vital preparation for the Messianic mission. Yet Science and Health asks the truly humbling question "Did the doctrines of John the Baptist confer healing power upon him, or endow him with the truest conception of the Christ?" Ibid., p. 132. And Jesus' response to John's doubts about the Messianic appearing teach us also that arguments relating to the right and wrong of theological issues are answered today as they were two thousand years ago—by works, by the way we live, love, and practice the Science of being.
There's a point in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus speaks of going the second mile. See Matt. 5:41 . When we seem to be victimized by the will of another, or we observe something we perceive to be wrong, and our mental action stops with the moral recognition that a wrong has been done, couldn't we liken that to stopping at the end of the first mile? If we haven't come to realize the baseless nature of the offense, the result is likely to be reaction, perhaps in the form of fear, anger, or revenge, or maybe in the form of criticism, personal judgment, self-righteousness. But when, instead of reacting, we volunteer to go that second mile, we have placed ourselves beyond imposition. We are exercising the spiritual understanding that declares the imposition not only morally wrong but spiritually unreal. This is the understanding that sees the real man's eternal innocence—setting us free to bear witness to the Christ-love that demonstrates that innocence in healing.
We need to draw consistently and persistently the foundational firmament line between unreal mortal personality and the sinless spiritual individuality that reflects the one Ego, divine Love, in which is no sin or knowledge of sin. It's vital, in fact, that we claim for ourselves and others this pure, universal consciousness of Love that alone reveals unity and heals. The error that would divide is the one that would give reality to sin—to that which the one Mind does not include. And only the Christ, Mind's manifestation, can destroy it and enable us to draw the line that stops the condemnation and gossip that are reactions to sin. Self-righteousness, too, the sin that would personalize both good and evil, is subdued and cast out by this Christ-spirit.
I asked myself once what made this sin so magnetic, and I realized that self-righteousness is a delaying tactic of the carnal mind that would keep us looking to material personality for a sense of our own worth. Self-righteous judgment seems temporarily to illumine us, make us appear to shine more brightly. But just as even a billion moons in our sky could all be equally illumined by a single sun, so all identities in God's spiritual universe shine equally with the reflected light of the one Ego, or Soul—illustrating that, as Jesus said, there truly is "none good but one, that is, God." Matt. 19:17.
When the self-righteous Pharisee, Simon, invited the Master, Christ Jesus, to be his guest for dinner, a lesson in "firmament vision" was probably not what he'd envisioned. Yet the challenge to Simon's ignorance of God's love remains a classic lesson for all of us. When the sinful woman came in and bathed Jesus' feet with her tears, Simon said in his heart, "This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner." Luke 7:39. Jesus, from the point of perfect understanding, was a true prophet because he could see spiritually. He did know who the woman was. He saw her innocent spiritual selfhood intact. He knew that creation never lapses from goodness and then subsequently returns to it. This firmament vision healed the woman. Simon's ability only to draw the line between right and wrong did not heal her.
With what kind of vision are we seeing these days? Are we seeing with the Mind of Christ, or as Simon the Pharisee, as false prophets? How are we seeing, for example, the problems and peoples of the world, our colleagues, family members, friends, fellow church members? Are we accepting the illusion of the senses that calls everything mortal, that says we are born of corruptible seed, with physical bodies subject to sin, disease, and death? Or are we exercising spiritual vision—spiritual understanding—to see through the veil of physical causation to spiritual causation, to the unmovable spiritual reality of identity that is conceived and born of incorruptible seed, forever innocent, safe from corruption and destruction from within and without? "A spiritual idea has not a single element of error," Science and Health, p. 463. Science and Health tells us, "and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive."
Becoming aware of the firmament in consciousness places a profound and inescapable demand on each of us. It is the demand the disciples faced when they saw their Master rise in resurrection. "Heretofore they had only believed; now they understood," Ibid., p. 43. Mrs. Eddy explains. Now, realizing the nothingness of material life and the omnipotence of divine Love, they could go forward obeying their Master's command to do the works that he did—and, as he promised, "greater works than these." And so can we.
