Christian Science Re-Explored: A Challenge to Original Thinking

By Margaret Laird C.S.B.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 16, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453580738

Margaret Laird C.S.B.

Betty Albee has been a student of metaphysics since childhood when her mother, a Christian Science Practitioner, guided her early study. Her serious study of Scientific Metaphysics began as a teenager when she first read the revolutionary writings of Margaret Laird from The Margaret Laird Foundation, now the Institute of Metaphysical Science. Bettys book, Mind is the Athlete, An Exploration of Consciousness and Cause, presents Scientific Metaphysics in a new format. She is an active practitioner and leader in the search for and dissemination of definitive, meaningful and useful avenues for Self-discovering. Currently she serves as President of the Institute of Metaphysical Science.

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OTHER WRITINGS BY MARGARET LAIRD

All Is One

Radical Reliance on Truth

The Fourth Dimension of Spirit

Government Is Self-Government

The Personal Concept

Reciprocal Being

The Laird Letter

CHRISTIAN

SCIENCE

RE-EXPLORED

A CHALLENGE TO ORIGINAL THINKING

THIRD EDITION WITH STUDY INDEX

BY MARGARET LAIRD, C.S.B.

THE MARGARET LAIRD FOUNDATION

NOW THE INSTITUTE OF METAPHYSICAL SCIENCE, LA JOLLA, CA

TO DON SYLVESTER MILBRIGHT, who came into my

world through a mutual understanding of Reciprocal Being,

and remains because his consistent living of the Science of Self, Mind-I-Us, makes him an invaluable friend. He never says, "I

do not like what I see because what I see is my wonderful

God-Self." His ability to communicate with a fellow worker

who had no concept of metaphysics, gave rise to the following:

"The only way there can be a man to

communicate with is to accept the

spiritual fact of my self."

Copyright © 2010 by Institute Of Metaphysical Science

Library of Congress Control Number:   2009908792

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-4415-6854-0

ISBN:   Softcover   978-1-4415-6853-3

ISBN:   Ebook   978-1-4535-8073-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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MARGARET LAIRD

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

FOREWORD

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE RE-EXPLORED

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

AFTERWORD

INTRODUCTION

The world is a kind of spiritual kindergarten where bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.

—Edwin Arlington Robinson

GLADLY I accept the privilege of the opportunity to write this Introduction, considering it to be another historic event, honoring the glorious identity throughout my secular and sacred living. Feeling sure that my proper opinion of my self is my surest guide to healthful living, I continually discipline my mind with my medical and spiritual truth: It is divine to be human and it is human to overlook it. My ignoring the integrity of my individuality, including my taking it for granted, regularly diminishes my devotion to my caring for my self according to my true worth.

I always derive great pleasure from the economy in recog- nizing real unity in apparent diversity. Thus, I have gained satisfaction from tracing the earliest signs (James Mackenzie) of my troubled mind to the point of my seeming to subject my self to my own words, forgetting that they are so many names for elements of my own being. I am now most grateful to my self that I can revere every phase of my medical and religious experience as my very own mental development. J. B. S. Haldane observes this choice integration, Insofar as it places all phe- nomena on the same emotional level, the scientific point of view may be called the God’s-eye view.

Margaret Laird feels the same principle underlying both her medical and religious orientation, namely, due realization of the strength derivable from honoring the absolute inviola- bility of her individual life. Repudiating neither her medical world nor her church world she attains conscious apprecia- tion for her self identity, which intentionally includes all of her being. Recognizing the painful consequence of trying to dis- sociate her mind into physical and mental, or spiritual and material, or human and divine, she observes her conscious mind’s love subsumes her all. Thus she identifies mind and body: Thoughtful medical practitioners today are beginning to recognize that the body is not a mechanism exist- ing apart from Soul, but is the actual identity of Soul.

