Article January 16, 1943 Issue

"Awake thou that sleepest"

HELEN CARLYLE MITCHELL

On page 250 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Mortal existence is a dream; mortal existence has no real entity, but saith 'It is I.' Spirit is the Ego which never dreams, but understands all things; which never errs, and is ever conscious; which never believes, but knows; which is never born and never dies. Spiritual man is the likeness of this Ego. Man is not God, but like a ray of light which comes from the sun, man the outcome of God, reflects God."

To understand the unreality of a dream, one must be awake. But, one may say, how did the dream of mortal existence start? If God is All-in-all, there can be nothing apart from Him and His creation. Where did the dream come from? The fact is that we can only suppose a dream to begin, and in the mortal dream the supposition is that there is something apart from Spirit, God, and spiritual man. Logically, this cannot be true.

Matter is an externalization of mortal mind, which is itself unreal. Mortal mind claims intelligence of its own, claims the counterfeit of the spiritual idea to be mortal man, with a mind of his own with which to think and reason independently of God. This counterfeit man implies a counterfeit universe, governed by physical laws of time, weather, and so on. The fact that mortal mind, the basis of matter, is a lie, is borne out by the unreliability and impermanence of material so-called laws and processes.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

Seeing What Constitutes Man