Does this title sound like double-talk? It may at first glance, but let's examine it.

What we really are saying is that the process of extending our horizons, seeing life whole and in depth, must begin within thought. Christian Science insists that it must start with a subjective encounter with absolute Truth—an encounter with God, the one infinite Mind, through scientific prayer. This activity, then, leads us step by step out of material limitations, gradually unfolding a better sense of health and happiness, increased capacities, showing the possibilities in store for us as we learn the truth of our real selfhood.

Many are hungry for a deeper subjectivity, an illumined inner life that leads thought beyond and above the superficiality of materialism. Some try drugs to attain it. Others attempt through trancelike meditation to break out beyond the limited perception of the senses. But the genuine experience can be had only as the true nature of God and man is understood in Christian Science, and consciously realized and affirmed through a right sense of prayer or meditation. Mrs. Eddy indicates how we are to reach out to an expanded sense of the Science of Life. She writes, "He advances most in divine Science who meditates most on infinite spiritual substance and intelligence." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 309;}

From the Biblically implied premise that God is Mind and man is His image, Christian Science reasons that man must be divine Mind's idea, the subjective expression of the activity of Mind. The real man's consciousness, then, is Mind itself. God is the Ego, or I am, of man and all creation—the infinite substance and intelligence of the universe.

As we strive to blend with the divine nature through the goodness and unselfishness of our thoughts and acts, these great metaphysical facts no longer seem abstract. We begin to feel and know ourselves to be in God, in Mind. Instead of blindly reaching out to Him as something distant and apart, we find Him in the deep subjectivity of spiritual realization. We get glimpses of God as the living Principle of our being, the All-in-all, and of ourselves as forever at one with Him in substance, Life, and intelligence. Mrs. Eddy tells us, "When mortal man blends his thoughts of existence with the spiritual and works only as God works, he will no longer grope in the dark and cling to earth because he has not tasted heaven." ^{Science and Health, p. 263;}

Heaven, the consciousness of spiritual peace and joy, can never be tasted through the medium of drugs. We cannot deepen and harmonize human experience through inert matter. Drugs are material and seem to act only because of an almost universal faith in their potency. Therefore any seeming drug-induced thought-expansion is only the hypnotic effect of general human belief. It is a sensual experience devoid of true inspiration.

A "trip," far from heightening the finer sensibilities, actually mires one more deeply in grossness, clouding the wider vision of reality that one is seeking. Mrs. Eddy lays it on the line. She writes, "A sensual thought, like an atom of dust thrown into the face of spiritual immensity, is dense blindness instead of a scientific eternal consciousness of creation." ^{p. 263;}

It was the mission of Christ Jesus to reveal to mankind the depths of spiritual consciousness and prove how this deeper sense of reality leads to a truly expanded life—to health, happiness, abundance, and, above all, wider opportunities for service to others.

The Pharisees failed to grasp the Master's message because they were hung up on external observances, on the rigid ritual and dietary laws of Judaism. As far as we know, they made no attempt to encounter Truth through the effect of chemicals or inert meditation, but, even so, materialistic religion was devastating to their spiritual sense. The inner kingdom of spiritual consciousness was right at hand, but they were blind to it.

It was this spiritual ignorance that led the Pharisees to question Jesus as to when the kingdom of God would come, as though it were a geographically located place. The Master, being vividly aware of the subjective nature of all reality, replied, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." ^{Luke 17:20, 21;}

Jesus' approach to God was direct and purely spiritual. He needed no form of matter or ritualistic worship to find the divine presence in the depths of purified thought. He said, "I and my Father are one," ^{John 10:30.} and this certain sense of oneness with divine Love so expanded his dominion over material conditions that he became the most effective spiritual healer of all time.

Like the Master, we must go deeply inward and find something of our true identity, the Christ-man he so perfectly exemplified. The reward will be a true expansion of thought and demonstration.

Alan A. Aylwin