While practicing hypnosis, Jean Martin Charcot (1825- 1893) made a most consequential discovery, namely, the organicity of every mental event. He found each idea, or thought, or feeling to be a specific incarnate task force performing unique vital functioning. Prior to this discovery, it was customary for the physician to classify human behavior as either organic or functional, the functional being hardly considered to be within his realm as a scientist. Mrs. Laird’s writing helpfully clarifies organic behavior as constituted entirely of its own subjective being. Discovering the seemingly functional to be really organic is difficult for every physician but it leads to his dispensing with makeshift dichotomies such as psychic-and-somatic, psychiatric-and-neurological, organic- and-functional. Although I gratefully acknowledge the potential value of this historical contribution of my Charcot, nevertheless I can scarcely overestimate the extent to which I continue unconsciously to indulge innumerable degrees of suggestion. Invariably, I can trace such indulgence to my ignoring the truth of my absolute subjectivity. Walt Whitman defined infidel: One who is unfaithful to life. Mrs. Laird’s loving self- observation illustrates how her strong belief in the power of her mind grows, how her faithful devotion to self insight is disci- pline in conscious self control.

The idea of giving birth to my self capable of enjoying my divinity, and then requiring my self to continue living with a constantly diminishing estimate of my true worth, is properly painful. A method for feeling the infallible goodness in my pain (including all unhappiness) is indispensable for my pre- serving my appreciation for my godliness. Consciously feeling my way to life experience compatible with my sensing all of my personal identity as divine, is ideal self fulfillment. Strict ac- counting of it amounts to a science of self, a science of theol- ogy.

I take pleasure in observing that my Margaret Laird’s method of steadfast self devotion to owning her soul as her own, and her all as her soul, is describable as scientific theology. Her mind consciously minds its self. For her soul’s good, her unfailing spiritual cheer, she relies wholly upon her belief in her own providential truth, standing ever free and clear of illusional foreign entanglements. Her so-called organiza- tion, school, movement, government, world, and the like, contribute to her life-affirming feeling of self possession. She feels within her unification of all such living. For godful Margaret Laird, healing is her wonderful life process itself, and not an exception to its constant perfection.

—John M. Dorsey, M.D.

FOREWORD

Science is absolute; it is neither behind the point of perfection, nor advancing toward it; it is at this point and must be practiced therefrom.[1]

—Mary Baker Eddy

As human thought changes from one stage to another of con- scious pain and painlessness, sorrow and joy,—from fear to hope and from faith to understanding,—the visible manifesta- tion will at last be man governed by Soul, not by material sense. The mariner will have dominion over the atmosphere and the great deep, over the fish of the sea and the fowls of the air. The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars,—he will look out from them upon the universe; and the florist will find his flower before its seed.[2]

—Mary Baker Eddy

Infinity is ceaseless unfoldment. Seeing that there is nothing conceivable and nothing really conceived outside of Infinity, God must be forever unfolding Himself, and because of being infinite, He never repeats Himself. ‘Behold I make all things new,’ is being fulfilled daily and hourly in our understanding and practice. Old things are indeed passed away. Therefore, do not think backwards or even forwards, but now and infinitely.

—Bicknell Young

A day will come when beings who are now latent in our thoughts and hidden in our loins shall stand upon this earth as one stands upon a footstool, and shall laugh and reach out their hands amid the stars.

—H. G. Wells

The power to think has never been explained materially. The capacity to think, or that condition which we call consciousness, including the reason faculty, can be explained only in Christian Science wherein Mind is recognized as the natural, self-existent Principle of existence. Our conscious ability to think proves this, for mental processes would be impossible without the basic fact of self-existent Intelligence or Mind. Mary Baker Eddy used the word Mind to define God. The God who is Mind, the natural Intelligence of the universe, is not distant from His own manifestation or reflection. Thoughts which reveal Mind are Mind self-revealed. Thoughts which appear to be our own thoughts are literally the very presence and power of God because they are God.

—Bicknell Young

Mind must have conscious identity to be Mind. This is the Reason for man and is the Principle by which he lives, moves, breathes. Originality, wit, humor, versatility, spontaneity, joy are characteristics of Mind. They are Mind Itself and not mere qualities. The substance of Mind is Spirit, and Spirit is Love and Love is Infinity—omnipresent perfection. ‘Being is infinity, freedom, harmony and boundless bliss.’ This is the Science and the Reason we say, ‘Be and by being heal the sick.’

