Someone has a premonition about a certain occurrence. It happens. Another may sense that a particular event has befallen a friend thousands of miles away. It turns out to be so. Someone's future predicted by the stars apparently comes about that way. Are we to assume there are mysterious and inexplicable forces at work and that some people have an unexplainable talent for insight into these?

To understand odd phenomena it is imperative to have a grasp of the subjective nature of experience. The divine Mind, God, creates—knows, as it were—only measureless, spiritual good. Supposititious mortal thought, on the other hand, believes in the negative and finite and experiences these, along with various peculiar phenomena, beyond the ken of the natural sciences and called psychic phenomena or magic.

There are many phenomena, Christian Science shows, which belong wholly to the realm of mortal belief. Mary Baker Eddy notes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "Mortal mind sees what it believes as certainly as it believes what it sees. It feels, hears, and sees its own thoughts." ^{Science and Health, p. 86;} And, "Mortal mind produces table-tipping as certainly as table-setting, and believes that this wonder emanates from spirits and electricity." ^{ibid., p. 80;} Such fundamental statements as these are the door to solid, basic answers to the kind of question specified in the opening paragraph. Essentially, telepathy, astrology, telekinesis—their theory and practice—evidence the beliefs and actions of mortal mind.

Christian Science helps us understand all phenomena, including events and conditions associated with spiritualism and the psychic in general. Materially mental happenings that to human thought may seem highly puzzling can be analyzed from a metaphysical basis and placed in the context of mortal belief. Mrs. Eddy says, for instance, in connection with the capacity to know what's going on in another mentality: "We think of an absent friend as easily as we do of one present. It is no more difficult to read the absent mind than it is to read the present." ^{ibid., p. 82;} This statement, and its implications, takes the mystery out of what would otherwise seem a strange ability.

While revealing the actions and methods of human thought, Christian Science does not approve or support attempts to utilize such knowledge for anything but healing. Its practice is wholly ethical. And it strongly insists on the absolute fact that there is only one Mind, the divine consciousness.

This consciousness includes no mortal beliefs, no sense of physical personalities subject to weird events, no admission that man is a corporeality containing a brain-mind. All that ever actually takes place is the divine Mind expressing itself and constituting, through this expression, man and the entire universe. God, fathomless Mind, includes and comprehends all real phenomena. None is odd, worrying, mysterious, or chilling—quite the reverse. All express divine intelligence and Love. The integrity and practice of Christian Science are rooted in these facts.

Someone who has lost a close relative or friend may long to get in touch with that individual. He may feel drawn to seek out a person he believes has the skill to be a medium between the living and those called dead. Such skills, even should we believe them genuine, offer no comfort or peace of mind that is both lasting and valid. Resting on the premise of mortality, of matter-living and matter-dying, they have no spiritual basis.

The spiritually scientific truth is that man is divine Life's immortal idea. This idea is inseparable from Life, never departs from Life, never leaves the realm in which all true ideas exist. Divine Life does not create a material world, people it with mortals living for a few decades and not knowing where they came from or where they are going, translate them into spirits, and remove them to a remote and inaccessible place.

Soul is God. Soul is One. Soul—though having endless manifestation—is never fractionated into souls. There are no actual entities named "souls" planted into physicalities to give them their identity and to be punished or rewarded according to the lifelong actions of that physical personality. Just as minds are misconceptions of the one Mind, God, so are souls misconceptions of the one Soul, the all-good Deity.

Should we ever feel baffled by strange phenomena or feel drawn to psychic methods and experiences, we should explore and accept the Christianly metaphysical bases of being. These are the foundation for demonstrating—as Christ Jesus did—intelligence, satisfaction, health, and for finding durable identity and substance. "God giveth to a man that is good in his sight wisdom, and knowledge, and joy," ^{Eccl. 2:26.} the Bible says.

The realm of mortal belief includes both things that can be understood and things that seem to elude humanity's comprehension. But immortal Mind, the divine consciousness, includes no mysteries or ignorance and is man's only consciousness. Divine consciousness has perfect self-understanding. Mortal thought, which is never valid mentality or consciousness, may seem to be often baffled about its own nature and about events in its own illusive domain. But the beginning and the end of this supposed intelligence is nonknowing and nonbeing. God is divine Life, Soul, Spirit, Mind, and is All.

Geoffrey J. Barratt