FROM THE EDITORS May 5, 2008 Issue

ALL FIVE SENSES—SPIRITUAL AND PERMANENT

Editor

THERE SEEMS TO BE a notable increase these days in various assaults on people's senses. Often this involves sight and hearing. Who hasn't at times felt besieged by graphic visual images of battle or crime, either in a TV news report or movie theater, or on a neighborhood street? Nor do you have to live in a major city anymore to feel awash in the unwanted sounds that define noise pollution.

What about taste, smell, and touch? While these senses are not as often the fodder of evening news and talk shows, the assaults on them are no less aggressive. And Christian Science concludes they're no less deserving of attention; the importance of not ignoring any assault on the senses involves a welfare far greater than just that of physical comfort. In medical reports especially, the three "junior senses" are increasingly depicted as vulnerable to decline and impairment.

The biological life-model says the five senses convey information to the brain, and that the brain responds with orders to act or react, like or dislike, flee or fight. Christian Science presents a radically different view of life and sense activity, a view based on the premise that life and mentality are entirely spiritual—the outcome of a loving and divine Life, an infinite Mind. Human life gains harmony and wholeness as God is understood as life's sole source and substance. This Science also reveals that all real communication emanates from the divine Mind to its ideas, and not from nerve to personal mind. Also, that we're all capable of enjoying Spirit's pure, sound, astute, invulnerable senses as our own, by reflection.

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