In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy makes this sweeping yet precise statement: "You command the situation if you understand that mortal existence is a state of self-deception and not the truth of being."Science and Health, p. 403;
Surely every Christian wants to command situations. He wants to see God, who is wisdom and Love, in full control of his life. Christian Science provides the means whereby divine government is proved, right where self-deception claims to hold one's self and one's affairs in its grasp.
Webster says, "Deceive implies the imposing of a false idea or belief that causes bewilderment or helplessness or furthers the agent's purpose."Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary; To be deceived by another individual is a bad enough situation, but to be self-deceived is a worse one. No one wants to lose control of the sanity and integrity of his own thought.
What is the agent that would cause one to be self-deceived? What is its purpose? In the Biblical allegory of the Garden of Eden we note that Eve found the answers to these questions. At first she accepted the subtle serpentine suggestion that there can be an advantage in disobeying God. Later we find her beginning to achieve liberation from an undesirable and bewildered state of self-deception. She recognized and admitted her mistake. Mrs. Eddy says of Eve, "She has already learned that corporeal sense is the serpent."Science and Health, p. 533 So we learn what the agent is, regardless of what its suggestion may entail. And we learn that its purpose is to bewilder.
Christ Jesus said, "Take heed that ye be not deceived,"Luke 21:8; and in the same discourse he gave the remedy for this false mental state. He said, "In your patience possess ye your souls." Then spiritual sense, or soul, is the remedy for self-deception, for this sense is real and intelligent, and intelligence can never be deceived.
Near the end of the Bible we find a description of evil as "that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world."Rev. 12:9. And to our joy we read the prophecy that the serpent was "cast out," overcome "by the blood of the Lamb," the power of the Christ-idea, as Christian Science explains.
Those who adhere to Science have important work to do to help fulfill this prophecy. They must realize that only corporeal sense, or material consciousness, experiences material conditions and that it is within this false sense that all self-deception takes place, all illusions appear. Furthermore, although the physical senses, or corporeal sense individualized, seem to be our own, they are not. Christian Science explains these senses as falsely claiming to be additions to true identity. In the thought of the unwary they conjure up mesmeric states and then claim to substitute themselves and their mental pictures for real consciousness and the spiritual ideas that it includes.
If we were to believe what the physical senses assert, we would be denying the very presence of God and His spiritual creation. It should always be clear to us that we can never cognize intelligence, integrity, love, justice, or any other God-created quality through the material senses. As far as these senses are concerned, God and His qualities and ideas do not even exist. Only spiritual sense, which is unmesmerizable, can discern the things of God.
Self-deception takes us over when we believe the five senses to be our own consciousness and do not deny what they suggest. We are self-deceived when we accept their finite concepts as actual and do not realize that they are merely misinterpretations of what is present in Science. We handle self-deception when we know ourselves as God's images and as actively conscious of spiritual truths, activities, and laws.
The clear distinction that Christian Science makes between spiritual consciousness and material consciousness, between soul and the serpent, is highly scientific revelation. The Christ Science shows this distinction in many ways, always emphasizing that the physical senses dwell in their own self-deceived realm and never touch God or His likeness.
With only a little thought given to the subject, we can see that God and His qualities and ideas do exist, that they are the very substance of our being. In fact, unseen moral and spiritual elements of Truth dominate society, and this regardless of the evil that claims to be on top.
The Christian Scientist takes up the human struggle for the dominance of good every time he resists believing in the illusions that corporeal sense presents. He knows that human situations seem intense and material objects solid only as long as they are believed. They lose their deceiving influence when they are intelligently viewed as delusion, unknown to God and man.
Jesus was never self-deceived, because he accepted as actual and real only what God had created. This made it possible for him to sustain a state of mind in which God was in full control. Even when he submitted to the cross, he did this deliberately, not helplessly. He was in complete control of his experience every moment, never deceived by the threats of the carnal mind.
By handling self-deception we strengthen our scientific ability to heal the sicknesses and sins that harass humanity. The most telling progress we make spiritually takes place when we come out from under the influence of the serpent, corporeal sense, and exercise our God-given spiritual right to freedom from evil suggestions. This withdrawal reveals the undeceivable immortals that we really are and destroys the suggestion that we are self-deceived personalities bewildered and helpless to know existence as God forever unfolds it.
