Editorial August 3, 1968 Issue

The Control of Unconscious Thought

Helen Wood Bauman

Ordinarily the control of the body is classified as conscious and unconscious, voluntary and involuntary. Many of its functions such as heartbeats or food assimilation continue to act whether we are aware of them or not. Even when we sleep, they go on and on. The individual takes these activities for granted and pays little attention to them unless something goes wrong with them. Then he feels helpless, for he believes he has no conscious control of them.

But the mind does control the body fully, as we can readily see when fear, for instance, either paralyzes its action or stimulates it abnormally. Recognizing this mental control, we should go farther and realize that if a negative state of mind such as fear has a harmful effect on the body, a harmonious or fearless state of mind must have the opposite effect, the effect of health.

Christian Science agrees with this sequence, but it equips one to go even beyond the attaining of a human state of health, which at its best is precarious. This Science destroys disease on the basis of the allness of God, or Love, to whom sickness is unknown, rather than on a basis of personal control. Consequently, Christian Science succeeds in healing when some physical disorder strikes aggressively and claims to develop itself in the body regardless of conscious efforts to stop it. For one thing, Science distinguishes between the carnal, or mortal, mind, which produces and controls the fleshly body, and the divine Mind, which makes man its incorporeal idea and eternally governs his actions.

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