Article March 2, 1981 Issue

Communicating

MURRAY LAWRENCE JAYNE

Another flight instructor and I sat at the approach end of an airport runway, watching the first solo flights of two students of ours. Apprehension can take over at such times, and as his student began his approach, I asked my friend what he was thinking. He was a fundamentalist. He said he was praying that God would let nothing go wrong.

When my student began his approach, I was asked the same question. I replied that I was praying for a clearer understanding of man as in truth God's spiritual idea, reflecting divine intelligence; and that I was expecting this unerring intelligence to guide the student to do the right thing. Each student performed well, and each instructor, I think, felt vindicated in his method of prayer. My friend apparently felt that praying is asking God to intercede directly in the affairs of mortals, while I regard it mainly as a preparation of thought enabling us to hear and respond to God's spiritual communication and direction.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes: "According to Christian Science, the only real senses of man are spiritual, emanating from divine Mind. Thought passes from God to man, but neither sensation nor report goes from material body to Mind. The intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man."^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 284.} Since real communication is from God, Spirit, to man, His spiritual idea, the way to improve one's lot is to realize one is actually that idea. As spiritual idea, man is formed and maintained by the creator of ideas, divine Mind. We are what Mind knows we are, and not the mortals we think we are. Right reasoning—that is, reasoning from the basis that true being is spiritual—awakens us to hear Mind's spiritual communication and practical guidance. God is never conscious of wrong, but we can identify an error on the basis of the truths He reveals.