Editorial June 19, 1978 Issue

Waking up from self-deception

Geoffrey J. Barratt

Human beings seem to themselves to think with a personal mind, intelligent to a greater or lesser extent, sometimes more a master than a servant, and capable of self-delusion. Christian Science elucidates the fact that there is only one Mind and that all true consciousness is divine. Our progressive understanding of this point wakes us up from self-deception. This, in turn, improves our health and relationships—our life in general.

It may never have struck us very forcibly that we are quite regularly self-deceived. Christian Science alerts us to the fact—and it's a profound one—that if we think of ourselves as physical, finite, mortal, then we are self-deluded. But in those moments in which we are vividly conscious that God is present and All, and the creator of man, we are truly not deceived. No one digests the implications of such spiritual truths in a day. But if we are to heal and to be healed, to be useful and satisfied, then we need to be aware of the infinite gulf between being self-fooled, on the one hand, and being truly awake on the other.

Moses, at one time in the process of his spiritual education, saw himself as having a leprous hand. The affliction was removed when he put his hand in his breast and then withdrew it.^{ See Ex. 4:6, 7 ;} Moses, thinking he had a very unpleasant disease, was momentarily self-mesmerized. But he didn't stay in that state. The momentum of his growing spiritual understanding carried him forward beyond the mesmerism.

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