Exploring the ocean's depths, discovering its fragile, colorful, intricate forms, can be an intriguing and wonderful experience. Yet delving into the fundamental nature of being—into the nature of God and His creation—must be, is, more satisfying than anything else can be. It's a door open to each of us, to find the unique satisfaction of looking deeply into existence as it really is.
One key piece of this exploration is each individual's relationship with God. The oneness of man—meaning man and woman's actual spiritual nature—with his Maker is of central importance to one's well-being and contentment. This oneness may not be readily apparent to the five physical senses, but the fact remains that as the expression of God's being, man must be, is, inseparable from his divine source. Growing in one's understanding and practice of this coexistence has endless consequences for good. It lifts one's whole tone of thought, and improves the quality of living. It gives a new and potent approach to prayer.
One's tendency can be to pray to God as an entity somewhere "out there" who may or may not respond in times of difficulty. But to the degree we accept our oneness with Him, we are able to begin praying from God rather than to God. That involves seeing man and the universe as God sees them. And He sees them as flawless, enduring, beautiful, and peaceful. Understanding this allows us to experience those conditions in our own lives.
The oneness of God and man, the togetherness of Cause and effect, doesn't confuse or blur the two. God and His manifestation are distinct, though at one eternally. Sunlight is not the sun but the emanation of the sun. Yet that light could never be separated from its source, in the same way that man could never be separated from his Maker.
Christ Jesus relied on this view of man and the universe. That he was a deep thinker is evident in this extraordinary insight: "I and my Father are one." John 10:30. This realization is surely not to be underestimated. It typified Jesus' outlook. It formed the basis of his whole experience and his remarkable works—his healings of blindness and lameness, his overcoming of disease, his raising of the dead.
This viewpoint ultimated in Jesus' ascension—to a condition he must have known he'd never really left: unity with God. Surely, such a man consistently acknowledged this oneness with the source of all being, God, with the guarantor of inexhaustible good, the infinite origin of man and the universe. Mary Baker Eddy described his approach in Science and Health: "He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause." Science and Health, p. 313.
This kind of deep thinking—especially in regard to such existential or spiritual matters as man's unfractured unity with God—can seem like hard work. But it is tremendously significant work for each of us. It points to answers to the questions many ask themselves from time to time: Who am I? Why am I here? Such an effort is not merely a matter of psychology or intellectualism. In fact, any effort to tackle substantial questions—issues typically beyond one's everyday concerns—is a form of prayer. And it is blessed and directed by Deity, who actually impels these questions and offers profound answers.
We aren't doomed to an endless mental plod to find man's coexistence with Deity. It's the natural state of affairs, and will inevitably emerge.
We might think to ourselves, "I'm too busy for delving into such abstractions. Besides, I'm a practical character, and not attracted to the notion of floating off on fantasies about my links to God." Perhaps a reasonable feeling in the hustle-bustle world of so many people. But how can one live confidently and satisfyingly, efficiently and successfully, without having the fundamentals of being—what it's all about—clear and straight?
Time may also seem to be a factor. But in finding and feeling one's unbreakable unity with God, one needn't be taken in by the argument of "I'm too busy." This is where inspiration plays a role. Inspiration can take us spontaneously to where we need to go, in a way that intellectualism never can. We aren't doomed to an endless mental plod to find man's coexistence with Deity. It's the natural state of affairs, and will inevitably emerge. Furthermore, one instance of inspiration can lead to another, and then another. You'll find it so.
The profoundest sort of thinking concedes that the human mind, and the reasoning of men and women, has its limits. The highest consciousness is associated with God, the divine Mind, and this Mind encompasses and constitutes the entirety of being. Where, then, could there be room for a human mind? The need is to put off one's old view of consciousness as materialistic, short on spiritual insight, detached from Deity—and to adopt a new view, the mountain-peak view that's inseparable from the Divine. A keen observer of the spiritual adventure, Christ Jesus, explained, "Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved." Matt. 9:17. In other words, new thinking calls for a new concept of the thinker.
Wherever God is, His manifestation is. The Creator and the created—man, and all existence—are interdependent, inseparable from one other. This is an eternal union, not a fluctuating, coming-and-going condition.
The essence of evil is the suggestion that one's connection with God has been broken, exposing one to all manner of trouble—to illness and mortality, deficiency and terror. Evil's argument is that we are alone in a random universe, helpless and mortal. But such a view is a distortion of divine reality.
Synonymous terms for God, seven in number, and found in Science and Health, See Science and Health, p. 465 . open the door to grasping and knowing one's permanent unity with Deity. To illustrate, our coexistence with God as Soul means we have access to joy and individuality which can't be lost or threatened. Mind, another term for God, and Mind's reflection, man, remain one in being. This precludes the possibility that man could be deceived or mesmerized, taken in by evil's subtle suggestions. And man, one's actual selfhood, is so unified with Life that one can know nothing less than vitality and deathlessness.
That God is All is perhaps the most profound concept to consider in thinking deeply about existence. This fundamental fact alone implies that there is no outside to that endless, unbordered "divine zone," so to speak, in which God and man are found forever at one.
