Unhappy Because Of A Severe Case Of the flu, I stumbled down the stairs to the telephone.
At my request, my wife had called a Christian Scientist two hundred miles away to pray for me and give me Christian Science treatment. This person scarcely said a thing to me except for words of comfort about my falling only under the influence of God, divine Spirit, and not under the influence of something like the flu.
I hung up the phone, climbed back to the bedroom, lay down on the bed—and found myself completely healed. So much so that in two hours I enjoyed a fried-fish meal with guests.
This healing set me to discovering fuller answers to vital questions about how Christian Science treatment works. What did this Christian Scientist know or do? How was it done? And "where" was it done? How could a spiritual action that appeared to take place miles away heal me in my bedroom?
Inward kingdom
First, I remembered that Christ Jesus' statement, "The kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21), bases Christian Science treatment.
"Within you" means, of course, within the individual, within individual consciousness. And "the kingdom of God" means that which is purely of God, or Spirit. The kingdom, then, is the consciousness of things of the Spirit.
Applying Jesus' statement to the issue of Christian healing implies that healing is impelled by God and takes place in what appears as individual human consciousness. This activity is the light of divine Spirit shining within us, normalizing our human condition. Christian Science teaches that experience is consciousness externalized, and inward spiritual harmony, derived from God, has the effect of destroying what seems to limit our day-to-day experience.
Jesus' lifework proves that in this way we can increasingly witness God's healing effect over every kind of personal, social, professional, or physical challenge.
Beyond that lesson, I learned from the study following my healing that we can begin to accept the consciousness of God, also called "the divine Mind" in Christian Science, as our own, and so begin to approximate having that Mind which was in Christ Jesus. From the standpoint of absolute spiritual truth, to know everything from the point of view of the divine Mind must be to know everything as spiritually perfect. This knowing has direct bearing on every event and condition of our lives.
On a daily basis we can take high spiritual ground and know that in reality we are spiritual, not encased in the mortal definition of ourselves. If the kingdom of heaven—the allness of God, or Mind—is reality and is within us, then everything, including what we think of as our bodies, is controlled by it. Our homes or jobs are spiritual and are also "within"—in consciousness. We can know that we are not in any mortal condition. Any condition is mental and appears in us—in what comes to our consciousness, where it can be harmonized.
Locale and process of treatment
In No and Yes, Mary Baker Eddy touches on Jesus' "within" methodology for healing: "The theology and medicine of Jesus were one,—in the divine oneness of the trinity, Life, Truth, and Love, which healed the sick and cleansed the sinful. This trinity in unity, correcting individual thought, is the only Mind-healing I vindicate ..." (pp. 1–2).
One heals, therefore, by the correction of whatever is unlike Life, Truth, and Love—unlike God—in individual thought.
Knowing this, we have the proper "locale" in which to preserve what is right on the human scene and destroy what is wrong, because thought tends to externalize itself. To the degree that we are materially inclined, experience tends to be discordant. To the degree that thought is spiritual, experience is whole and wholesome. Progressively we shall find that all is entirely within the one consciousness that is God, and that all that can be experienced by us—all that can be externalized or embodied—is of God.
And what did I find out about the "process" of healing?
Christian Science treatment represents the activity of the Christ, or Truth, permeating our thoughts and lives. How? By acknowledging being's true nature as God's full perfection. By letting this powerful truth heal the belief that man is something separate from God—the belief that some error is "within" a mind and nature separated from God, to be manifested "without" as discord.
Christian Science treatment represents the activity of the Christ, or Truth, permeating our thoughts and lives.
Through the Christ consciousness, we hold to spiritual truths and mold our lives to the divine. We mentally correct any lie against spiritual perfection with spiritual truth, so that the error of illness or limitation is seen to have never had reality in God's sight, and to have never even come to the point of really existing.
Mental error—however it may appear to externalize itself—as sin, disease, death, deprivation, poor relationships, deception, problems associated with age—simply cannot stand up long next to spiritual truth, when held to and lived.
The inward patient
Christian Scientists sometimes say that they themselves are, in a sense, their own "patients" because what appears as their own thought is their "patient"—whether the error needing healing is a report of disease, a news story about a bombing incident, a friend's calling about a death in the family, a magazine article about senility, or a television special about unemployed workers.
