Article May 25, 1968 Issue

How Much Do I Weigh?

EDGAR F. WRIGHT

Every day for many years the writer had repeated "the scientific statement of being" by Mrs. Eddy. It begins, "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter." ^{Science and Health, p. 468;} Every day he had also passed and repassed a white enameled portable scale on the bathroom floor. From time to time he had weighed himself. Then one day he suddenly saw the bathroom scale in a new light. It now presented a mute but dramatic challenge that refused to be ignored.

The writer asked himself how could he pray, "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter," and at the same time use the scale to weigh matter. Wasn't he making a reality of the very thing he was denying? Was he being consistent? Was he being honest? No. The two practices were at extreme variance. He picked up the scale and removed it. But he then realized that there was something more to be done. A mental correction had to be made—an erasure from consciousness of the need for the scale and of the many false beliefs about the real, spiritual man inherent in its use. He had to make a renewed, firmer acknowledgment of "the scientific statement of being" and of the broad scope of metaphysical reasoning it comprehends.

The scale had stood as a measure of the effect of food on the body. When the dial moved beyond a certain figure, the writer felt he had better go easy on pie, cake, and ice cream. When the dial swung back to a lower figure, he could again eat richer foods. Just fancy that small scale being the arbiter of what foods might be eaten —the dictator of health and even of life! More thought brought the realization that he must turn radically from the false claims of mortal, material thinking that food could add or subtract weight to the fact in Christian Science that substance is spiritual.

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