(What follows…are notes from Dr. Dorsey’s last Adult Education Class and show the common ground the psychology of Self-divinity has with Christian Science or Divine Science Today.
“There comes a time in human history when a person is able to recognize his/her divinity in all things from considering a stone as something inactive, to recognizing that the atoms that constitute the stone are constantly alive. I have Mary Baker Eddy in mind as able to do this. She tried to help herself with different doctors but she could not get the kind of Self-help she needed. So she got into the whole principle of mental functioning (psychology) and it looks by all accounts that she repressed all other kinds of living such as the medical man was practicing. I would have to say I do not know whether that occurred or not. The fact that her followers do it (a follower is a disguised leader) has nothing to do with Mary Baker Eddy. What the followers or disciples of Mrs. Eddy said about her had nothing to do with her. If you can get hold of the original text of Mary Baker Eddy, you will find more modern psychoanalysis in her writings in appreciation of subjectivity than in any psychiatric textbook available today. Her recognition of subjectivity is voiced, ‘The entire being is found in Mind,’ but you will also be up against the barrier of words. However, there is so much of the Spirit in her writings, the words make little difference.
“I attribute nothing to Mary Baker Eddy but my own Self-living. The subject of Self-divinity is inexhaustible. I was researching the Science of psychology of Self long before I ever heard of Mary Baker Eddy. Therefore, the observation I make of her writings is understandable to me. You may say, ‘I can’t use those words.’ Well, I couldn’t either until I worked hard at it. I really got on the track when I discovered all that I read in her writings was Self-knowledge, and what accrued from that reading was the fact that I could not avoid appreciating my greatness.
“Until I read myself in Mary Baker Eddy, I did not know what Self-consciousness was. I thought there was some other kind of consciousness that could be conscious of someone else, but that it impossible. It is my somebody else that I am living. This was a difficult step for me to take. You ask the question, “What prompted you to take that step?” I was unhappy and self-deprived. I was ambitious and I was hurting myself until the opportunity appeared to take that step. I listened to my living of my fellowman who had take the step and found that it worked.” (Dr. Dorsey found the confirmation of his life work when he “grew” one or two Christian Scientists in his world who interpreted and demonstrated that living the God-Nature Self-consciously is God “doing” the living.)
“In my church living I had heard over and over the importance of Soul, but I never heard that everything I lived was my Soul (my sense of being Spirit). I had heard that the Kingdom of God is within you, but never heard that everything is the Kingdom of God, even things that I was accustomed to thing of as the kingdom of evil. The Kingdom of God that I was not understanding, is the kingdom of evil. I heard all the therapeutic statements about Love, but the whole story was not heard until I learned that Love is Spirit with Soul for seeing, hearing, feeling. All ‘other’ feelings I may believe I have are Love that has been inhibited (covered up)
“The one thing needed in my whole educational life is the admission that all education is learning about myself. There is nothing more wonderful and exhilarating than learning that I am individual Soul (God) capable of creating my won world in my own image and likeness. I have the making of divinity within me and am in constant consultation with myself. In other words, from childhood I was adorably helping myself through efforts to make my life seem worth living.” (Laird Letter Sept./Oct. 1980, Vol. 26 no. 5)
For text at head of his chapter,
My Scientific I, in LIVING CONSCIOUSLY: THE SCIENCE OF SELF,” John M. Dorsey, M.D. quotes, J.B.S. Haldane: “In so far as it places all phenomena on the same emotional level, the scientific point of view may be called the God’s-eye-view.”
My dear friend and colleague, John M. Dorsey, M.D., Dean of the Department of Psychiatry, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI, co-authored a book with Dr. Walter Seegers, M.D., Dean of the Department of Physiology, entitled LIVING CONSCIOUSLY: THE SCIENCE OF SELF. Many Christian Scientists have found this book helpful in the light of Mrs. Eddy’s discovery that “All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation” for Mind is the All-of-all. Dr. Dorsey wrote other books on the psychology or Science of Spirit, God, from the same standpoint as Mary Baker Eddy. “What you see, hear, feel is a mode of consciousness and can have no other reality than the sense you entertain of it.” Also, “All consciousness is Mind, God, an infinite and not a finite consciousness."
The ethics of John M. Dorsey an M.D. and the ethics of Margaret Laird, a C.S.B. are individual but the same in Principle and Practice. The Science which wrote CHRISTIAN SCIENCE RE-EXPLORED, including authentic notes from the teaching of Bicknell Young, C.S.B., is a book which Christian Scientists find of value in “interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony.” (Letter, 1980 no. 3, pg. 4)
