Article January 13, 1945 Issue

Things Are Thoughts

WALTER W. KANTACK

Have you ever pondered the nature of your individual experience? The things it includes—the new hat, or overcoat, or automobile, a friend or an enemy; how have these entered your experience, mentally or materially? Without consciousness can anything ever be to you or me? Quiet and honest reflection will reveal that the answer to the last question must be "No." Such an admission should lead one to see that individual experience is altogether mental, although often claiming to be merely physical and material.

"An image of mortal thought, reflected on the retina, is all that the eye beholds. Matter cannot see, feel, hear, taste, nor smell." In these two brief sentences, quoted from the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 479), Mary Baker Eddy presents the answer to the perplexing enigma of human experience. She thus discloses all so-called physical phenomena to be mortally mental and not objectively material. No one could rationally contend that matter—that which is inert and nonintelligent—can see, feel, hear, taste, or smell. These sensations could only be experienced by consciousness, or mentality. Mentality can only experience thought, never things. So, then, that which perceives as well as that which is perceived is mental, never something called matter, apart from thought.

It is on the retina of so-called mortal mind, or human consciousness, that all physical sense impressions are, in belief, registered. No mere physical, material structure or organism could possess any sensation or awareness whatsoever. It thus becomes evident that things are thoughts, and are cognizable only by consciousness and as thoughts objectified, it is for this reason that all inharmonies in individual or collective experience must be seen as the effects, or expressions, of beliefs or thoughts which are not in harmony with or expressive of Truth. The acceptance of this fact prepares one to take the next step in finding the true thoughts, which alone will emancipate human consciousness from the thralldom of false believing. Jesus said (John 8:32), "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." To discover that things are thoughts, and not detached material or physical objects, is a great step towards individual freedom from ignorance, fear, and mortality in general.

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