Since God is All and perfect good—the only Mind and Truth—such evil reports present to us only incorrect mental pictures and arguments. They may be colorful or drab, ecstatic or poignant, exciting or deadening—or apparently "well reasoned." But because they're errors, they're lies that can be corrected. Because they're mental, Christ, Truth, the presence of the divine Mind, corrects them in what appears as our own individual consciousness, and, as a result, in our experience.
Our consciousness is our experience. This is cause for rejoicing, because any apparition of distress in our lives can only suggest itself—not as an uncontrollable "out there" that we can't do much about—but, through the Christ, Truth, as a controllable and healable "in here."
Christian Science treatment can be looked upon as God's healing us of believing mental lies. Treatment "sees"—within—the truth of God's infinite harmony, instead of being fascinated by unhappy pictures claiming to be without. And, because truth excludes error, this spiritual seeing heals sin, disease, discord, and decline.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote, "Nothing appears to the physical senses but their own subjective state of thought. ... Destroy the thought of sin, sickness,death, and you destroy their existence" (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 105).
Healing others
How can the spiritualization of thought that appears in the consciousness of one person, help another? A community? A church? How can it help a nation? That was my next pursuit in finding out more about Christian Science treatment.
When we enter a cold room and turn on the heat, we can't turn it on just for ourselves. Whoever is in the room with us receives the benefit of the same warmth. "His" or "their" coldness disappears, too. The Christian Scientist I spoke to the day I was ill turned on the "warmth" of spiritual truth, and that Christly truth "warmed" both that Scientist and me.
When our world or our lives seem to be invaded by evil—through such "agencies" as malice, circumstance, misdirection, ads about aging, or alarming information via the media—we can let God enrich our thought with spiritual truth. Motivated by the Christ, we can "turn on warmth," correct the specific, unsettling error with calming, spiritual truth. We can see that error is always unreal before Truth—and we can see it destroyed.
From the study of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy's writings that followed my healing, I learned that in belief there's only one carnal mind—not minds many. One deceptive mortal mind, masquerading as many.
Therefore, whatever calamity seems to be happening in another's experience is actually happening somewhere within this whole supposititious realm of mortal mind, the claim of a mind opposed to God. The problem can be thought of as a specific condition we've been alerted to see through, or reverse, through the power of the Christ.
And so the condition can be healed for another because he or she, and the condition, appear to be in that same one mortal mind. Change can be made there by the action of spiritual knowing, no matter where it seems to occur geographically. Mortal mind then gives up some of its nest of worms.
Going a step further, however, it's essential to radically affirm that in the reality of being, God alone exists—there's one true will, one true condition, and one true Mind only. That's why spiritual healing is not the action of a human mind, although, granted, that's where it appears to take place. Healing is entirely the action of God, the one and only Mind, consistently declaring Himself as All. Whatever discord may be encroaching on our experience, healing is God's declaring Himself, His kingdom, to be infinite harmony.
What Christian Science treatment is not
In this research I also discovered what Christian Science treatment is not. Christian Scientists aren't messing around in the minds of others. We don't operate there, nor should we want to. In truth we can't control the minds of others—for good or for ill—nor would we want to since that would be an aspect of personal domination or will power.
Christian Science vigorously opposes intrusion upon another. Seeking to control others or their thoughts would not be pure Christianity. True Christianity affirms the uninvadable holiness and free moral agency of each of us as God's child. So any intrusive human thinking wouldn't even be basic courtesy, which respects the rights and mental sanctuary of others.
Such a manipulative approach would try to give legitimacy to the false notion that there are many divided mortal minds, instead of the one, infinite divine Mind, the one God. It would foster the impression that Christian Scientists are personal, charismatic healers, instead of acknowledging God, divine Principle, as the only true healer.
So human will and human outlining have no part in Christian Science treatment, which is the activity within consciousness of the divine will alone. Inharmony cannot be destroyed—externally, physically, or mentally—through, charmingly or forcefully, meddling in other people's affairs or thinking.
Further, it's impossible to radically solve problems through personal or material means. Solutions in the long run are found spiritually. They're successfully wrought out only within what appears as individual consciousness responding to its innate Christliness.
Evil is effectively destroyed through radical inward prayer—especially the prayer of self-correction—through the spiritual correction of individual thought by divine Life, Truth, and Love, acting through its agency, the Christ.
