In Christian Science it is the state of mind and not the state of matter that is of importance. If the consciousness of good, the outcome of the divine Mind, God, is made manifest as the consciousness of the individual, matter, so called, may well be left to its own inability to interfere with that consciousness. By the consciousness of good, matter is understood to be without power or entity; and as the understanding is, so is experience.

The primary importance of one's state of mind is often emphasized by Mary Baker Eddy, Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science. For instance, in her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," she states (p. 161): "Holy inspiration has created states of mind which have been able to nullify the action of the flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the Babylonian furnace; while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous combustion." Clearly, it was the state of mind of those three youths that ensured their immunity from harm, and the state of the furnace was of no consequence, except to provide the opportunity for proof that matter, in whatever seeming state of fury, can make no impression upon the right state of consciousness. Making no impression, it is relegated to impotence, nothingness, and ceases even to seem to appear in any form of limitation.

Naturally the uninitiated in spiritual understanding and demonstration will ask how this is done. "What is the right state of mind, and how can it be acquired, and, once acquired, how can it be maintained?" The answer is that one must cultivate genuine intelligence, which truly loves God. God is the one infinite Mind. He is the Mind of every individual, every varied manifestation of Life. The right state of Mind is the state of that one and only Mind. The appearance of any other state of mind at variance with the state of the one Mind, God, is illusion, mirage, myth.

In true Mind is every lovely creature or creation, that is, every lovely idea that infinite Mind can conceive. Nothing unlovely, nothing conducive to friction, frustration, weakness, or incompetence, is ever in Mind. In Mind, then, are peaceful activity and the power of unchangeable peace to exclude suggestions of anything unlike peace. Since man reflects the consciousness of Mind, man's state of mind is forever assured of good, forever unruffled by any suggestion that it is subject to the touch of evil.

That is the correct state of mind. It is right, or righteous. Any other seeming state of mind is not right, that is, is unrighteous. Hence the requirement upon the so-called human mind to claim that which is wholly right in order to exclude the touch of that which is not right; in other words, that which is incorrect, defined as error, evil, unrighteousness. The fulfillment of that requirement is achieved humanly by devoting thought to knowing, that is, loving perfect Mind by placing the affections upon infinite Principle, the source of all right thought. Achieved, it produces a result. The prophet Isaiah confirms it. "And the work of righteousness," he says (Isa. 32:17), "shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever."

While there is but one Mind and one state of mind, there seems to be, humanly considered, progress in attaining the true state. Each individual working in Christian Science is daily recognizing more of the spiritual ideas in his consciousness and using them as his normal sense of reality. Conversely, he is refusing more and more to be deceived into believing that mortal concepts or notions belong to his consciousness and therefore is refusing to use them. Under this procedure he is letting the latter disappear as the mirage or illusion they are. Thus there seem to be varying and improving states of mind until all error disappears and individual human consciousness yields wholly to right ideas. Then the label "human" is dropped, for the divine nature of individual consciousness is apparent.

Simultaneous with the improving states of the so-called human mind there is improving evidence of one's dominion and power over evil. In that fact is the certainty of individual immortality. If there is evidence that each individual will ultimately recognize his right state of mind, that evidence supports the understanding that his state of mind is now right. The fact is intact. Recognition of it needs to be speeded.

And the method is by cultivating love for the perfect Mind, seeing the desirability of proving the perfect to be one's own Mind. It is the method of looking facts in the face, of perceiving that everything good is possible and available to the Mind that knows enough to have it. Divine Mind knows all things. It creates and includes all things, all ideas and their identities. Divine Mind is the Mind of man. Every individual in his true selfhood is man. Every individual in his true selfhood, therefore, knows God as his Mind. And in the warmth of appreciation felt for this fact the illusions of sense melt away from the so-called human being.

The state of mind of the individual is recognized as a state of divine Mind. And as Mind is, so is the manifestation; as the state of mind of the individual is, so is his spiritual power. Whatever bears witness to the presence of divine Mind, that divine Mind is aware of. Consequently the individual who knows God as his Mind is aware of a perfect universe, in no way subject to description in terms applicable to the supposititious material universe, which mortal sense, dreaming of itself, seems to see. No sickness, no sorrow, no mortality.

"And I saw," says John (Rev. 21:1), "a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away." Endowed with spiritual understanding, conferred by the Comforter, which is Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy pursues still further the explanation of heaven and gives mankind a clear statement of its mental and spiritual nature (Science and Health, p. 291): "Heaven is not a locality, but a divine state of Mind in which all the manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of 'the mind of the Lord,' as the Scripture says."

George Channing