To the extent that Christian Science instruction will make clearer to his mind and fix more deeply within it those several great truths which Christian Science shares in common with philosophy, he will benefit by it. But to the extent that he absorbs, along with them, those errors, fallacies, and confusions which are also part of Christian Science, he will not. Therefore in its study he should keep vigilance close to him and not throw away his right to use critical judgement. One fallacy is not to see that physical means may also be used by God to cure, even if it be granted that they are indirect as well as on a lower plane. They need not be rejected but merely valued for the inferior things they are. But they have their place. Another fallacy is not to see that mental means may also be used. Psychology, change of thought, is also inferior and indirect, but still has a useful place and positive value.

Healings can be done without entering the kingdom. They are achieved by the power of concentration. This leaves the ego still there. The cure is wrought then by an occult, not a spiritual, power. It is personal to the practitioner, not impersonal. Every individual practitioner who makes progress will come to the point where either his power lapses or his understanding outgrows the imposed dogmas. If he accepts this opportunity or passes this test, he may come closer to God.

The Christian Scientist adherent needs to purify his motive. His need of better health or more money may be satisfied in the proper way but must be kept in the proper place. He should not seek to exploit higher powers for lower ends. He should carefully study the meaning of Jesus' words: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you."    (#13157)

The fallacy in Christian Science theory is the pretense that problems and pains, diseases and malfunctions, cancer and crime do not exist among us here in this physical world. If we turn only to pure Spirit and leave out the world in time and space and form, then, undeniably, they do not exist. But we may not leave them out of practical reckoning while we have to live in this body, much as some of us would like to. If the theory floats in mists of fatuous optimism, the art of Christian Science healing does in some cases bring very successful results. Why?    (#13163)

With the Short Path are allied all healing techniques, like Christian Science, which affirm the actual existence of God as perfect, disease-free, and all-providing. Sometimes they really do draw on the Overself's power but at other times they use a queer mixture of black magic, hypnotic suggestion, and fallacious religion.    (#13164)

The group of powers manifesting themselves in the phenomena which have been variously named--according to the theoretical interpretation given them by various cults--as spirit healing, Christian Science, mesmeric healing, hypnotic treatment, and suggestive therapeutics, may, with one group of exceptions, conveniently be classified under the heading of "mental healing." These exceptions occur through the unconscious stimulation of physical vital force (prana) and usually lead to cures which are such in name only for they do not last long and are followed by a relapse into illness.    (#13169)

In all this Christian Science teaching it is essential to note that the healer can utter these healing formulae, think these healing truths, either out of his intellect or out of his insight. In the first case his words and thoughts are merely like the map of a country. In the second case they are like an actual visit to the country. The first healer makes an unwarranted claim, does not see that his statements could be truly made only if he attained the stature and purity of Jesus. It is not enough that the patient should have faith; the healer himself must have the requisite higher consciousness. For the divine power which actually effects the healing will not come from his ordinary self but out of this higher one.    (#13175)

Whereas Christian Science denies the reality of the body and hence of the body's ills, most other spiritual healing schools admit it. Whereas Christian Science nowhere speaks of man struggling upward through constant reincarnations on earth to realize his highest possibilities, its most powerful rival--the Unity school of Christianity--proclaims this doctrine.    (#13177)

When Christian Science states profound mentalist truths it becomes elevating, but when it mixes them up with refutable conjectures, it becomes misleading. In the first case it is supported by the facts of life, whereas in the second it conflicts with them.    (#13187)

My attitude towards Christian Science-Aurobindo theory of physical immortality: continue to deny that abolition of death is possible, but admit that prolongation of physical life may well be possible. In the case of good individuals admit also its desirability.    (#13188)

The Christian Science practitioners apparently use their formulas, their statements of being, their treatments, in the form of uttered incantations. This is much like the use of mantrams in India.    (#13189)

The error of Christian Science would appear to be that it confuses theory and wrongly applies practice. Its principles are half-right, half-wrong; its technique is the same. The injunction to "cast thy burden on Me," which it seems to apply, is misunderstood to advise neglecting practical means of healing troubles and leaving all to God. But the correct way is not to neglect them but to do them while at the same time leaving results to God and being indifferent to them.    (#13194)

