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The Bulletin Board is for gratitude for Christian Science and the Church, as well as timely excerpts from the Bible, the works of Mrs. Eddy, and the early workers that help and encourage. We are very grateful for all posts that conform to these guidelines, but will edit or remove anything that the Practitioners feel is not in complete accord with pure Christian Science or in any way disrespectful of it.
We also ask that you keep your postings as concise as possible. If you quote the Bible, please use The King James Version, as this is what Mrs. Eddy used. Thank you!
Thank you so much for everything that is taught here at this wonderful church!
O yes, this book was so inspiring and healing, I read it in 1990 around that date, long time ago. The Society in San José was folding, and the books were free to take. One of the reason I have persisted in Christian Science, in spite of all the efforts of the devil. It makes me so sad to read those powerful stories, to find Christian Science now almost unknown, weak and irrelevant. Well, we soldier on, and God will abide His time. For my friends here reading this, I will fly back to Costa Rica next monday october 9, to live with my family there. No more winter for me!
The only thing that burns in hell is the part of you that won’t let go of your life: your memories, your attachments. They burn them all away, but they’re not punishing you, they’re freeing your soul. If you’re frightened of dying and you’re holding on, you’ll see devils tearing your life away. If you’ve made your peace, then the devils are really angels freeing you from the earth.
The eye with which I see God is the same with which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye is one eye, and one sight, and one knowledge, and one love.
Meister Eckhart.
He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it.
St. Matthew 10:39.
What I like about some of the writings of poets and mystics is that they are more Scientific than the mostly Scholastic Christianity of the present world, more free of matter-beliefs and of a wrong concept of a superior being. What hit home with me lately was a sentence in my notebook from the 1875 edition of S&H.
The sensations of the material senses…. in no way proceed from matter.
God is Creator of consciusness, soul, thoughts, only. The limitless Spirit without beginning or end cannot produce a creation made of matter. Divine Mind’s thoughts and ideas constitute the only substance. There is no objective universe or world. Reality is subjective, and as an image and likeness it depends on our receptivity and our ability to reflect the divine substance, the mind of Christ, Life, Truth and Love.
I am reading Kilpatrick’s Being is consciousness. He writes that our work is to know God, and not to handle error. To understand the ever-presence so that any opposite sense cannot suggest itself as a possibility. If it does not exist in reality, we do not have to overcome it. It is just a state of un-Mind, the absence of Mind. Be allied to God, let God have His way. All else is just Animal Magnetism, or hypnotism. I rejoice in his teaching.
If God does not think it, can it be real? Myrtle Smith was a good old warrior, and her talks are very practical and full of God’s love.
So right! Erroneous thoughts, “Any information, coming from the body….is an illusion of mortal mind. Mind is the master of the corporeal senses…The corporeal senses are the only source of evil or error.”
The universe of Mind is basically consciousness and Love only. Pray without ceasing.
I agree that Mind did not think or make something that can harm, but if you believe you cannot get sick, you must keep your thoughts strongly in the realm of Truth and Love, and not allow the general human beliefs to sneak into your consciousness. Also it is important not to upset people around you for this reason, to avoid controversy one must remember that the vaccins can neither harm nor benefit in Science.
Matter becomes something when we grant power, activity and intelligence to where there is none.
“What is termed matter is unknown to Spirit, …. Matter is a human concept.” Page 469, S&H.
Say: Oh Father, I have all eternity to enjoy You.
I love it.
‘What thou needest to know is that mortal mind has translated the body and its functions into matter, and immortal Mind gives back the original with its functions preserved and harmonious, but not as not in matter, but as and of Mind.’ (Calvin Frye)
From the intro of the Red Book, by Richard Oakes.
Water has three ways we can experience it, vapour, liquid, and solid. We tend to think of Spirit as vapour, and of the solid things as matter. What a joy it is to understand that Mind, -the thoughts of His heart-, is all, even if it looks like matter, or flesh.
I share this not to show off how advanced I am, because I am not, but I hope it does some good.
The problem for me is that the experience of God’s truth is subjective. And even when I can see all around me sickness, discords and death, I must try to experience only that which God experiences and makes us experience as his likeness and reflection. And not to be “lured forth, … pressed into the whirl…..dragged through the uncleanness, the pain ….” (Blue Book, p. 216.) I prayed and this came to me, God asking me: Can you be a place where I can dwell? Act, be, function? Work in progress. Lead me in thy truth, and teach me, for thou art the God of my salvation. (Psalm 25.)
