Editorial December 10, 1949 Issue

SUBORDINATING THE FLESHLY PERCEPTIONS

Helen Wood Bauman

Every Christian Scientist seeks to forward the full revelation of the spiritual senses, for through them men become conscious of heaven's presence, of the realm of Spirit, whose glories are now but dimly seen. Not through physical senses, but through such enduring faculties as understanding, discernment, and intuition one perceives his true self as spiritually perfect and discovers his fellow beings in their real character as the expression of infinite Love. In her book "Unity of Good" Mary Baker Eddy explains how one may bring his God-made selfhood to light. Here she writes (p. 46), "The scientific man and his Maker are here; and you would be none other than this man, if you would subordinate the fleshly perceptions to the spiritual sense and source of being."

To subordinate the fleshly perceptions and thus reject the lawless suggestions of the physical senses, one needs to comprehend the false nature of those senses and to understand that they are no part of God's man. Science fully explains them as modes of mortal consciousness which project as material images the thoughts of the unreal carnal mind. The world within them has only the stability of delusion and must fade before the evidence of Spirit's immutable senses. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy likens the formations which we call matter to those of the night dream where she says (p. 71): "Close your eyes, and you may dream that you see a flower,—that you touch and smell it. Thus you learn that the flower is a product of the so-called mind, a formation, of thought rather than of matter." And she carries the explanation further by showing that landscapes and people are images evolved and held by so-called mortal mind.

To form one's conclusions of being from the five senses and their impressions is to tread the quicksands of disaster, for the instruments of a dream-mind are as false as the mind that creates them and as incapable of presenting reality or truth as they are of perceiving it.

Enjoy 1 free Sentinel article or audio program each month, including content from 1898 to today.

Send a comment to the editors
NEXT IN THIS ISSUE
Article
Notices
December 10, 1949
Contents

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit