"The Universe Seems So Simple Until You Have to Explain it," moans a recent New York Times science section headline. "The ordinary matter of the universe, astronomers say, is engulfed in clouds of dark matter . . . . " Dennis Overbye, "The Universe," The New York Times, October 22, 2002 .
Dark matter is that part of the universe which is believed to be there, but whose origin and nature are unknown. It comprises most of the stuff of the universe, according to current scientific thinking. To make things more complex, many physicists believe there are possibly ten dimensions connecting all things in nature, but that six of those dimensions are currently invisible, leaving just the four well-known ones. This all-embracing "theory of everything" is called string theory.
The real icing on the cake, however, is the notion that matter can be swallowed up inside a black hole and compressed there to an infinitesimally small space. This rich mix of opinions—especially the latter one—urges many spiritually minded thinkers today to speculate that the natural sciences are reaching the conclusion that matter may amount to nothing at all.
Moving to an entirely different view of matter, however, Mary Baker Eddy in the Glossary of her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, defined matter as "mythology." And on page 480, she explained that there is a prerequisite to perceiving the insubstantiality of matter. "When the substance of Spirit appears in Christian Science," she wrote, "the nothingness of matter is recognized." As a physics teacher and a lifelong student of both the physical sciences and the Science of being, or Christian Science, I've found that gaining this understanding is a gradual process in which evidence accumulates of the reality of things that the physical senses cannot see.
Every time one witnesses healings of symptoms of disease through prayer, for instance, success in peacemaking between colleagues or within a family, or protection from violence or accident, one glimpses spiritual reality a little more clearly. This spiritual reality, experienced more and more, bring one to the conclusion that Spirit is real. Spirit's opposite, matter, appears less and less substantial in proportion as one discerns the substantiality of Spirit.
At some point matter ceases to be relevant.
BUT WHAT ABOUT the views of physical scientists? Are they reaching the same conclusions about matter that Mary Baker Eddy did in the mid-19th century? The majority of contemporary physicists still conceive of matter as having physical properties, including mass, electrical charge, energy, and angular momentum. To them matter is still quite real and substantial in some respects, even though the stuff can be compressed to a microscopic point in a black hole. Referring to the surprises predicted by general relativity, California Institute of Technology professor Kip Thorne has written, ". . . all the properties of a black hole are precisely predictable from just three numbers: the hole's mass, its rate of spin, and its electrical charge." Kip S. Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1994), p. 259 . Apparently, many physicists are not giving up on matter as real or inherently powerful. But in this context, I have found another of Mrs. Eddy's statements useful: "Only by understanding that there is but one power,—not two powers, matter and Mind, —are scientific and logical conclusions reached." Science and Health, P. 270. Again, one proves the validity of such statements by incremental steps.
AS THE MANAGER of a new state-of-the-art telescope, I had an opportunity to prove that the divine Mind, and not matter, has power and intelligence. I was responsible for seeing that the telescope worked up to expectations. After installation it didn't move exactly as we had hoped. I checked the physical structure and the electrical connections carefully. Everything seemed to be in order. There was no apparent physical explanation for the anomaly. Finally I went home and prayed.
I pondered the fact that all right and good ideas were available to me, because God is infinite Mind and Mind's thoughts are constantly flowing to its creation. That night, a new test occurred to me, one that enabled me to detect and correct electrical noise that marred instructions going from the control computer to the telescope. Following that correction, all was well and remained so. Hours spent going over the physical information at the telescope had been unavailing, and the answer to the problem came clearly from God during prayer, when I turned away from the material system itself for guidance.
The healing of the body, too, shows how physics yields to metaphysics. I was making a solar filter for my camera, to use in taking pictures during a coming eclipse. A sharp utility knife, which I was using to cut some material, slipped and cut deeply into the palm of one hand. After rinsing the wound and covering it, I sat down to pray. I needed to silence the feeling that my life depended on blood and I was losing a lot of it. My wife came to help me. She did two important things. She sang a hymn, and that brought comfort; she also insisted that I remain conscious. All shock, fear, and pain vanished within minutes. In fact, I was able to play the piano normally the next day.
What is there about physical science that holds onto the substantiality of matter, even given the astounding reduction of visible matter to mostly empty space? When looking at a balloon or a bubble, for instance, scientists don't say that it lacks substance just because its "stuff" is confined to its skin. Likewise, when physicists learned that atomic matter was 99.9999 percent empty space, they regarded the minute particles of the atom with renewed awe. Far from abandoning matter as objective reality, they now tend to believe that even the formerly so-called empty space is filled with "Einsteinian energy," which has its own equivalent in matter.
As long as matter is the medium through which scientists perceive things—in other words, as long as they rely mainly on the physical senses and human intellect to tell them what is real and substantial—the universe will remain essentially material to them. This is still the majority opinion. Humanity's awakening to a superceding spiritual reality will come as searchers in every discipline learn to use the spiritual senses that God gives to each individual. That shift of thought will produce the real quantum leap of discovery that Mary Baker Eddy perceived many years ago.
