Article March 23, 1981 Issue

The deepening of human experience

ROSE M. HENNIKER-HEATON

Roaring Fork River rushes on. Sometimes chattering over shallows, sometimes deepening into pools where the force of the current sweeps around big rocks. As I watched, I thought that human experience is much like this. It has its shallows and its depths. How can its superficialities be replaced with genuine delight and sparkle? How can its depths be purified and enriched?

Using the metaphor of a river, Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, gives us an answer in metaphysical terms: "The calm, strong currents of true spirituality, the manifestations of which are health, purity, and self-immolation, must deepen human experience, until the beliefs of material existence are seen to be a bald imposition, and sin, disease, and death give everlasting place to the scientific demonstration of divine Spirit and to God's spiritual, perfect man."^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 99.}

In order to deepen experience the meaning of "true spirituality" must break in on our day-to-day life with the power of a current rushing from its source. It is the deepening that is important. The human mind tolerates superficial cleaning up. It may even find this pleasant. But so often we fail to understand the utter satisfaction and peace resulting from a purification of the depths.

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