Why deny, for the sake of wishful thinking or to satisfy a speculative theory, facts which we find in nature? Such are the denials of Christian Science. Thinking can make such concessions to human weakness and such violations of its own integrity only at the cost of failing to arrive at Truth.    (#20472)

The fallacy of Christian Science on its practical side is its overestimation of the powers of man. It turns him into a veritable god.    (#20474)

A justifiable criticism of de Waters' teachings which mix Advaita with Christian Science is that they represent a magnificent but a one-sided and hence unbalanced position; consequently her brilliant conclusions can never be the perfect impeccable truth. They are necessary to offset the other form of unbalance which arises from the step-by-step self-improvement school. But the latter's teachings are just as necessary to offset her own. Philosophy, by accepting both the immediate and the ultimate, by keeping them always together to compensate and balance each other, alone offers an adequate and faultless teaching.    (#20481)

Whatever defects exist in Christian Science exist partly because of the confusion which existed in the mind of its founder, partly because she was fond of using impressive words even though she often did not know their meaning, partly because she habitually used the appearance of scientific thinking without being able to attain the reality. Mystics have often used announcement for argument, fantasy for fact, and they have the right to do so. But they do not have the right to label their pseudo-science as science.    (#20482)

Margot Asquilth once wittily observed that if the practice of Christian Science is pushed to a logical conclusion, you could jump off a roof without being hurt!    (#20483)

The danger of New Thought-Christian Science affirmations about our divine power and of Vedantic meditations on our identity with God is that they may merely swell the ego with spiritual arrogance and grandiose babble. And because humility is both the first step and the inescapable price demanded of us, such exercises may remove us farther from, and not bring us nearer to, the Quest's goal.    (#20488)

A system of assertion is not the same as a science of observation. When Christian Science ceases to deny facts or avoid realities, it will have the chance to become a science in the true sense of that term.    (#20490)

Some of these visionaries, strangely enough, deal in the art of attracting earthly things. A good deal of New Thought and Christian Science is like the ostrich. It buries it head in the sand, holding the thought of prosperity the while, and refuses to see the slum in which God compels it to live. It becomes excited to the point of purple ecstasy with its vision of riches yet to come. But alas! When that vision fades down the years through the hard refusal of facts to accommodate themselves to our theories, bewilderment comes like a blasting wind, yet brings an aftermath of enlightenment to those who have been forced to think.

It seems to me that the average New Thoughtist wants to deal himself all the aces of life, leaving the poorer sort of cards for the lesser and unfortunate mortals.    (#20491)

The truth in these New Thought and Christian Science doctrines can be known only by clipping and correcting the extravagances from which they suffer. The largest one is the belief the the body's health and the bank's balance must always and necessarily increase and improve to the extent that one's spirituality increases and improves. What really happens is that one is brought into increased and improved awareness of the higher self's leading, love, and protective care. It leads one toward those acts and decisions or into those situations and events which best promote the purpose of one's existence. It exists for the ordinary unenlightened man too and would do the same to him, but, not being on the Quest, he unwittingly frustrates its guidance and thwarts its moves. As for the material help it gives the Quester, this is a fact, for, as Jesus mentioned, "The Father knoweth that you have need of these things." But what the Father understands as one's need is viewed in the light of life's true purpose, whereas what the unenlightened man understands is dictated by the ego's desires. The New Thought teachings fail to make this distinction.    (#20492)

This, incidentally, is not the same thing as the "demonstration" claimed by Christian Science and kindred cults. The latter make the mistake of attempting to measure inward spiritual attainment by outward material gain, an absurd and materialistic notion and one which could never have taken hold had these cults truly understood the message of Jesus. They claim that fortune can be amply supplied through the services of the Divine Mind, as though Providence took a special interest in our private purse. They wish to effect an unholy conjuncture of God and Mammon, wish to widen the narrow way. It cannot be done. They are really worshipping money, not spirit and truth. They are entitled to do this but they ought not to deceive themselves in the matter.    (#20506)

