The carnal mind is proposing a bizarre shortcut to joy and spiritual enlightenment these days, suggesting that with hallucinogenic drugs a person can bypass all demands upon himself to prove his relationship to the living God, Mind. Marihuana, a throwback to primitive ignorance, looms as a social phenomenon today. The more intense drug, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), has led the gaudy parade of a press-styled "love generation."

Since belief in matter underlies all limitation, swallowing matter in search of freedom is a perversion. Mindless matter can never confer instant spiritual enlightenment, new revelations of selfhood, or individual freedom and universal love. Only the recognition of the all-inclusiveness of Mind, Spirit, can free an individual and give him full dominion.

An enigmatical world confronts mankind. Is it any wonder that a questioning generation seeks new answers? Let us examine those aspects of the world that thoughtful young people rebel against. They are against the crass materialism in modern society. Practices passed down from generation to generation within the limited material sense of life are up for investigation. Disease, divorce, pressure paces, hypocrisy, materialism, mass murder, superficial religion, and the contemporary threat of total destruction of the human race are some of the social phenomena involved. For the individual, chasing rainbows through eight or nine decades of ephemeral joys and near disasters to gain the grave is a questionable pattern, to say the least. These images make one cry out for better concepts. Where are they to be found? In a better understanding of divine Mind, of God.

But divine Mind is not a mass of nerve tissue beneath a skull bone, nor is man's individuality trapped within a body. Mrs. Eddy states: "Divine Mind is the only cause or Principle of existence. Cause does not exist in matter, in mortal mind, or in physical forms."Science and Health, p. 262; Man is a spiritual idea, and he reflects infinite Mind. In this respect an unmistakable distinction must be made between mortal mind (based on the mythological team of matter and mind) and the immortal Mind which is God. The latter is pure Spirit and knows no matter or evil. This Mind creates the incorporeal idea man. And this real man, who is the spiritual image and likeness of God, represents by reflection the Mind which makes him.

Think of it! The only Mind—the Mind that is God—knows no matter or evil. If a person gets this straight, he can distinguish quickly between the real and the unreal. He is ready to start on the spiritually mental journey that leads into that true sense of existence recommended by Christ Jesus when he said, "I am the way."John 14:6; He learns that ideas proceed from God and are wholly good. Illusions he rejects because they are unreal or misleading appearances, false perceptions or misconceptions. He finds that matter is only a mental concept, that the images of the waking dreamworld are no more real than those entertained by the illusory ego of the whirling night dream.

The infinite Mind, divine Love, however, is pouring forth all reality. The smallest act of loving-kindness proceeds directly from Mind. In the realization of Love's allness unexplored areas of thought are illuminated, and in this light new solutions to war, lack, and social dilemmas can appear. Brotherhood—the jewel sought by many young people of today—is most perfectly realized as character is transformed through spiritualized thinking. Christian self-discipline, subordinate to the truth of the one God, Love, as outlined in the Sermon on the Mount and the Ten Commandments of the Bible, is the way to principled world brotherhood.

All creativity belongs to Mind alone. Mind, Spirit, comprehends and expresses the infinite dynamics of all form, color, outline, and beauty. Since newness and constant variety are inherent in infinity, new dimensions can always be brought to all the arts. By contrast, hallucinogenic drugs, attempting to force mortal consciousness one step further into unreality through hallucinations, deal in artificial escapades of mortal mind—dreams within dreams. The trick of evil is to claim for these drugs alignment with the most marvelous good: beauty, spiritual love, discovery, expanding new dimensions. But all these, existing as realities entirely separate from the drugs, are available through Mind alone.

The false idol of LSD is tottering in a kingdom divided against itself. Doctors warn against use of LSD because of the possible damage to the human chromosomes. Spiritually disillusioned and wary because of medical findings, a number of its early advocates are losing their zeal. Today civilization hangs a question mark over marihuana. Tomorrow, if history serves us well, materia medica will announce newly discovered dangers to the physical and mental health of pot smokers. Marihuana will be rapidly abandoned as intelligent people find this transitory escape a cheat.

The dense ignorance of the hypnotized, psychedelic world cannot deflect honest thought from its true need to turn to the wholly spiritual and good God. Man does not stand on the outside of the universe, aghast at discord, ready to turn moral idiot in the face of the false claim that Truth can be contained in a synthetic drug. Man lives as an expression of the divine consciousness, God, and includes the universe as a spiritually mental idea over which he has full dominion.

The excursion into infinite Mind promises no mere dull adventure for explorers but a safe sojourn. The great peace that always accompanies uprightness and the tender presence of a God who is Love go with the individual who is demonstrating the spiritual facts of being. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."I Cor.2:9. These words of the Bible point the way for the journey in Christian Science that leads out of the bondage of material sense into total spiritual freedom.

This is the great adventure endorsed by Jesus Christ. Not only is it a safe one; it is salvation itself.