—Bicknell Young

The American physician, living for himself a Jeffersonian self- government, enables himself to grow aware of the health importance of Luke’s ‘Physician heal thyself.’ Self-awareness and its associated mental power, self-control, constitute all of the art of every physician studying and practicing his science of medicine. There can be no force whatever in an abstract principle except what it derives from being a living idea. . . . His habit of using his mind as his own was his greatest health asset.

—John M. Dorsey, M.D.

INTUITIONS of Reality, evolving or growing out of Reason or Principle and experienced self-consciously (existentially) in daily living, are recorded in this book. Nothing exists or seems to exist without Reason or Principle. The book is not a text- book nor will it supply the reader with recipes for the solution of the problems that arise daily. Problems do not arise as prob- lems, but as opportunities for witnessing the operation of Princi- ple in human affairs. Diagnosis of the human situation must be made by Science, Mind, unconcerned with correction or problem solving. What we have been conditioned to call problems are catalysts Love supplies, if they are needed, for accelerating the discovery of our divinity.

Most of us see ourselves expanding in the negative. It is this backward Christian movement toward the Source, against the stream of infinite self-fulfillment instead of the Science movement forward as the Source, that makes problems the language of Love. Christianity presents the divinity of humanity, the Christ, as a savior, as the human becoming, developing his divinity, overcoming evil by good. Christian Science presents the divinity of humanity as humanity living (being) its divinity self-consciously, Mindfully, now.

This book deals with Christian Science as spiritual transac- tional psychology. It is what the title says it is: Christian Science Re-explored. For me, the exploring began with the healing of my mother in Christian Science over sixty years ago. The re- exploring, the ideas, the thinking that is writing this book, began many years later when I awakened to the meaning of Christian Science as defined by Mary Baker Eddy: "Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold, and not about what the material senses behold.[3]

This is a statement of the subjective existence of all objectivity. Christian Science is not that which discerns the spiritual fact about what the material senses behold. Science is Soul, in which feeling, sensing, makes one of feel-er and felt, see-er and seen, hear-er and heard. What the material senses behold is the spiritual fact beholding itself in all form, substance, color. Mrs. Eddy calls material sense an absurd phrase.[4]

This awakening completely revolutionized my point of view. A natural outcome of my re-explorations was my severance from the church organization. Church exists constitutionally as the structure of Truth and Love, in and as the consciousness of each individual. This fact lived self-consciously, evolves a con- tinuously changing institution for its identity. Mrs. Eddy pre- dicts this in her book, Retrospection and Introspection, page 45: 5-8. Organization, by its very nature, is the attempt to confine Truth to a concept. While Truth is the existence of the concept, it is also its non-existence.

The fundamental idea of which this book is a record is: One infinite Life-Principle, one Mind, one I or Ego. Whether the conscious infinitude of existence is called God or man is of no consequence—Infinity, the Good, is what is being. The ideas of which I speak in words are the God-idea which all are being, consciously or unconsciously. I discover as ideas (spiritual facts) come into clearer focus that each individuation of Mind is involved with every other. As conscious identity or Mind, each lives his other as himself. The murdering, cheating, vandalism, robbing, that I see in my world, I am living as my self. The world I walk through, walks through me. I throw the rocks which I see coming from the boy in the street. Since everything I live is self-living for my Good, I am able to walk through the fires and the floods without being burned and drowned, dodge the rocks without being injured. Consciousness cannot be divided into inner and outer since it is infinite.

Mind and its infinite manifestation is what is happening. Each individuation of Mind is Mind being its own self-conscious identity. The ability to think, to reason, is proof of this fact. Thinking would be impossible without Mind or Intelligence, the natural self-existent Principle or Reason for existence. The consciousness that is Mind (God) can form nothing unlike Itself (Spirit). This is the Science of being seen relatively or conceptually in the language of individual discernment. What- ever the language, the fact stands that since I consciously am, my consciousness is Mind, God, and a knowledge of aught beside myself is impossible. This fact makes man a loner and at the same time gregarious. Living his divinity, Mind, self- consciously, all of his living is self-living. Objectification or externality is self-conscious living—transactional as conscious identity. Perception is reception. The persons, places, things ap- parently constituting my world are my own self-evolving consciousness.