Even if Christian Science and New Thought sects produce healings, they are still not truly "divine." They use some lower force--some vital force, as the Indians say. For they are all attached to the ego, which is itself a consequence of their unconscious belief in its reality. The ego has cunningly inserted itself even into these highly spiritual teachings and is still the hidden source behind both their prophets and their followers. This explains Mary B. Eddy's and so many New Thought teachers' commercialism as well as the errors which are contained in the teachings of Emmet Fox, which led to his own mental-physical breakdown and death.    (#13195)

Christian Science can deny the existence of ill health only at the cost of logically denying the existence of good health also. Both are differing conditions of the same thing--the body. Christian Science calls sickness a lie. Then it should likewise call its opposite a lie. But not only does it not: it actually affirms that good health is a truth and a reality even while it denounces matter--the body--as a lie and an illusion! If, in spite of its deformed logic, Christian Science still gets healing done--as it does--this result must be attributed to the fact that the infinite Life-Power does take cognizance of the body's disease and does not deny its being there.    (#13196)

The Christian Science attempt to deny existence to sickness as an error of mortal mind is itself an error. It is more philosophic, first, to take it as an existent fact, but to understand that the body's reality is only a limited and temporary one, and, second, to couple it with the other fact that there are healing forces and recuperative energies in the higher self of man which may dispel it.    (#13198)

Although the theory of these cults is in part quite fallacious, the practice of them brings striking results at times. This is because the healing power really comes forth from the patient's own higher self, to which the cults do--although somewhat unconsciously--direct him.

One of the yoga paths is the creative use of imagination and thought for self-improvement, and so far as it embodies such a technique, Christian Science is a yoga path too. It instructs its disciples to see themselves as perfect, as the Universal Mind sees them, to concentrate on the concept of, and hold to the belief in, the divine in man. These meditations and attitudes draw forth higher resources, which may effect results where ordinary ones fail.

This thinking runs somewhat as follows. The entire universe is but an idea. Therefore the human body is also an idea. Therefore the human being, as the thinker of this idea, possesses complete power to alter, improve, and even change the body. Therefore he can abolish disease, annul sickness, restore health, and perform miraculous environmental betterments at will, provided he can suitably re-adjust and control his thoughts. All this sounds plausible and attractive, but there is a fallacy in it. And this is that the human being is the sole thinker of the World-Idea. He is not. He only participates in it along with the World Mind. His power over the body is a limited one. By his thoughts he can influence its functioning and sometimes modify its mechanism.    (#13202)

New Thought and Christian Science should correct their errors, for some of the things which they label as "negative" may not be so at all. It is divine love which sanctions losses, sicknesses, poverty, and adversities. They are not to be regarded as enemies to be shunned but rather as tutors to be heeded. Through such blows the ego may be crushed and thus allow truer thoughts to fill the emptied space. Even pleasure and prosperity may deal a man worse blows than the so-called negatives can deal him if their end effect is to close the mind's door to light.    (#13281)

Athos, the Holy Mountain:

(1) As the ship moved eastwards, the Holy Mount came into sight on the port side--a six thousand foot pyramidal peak jutting straight out of the blue water into the blue sky.

(2) The path passed through dark-green leafy forest and occasional tumbled boulders.

(3) The sea which washes Athos' shores can get exceedingly rough (an invading Persian fleet was once largely smashed to pieces on its rocks).

(4) Most of the three thousand monks are housed in the large monasteries and have to conform to the fixed strict rules and obey the abbots. But of the remaining monks, some live in little huts, retreats, or cells centering around a point where once, occasionally even now, there lived an anchorite whose sanctity drew disciples or followers around him. These come into contact from time to time, as often or as little as they wish, such is the flexibility of this system. Others live away from their fellows altogether, in wilder, more deserted parts of the peninsula where they can find the full independence and solitude they desire. Thus the three types exist side by side, whether sharing the common life of a large monastery, the semi-common life of small houses and cottages grouped around a church, or the complete solitude of hut and cave. I found much the same arrangement in India at the foot of the Himalayas, in the communities of holy men at Hardwar and at Rishikesh, where even the total population was about the same as at Mount Athos. There is even a fourth type, peculiar to Athos itself and not likely to be matched easily anywhere else in the Asiatic or Western worlds. Such monks seek to combine the advantages of organized communal life with those of private life, the benefits of large buildings with those of independent quarters.

(5) Athos is a working community. The monks are active enough getting their food and attending to other chores to be in no peril of becoming torpid and lazy. Everyone contributes with the labour of his hands to satisfying the body's inescapable needs of food, clothing, fuel, and shelter, or supplements the monastery's slender income by making religious souvenirs for selling to the mainland.

(6) Philip Sherrard's story is simple. "I was walking in a village on a Greek island away from the tourist track and saw a simple peasant sitting by the roadside reading. He looked up at me and exclaimed: `This is a wonderful book!' I examined it and found it to be a volume of writings by one of the Orthodox Church mystics. I discovered that here, in Christianity, were the teachings, the mode of life, the practices of contemplation, the theology, which had attracted me towards India and its Vedanta. Eventually I became a member of the Church."

(7) I began to feel the aura of peace which surrounded and held Athos whenever a boat brought me to a monastery's landing stage or a mule carried me along steep tracks from one settlement to another.

(8) The Monastery of Dionysiou appears high up on a cliffside, looking just like a Tibetan one except that it overlooks a bit of beach and a lot of sea.

(9) Perhaps the oldest and largest of all the monasteries is the Lavra--really an entire group of several picturesque buildings set within a walled fort. A reminder of the grim old days when pirates or raiders--European, African, or Asiatic--made descents on Athos in search of plunder or intent on murder is the pair of great double doors, thick enough already but still covered with sheets of iron. The monks sit in their little cells, which branch off from long well-trodden wooden galleries, or in the plain unornamented wooden balconies jutting from the outside wall and overlooking the courtyard.

(10) It is when eventide comes that the tranquillity of Athos comes to its own fullness, covering everyone and everything with the presence of God.

(11) These icons are venerated here in a way that the science-minded realists of America and the rest of Europe may not appreciate and are unlikely to understand. For they are regarded not merely as decorations and inspirations, but also as sources of holy power, links connecting the worshipper with the long-departed saints they depict. They are used in prayer, and particularly in intercessory prayer.

(12) The bits of bone, the skulls, and the other relics of long-dead holy men are not so attractive or so well appreciated by the modern Western mind--although their jewelled cases may be--but the colourful, illuminated manuscripts, the boxes of fine, rare, and ancient books would provide the religious scholar and the devotee of mysticism with many weeks of fascinating study could he but read them.

(13) Many years ago I gave, in the thirteenth chapter of The Quest of the Overself, an exercise for centering attention in the heart as a means of spiritual awakening. It had been taught to me first in Europe by Brother M., the adept who died forty years ago, and later in India by Ramana Maharshi. I learn that the exercise has been known and practised by Eastern Church mystics for many centuries. In the fourth century that best known of the Fathers, Chrysostom of Constantinople, taught the method of "praying truly which finally leads to a state in which the mind is always in the heart." And in a later century, Gregory the Sinaite wrote: "Lead your mind down from your head into your heart, and hold it there."

It is even more significant that the practice of contemplating the navel, known in India for thousands of years, had its adherents in Athos too, where they were long ago called "belly-watchers." Were these exercises brought back by some soldiers returning home from Alexander the Great's Indian adventure? There are some interesting differences between the Indian and the Athonite practice of this exercise, but both in the end seek the same goal. Where the Indian begins with a physical act--fixing the gaze but with the head erect--the Greek begins with a mental act--bringing the mind down into the heart. Since his attention is thus directed toward the heart, the Greek lets his head bend naturally down in the same direction, his physical movement being a secondary accompaniment. When the monk in Athos has succeeded in his first aim, he then begins working on his second one, and here makes a physical move to achieve it. He holds the breath so as to hold the mind in the heart. The Indian, too, when his navel-watching gaze is fixed, transfers his attention from body to spirit. Thus both seek and find a spiritual centralized union.

(14) More seems to be made of purification here than of meditation: the two are always coupled together, but the principal emphasis is put on the first need. This was the view of all those interviewed. It seems also to have been the view of the Russian Orthodox mystics whose sixteenth-century Nile Sorsky warned monks against doing the exercise of centering the mind in the heart and seeking the union with God before they had undergone penance and crushed passion. The Syrian mystic Isaac of Nineveh went even farther and threatened the punishment of God's anger on those who sought Him prematurely by contemplation while "still stained by reprehensible passions."

