Article August 28, 1920 Issue

Like a Dream

G. HENRY BRUMELL

The remark is often heard, "Oh, it is all like a dream now that it is over." This may apply equally to a pleasant or unpleasant experience. The speaker may be an out and out materialist, yet has voiced a metaphysical truth. Once the student gets a grasp of the teachings of Christian Science and hence sees the spiritual in place of materiality,—in other words, the real instead of the unreal,—then all the seeming trials and troubles of whatever magnitude or however apparently crushing, are seen not as the reality of being, but as part of "the waking dream of mortal existence," of which Mrs. Eddy says on page 250 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "A mortal may be weary or pained, enjoy or suffer, according to the dream he entertains in sleep. When that dream vanishes, the mortal finds himself experiencing none of these dream-sensations. To the observer, the body lies listless, undisturbed, and sensationless, and the mind seems absent. Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking dream of mortal existence than in the sleeping dream?"

Disasters, calamities, upheavals, and such like, whether political, social, of business or of private life, which before seemed so real and insurmountable, are now recognized at their true value, as a mortal dream, out of which we are gradually awakening as the light of Christian Science breaks in, dispelling the thick mists of mortal belief. As the truth dawns on us that God, good, is Spirit, and that His creation, including man made in His image and likeness, is not only spiritual but perfect; that He could not bring into existence, could not bring forth or cause anything unlike Himself; that He created everything that was created, and "behold, it was very good,"—it at once becomes obvious that anything which is not good is outside God's creation, in fact has never been created. This being so, the truth about the dream is clearly seen, that it is only a false, mortal belief, unknown and unrecognized by Spirit, God. God never created evil. He is, as Habakkuk states, "of purer eyes than to behold evil;" besides God is Love, omnipresent, filling all space. Thus we begin to grasp the glorious truth that all evil is unreal because untrue. In "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 21) Mrs. Eddy declares: "It is well to know, dear reader, that our material, mortal history is but the record of dreams, not of man's real existence, and the dream has no place in the Science of being. It is 'as a tale that is told,' and 'as the shadow when it declineth.'"

The sleeping dream may seem very real whilst it lasts, and so may seem this dream of mortal and material life, but when we know it is only a poor counterfeit of man's true existence and understand the truth that it is impossible for the real man to experience anything unlike God, good, then all these false beliefs of discord will disappear. "If ye continue in my word ... ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," said Christ Jesus,—free from the seeming reality of all that is unlike God. Once we know the truth about anything, false beliefs on the subject are destroyed, and it must follow that the same fact is equally applicable to discord of every description. When we know that harmony is the reality, we at the same time know that inharmony,—discord, evil,—is unreal; and if unreal why allow it any place? Cast it out, destroy it by knowing the truth about it. When we awake from a dream, be it a pleasant or unpleasant one, we know it was but a dream; in the same way when we awake to recognize mortal life, the false belief in intelligent matter, to be nothing but a dream, then our seeming cares, troubles, and worries fade away into their native nothingness.

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