Christian Science offers material benefits as a bait to induce men to seek for the Kingdom of Heaven. But Jesus himself is authority for the statement that the Kingdom must be sought for its own sake, or it will not be found. And all history shows that those who have succeeded in finding it were individuals who had, through wide experience or deep insight, abandoned earthly desires. For them the Christian Science bait would have been the very opposite--a bar!    (#20507)

Because in the past it was invariably men who appeared as prophets or founded religions while women became their followers, since the nineteenth century we have witnessed the beginnings of a reversal of this situation. That became evident when a number of minor sects arose in England, all started by women, and when Mrs. Eddy, in America, founded Christian Science, a religion to which many men have attached themselves.    (#21501)

There are great dangers in falling into a supine attitude of supposed submission of our will, an attitude into which so many mystics and religionists often fall. There is a profound difference between the pseudo-surrendered life and the genuine surrendered life. It is easy enough to misinterpret the saying "Thy will be done." Jesus, by his own example, gave this phrase a firm and positive meaning. Hence this is better understood as meaning "Thy will be done by me." A wide experience has revealed how many are those who have degenerated into a degrading fatalism under the illusion that they were thereby co-operating with the will of God; how many are those who have, through their own stupidity, negligence, weakness, and wrong-doing, made no effort to remedy the consequences of their own acts and thus have had to bear the suffering involved to the full; how many are those who have failed to seize the opportunity presented by these sufferings to recognize that they arose out of their own defects or faults and to examine themselves in time to become aware of them and thus avoid making the same mistake twice. The importance of heeding this counsel is immense. For example, many an aspirant has felt that fate has compelled him to work at useless tasks amid uncongenial surroundings, but when his philosophic understanding matures, he begins to see what was before invisible--the inner karmic significance of these tasks, the ultimate educative or punitive meaning of those environments. Once this is done he may rightly, and should for his own self-respect, set to work to free himself from them. Every time he patiently crushes a wrong or foolish thought, he adds to his inner strength. Every time he bravely faces up to a misfortune with calm impersonal appraisal of its lesson, he adds to his inner wisdom. The man who has thus wisely and self-critically surrendered himself may then go forward with a sense of outward security and inward assurance, hopeful and unafraid, because he is now aware of the benign protection of his Overself. If he has taken the trouble to understand intelligently the educative or punitive lessons they hold for him, he may then--and only then--conquer the evils of life, if at the same time of their onset, he turns inward at once and persistently realizes that the divinity within offers him refuge and harmony. This twofold process is always needful and the failures of Christian Science are partially the consequence of its failure to comprehend this.    (#23116)

We have to cope with the world and the problems it brings us with the body and its needs. There is no evading them. Yet on the other hand, we have to recognize that in Absolute Truth there is no world, no body, no problems--only the one infinite timeless Being. How can we meet this enigmatic dilemma? Christian Science denies the dilemma in theory, but is untrue to its denial in practice. This is why so many have passed into its portals only to emerge again in later years. Philosophy counsels us to admit the plain fact, to cultivate a bifocal vision, and to see the relative truth where and when we want it but always fitted into the larger absolute truth.    (#23733)

There is a difference--vast and deep--between the way Christian Science denies the body and the way mentalism affirms but changes the ordinary conception of the body.    (#26181)

There is a stubborn psychological problem, with profound metaphysical implications, which has remained unsolved throughout the whole history of science; but the range of data available today being greater, the prospects of its solution are brighter. Put briefly, this problem is as follows: is consciousness a property developed by the physical body in the course of its activity or is it a primary and intuitive part of the individual's nature? If the solution proved favourable to the theory of primacy of consciousness, then the effects upon our culture would be incalculable. The Christian teaching about the immortality of the soul would be vindicated, the value of religion in human life would be established, and the intellectual materialism of our time, which has given birth to such horrible evils as Nazism and Communism, would be eradicated.    (#26204)