Asserting What Is True
by Herbert W. Eustace
My thinking stays on one side and one side only, the side of God. when you affirm that which is true, although human reasoning and sight may say it is not true at all, you will
bring it to pass. Why? Because it is already the fact.
if you go on accepting the arguments of malicious mind, thinking that they are your own thought, you are powerless to cope with them. Assert the power of Mind, this Mind that is God, this Mind that is your Mind,
That which is real, that which is true, is not in the process of coming; it is already here. That applies not only to health, but to the fulfillment of all good, regardless of the need or the occasion. The answer is here, present every moment. Reject with insistence the perpetual lying insistence of evil. You are not afraid to use the will of God. As the man of God, the voice of God, you declare, “Here I stand, and evil has no power.”
When thought is lost in the eminence of Mind, healing is taking place. Not healing of anything physical, but the human, insolent mortal mind is attenuated enough to allow the reality of Mind to shine through. Get lost!
Error, not Truth, produces all the suffering in earth. 386. Misunderstanding, misconception, misbelief, misjudgement, falsehood, delusion, absurdity, produces all the suffering on earth. Matter must be an absurdity in a mental universe created by Mind, the divine, infinite Consciousness.
God’s thoughts are perfect and eternal, are substance and Life. The glories of limitless, incorporeal Life and Love.
What to material sense seems substance, becomes nothingness, as the sense-dream vanishes and reality appears.
…..infinite Mind, the sum of all substance.
I heard a few things about sex on the Roundtable, and just want to make a few comments. In my experience the craving for physical feelings can be connected to loneliness, sadness, having grown up without a mother and without love. When I was 25 years of age, I had a very strong need to love and be loved, and when I read about chastity in the chapter on marriage in Science and Health, I very much disagreed. Actually, since I was on a ship sailing to South America, I threw the book overboard. Now, about 52 years and four children later, I can appreciate better what Mrs. Eddy intended. I just heard it also on tv from a few retired catholic missionaries, they would have liked to marry and have a family. Chastity was not really their choice, after a few decades.
Another thing I would like to mention is that although when I went through class instruction, I did not get to know God. I feel that this was the difference with pupils who went through class with Mary Baker Eddy, they came to really know God. Christian Science can be an awful lot of writing and reading. But the purpose of it all is this oneness with God.
Absorbed in material selfhood we discern and reflect but faintly the substance of Life or Mind.
The history of error is a dream-narrative. The dream has no reality, no intelligence, no mind; therefore the dreamer and dream are one, for neither is true nor real.
Yes, we constantly react to error, and then try to fix it, while the remedy consists of knowing Truth only.
Self-renunciation of all that constitutes a so-called material man, (nonexistent) and the acknowledgment and achievement of his spiritual identity as the child of God, is Science that opens the very flood-gates of heaven; whence good flows into every avenue of being, cleansing mortals of all uncleanness, destroying all suffering, and demonstrating the true image and likeness. There is no other way under heaven whereby we can be saved, and man be clothed with might, majesty, and immortality.
From Mis. p. 185 I believe. Lately I have been praying with the understanding that my body and the world are in my consciousness, and not the other way around. I am conscious not because of a brain. In a divinely Mental universe, our reflected thinking can change things, and have dominion. All is the divine Consciousness, even Love, and its infinite manifestation. We will always have a body, Mrs. Eddy said, so I must not identify my true self with this body, or with any other body I may experience in the vast eternity, but need to learn how to identify better with my God and Father, the only true consciousness.
Absolute oneness with Mind is our only way of escape, most likely from Bicknell Young? There is no other way …. and it is Christ’s way. The whole mass of evil and hate and animal magnetism fell upon Jesus, and he overcame and so destroyed it.
Just sharing.
Yes, it is wonderful that we can read all the good stuff from the early workers! for free! Also “The Bookmark” sells those books. Dr. John Todd, CSB, wrote that the belief of material, personal sense is the only devil there is. He was taught by Adam Dickey. Mrs. Eddy, I believe, wrote about “the sense of self, and the self of sense.” Love, the divine Mind, must be our self is we reflect Him/Her. “In Thy presence, there is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures evermore.” I’ve found that all the reading and studying on its own does not necessarily lead us to God, it is God’s nearness, Love’s presence and Allness that was needed.
