Mrs. Margaret Laird: "The search for Truth does not lead to Truth since Truth is the Reason for the search. Truth unfolding from the withinness of consciousness is the Reality of the seen, heard, felt...Perfection is gained by perfection. This is the Science of being. Whatever arises to deny the perfection that you divinely are should be embraced with Love since it is Love reminding you to live your divinity (your God) self-consciously. Whether I feel this Health as health or sickness, Health is what is. Through Itself (Truth) which is understanding destroying the belief of a God separate from man, of a Soul outside of body, you are Soul, and not body separate from Soul; you are God and not man separate from God."
-- Government is Self-Government
The Science of Metaphysics is the Soul-knowledge that Mind, the Mind of each individual, is the entire being: the universe. With this knowledge, the metaphysician does not work mentally to correct the man-image, to unsee the crime and sickness which confront him on every hand. He does not do mental work to prevent war or destroy an enemy. He who is being the Science examines “the divine mysteries” unfolding from his own Mind until, like St. Francis of Assisi, “he may know how to pass through the appearance of things seen with the eyes into the beholding of the truth of things seen only in the understanding.”
“Healing in Science is education. It is the elimination of disease in the sense that sin, “missing the mark,” imperfect apprehension, is the disease. A scientific metaphysician will not ask himself why or how he got into trouble since what confronts him as trouble is the mistaken sense of himself. The all-knowing Mind never got into trouble and does not have to get out, and the ego-image can never get out since it is the trouble.”
“The equation Mind=I=Us states the Science of Metaphysics and sets it apart from all other systems of healing. This equation does not do away with the physical body that needs healing, but recognizes that in the physical the metaphysical is the physical. That which identifies the I with and as Mind, is the understanding or unconditioned thinking in which the language of disease and adversity changes to ease and abundance. Conditioned thinking makes disease and adversity essential concepts in demonstrating individual divinity.”
“The Reason incarnate in all existence is the intelligence or rationality which “reduces to human perception the Life which is God.” The metaphysician who is Science does not use his capacity to reason from an intellectual point of view, but uses it from within the framework of Science, Reason itself. The visibility of Spirit is demonstrated rationally, in which the trees, flowers and people in our world are all seen as our own conscious being or experience of Mind.”
“Instinctively we want to be happy; we desire health and wealth. We cannot help this instinct any more than the flower can help growing into a flower since the flower exists before the seed. The desire to expand, to create new frontiers, is not separate from the expanding, the creating, the growing. The Life-force, felt as desire, is the same Life-force felt as fulfillment. Turn away from Science, the divinity or reality of ourselves, to take thought by outlining or conceptualizing our desires and we deprive ourselves of fulfillment. He who would experience wellness in his sickness must think unconditionally out from Mind. In unconditioned thinking Health is the fact in both wellness and sickness. He who would experience greater good than his present concept of good must acknowledge the infinity of Good and thus prepare the soil and climate in which a new and better good can appear. Such a one can say, “My sickness is indeed my Health.”
"The religion that is Science is the subjective experience of Truth as individual consciousness or Mind. It is understanding, Reason. That which searches for Truth is Truth breaking from the infinite Unconscious (Mind) into the conscious experience that is I-Us. What we are sensing as though it were outside of us, we are really sensing insightfully as us, since we are the conscious infinitude of existence. As Mind, each one individually is the Whole. There is but one I or Ego."
"He who is being the Science of Scientific Metaphysics has neither reverence nor humility in the old sense of reverence and humility. Bicknell Young told his students that reverence and humility should be discarded, based as they are on the Christian belief that God is other than one's own self-conscious divinity or Mind. Man's is required by his divinity (Reality) to give up preconceptions of good and evil, God and devil. His duty is entirely to himself, the divinity that is his existence."
--We are the World We Walk Through
Mary Baker Eddy: "Our false views of Life hide the eternal harmony and produce the ills of which we complain."
"Through discernment of the spiritual opposite of materiality, even the way through Christ, Truth, man will re-open with the key of divine Science, the gates of paradise which human beliefs have closed and will find himself unfallen, upright, pure and free, not needing to consult almanacs for the probabilities either of his life or of the weather, not needing to study Brainology to learn how much of a man he is."
