When it comes to problems with vision, an understanding of where true sight comes from can make a healing difference.
The opening chapter of the Bible is central to this understanding. I've found these verses helpful: "And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day." Gen. 1 :3-5.
What was the light that God saw on the first day of creation? Commenting on these verses in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes, "This light is not from the sun nor from volcanic flames, but it is the revelation of Truth and of spiritual ideas." Science and Health, p.504. No solar light is necessary to see the spiritual ideas of God, for the ideas reflect the light of Truth. True sight, then, can be thought of as the conscious knowledge of Truth and its infinite ideas.
The concluding verse in that chapter of Genesis states, "And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." Gen. 1:31. The light that God saw reveals His own goodness, infinitely expressed. Beholding good is the activity of all-seeing divine Mind. It is Mind's knowing, Soul's conscious distinguishing of its ideas in all their beauty, distinctness, and color. Range, clarity, focus, are not truly capacities of matter but of divine consciousness, making known the presence of God's ideas.
The eye specialist's examination found no problems.
How Are We Related to this perfect seeing of God, Soul? As God's image, each of us is the individual expression of the one Soul, the exact reflection of Soul's seeing. In truth, we have no personal vision derived from matter, but dwell forever in the light of Soul and receive only the clear impressions of Soul. Sight in its real, spiritual sense is not the seeing of material objects; it is being conscious of the particular qualities that define and identify each of God's ideas.
Sight is actually the permanent, undeviating, perfect perception of what God creates, knows, and loves. God sees only what He includes within Himself, and each of us, individually, evidences this seeing. How natural, then, for us to see with clarity God's good creation. An understanding of these spiritual truths can have a direct, healing effect on eyesight.
A Little Girl had been having a hard time clearly seeing the blackboard at school. Two eye tests given by the school showed that the muscles in her eyes were weak and that she needed glasses. The mother, in compliance with a request by the school and the County Health Department, made an appointment for her daughter with an eye specialist. She also called a Christian Science practitioner to pray for her daughter before she went to the appointment.
In praying about this, the mother and practitioner understood that real sight is independent of matter, including material muscles. It is really the might of Spirit that focuses and distinguishes all good. Acknowledging God's infinite nature and power, they prayed to see that Mind beholds the delineation of its ideas; Truth perceives with clarity all that is real; Soul sees the glorious beauty and form of all creation; Spirit magnifies the ever-presence of infinite good. And because God's offspring express Him, reflecting His capacities, they see with clarity the good that God sees.
The eye specialist did a thorough examination and found no sign of any problems with her eye muscles. No glasses needed. Her vision was perfectly clear.
There are various factors that supposedly contribute to vision problems. But whatever would claim to block the light of Truth and limit our ability to see clearly stems from the false premise that matter, instead of Spirit, God, is the source of our sight. This false premise is illustrated in the Adam and Eve story. In this Biblical allegory, the serpent tempts Eve to eat fruit from "the tree of knowledge of good and evil." See Gen. 2:9 and Gen. chap,3. The serpent suggests that in doing so, her eyes will be opened, and she will know both good and evil. She yields to the temptation, gives some of the forbidden fruit to Adam, and we're told that "the eyes of them both were opened." According to this myth, perception is now material, a means of seeing both good and evil, with men and women being mediums through which evil is seen. This is the exact counterfeit of true sight, which proceeds from Spirit, God, with God seeing only good and His spiritual offspring reflecting His seeing. The understanding, then, that it is, in fact a myth opens the way for healing.
Referring to physiology as "one of the apples from 'the tree of knowledge,'" Mary Baker Eddy states: "Evil declared that eating this fruit would open man's eyes and make him as a god. Instead of so doing, it closed the eyes of mortals to man's God-given dominion over the earth." Science and Health, p. 165. This dominion includes the ability to reflect a clear and correct view of all God's ideas. Since God has given us dominion, in reality we are now at the point of perceiving with clarity each idea of God.
If Our Sight is not as it should be, we can claim our God-given dominion, our sovereign right to see with perfect clarity the infinite goodness of God's creation. Perceiving creation in this way is possible through spiritual sense. "Spiritual sense is the discernment of spiritual good," Ibid., p. 505. Science and Health says. How freeing it is to know that as God's eternal witnesses, we are forever conscious only of good and therefore can see only good. A deeper understanding of this truth must improve our sight.
The Bible relates a wonderful healing of a man who was blind from his birth. See John 9: 1-7 . The disciples asked Jesus if it was the man's sin or the parents' sin that had made him blind. Jesus answered, "Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him." Jesus saw true identity as sinless, never blind to the works of God, never part of the Adam myth of life in matter. The account tells us that the Master anointed the man's eyes with clay and told him to go wash in the pool of Siloam. He did so and was then able to see. The clay and the water that washed it off did not have healing power. The healing came through the power of the Christ, cleansing the man's thought, washing away the Adam-and-Eve belief of life in matter that would blind one to the presence of God's spiritual creation.
True sight transcends time, space, and mortality.
Christ shines through the suggestion that sight can be defective because of heredity, diminish because of age, or be lost because of disease or accident. Christ restores the consciousness of our eternal oneness with the all-seeing Mind.
The Christ certainly can restore our vision. But it can also open to us a much wider vista of what sight includes. True sight transcends time, space, and mortality. It beholds the real nature of God's offspring as spiritual and immortal. It perceives the unbroken continuity of being in which each individual expression of God remains inseparable from God and in harmony with all of His ideas in the eternal heaven of His presence. True sight, bathed in the beautiful, clear light of Christ, beholds "all the glories of earth and heaven and man," Science and Health, p. 264. to use words of Mrs. Eddy.
This true sight, which comes from God, is ours now as His sons and daughters. Understanding this can heal us today!
