Mary Baker Eddy (1821 - 1910)
"Prayer cannot change the Science of being,
but it tends to bring us into harmony with it.
Goodness attains the demonstration of Truth.
A request that God will save us is not all that is required.
The mere habit of pleading with the divine Mind,
as one pleads with a human being,
perpetuates the belief in God as humanly circumscribed,
an error which impedes spiritual growth.
God is Love.
Can we ask Him to be more?
God is intelligence.
Can we inform the infinite Mind of anything He does not already comprehend?"
BEYOND THE BOOK
I recently began studying the writings of Mary Baker Eddy - founder of Christian Science, and I am fascinated by her rather unique interpretations of scripture and her observations about the nature of God and reality. Her thoughts were controversial in her day and deviate considerably with the teachings and doctrines of the Orthodox Christian Church. Her efforts to find a means of spiritual healing, led her to the discovery, development and foundation of the Christian Science Movement in the late 1870's.
Although her writings mostly pertained, and were limited to, the interpretation and application of spiritual principles found in the Christian Bible - her works revealed an obvious experience of non-dual reality that transcended all religious affiliation.
CAN YOU SEE THE REAL ME??
It seems that Mary Baker Eddy and I would agree that it is perhaps wiser to see that the primary purpose of scripture is not to try and convince us of an alternative reality that we must struggle to believe, but rather, reveal to us, through moral stories of legend and history, the nature of our own real existence as being at one with the source of all life. But, as is common with other forms of human communication, we often mistake the messenger for the author, or confuse the bearer of the message with its source. Thus we assume that the speaker is the consciousness that is communicating through the speaker. So people begin to focus on the personality of the messenger and miss the intent of the message. I think that this is what Mary Baker Eddy struggled against - the principles of Christianity that make Jesus separate and above us and therefore strip his teachings of their real-practical power. By declaring them as miraculous, or as "coming from God" - we distance ourselves from the reality that they reveal to our deepest thoughts and hearts. We make the fruits of his teachings unattainable because He is above us and not like us. Thus we divide ourselves from the transformed reality that already is. Jesus declared that the Kingdom was among us - it was not a place we had to die to get to - healing and wholeness were not in the distant future beyond death - but here and now.
We hold the same divisive thinking about our own consciousness. We reveal, by our use of speech, the confused identities that we bear. For example, we speak of "listening to the radio" - when in fact, we are, in reality, listening to a broadcast that is being transmitted through the radio. We speak of ourselves as doing or being, as if we have separate existence - when in fact our bodies are in reality, flesh and blood vehicles for the one consciousness that is manifesting through us. The idea that our consciousness belongs to us is the same as believing that the voice heard on the radio belongs to the device itself.
Therefore, the wholeness, the healing, the fulness of being, that we seek is already here - we just don't know it or hold it in our understanding.
Mary Baker Eddy taught that spiritual healing of diseases was possible because we are not what we think we are. We confuse our bodies with our selves and thus imprison ourselves in a false, limited view of our nature.
Some Christian Science practitioners have gotten seriously maligned for their misguided denial of medical treatment for their children and other adults. These cases are the extremist fringes and this is not the general practice of Christian Science - their belief in spiritual healing might better be classified as holistic healing - the balanced practice of both spiritual and medicinal health.
For the most part, Mary Baker Eddy inspired a lot of good people - she emphasized the integrated nature of life - de-emphasizing the material side of human life and re-emphasizing the human side of the divine life of Jesus.
"Give up the belief that mind is, even temporarily, compressed within the skull, and you will quickly become more manly or womanly. You will understand yourself and your Maker better than before"
- Mary Baker Eddy.
"Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal"
- Mary Baker Eddy
2 comments:
Loved reading this post after doing a search for Non Dual Christian Science your Blogger, was first on the list. Many independent followers of MBEddy that left the movement, were aware of the 'precious volume' 1st edition of Science and Health by Mary Glover, before she married Dr. Eddy. on line here
http://www.mbeinstitute.org/SAHI/1875toc.htm
I have profound respect for MBE but do not agree with her on many points that are the metaphysical dual approach, and not 100% Absolute (Non -dual) from which view, is how she said CS should be understood. There are independent CS's who do follow her instructions, but the Mother Church, which she didn't want to found, but out of necessity of the times, it became a religion mainly for practical purposes. You may like the site for Alfred Aiken's work, a former CS practitioner, who had his own revelation www.hillierpress.com
Enjoyed reading your post. It's a very fair description of Christian Science. You might enjoy reading the scholar of early Christianity, Elaine Pagels, of Princeton University. She is not a Christian Scientist, nor does she write about it, but her work on the Nag Hammadi Library, a collection of early Christian writings dating from the early 2nd century, is fascinating for anyone who has studied Eddy's writings. Her book,Beyond Belief, is a commentary on The Gospel of Thomas, a work in which Jesus says: "The Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth and men do not see it." This is the underlying premise of CS, that the Kingdom of Heaven is present. Her work shows that this was part of Christian teaching early on and was lost.
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