"The I signifies God and not man; Principle and not person...The I is intelligence; to admit one's self Soul, sets one free to master the infinite idea. The belief that God has a separate being leads to multitudinous errors. Man is the phenomenon of Soul, of Intelligence. When realizing Life as it is, namely Soul and not the personal man, we shall expand into Truth and Self-completeness that embrace all things. The final understanding that we are Spirit must come, and we might as well improve our time in solving the so-called mysteries of today on this Principle."
--Science and Health
John Dorsey and Walter Seegers: "Ever since Freud's discovery of his valid and epoch-making method which enables a human mind to strengthen and heal itself by means of the extension of its power of consciousness, every kind of antagonism regarding it has appeared. Such antagonism toward life-consciousness, technically recognized as resistance which is always traceable to self-intolerance, has been found to be a regular forerunner of conscious life-affirmation. An untrained mind is not capable of immediate intutive appreciation that its own modifications account for all of its living of its mental powers. As a corrective, systematic study and practice of conscious individual living develops mental insight which is the essence of mental health."
-- Living Consciously: The Science of Self
Arthur Corey: "Scientific thought spreads itself in spite of organized groups, hostile or friendly. Mathematics has spread itself inexorably throughout all the lands without concerted effort on the part of some band or bands of people working to that end. The scientific approach to God, to do this, would have to be divorced from the stultifying confines of denominationalism, loosened from brands and trademarks, which represent but a narrowing of thought and purpose.
Scientific thought recommends itself not through the prestige of its proponents, but through its compelling logic and works. The mystical notion of Truth embodied in a miraculous "revealed religion", belonging personally to its revelator to be handed down to his or her successors in office, is utterly incompatible with any science, of course. Scientific principles cannot be bottled up by human custodians. If ours, then, is a true science, it will flourish in the light of day, shunning the darkening pride and secretiveness of priestcraft, its exponents knowing full well "though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity, I am as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal." So often the Christian ethic is lost sight of in the frenzy of what zealots call "holy work." There is surely nothing more diabolical than the human view-point operating under the disguise of divinity. Throughout history religion has been plagued by antinomianism, the insidious sophistry whereby the self-ordained can justify anything from the physical tortures of the ghastly Spanish Inquisition, to the tricks of character assassination practiced today by those churchists who regard themselves as vicars of a higher law than that govering ordinary mortals.
To found faith not upon the shifting sands of tradition or authority but on the unshakable ground of ascertained fact, that is the scientific approach to God."
--Behind the Scenes with the Metaphysicians.
Lewis Strang: "Everything that one does is the externalized effect of some sort of mental process. The mind must act before the body can move. When a thing is done for the first time, the external activity is the effect of a mental process into which has entered the element of initiative.
Compared with an accepted standard of conduct or morals, the external activity may be either good or it may be bad. The mental process may be intelligent or it may be foolish. These comparative values are extremely important where such relative matters as human custom and situations are concerned, but these relative values are not at the present moment under consideration. The important question from the standpoint of metaphysics always is: has the mental process the element of initiative? It is the presence of this important element of initiative in his mental proceedings which determines the mental quality of the individual and proves his unity with Mind.
Though the thought process or mental initiative may be inferior, judged by an accepted human standard, nevertheless, the presence of mental initiative is the definite evidence of conscious mind action as distinguished from automatic response to suggestion. An initiative thought process has in it the worth and dignity of individual intelligence. As regards quality and character, it is the manifestation of individual understanding of what for convenience is called divine Mind.
It is also the only proof one can give that he is himself. It is the presentation of identity -- one's self-cognized individuality or selfhood as distinguished from his changing personal mentality and physical characteristics, a step towards the realization and expression of true identity, which must of necessity be intelligence made manifest in order to be knowable. Non-intelligent or illogical and unreasonalbe identity could neer be knowable and therefore would be a myth.
---Freedom Through Right Thinking
Joel S. Goldsmith: "No matter how many solutions are offered today to the problems of the world, tomorrow they will break out in new and more serious forms. The end of all this shifting back and forth will come only when we perceive the nature of spiritual power, and realize that spiritual power has nothign to do with good conditions today or evil conditions tomorrow. Rather does it have to do with our understanding that we are not seeking to change the conditions of matter but to realize the omnipresence of Spirit, that we are not seeking to turn sickness into health or war into peace: we are seeking the government of God, the revelation and realization of God as our consciousness....The revelation and understanding of one power helps us to arrive at the consciousness where we do not seek to change the negative to the positive. In the realization of one power, we not only stop seeking some material power with which to meet our need, but we stop seeking a spiritual power.
