TRUE BEING IS UNCONFINED

Present-day technological successes in the breaking down of limitations imposed by matter hint humanity's instinctive realization that true being is unconfined. One can see that the mortal sense of life is completely confined to matter. However swiftly men travel about or communicate with each other, they are still chained to material bodies, means, methods, environment. And thus they will continue to be bound as long as they believe that existence is material.

But Christian Science reveals Life that knows no material limitations. This Life is God; and man, Life's expressed idea, dwells in the unrestricted consciousness of spiritual infinity. As the real man comes to light through such manifested Godlike qualities as love, truthfulness, intelligence, purity, and justice, he will be seen to be existing entirely apart from matter and never conditioned by it. Divine Science, not natural science, reveals this truth. Mary Baker Eddy says in "Pulpit and Press" (p. 4 ), "Who lives in good, lives also in God,— lives in all Life, through all space." And she says further: "Wait patiently on illimitable Love, the lord and giver of Life. Reflect this Life, and with it cometh the full power of being."

Christ Jesus proved man's true existence in the one Life. He dispelled the mortal sense of life as the dream that it is, the illusive realm of material sensations, which vanish at the touch of Christliness. Jesus' knowledge of man as God's spiritual son, unfettered by matter, released many a sufferer from the congested, cramped, painful conditions of the flesh that grew out of the delusion that man lives in matter and is dependent upon it for health and action and even for existence. Jesus was speaking with profoundly scientific accuracy when he said (John 6:63 ), "The flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life."

The Master did more than relieve sufferers and sinners from the immediate effects of believing that life is confined to material bodies. His individual proofs of the one Life, which makes all real conditions for existence, prophesied the capacities of life in God unrestricted by material objects. Jesus moved himself instantly from one place to another, changed water into wine, and fed multitudes with the little food at hand. Finally, in his ascension above matter, he dropped the material concept of body for his true identity in immortal Life.

In "Miscellaneous Writings," Mrs. Eddy says of the Saviour (p. 30 ), "The great Way-shower illustrated Life unconfined, uncontaminated, untrammeled, by matter." One receives great benefit simply by knowing that his present confinement to matter is delusive and that nothing but human belief is holding him in subjection to a physical body and a universe of material objects. To remove thought from the flesh as the basis of one's life, to see individual consciousness as resting upon and emanating from divine Life, brings healing, because this helps one to break the mesmerism of a localized belief of life.

It often happens that the impression of an expanding sense of life and mind comes to one when first the mesmerism of mind in matter is broken by the power of Christian Science. A young woman had suffered for years from head pains, desperate fatigue, a depleted interest in life, and the consequent inability to express the liveliness and freedom natural to youth.

She was directed to a Christian Science practitioner, who awakened her to the presence of God, Spirit, as living Truth. Relief came quickly like the snap of a taut rope, and her natural energies and interest in life began to return in force. She was soon restored to a life of usefulness and spontaneous mental activity. She was able to move about freely, to travel with pleasure, and to work diligently in her profession. She had received a glimpse of "Life unconfined," the Life which is man's native habitat. For in Life there is no belief that man is a mortal, restricted by the objects of a material environment, ranging from flesh to the celestial bodies in vast, cosmic space.

Since this healing, she has come to realize a little of the purpose of Jesus' ministry and of his demand for Christliness, upon which release from matter depends. This release can never be gained through material theories or through abstract acknowledgment of spiritual truths. The Scientist must live a life of godliness, an existence which exemplifies "Life unconfined," if he is to benefit by the truths which the teachings of Christ Jesus and Christian Science unfold. One's thought is spiritualized only as one understands the illusive nature of matter and actually counts it as nothing, as one evaluates spiritual activity as true substance and devotes his life to demonstrating his real nature in God's likeness.

In "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany," Mrs. Eddy says (p. 110 ), "Hidden electrical forces annihilating time and space, wireless telegraphy, navigation of the air; in fact, all the et cetera of mortal mind pressing to the front, remind me of my early dreams of flying in airy space, buoyant with liberty and the luxury of thought let loose, rising higher and forever higher in the boundless blue." She goes on to say, "The night thought should show us that even mortals can mount higher in the altitude of being."

Mounting ever higher in the understanding that God, not inert matter, makes man and gives him sinless being, mankind will eventually prove what the Way-shower illustrated—"Life unconfined, uncontaminated, untrammelled, by matter."