When the mind is not active one is unaware of its existence--for instance, when attention is wandering or in deep sleep. A study of physiology shows that eye, nerve, and brain must combine to tell a person that he sees something and even then he does not see it until the mind pays attention to it. The truth is that the mind creates its own objects--but not the individual, finite mind; only the Mind which is back of it and which is infinite and common to all individuals. This is difficult to understand, so to make it easier one has to think of dream. In that state he can see cities, men, women, and children, mountains and flowers, hear voices, feel pain, and so forth. What is more, everything is so real then that at the time it is the waking state to him, not dream. Now who created all these scenes and things? Not his finite mind, for he is not conscious of having done so. Hence there is a larger mind within him which has this power of manufacturing scenes, objects, and events so vividly that he takes them to be real. This reality is a myth or, as the Indians call it, Maya.

Mrs. Eddy came extremely close to grasping this point and indeed of all the Western cults Christian Science stands closest to the ultimate teaching. Unfortunately it has mixed much error with truth and is ignorant of other vital teachings which are needed to complete the circle of knowledge. This impurity is due to the ego--the selfish, grasping personality which Mrs. Eddy possessed and which prevented her full initiation. The ego must be utterly yielded if one wants truth.

All this implies that matter is also a myth, unreal. Still more it implies that the ego is a myth, illusory. Here, then, is the first practice of the ultimate path: think constantly of that Mind which is producing the ego, all the other egos around, and all the world, in fact. Keep this up until it becomes habitual. The consequence is that one tends in time to regard his own ego with complete detachment, as though he were regarding somebody else. Furthermore, it forces him to take the standpoint of the all, and to see unity as fundamental being.

Those who have shown the worst features of hate, selfishness brutality, and separateness, are as much productions of this infinite Mind as others--only they have concentrated their full attention on the ego, and they have clouded reason by passion, while submitting to the stronger mental forces which propaganda has hypnotically let loose upon them.    (#26510)

There are great possibilities open to the man who believes in and applies mentalism. This is indirectly evident by the history and state of the Christian Science movement, for it will be found that many Christian Scientists, if they have really understood and constantly applied their doctrine, have risen to high executive positions. Why is this? It is partly because they have obeyed the higher moral law and partly because they have used the creative power of meditation. They have tried to run their businesses on the Golden Rule, and they have positively affirmed ideals in their business and work. Thus they have made good karma for themselves not only by acting morally but also by acting creatively through using their thoughts in a constructive, healthy manner. They do not believe that business is a struggle of wolves but an opportunity to serve and to profit by such service. They do not believe that it is an opportunity to get the best of others unscrupulously but that it is an opportunity to practise ideals and to express ethics. They do not believe in depending solely on their own little selves for results but they also look up to a higher power, God, in prayer and thought. They increase their openness and receptivity to this higher power by trying to purify their characters and to ennoble their personalities.    (#26829)

The understanding that everything is illusive is not the final one. It is an essential stage but only a stage. Ultimately you will understand that the form and separateness of a thing are illusory, but the thing-in-itself is not. That out of which these forms appear is not different from them, hence Reality is one and the same in all things. This is the paradox of life and a sharp mind is needed to perceive it. However, to bring beginners out of their earthly attachments, we have to teach first the illusoriness of the world, and then raise them to a higher level of understanding and show that the world is not apart from the Real. That Thou Art unifies everything in essence. But this final realization cannot be got by stilling the mind, only by awakening it into full vigour again after yogic peace has been attained and then letting its activity cease of its own accord when thought merges voluntarily into insight. When that is done, you know the limitations of both yoga and enquiry as successive stages. Whoever realizes this truth does not divorce from matter--as most yogis do--but realizes non-difference from it. Hence we call this highest path the "yoga of nonduality." But to reach it one has to pass through the "yoga of philosophical knowledge." Christian Science caught glimpses of the higher truth but Mrs. Eddy got her facts and fancies confused together.    (#31840)