Article March 27, 1989 Issue

Talking with God

Is communion with God possible? Yes. You might say that it is "built into" the very nature of reality.

Michael P. Watson

I HAVE always loved the Bible accounts of prophets and others who heard the voice of God and talked with Him, and as a pupil in a Christian Science Sunday School I used to wonder how I could do this.

In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy writes, "The Soul-inspired patriarchs heard the voice of Truth, and talked with God as consciously as man talks with man." ^{Science and Health, p. 308.} Elsewhere in the same book she explains the spiritual reality underlying this possibility: "The intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man." ^{Ibid., p. 284.}

Over the years I have come to realize that God is in fact constantly speaking to every one of us. It is the Soul-sense, or kingdom of God, within each of us that responds to this intercommunication. Humanly we may refer to it as spiritual intuition, conscience, moral sense, the ability to differentiate between right and wrong, and so on. Whatever we may choose to call it, whatever individual way we may express it, and even if it appears to be dormant, the kingdom of God is within us, irrespective of race, nationality, social position, color, or religious belief. As Science and Health states: "This kingdom of God 'is within you,'—is within reach of man's consciousness here, and the spiritual idea reveals it. In divine Science, man possesses this recognition of harmony consciously in proportion to his understanding of God." ^{Ibid., p. 576.}