Thank you for your post, it feels encouraging to know that I am not alone in facing challenges. As I get older, death is becoming more prominent all around me, as people fall away one by one. Then I can know that each human being is the eternal embodiment or personification of Soul, and not an old sick physical body. “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. …. the Saviour saw God’s likeness, ….” Science and Health, page 477. The more death tries to puts its face into my face, the more I know it is an illusion, it is nothing. It is not about improving our thoughts, but getting rid of them, and only allowing God’s thoughts. People will scoff, but sooner and probably later, they will learn that they are not dead. Keep up the good work, Jeremy, the greatness of the Plainfield Church is found in all the richness of the material to be had on-line.
I think it was Mrs. Eddy who remarked that old age is the destruction of that which never was?
Yes, as one grows…older? when one acquieres more human experience, past memories can flow into one’s consciousness, and many of them tend to be disturbing in a lesser or greater way. Especially when you try to sleep, or in early morning. I try to realize that all the negatives and horrors of personal and collective history are not part of the infinitude of Mind. They may have had their place in the evolution of the human, mortal mind out of itself. The sinless joy, the perfect harmony and immortality of Life, Truth, of the divine Mind and Soul, constitutes the only veritable man, whose being is spiritual. Those flood-tides of Love only can do it, and will. Thank you.
Human thought never projected the least portion of true being.
…..the human mind never produced a real tone nor sent forth a positive sound. S&H 126.
Excommunicate the so-called human mind from the world, in order that the divine Mind may come in and govern this so-called physical universe. MBE.
When we think what God thinks, we wil find God taking place, I read somewhere, so we do not leave it passively to God, but try to think divine thoughts, to see his face, right there where mortal mind proyects its fears and ugliness.
Eternal Mind the Potter is, and thought the eternal clay; Unhallowed thought He could not plan, Love’s work and Love must fit. Such a wonderful Hymn.
The whole horror and evil of this so-called world, is but ….. yes, what is it?
This phrase; lead us not into temptation, seems to be a grammatical erroneous translation from the original Greek, and it does not make sense. Let us not be lead into temptation, let us not fall into temptation, seems to be the better translation, from some research I did on the subject.
Truth will not and cannot lead us away from Itself. Some years ago I had this vision of God’s allness, and I saw that Jesus’work on the cross was to overcome and destroy this temptation of sin, sickness and death, this temptation of something besides All. The foundation of evil is laid on a belief in something besides God. 92.
I still struggle with all that the senses try to convince me of, when I visit my grandsons and they pass me the flu they strongly believe in, and with the world the senses and the news try to convince me of. I have tried long and hard to share this wonderful Science to friends and relatives, but to no avail that I am aware of. I takes the presence of God to stand alone, but this Forum and Church might be just the help I need.
this phrase
It is so good to hear from you, thank you.
We are on our way to something ever better and closer to God, where Love is All-in-all, and there is nothing else. Thank you all for the responses, I have no one to talk to about the metaphysics of divine Science, and mortal mind is all around and aggressive. Human love is foretaste of eternity.
Wait patiently for divine Love to move upon the water of mortal mind, … 454.
Mortals and immortals, what does God know about this? I saw this mortal mind constantly projecting its own mirage-world or creation of discords, sin, disease and death, war and sufferings untold. When I saw a room full of people receiving chemo therapy, poison poured into their veins, my soul cried out, O my God, how far have we strayed! From You, source of all goodness and blessing! The divine Mind could ask: where is there something wrong? Is it here? That is impossible, because I am here, omnipresent Good. Is it over there? No way, I am there too. I am everywhere mortal mind is not. Mortal mind is the omni-absence of Omnipresence. God’s thoughts should be omnipresent in my mind, creating in me a kingdom of harmony and health. When we think as God thinks, we find God taking place. It all takes place in our inner being, or thinking and feeling. Omnipresence is omnipotence, Truth and Love, All-in-all. For of Mind, and through Mind, and to Mind, is All. (Romans 11:36.) Thank God we have not to struggle with matter, or with a reality. We just must allow Mind to be omnipresent as us. find yourself as Mind.
The plane of divine Mind where thought operates as Omnipresence.
From Martha Wilcox I learned that there is no place where evil, hate, war, disease, plagues and all sin and error is going on. There is no such place. Do not allow it in your consciousness. In Mind the only place is where Love reigns. There is no other place.
It is so easy to get upset about “the world.” There is no such place.
All only knows All. God knows not it could be possible not to know Him. The temptation is to dream up a reality besides All.
Jesus nailed that temptation to the cross.