The individual who lives insightfully, Mindfully, lives ideas and evolves an ego-image as identity capable of affecting the whole society. In this self-conscious living, the individual is his own law and authority. What we are seeing today as rebellion against the establishment and resistence to change is Infinity, the God-idea, making all things new. Fences are built and torn down since Truth cannot be confined.

To summarize, the ideas which unfolded in my study and re-exploration of Christian Science, and which every card- carrying Christian Scientist must live self-consciously if he is to live effectively, are:

The God-idea, infinity, is Mind, forever evolving and

disclosing the infinitude of Good. This Mind is Reason,

Truth, the what is of all that Is or seems to be.

The language of identity on the human belief level is

the language of paradox. Webster defines paradox as "A

statement that seems contradictory, unbelievable, or ab-

surd but that may actually be true in fact." For instance:

In destruction, construction is destruction; in death, Life is

the death; in sickness, Health is the sickness. In the Gospels

of John and Luke, we read: "Except a corn of wheat fall

into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die,

it bringeth forth much fruit."[5] "Whosoever shall seek

to save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose

his life shall preserve it."[6] Paradox is the language of In-

finity. Behold, I make all things new![7] The pairs of oppo-

sites which Infinity, One-All, evolves, are resolved in

Science by the understanding that in all appearances, Truth

or Reality is the appearance. Man is living, existing as

Mind (conscious identity) and is non-existing conceptu-

ally as material personality. In the relatively true, the

Absolute or Truth is the relative, and in the human, the

divine is the human. He who clings to the human denies

or negates his divinity (wholeness), but he who lives

free from all otherness has full measure and running

over. The concept of human goodness is the bad. Thou

shalt have no other Gods before Me, the Good that is

beyond human conception.

Spirit is the Life-force or Principle of existence. We feel

the energy of Spirit and rise into newness of Life because

Spirit is what we are. We are self-conscious because con-

sciousness or Mind is our Life. Spirit is visible and tangible

in organic thought-forms identifying Mind as "the source

and condition of all existence."[8]

I am myself—the conscious infinitude of existence. To

be my self is my sole responsibility and obligation. To

quote the philosopher, Frederick S. Perls, M.D., Ph.D.:

"I do my thing, and you do your thing.

I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,

and you are not in this world to live up to mine.

You are you, and I am I; if by chance we

find each other, it’s beautiful."

He who lives consciously in a state of otherness by not living his others as himself, lives a conditioned or im- poverished existence. If I love my brother as other than my self, I shall look to him for love. In this look, I find hate and resentment since I am obliged to recognize that Love is transactional and my own Love is the Love that loves me.

We feel the pressure of Truth, the energy of Spirit, to move on or out of conditioned thinking. We feel this pressure because Truth does not exist to be discovered, but to be lived self-consciously as Mind. Truth is a constant social re-structuring apparent as transformation.

In this book you will not find the idea that God work- eth in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. What you will find is the idea that there is no God of the sort you have been conditioned to call God, nor is there a man of the sort you imagine to be man. The God that worketh in you worketh as you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure. The I is Mind, the Me is Spirit. This fact is fundamental to the practice of Christian Science. It cannot be repeated too often that there is no God but the one each individual lives self-consciously, Mindfully, as himself.

Mind (the infinite Unconscious) is forever breaking into consciousness with ideas for the identity of its infini- tude. These ideas are the understanding that resolves the conflicts, strains and tensions incidental to the theory that consciousness is divided into human and divine.

Understanding fosters a divine discontent which is contentment beyond conception, and a benign neglect.

Benign neglect does not mean a denial of your sickness.

If you are sick, you are sick. A benign neglect lies in the

understanding that in sickness, Health is the sickness. This

understanding enables you to go on your way consciously,

Mindfully, being the Health or Wholeness that creates its

identity either with or without media—medicine or human

steps. Mary Baker Eddy makes the statement that sickness

"is more than fancy; it is solid conviction. It is therefore

to be dealt with through right apprehension of the truth

of being."[9] This is benign neglect of the sickness.

