Cheryl Petersen is author of:
from science & religion to God: A briefer narrative of Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health
Christian Science today
The ever-revealing Truth is changing the universe. Progress removes restraints. The finite yields to the infinite. Although we’re trained to disregard mind over matter, or healing that defy conventional biology and genetics, we find nothing in matter and ask for more light.
We progress spontaneously, as light emits light, when we regard creation from the standpoint of Soul, eternal Life, instead of from personal realities or illusive matter.
God, the all-knowing divine Mind does not know the short-lived human mind. To know the human mind is not to know divine Mind. To know divine Mind is to recognize that the human mind is unknowable because it constantly vacillates between spirituality and materiality, good and bad, adoration and fear, joy and grief, mistakes and fixes, birth and death.
Human mind may think it knows what health is, until it’s lost. It may think it’s experiencing out-of-body spirituality until it quits absorbing hallucinogenic drugs. Human mind may think it’s creating a life-changing adventure until it removes the Oculus headset. The human mind is easily fooled.
Without the Principle of the Science of Life to interpret existence, views of reality are taken on blind faith and trigger conflicting opinions and behaviors that reduce the wholeness of life to a menagerie of personal beliefs, fears, pleasures, pains, haves and have nots.
With the Principle of the Science of Life to interpret existence, views of reality are taken on a trust in the infinite divine Mind, complete with inspired thoughts, creativity, and actions that manifest restoration, restructuring, the greater dimension of wellbeing. The infinite is achieved only as we turn from the finite. Light is seen only as we stop looking at the darkness. Unlimited wellbeing is experienced only as we stop applying limited human knowledge. Health is more reliably known when sought for and found in its Principle, divine Mind. Health is a state of Mind, Truth, Love.
Lies are defined as physical senses, lack of knowledge, wrong assumptions, personal opinions, fear, aversion. Lies are unable to detect the Truth of being. Physical senses are unable to detect Spirit and spirituality and therefore anything they claim aren’t the Truth of being. But because we can detect the life that goes on despite death, because we know that musical harmony exists despite terrible noise, because we know that mathematical equations are solvable despite multiple mistakes or voids in knowledge, we surmise correctly that spirituality exists, that instinctive, motivated spirituality that knows the one Spirit, Principle. Lies make people answerable to physical senses, rather than spiritual sense. Lies make people accountable to a lack of knowledge rather than to the Truth of being. Lies make people blamable, punishable, liable to displacement, anxious, abusive, and uncontrollable.
When we quit lies, we can’t fail to see the contradiction between the blessed spiritual creation of the universe and the cursed material creation. We can’t fail to see that the story of Adam and Eve is a myth, used to reinforce spirituality rather than fester the lies that fail us. In the biblical earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden, the rule was made clear, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”[1] Why believe or repeat a mythical story of evolving knowledge, as if Life and intelligence is separate from Principle, and passed down from dust, to mortals, to eggs and sperms, when the story fails to fulfill itself? A life outside God, Truth, is self-cursed to death. A life inside the material elements of change, terror, threats, death is unscientific. Every experiment made to prove that material elements contain life or intelligence, fails.
[1] Gen. 2:16-17
Q. What is the scientific statement of being?
A. There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in separate minds. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is divine Truth; divisible matter is human error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and we are Spirit’s image and likeness. Therefore, individuals are not things, but ideas of one Mind.
Think on this:
The definition of scientific involves a system or method. I think of it as a linear thought process. It can become unscientific when veering off with thoughts that don’t stay in line with a reachable goal.
Example: Mathematics is a science. To learn how to do math, we first learn numbers, then addition and subtraction. Then calculus. It’s a linear process starting out with simple ideas and leading to more complicated ideas.
To get to the moon, a lot of math is necessary.
If we started out learning numbers and then learned how to cook pancakes, the science of math still exists but the effort to get to the moon became unscientific. We may have pancakes to eat but the more difficult math problems probably won’t get figured out.
Same with the scientific statement of being. “Being” is defined as existence, actual life. Mind, nature. Self.
To get to the goal of staying with scientific being, the thought process doesn’t divert off to believe being is human or mortal. The thought process stays with Being as Spirit, divine Mind and us as spiritual and mindful.
We first learn qualities of God such as wise and loveable. Then we learn how to give forth those qualities. Then we learn about the qualities of patience and humility. The more difficult problems may be learning how to give forth all Godlike qualities during changeable, divisive, or horrible circumstances.
When we think about our self, we know our self as idea, image, of Spirit and intelligent Mind.
The situation becomes unscientific or broken when we treat our self as chaotic or broken. No doubt, things get complicated or broken but they ultimately have no scientific statement of being. But, that which is un-Godlike has no ultimate existence. That which is unspiritual or unwise is not a part of our being.
When we keep in mind, Spirit and our spirituality, Love and its reality, existence is, and we are. Being.
From the Bible, II Kings 5, we read about a little girl who was captured. She became a slave of Naaman’s wife.
Naaman was a captain of the army of Aram. He was a great man, valiant, well-liked and respected, however he had a disease called leprosy.
The little girl told the wife that there was a man in Israel, Elisha, who could heal Naaman.
After a bit of negotiation between leaders, Naaman did go to Elisha, along with his horses and chariots, to be healed. Before he got to Elisha’s house, Elisha sent a servant out to tell Naaman, “Go wash in the river Jordan seven times, and you’ll be healed.”
But Naaman was disgusted and angry. He wanted a big show. He wanted Elisha to come out and call upon God and make Naaman look like a grand hero. Or at least go wash in a nicer river than the Jordan.
But a servant calmed Naaman down and told him the point isn’t doing something great in the world but following humility and health. So, Naaman did wash himself seven times in the Jordan and he was healed.
Scientific being remains in God.
Q. What are spirits and souls?
A. To human belief, they are personalities composed of consciousness and unconsciousness, life and death, truth and error, good and evil. Divine Science reveals how those contrasting terms don’t agree or conform to one another. Truth is indivisible; error is divisible. Truth is limitless; error is limited. Truth is intelligent; error is non-intelligent. Moreover, Truth is real, and error is unreal. This last statement contains the point you will most reluctantly admit, although first and last it is the most important to understand.
The terms souls, spirits, or human beings are as unsustainable as the term gods. Soul or Spirit signifies infinite Being and nothing else. There are not finite souls, spirits, or beings. Soul or Spirit means only one Mind and cannot be rendered in the plural. Mythology and human philosophies have perpetuated the fallacy that intelligence, soul, and life can be divided and confined, and thereby materialized. Idolatry and ritualism are the outcome of all human-made beliefs. The Science of spirituality comes with tool in hand to separate the chaff from the wheat. Science will declare God aright, and Christianity will demonstrate this declaration and its divine Principle, making humankind better physically, morally, and spiritually.
Think about this…On one side of the coin we have individual people. Everyone should have their own rights and life. On the other side of the coin we have humanity, the collection of all individuals. Getting along challenges individuals to act as a whole unit. But of course, we bump into problems because our diversity overwhelms unity.
For other solutions, let’s back up.
If we back up to the sides of the coins, it’s apparent each individual is assigned a different spirit or soul to make up the diversity and thereby make unity a super-challenge.
So, back up farther. Don’t focus on the sides of the coin.
Let’s keep the coin but start thinking with the coin itself. The coin is one Spirit. Now, move to the coins sides. Each individual reflects the one Spirit in their own way, plus as a whole unit.
Diversity isn’t different/separate persons or spirits, but diversity signifies the ever-expansion of one Spirit, the multi-color of one Soul, the ongoing proliferation of beauty.