Since there is but one power, then, there is nothing on, against, or for which to use this power. What in essence does this really mean? What does it mean to reach a point in consciousness where we relinquish all thought of using God as a power?"
---A Parenthesis in Eternity
J. J. Van Der Leeuw: "If then in the world of the Absolute nothing is either good or evil, while in the world of the relative we are painfully aware that some things are as evil as others are good, what is it that causes us to experience some things as evil and others as good?
Let us begin by realizing that at every point of the vast scheme of evolution certain things are right and fitting for the evolving creature, others are not. Thus certain conditions of life were right for the prehistoric reptile; when, however, the winged creature evolved it needed and utilized conditions of life very different from those which were right for the reptile. The same holds good for different creatures at the present time; water is a right and fitting an environment for the fish as air is for the bird and earth is for the mole. For each of these the environment of the other would be fatal; that which is right for the one is wrong for the other; to say that any environment is right or wrong in itself would be to forget the relativity involved and make an absolutistic absurdity out of that which is a relative truth."
-- the Conquest of Illusion
Hubert Benoit: "With regard to these essential ideas we necessarily ask ourselves, what difference there is between the natural man and the man who has attained 'realisation.' These two men exist by virture of (the) central cross-roads at which sits their creative principle; basically there is no difference between them; and it is that moreover which Zen affirms. Zen affirms that these two men are identical in constitution and that the natural man lacks nothing; the man who has attained realisation has not acquired something which the natural man lacked. However, if these two men are identical, their manifestations differ. Why? Does it mean that the unconscious central cross-roads has become conscious at the moment of satori? This would have no sense, the principle of consciousness being necessarily always above consciousness itself, outside it, unconscious.
No, the true answer is otherwise: Let us say that everything happens in the natural man as though his cross-roads were asleep, passive; and that everything happens in the man who has attained realisation as if his cross-roads were awake, active. It is relatively easy to imagine the relatively sleeping cross-road of the natural man; it is indeed only a cross-roads, that is to say, a place at which passes by all the influences coming from the outside world. Crossing this simple 'place', the influxes from without reach the secondary centeres of the somatic and psychical domains, centres which respond to them by automatic reactions. The natural man, whose cross-roads is asleep, is an automaton. With the man who has attained realisation the central cross-roads is not asleep. The Absolute Original Thought is functioning there (although, once again, always unconsciously). This Thought interprets the influx that has come from without; conceiving things in the totality of the universal context; it sees it, then, in its relativity, that is to say, that it sees it as it is really."
---The Supreme Doctrine
Chogyam Trungpa: "Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against the other "undesirable" side, the bad and the black? That is a big question. If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. As long as a person is involved in warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation. One would not expect the great teachings to be as simple-minded as that, trying to be good, fighting bad. Such would be the approach of the Hollywood western movie...This approach is obviously simple-minded; but it is just this type of situation that we are creating in terms of "spiritual" struggle, "spiritual" achievement. Sense of humor seems to come from all-pervading joy, joy which has room to expand into a completely open situation because it is not involved with the battle between "this" and "that". Joy develops into the panoramic situation of seeing or feeling the whole ground, the open ground. This open situation has no hint of limitation, of imposed solemnity...sense of humor is not merely a matter of trying to tell jokes or make puns, trying to be funny in a deliberate fashion. It involves seeing the basic irony of the juxtaposition of extremes, so that one is not caught taking them seriously, so that one does not seriously play their game of hope and fear....Someone is trying to be stern and spiritually solemn, trying to be a good person. Such a person might take it seriously if someone offended him, might want to fight. If you work in accordance with the basic insignificance of what is, then you begin to see the humor in this kind of solemnity, in people making such a big deal about things...I am speaking of seeing something more than just warfare, struggle, duality. If we regard the path of spirituality as a battlefield, then we are weak and feeble. Then our progress on the path will depend upon how great an area we have conquered, upon the subjugation of our own and other's faults, upon how much negativity we have eliminated. Relative to how much dark you have eliminated, that much light you have been able to produce. That is very feeble; one could hardly call it liberation...."
--Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism
