The Pharisees once asked Christ Jesus when the kingdom of God would come. He answered, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." Luke 17:20,21 How comforting to know that we don't have to go on a search for God's kingdom as though we were separated from Him; that, in reality, God and His perfect creation are as close as our conscious awareness.
From a practical standpoint, however, how do we get from where we appear to be in our present understanding of God to the point Jesus described and demonstrated, especially when the presence of God's kingdom within seems very small compared to the apparent world of mortality?
The answer to this question begins with understanding that what appears as the world of mortality without is really a state of thought. Mary Baker Eddy describes the mental nature of all things at the beginning of an article entitled "Seedtime and Harvest" in Unity of Good. She asks, "Is anything real of which the physical senses are cognizant?" And in the first part of her answer she says: "Everything is as real as you make it, and no more so. What you see, hear, feel, is a mode of consciousness, and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it." Un., p. 8 So materiality is thought objectified.