It is hoped that this book will act as a challenge to individual, original thinking. While I do not intentionally write or speak to confuse or disturb, I recognize that unconditioned thinking, the Science of being, is always a disturber of the peace and is unsettling to the status quo. Unless one is startled out of the rut of conditioned, traditional thinking, the dis-ease of not seeing clearly becomes a habit (chronic). Doubt and questioning are useful tools in divine self-discovery. The only hell lies in at- tempts to rigidify or mold Truth, confine Good to its concept, trying to snatch the Good as it flows. Conform and uniform are words for the thinking that denies the conscious infinitude of each individual. To read a book which challenges one’s think- ing is very conducive to individual self-growth.

The divine understanding reigns, is all and there is no other consciousness.9a This statement of Science means that there is nothing outside of our own understanding to understand. Man is understanding, not understand-er. Understanding is the Life- force or energy of Spirit, the thinking that is conscious identity (man) making the invisible, visible. I can promise that if you read this book with your heart, savoring the ideas presented as facets of Truth unfolding from your own withinness inspira- tionally and spontaneously, you will find yourself in a new dimension of awareness with a new ego-image, a new person- ality as identity. Identity is Reality at its deepest level in which subject and object is one. When you read with an open mind, making no intellectual evaluations, and in the silence of listening to inspiration from your own withinness, the upheaval created by new ideas will pass and leave you with a new sensory world.

You may apparently have a difficult day, with your concept of what is good or right appearing as bad and wrong. If, how- ever, your discernment is Science you will not deny the difficult day, nor attempt to right it. Your difficult day has great value for you since it means that Good beyond your concept is present and appearing. This is the paradox of Infinity—the old disap- pearing in the new appearing. Your understanding of the language of paradox for the identity of Infinity (Unchanging Change), no wrong without right, no bad without good, en- ables you to relax and go on about your business of living your all self-consciously, Mindfully, as yourself. In this living all fear disappears and you are confident that everything is all Right.

If, as material personality or ego-image, I am sick and dying, which I am whether I am conscious of it or not, I am well and happy as conscious identity or Mind. This is the Science which enables me to let the sickness alone, treat the ego-image with benign neglect, to live my divinity self- consciously as Spirit and create a new ego-image. In this living I am being the God-idea, the conscious human individuality that feels Health in its sickness, and I am not being the material personality that feels sickness in its Health. A verse from a modern song:

Then our befores

No longer bind us

As we drift upon the waters of the now

And our tomorrows cease to blind us

’Cause they never arrive as we make each day

The first day of the rest of our lives.

Life is living as consciousness or Mind, as thought, as con- scious identity or man. Whether you are living this fact con- sciously or unconsciously you are the living of it; you grow the experiences you need on your belief level for self-fulfillment. When you are living your divinity unself-consciously you can- not avoid what is called growing or expanding in the negative. This is the paradox of Infinity—Unchanging Change: finding yourself by losing yourself, or losing yourself by finding your- self. In the ego-image, the Ego is the image. The self-image, because Mind is the self or I that makes it, instinctively tears itself down in the attempt to build itself up. Science allows no standardization or regimentation of ideas. Infinity means Life- living and is like a river ever flowing, whether the appearance is death or life, loss or gain.

If there is a goal in life it is to be the Science, the self- conscious divinity that shapes our ends. But this goal has been from the beginning. When we can be so divinely self-conscious that we are unmindful of sickness to overcome or health to preserve, we shall have resolved the paradox of expanding in the negative. If in death, Life is the death, where is the death? O death where is thy victory or thy sting?

