From the Platform of Christian Science
and the definitions of "mortal
mind."
West
(-19- Soul and
Spirit one)
XIX. Soul and Spirit being one, God and Soul are one, and this one never
included in a limited mind or a limited body. Spirit is eternal, divine.
Nothing but Spirit, Soul, can evolve Life, for Spirit is more than all
else. Because Soul is immortal, it does not exist in mortality. Soul must
be incorporeal to be Spirit, for Spirit is not finite. Only by losing the
false sense of Soul can we gain the eternal unfolding of Life as
immortality brought to light.
East
(-20- The one
divine Mind)
XX. Mind is the divine Principle, Love, and can produce nothing unlike the
eternal Father-Mother, God. Reality is spiritual, harmonious, immutable,
immortal, divine, eternal. Nothing unspiritual can be real, harmonious, or
eternal. Sin, sickness, and mortality are the suppositional antipodes of
Spirit, and must be contradictions of reality.
mortal mind
idolatry;
Recapitulation Questions
Lesson topics, and the definition of Adam
West
Question 19. - Is materiality the
concomitant of spirituality,
and is material sense a necessary preliminary
to the understanding and expression of Spirit?
ADAM = An inverted image of Spirit.
(Error only ephemeral)
Answer. - If error is necessary to define or to reveal
Truth, the answer is yes; but not otherwise. Material sense
is an absurd phrase, for matter has no sensation. Science declares that
Mind, not matter, sees, hears, feels, speaks. Whatever contradicts this
statement is the false sense, which ever betrays mortals into sickness,
sin, and death. If the unimportant and evil appear, only soon to disappear
because of their uselessness or their iniquity, then these ephemeral views
of error ought to be obliterated by Truth. Why malign Christian Science
for instructing mortals how to make sin, disease, and death appear more
and more unreal?
(Scientific translations)
Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not to thwart the spiritual
ultimate of all things, but come naturally into Spirit through better
health and morals and as the result of spiritual growth. Not death, but
the understanding of Life, makes man immortal. The belief that life can be
in matter or soul in body, and that man springs from dust or from an egg,
is the result of the mortal error which Christ, or Truth, destroys by
fulfilling the spiritual law of being, in which man is perfect, even as
the "Father which is in heaven is perfect." If thought yields
its dominion to other powers, it cannot outline on the body its own
beautiful images, but it effaces them and delineates foreign agents,
called disease and sin.
(Material beliefs)
The heathen gods of mythology controlled war and agriculture as much as
nerves control sensation or muscles measure strength. To say that strength
is in matter, is like saying that the power is in the lever. The notion of
any life or intelligence in matter is without foundation in fact, and you
can have no faith in falsehood when you have learned falsehood's true
nature.
(Sense versus Soul)
Suppose one accident happens to the eye, another to the ear, and so on,
until every corporeal sense is quenched. What is man's remedy? To die,
that he may regain these senses? Even then he must gain spiritual
understanding and spiritual sense in order to possess immortal
consciousness. Earth's preparatory school must be improved to the utmost.
In reality man never dies. The belief that he dies will not establish his
scientific harmony. Death is not the result of Truth but of error, and one
error will not correct another.
(Death an error)
Jesus proved by the prints of the nails, that his body was the same
immediately after death as before. If death restores sight, sound, and
strength to man, then death is not an enemy but a better friend than Life.
Alas for the blindness of belief, which makes harmony conditional upon
death and matter, and yet supposes Mind unable to produce harmony! So long
as this error of belief remains, mortals will continue mortal in belief
and subject to chance and change.
(Permanent sensibility)
Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are eternal. They cannot
be lost. Their reality and immortality are in Spirit and understanding,
not in matter, - hence their permanence. If this were not so, man would be
speedily annihilated. If the five corporeal senses were the medium through
which to understand God, then palsy, blindness, and deafness would place
man in a terrible situation, where he would be like those "having no
hope, and without God in the world;" but as a matter of fact, these
calamities often drive mortals to seek and to find a higher sense of
happiness and existence.
(Exercise of Mind faculties)
Life is deathless. Life is the origin and ultimate of man, never
attainable through death, but gained by walking in the pathway of Truth
both before and after that which is called death. There is more
Christianity in seeing and hearing spiritually than materially. There is
more Science in the perpetual exercise of the Mind-faculties than in their
loss. Lost they cannot be, while Mind remains. The apprehension of this
gave sight to the blind and hearing to the deaf centuries ago, and it will
repeat the wonder.
East
-
Mortals and
Immortals
-
Soul and Body
Question 20. - You speak of belief.
Who or what is it that believes?
ADAM = The image and likeness of what God has not created,
namely, matter, sin, sickness, and death.
ADAM = The opposer of Truth, termed error.
(Understanding versus belief)
Answer. - Spirit is
all-knowing; this precludes the need of believing. Matter cannot believe,
and Mind understands. The body cannot believe. The believer and belief are
one and are mortal. Christian evidence is founded on Science or
demonstrable Truth, flowing from immortal Mind, and there is in reality no
such thing as mortal mind. Mere belief is blindness
without Principle from which to explain the reason of its hope. The belief
that life is sentient and intelligent matter is erroneous.
The Apostle James said, "Show me thy faith without thy works, and I
will show thee my faith by my works." The understanding that Life is
God, Spirit, lengthens our days by strengthening our trust in the
deathless reality of Life, its almightiness and immortality.
(Confirmation by healing)
This faith relies upon an understood Principle. This Principle makes whole
the diseased, and brings out the enduring and harmonious phases of things.
The result of our teachings is their sufficient confirmation. When, on the
strength of these instructions, you are able to banish a severe malady,
the cure shows that you understand this teaching, and therefore you
receive the blessing of Truth.
(Belief and firm trust)
The Hebrew and Greek words often translated belief differ
somewhat in meaning from that conveyed by the English verb believe;
they have more the significance of faith, understanding, trust, constancy,
firmness. Hence the Scriptures often appear in our common version to
approve and endorse belief, when they mean to enforce the necessity of
understanding.
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