Precepts and parables concerning the good news of heaven's nearness were often on the Master's lips as he brought home the fact that peace, abundance, and immortality are to be found within one's true consciousness. He said (Luke 17:21), "The kingdom of God is within you." His message has never lost its freshness, its vitality, its rousing inference that not outward circumstances but inward purification is the requirement for entrance into the heaven of Spirit, the consciousness of Love.

Christ Jesus showed plainly that a heavenly state of mind is linked with obedience to the Father's will. Paul put it in these words (Rom. 14: 17): "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." But with all their teaching, mortals have generally clung stubbornly to the delusion that one's harmony depends upon material circumstances and the behavior of others and that death alone can usher one into God's heaven.

Christian Science makes heaven a present possibility by showing its students how to obey the will of God through the demonstration of spiritual facts. In Science, God exists as one infinite, all-inclusive Mind; and His creation—man and the universe—is His idea, fully subservient to the Mind whose expression it is. This is the order of heaven, the truth of being, and one who lives the truth not only brings heaven to earth, but actually leaves earth for heaven—becomes conscious of the atmosphere and activity of Spirit here and now. In God's kingdom, man is spiritual. He knows only the light and harmony of divine good, and there is no kingdom but God's, no false sense to proclaim disorder, sickness, disaster, insubordination to Truth—mortality.

Christ Jesus knew himself as God's Son, the Christ-man, and he saw to it that this real man dominated his sense of existence even when he went about his earthly tasks. He maintained his consciousness of life in Spirit, expressed the divine character unfailingly, and in this way proved that he never left heaven. He was speaking of the Christly self when he said (John 3:13), "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven."

Mary Baker Eddy says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 30), "The great Way-shower illustrated Life unconfined, uncontaminated, untrammelled, by matter." We experience the freedom of real being in the measure that we realize the illusiveness of the physical senses and awake to touch the heavenly substance of pure good—good uncontaminated by material desire or consideration.

A student of Christian Science was working diligently to know herself better as God's incorporeal image, controlled by the Father, and heaven was gradually opening to her as a life of increasing vigor and usefulness. One day she received a sudden reward for her efforts. She had been carefully identifying herself as the real man, the individual consciousness which eternally expresses its Principle in the natural expansion of good. She saw that, as this man, she had never been born, but coexisted with Spirit, the Principle whose expression she was, saw that she had existed forever.

Then she declared that because she, as idea, had never entered matter, she was infinitely removed from it, had no connection with flesh, but was incorporeal, spiritual. Her third step was to realize that because she actually coexisted with Spirit and was unrelated to matter, she was not subject to death, would never die, and possessed no element that could deteriorate or decay.

The sudden influx of spiritual light and joy that followed these realizations was unforgettable. It illumined her consciousness for days, releasing energies of love and understanding that she had never known before. Her mental processes became spontaneous and active. There was no groping for wisdom or for expression, no dullness of memory, no absence of affection, no uncomfortable consciousness of body. A better comprehension of divine Science began to unfold rapidly, and healing power was evinced. The fact that heaven is a spiritual state of Mind, untrammeled by matter and hereditary limitations, and that it is within reach of our present possibilities became very clear. She found that heaven is indeed within consciousness and that its attainment depends upon a simple change of sense from matter to Spirit.

The knowledge that heaven must be found within prevents us from blaming our troubles on human personalities and material conditions apparently external to thought. Christian Science emphasizes the fact that material concepts are reflex images of thought, that they represent a mode of thinking, and that it is false thought rather than inflexible mortal circumstances, that needs changing. Mrs. Eddy touches on this in "The First church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" where she writes on page 167, "The suppositional world within us separates us from the spiritual world, which is apart from matter, and unites us to one another."

When we turn to the Father as the Master taught us to do and pray that His kingdom come, be understood as present, we shall find the true concept of every individual, circumstance, and activity. Then we shall stop defending our undestroyed materialism and shall seek to change our conceptions from the unreal to the real. We shall not be numbered among the violent, who would take God's kingdom by force, by means of material expedients, but shall seek to demonstrate the immortal elements of that consciousness which constitutes the real man: joy, integrity, love, justice, intelligence, and understanding; divine ideas; right activities. Then we shall have proved the Master's words in the full measure of their scientific meaning: "The kingdom of God is within you."

Helen Wood Bauman