There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter. This is a statement of pure Science. The Mind that is Spirit is Life, Truth, Intelligence and Substance. This is the reason Mary Baker Eddy said that Science is the language of Soul which translates matter into its original language, which is Mind.[10] If matter can be translated into Mind, the energy of Spirit (thought) must be matter. In fact, Mrs. Eddy asks the question, Who dares to say that God exists in matter, or that matter exists without God?[11] In all existence, Mind, Life, Spirit is the existence (not in it). In the words of Sir James Jeans: The new knowledge [regarding matter] compels us to revise our hasty first impres- sions that we have stumbled into a universe which either did not concern itself with life or was actively hostile to life. The old dualism of mind and matter, which was mainly responsible for the supposed hostility, seems likely to disappear, not through matter becoming any more shadowy or insubstantial . . . but through substantial matter resolving itself into a creation and manifestation of Mind.

Truth makes its presence known as understanding, a state or condition of consciousness, and is the reality of everything seen, heard and felt. As understanding, you have the courage and strength of character to rejoice when the occasion arises requir- ing a catalyst, a problem, in the demonstration of your divinity —your health or wholeness. The concept of the universe as a world of pure thought throws new light on every sensory experience. When you are face to face with a difficult situation, do not think, God will take care of this and it will come out all right, as if God were other than yourself. That kind of thinking is Christian theology, not Christian Science. Such be- lief may be comforting, but in the long run such comfort is worse than discomfort. The God that is Principle, Love, will take care of all things in the understanding that God, your own Mind, is the Being, the Presence of everything that exists or seems to exist. Love cannot guide, govern, protect, if there is no Love consciously present as yourself. How could you see Love func- tion in human affairs except as love and hate, construction and destruction, unless you are being the Love beyond love and hate, right and wrong? Except the Lord [understanding] build the house, they labor in vain who build it. The Ego, the I, the Mind, is the life and death of the ego-image.

Understanding is the Lord that takes care of everything. Let understanding—the truth of Being—your own divinity or God- self, deal with the problem and it becomes no problem. This understanding is the Lord building your world in complete com- mand of every situation. The all-knowing Mind is the intelli- gence, the Love, that disposes of the need for a problem or catalyst. The name which conditioned thinking or ignorance gives to Reality, the Good, is the Reality in finite form. The attempt through human effort to make conditions better and mankind happier, proves abortive and frustrating since the human is human because it already is divine. Treat your sick- ness with the right apprehension of the truth of being and you treat it with Love, which evaluates it as a Health experience.

We may take a pill for our pain. There is nothing wrong about this. In fact, it might be nearer right than incurring the tension of attempting to rule out the pain by the mental treat- ment of denial and affirmation. However, the temporary dis- appearance of the pain through mental work or through a pill, puts off the day of its final disappearance through the recog- nition of pain’s value in the self-fulfillment of one’s divinity.

Love for the pain is the awareness that everything is exactly right under all circumstances whether the sensory experience is pain or no pain. You may know that Love is with you, as you, when you are able to discern the idea, the message, the eternal fact of well-being, in the medium. In this discernment you will not regard media as steps leading to perfection, but as Perfection itself unfolding, nor will you regard problems as essential or non-essential. Perfection, Infinity, evolves whatever is of value for its identity on the human belief level.

The Good that I am being self-consciously is Good conceptu- alized as good and evil. This means that in the concept, Good is the good and Good is the evil. When I am Good enough for evil, evil will be Good enough for me. When I am comfortable enough for pain, pain will be comfortable enough for me. When understanding gives me enough Health for sickness, Health beyond health and sickness is my lot. The Health or Wholeness in the sickness is the Health or Wholeness that is its cure—no sickness. My sickness tells me that while Health or Wholeness is what I am presently experiencing as the experience, not the experience-er, I am not aware of it. My sickness does not exist as something to overcome or eliminate, or even argue against, but is the language of Love, reminding me that Health is the Reality always present and appearing. Now I no longer say, Health is what is going on in spite of appearances, but rather, Health is going on and is what is appearing in the language (sickness or health) of my discernment.

Mary Baker Eddy speaks of healing in these words: Today the healing power of Truth is widely demonstrated as an im- manent eternal Science instead of a phenomenal exhibition.[12] In other words, there is no healing of the sort we call healing. He who would lose his disease must look deeply into his own being to discern its roots: the Principle or Reason for all that exists or seems to exist. From the standpoint