Article December 26, 1988 Issue

To live at "zero g"

Is it possible to overcome the downward pull of material living? To rise into the freedom of Spirit?

Joy Dell

"As spaceflights of longer and longer duration became possible, something unexpected was found. ... zero gravity extended the lifespan. By 10 or 20 percent. If you lived in zero g, your body would spend less energy fighting the force of gravity, your cells would oxidize more slowly, and you would live longer."^{Contact (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 281 .}

I set down Carl Sagan's entertaining science fiction novel and thought, "Wouldn't it be great if mankind could live at 'zero g' now?" But then I realized that floating around in space or simply living ten years longer because of a physiological effect is not really what mankind needs. Rather, we need to break free of earthly beliefs—the materiality that defines life as corporeal, limited, and separated from God. This is the kind of earthward gravitation we can leave behind now through spiritual progress and regeneration.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, an explorer of spiritual frontiers for mankind and a deep student of the Bible, writes, "To live so as to keep humanconsciousness in constant relation with the divine, the spiritual, and the eternal, is to individualize infinite power; and this is Christian Science."^{The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 160.} Surely holding consciousness in relation with the divine would give mankind the spiritual buoyancy and power necessary to break away from the earthward pull of material beliefs. But how are we to do it?