Removing Blindfolding Beliefs

THOMAS C. HOLLINGSHEAD

On page 379 of the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mary Baker Eddy tells of an experiment which some students performed upon a criminal in an effort to test the power of imagination in its effect upon the body. Being blindfolded, this man, feeling a stream of warm liquid trickling down his arm and not knowing it was only water, succumbed to his belief that he was bleeding to death. Referring again to this experiment in "Christian Healing" Mrs. Eddy says (p. 19), "They proved that every organ of the system, every function of the body, is governed directly and entirely by mind, else those functions could not have been stopped by mind independently of material conditions." There can be no doubt that had the bandage been removed from the man's eyes and the situation understood, the delusion would have been dispelled, and he would have lived.

Sometimes, when confronting a problem, the student is figuratively in a similar position. Deceived by sense-testimony, which he has accepted as real, he is blinded to the actual facts concerning man and his spiritual perfection as the idea of God, and is accepting as true something that is not spiritually true. As this blindfolding bandage of materiality is removed from his thinking he escapes from the effects of his belief in an illusion, his belief that some unreal condition is actual.

In this process of removing the blinding beliefs of materiality, it is found that study of the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, in connection with the Lesson-Sermons from the Christian Science Quarterly, is most helpful. Through acceptance of the spiritual truth about man and the gain of spiritual understanding, one is enabled to realize the utter falsity of the discord material sense is presenting. No error can seem to have power when it is seen to be an illusion. It might be said that the last chapter of the textbook, entitled "Fruitage," is made up of the experiences of those who had formerly been blinded to man's harmony by the illusions of material sense, but who through study or perusal of this book were enabled to dispel the illusion and to wake to a better sense of man's birthright.

"Any supposed information, coming from the body or from inert matter as if either were intelligent, is an illusion of mortal mind,—one of its dreams." So Mrs. Eddy writes on pages 385 and 386 of the textbook; and she immediately adds the admonition, "Realize that the evidence of the senses is not to be accepted in the case of sickness, any more than it is in the case of sin."

In the fourth chapter of II Kings is related the experience of the Shunammite mother, who, though confronted by the material evidence that her child was dead, was able to answer the prophet's question, "Is it well with the child?" with the declaration which must have come to her thought through spiritual insight, "It is well." And through Elisha's prayer to God the truth of her affirmation was proved to her, and her child restored.

God's creation is seen by Him to be "very good." "Nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it." Mortals, however, suffer so long as they accept illusions as facts, the suffering being evidence of their fear of evil, their belief in evil—the opposite of infinite good—as real.

Our gratitude goes out to God for our Leader's gift to humanity, for this great truth of Christian Science, which is destroying the illusion that man is material, together with all the sorrow, suffering, and disease that so often attends this illusion. Christian Science reveals "the great spiritual fact ... that man is, not shall be, perfect and immortal" (Science and Health, p. 428). The suffering of mortals, as was illustrated in the case of the blindfolded man, is therefore seen to be the effect of their accepting as real conditions which are contrary to God's creation and opposed to His law, and which can be healed through obedience to spiritual law.

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