People ask Why, if all is mind, if--as you say--our bodies are only ideas, can we not control regulate and improve our bodies by controlling regulating and improving our minds? Why not go further still, with Christian Science, and play with the possibility, not only of these achievements, but also of rendering the body immortal by thinking it so?
The answer is that nobody can deny the creative power of the mind. It may do all these things, except the last. That it will never do. Why? Because we live in a world whose fundamental law of being--as Buddha discovered and Jesus taught--is decay and death, change and transition. Indeed, it was because they were so painfully aware of these truths that they sought and found the only true way of escape for man and that was into Nirvana, into the Kingdom of Heaven--not into the physical body again! No Christian Scientist from the first founder down to the latest follower has ever achieved physical immortality, nor ever will. "Man will never tire of seeking immortality," wrote Dr. Alexis Carrel, whose biological researches, yet mystical sympathies, entitle him to speak with high authority. "He will not attain it, because he is bound by certain laws of his organic constitution. . . . Never will he vanquish death. Death is the price he has to pay for his brain and his personality."
Now as for the other things, the possibilities of spiritual healings of pathological conditions, miraculous mental cures of disease, and rapid acceleration of organic repairs through concentrated thinking, I repeat that we do not deny them. They have always existed, always been demonstrated. The relation between psychological and physical processes must certainly exist if our doctrine is true. But there are two other factors at work in human life which must also be considered and must not be ignored. What are they? The first is the factor of destiny, self-earned in previous lives and now awaiting physical expression in the present life. It has something to say, whether we like it or not. The second is the factor of renunciation. When you accept the doctrine that all is mind and each individual thing is but an ephemeral idea, you must perforce accept the doctrine that you as an individual, as the ego, are also an ephemeral idea. Now when you go further and declare that you want reality, you want to find eternal and not ephemeral life, you will have to abandon the fleeting idea for the eternal Mind in which it occurs: that is, you will have to sink the ego and merge its will in the greater universal will of the Infinite Being. Do this! What will you find next? That your personal desires have sunk with it, that your individual wishes and hopes and fears have dissolved and disappeared. The desire for bodily betterment, however very attractive, would have gone too. You cannot have a single desire and yet enter the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus pointed out. So good health, the care of your painful diseases, the healing of your disturbed organs--right, necessary, and desirable as they undoubtedly are--are nevertheless matters which you must try to effect in a desireless way; you may try to cure them but you must leave the result to the higher will. If you insist that the body must yield to your desires of a cure, to your personal desires, then your ego, not the real universal self, has got the upper hand and is directing you. In that case you will be no better off, for you have no guarantee of success even then. Most Christian Scientists experience a score of failures for every cure. Whereas if you do your best mentally and physically to put your body right, but do it impersonally--accepting failure, if it comes, with as much equanimity as you can--you will certainly be no worse off than the Christian Scientist so far as the possibilities of cure are concerned, and you will be infinitely better off so far as realizing truth is concerned, with all the wonderful peace that will bring in its train. This is one meaning of the words "Not my will but Thine be done" which Mrs. Eddy failed to learn.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 1 : The Laws of Nature > # 37