(15) The warning against rushing too fast with breathing exercises, or using them wrongly, or using them at all when one's health is unsuited to them, has been set down in some of my books. The most dangerous one of them all is that which attempts to hold the breath completely. Those warnings were derived from Indian sources and observations, as well as from Euramerican experiences. Among the Orthodox Church mystics I found further confirmation. The Russian Elder Paissy Velitchkovsky, writing about the turn of the eighteenth century, stated that a number of monks of the period had injured themselves by misusing physical aids to meditation, mostly breathing exercises.

(16) Their lives here on this promontory are so simple, so uncomplicated.

(17) In this golden light, the colours of the buildings gleamed brightly.

(18) The old structure, blackened by time, smelling of stale incense.

(19) A thin old monk in a faded grey robe appeared. He answered questions in a frail voice.

(20) A fishing boat, with orange-coloured sail, passed us.

(21) No railway lines run through Athos, no automobile traverses its length or breadth, so the monks must move about on foot, donkey, or mule. Here the eyes see a medieval world. Here is none of the noise, the complications, the pressures, and the care of modern civilization. This is good, but the comforts and conveniences, the pleasures and the luxuries are not here either. "Take what thou wilt, but pay the price." exclaimed Emerson.

(22) The precipitous face of Athos descends sheer into the water.

(23) The peninsula thrusts itself forward into the heaving sea like a pointing finger. It is there, at the more inaccessible steep tip, that most of the hermits who desire more solitude live.

(24) There is no traffic to make a person nervously take more care lest he fall beneath the wheels of the modern juggernaut's car!

(25) This forty mile long, self-governing peninsula once harboured 40,000 monks collected from the several Balkan nationalities as well as the Russian. Wars changed and reduced the population.

(26) The questions which come to our voluble intellectuals do not come to these simple monks. Their minds are untroubled by doubts, for the faith which was powerful enough to bring them and keep them there is powerful enough to disdain the intellect and discount its values.

(27) The Indian technique of mantram yoga is practised here under the name of "Jesus-prayer." Sitting in the solitude of his little room, repeating constantly the text "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me," counting the number of times upon a rosary until a specified figure is reached, the monk is doing here in a Christian monastery what the sadhu is doing there in a Hindu monastery. The invocation in both cases may be used anywhere, in any surroundings, and amid any practical activities; it is not restricted to the monastic cell. This pious duty is to be practised deliberately by effort, until one day the miracle happens and it thenceforth continues to repeat itself without his effort entirely of its own accord. This may happen within a few weeks; in other cases within a few months; in still others even longer periods may be necessary.

(28) It was the judgement of the Russian Staretz--that is, guru--Silouan that the ancient forms of monasticism were less and less suitable in view of conditions in the modern world, but that since the need and aspiration for the withdrawn existence would never vanish, more and more people among those who remained in society would practise monastic disciplines even while doing so. This, he believed, would be even more true in the case of those with some education.

(29) The steamer's engines ceased throbbing; we were at the shoreline of this enormous cliff, this "Holy Athos" as tradition called it, topped with a white pyramid.

(30) The Holy Synod which governs Athos has always tried to keep up tradition and to keep out innovation. But can it continue to do so in an age of such terrific change as ours?

(31) Too many of the monks are ignorant and superstitious, unrefined and uncultured.

(32) Those who have attained the highest grade of spirituality are total vegetarians; the others are expected to keep their meat consumption down to a minimum.

(33) These hermits look out at their little world from mountain retreats.

(34) The services in Orthodox churches have no accompaniment from musical instruments, only from chanted song.

(35) There are wide differences in character and development among these monks, just as there are in Indian ashrams. Father X, who is famous in Greece because of his numerous published articles and books, spoke fluently but fanatically. He was excitable, narrow-minded, and intolerant. But Father Ephraim made a most favourable impression on me. He was mild, kindly, gentle, and a very advanced meditator. Both men are leaders in the Athos community.

(36) Father Avakum, of Lavra Monastery, a rough untutored eccentric but unselfish monk, says: "I am all joy!" He despises intellect, saying, "I am empty save for Christ and joy!"

(37) The notorious Rasputin came to Athos and stayed for a while in the Monastery of Russiko.

(38) Whereas Catholic saints like Saint Francis Xavier and Hindu yogis like Sri Aurobindo whose dead bodies remain undecayed and uncrumbled are held in high esteem and made objects of pilgrimage, the Russian Orthodox Church has very different ideas on the matter. At their Monastery of Russiko on Athos, dead monks whose bodies are supernaturally preserved are treated as possessed by evil spirits. A stake is driven through the heart and the rite of exorcism performed.

(39) The cells have little household furniture.

(40) The devout songs and the prayer-chants, the rituals and the text readings make up the full life for many monks, the essentially pious ones. Their capacity is sufficient only for this, and their desire is satisfied by it. But others are the ascetic ones, whose presence here, and absence from the world, is caused by the repellent state of the world and by disgust with their own or others' animal lower nature.

(41) High up the cliffs were eagles' eyries.

(42) The monks said that winter is a trying time--thundering seas dash against the peninsula, screaming winds blow fiercely along it, and bitterly cold snow falls. It is then that their hard lives in ill-heated buildings are even harder.    (#19267)

Notes on Greece:

(1) There, on the summit of the Acropolis, its rock hill home, covered in the purple dawn light, perched the massive Doric-columned Parthenon. Once it was a temple where man as pagan, then as Christian, then as Muhammedan worshipped God. But now as tourist he stares and gapes at its empty shell. It stands broken and roofless, the crimson and blue colours of the elaborate interior decorations gone, the exquisitely carved statues taken away, the gildings removed. The marble floor, trodden by Phidias and Pericles, is bare and worn.

(2) Grey, honey-yielding Mount Hymettus stands between me and the sea. For some hours daily I see this hill whenever I lift my head from the meditation in which it is sunk, or from the white papers scattered on the desk, or go out on the verandah to feed the impatient swallows who have been circling above it in their joyous freedom. Daily at two o'clock the guns on Lycabettus fire their time signal.

(3) A Meditation on Mount Parnassus: I sat on the mountain's southern slope, looking down on the narrow ravine, and thought of those who travelled from afar and near, of the pilgrims who came here to question the far-famed Oracle at Delphi, came out of their anxieties and fears, their uncertainties and perplexities. (Complete this section by paras on precognition, prophecy, karma, rebirth, fortunetelling, fate, clairvoyance.) Why was Delphi called by the ancients "the navel of the earth," meaning its centre, where Apollo's immense temple once stood? Why did they believe that the god of the dead hid here, among the lonely volcanic rocks?

(4) It was the Hill of Pnyx, just west of the Acropolis, where the great speakers of ancient Greece delivered their celebrated orations, and where Demosthenes defended democracy. Day after day, and in the presence of the Greek King and Queen, for five days a cosmopolitan crowd gathers in the wide open space on the hill to listen to invited speakers, each a leader in his field, from different parts of the world, on some higher aspect of culture and civilization, science and philosophy, to feed the higher nature of man. German, Indian, Greek, Swede, Frenchman, American, and Italian speak on successive days. The wisdom of Asia, carried down from its ancient past, is here carried to Europe and mingled with our own thought. I hear with especial interest considering the place and its symbolism, the name of Ramana Maharshi uttered by a bespectacled and benign Hindu professor. I hear the name of Socrates mentioned by an Italian one, and ruminate that both have given us the same counsel, in almost identical words: "Man, know thyself!" The addresses are timed for early evening, so that the last sentences are heard with the last rays of the sun. As the sky's light darkens, a hush falls over the meeting, helped by the little groves of trees on two sides which screen off some of the city's distant hum, and is broken only by the lecturer's voice.

(5) The quality of curiosity prominent in the Greek temperament developed on a higher level into the search after scientific knowledge and on a still higher level into the search after metaphysical truth.

(6) After the Persian Wars, Greek traders took part in the long winding caravans which crossed central Asia as far as northern India or embarked on ships which sailed from Egypt to northwestern India. Now and then a scholar or philosopher might join them, mostly to learn but sometimes to teach. There are several evidences of Indian contacts with Egypt immediately before and after the Christian era began. If Chinese silk was freely sold during the first century a.d. in the markets of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the contacts of Greece and Egypt with India, situated at a shorter distance by sea as she was, were likely to be more numerous.    (#19322)

Christian Science is a useful anticipator of the fuller philosophic teaching.    (#20416)

Because we must refuse to follow the Christian Scientists all the way, because we must refuse to regard Christian Science as the one and only thing that matters--this is no excuse for not following them part of the way.    (#20417)