Note: This transcription is as accurate to the spoken text as I found possible to put into the written word. Since we naturally speak much more informally than we write, and often in incomplete sentences, the written text may be somewhat difficult to read at points where the meaning is quite clear in the talk itself.
In addition, please note that any text enclosed in brackets is not part of the talk. I have added these references so that the reader may know where the quoted text may be found or understand the activities that occur during the delivery of the talk.
Wendy: Dear staff at Tenacre, visitors, our guests, both here and in the hall, Mr. Daniel Jenson is from Richmond, California. He is a life-long Christian Scientist and practiced law for a number of years. Through the healing of a severe physical problem, he began to see that Christian Science was the most important thing in his life. And this led to his becoming a public practitioner of Christian Science. He became a teacher in 1970, has assisted in college organizations, college organization work, has been a chaplain at San Quentin Correctional Institution, has served on the board of Arden Wood for over twelve years. He's finally interested in all aspects of Christian Science Nursing, and that's why he's here. So welcome, will you please, his address is "To Begin Rightly," Mr. Jenson.
[Applause]
Mr. Jensen: Thank you, Wendy. Mrs. Eddy tells us that "To begin rightly is to end rightly" [Science and Health 262:28]. And that's what I'd like to talk to you about this afternoon -- beginning rightly. In our prayers, in our treatment, from which premise do we begin -- Spirit or matter? Mortal mind presents its material claims of disease and discord to all mankind, it seems. And since most of the world is ignorantly deceived into accepting these material sense pictures as instant reality, they undertake to heal them in the only way they know -- materially. When their car doesn't work, they go to a mechanic. And when they think their body isn't working right, viewing it as just as materially as their car, they go to a mechanic with a white coat on. And they try and do something to that body. But almost the first thing that a Christian Scientist learns is that we do not, in Christian Science, use material means for healing. Gradually, we come to understand something of why we don't and how to turn to spiritual means alone. This premise, in solution, is pretty generally accepted among Christian Scientists. But there is one vitally important area where all too often we go astray.
Any experienced practitioner will tell you that nine out of ten patients come to them wanting metaphysical help. But to do what? To fix a matter body, a material situation, or to find a solution to some material problem. Now, what does this effort reveal? It tells us unmistakably that we too have been deceived by the primary error -- the reality of matter. Now, stop and think to yourself, every time you've gone to a practitioner, almost, isn't in the back of your thought that somehow you want to quit hurting? You want to fix that matter body in some way? Of course, it's a no-no to do anything materially, and you ask your practitioner to work metaphysically, but to do what? And this is the point. We've been duped into accepting the wrong premise -- that matter is real, that man is mortal, and that, therefore, it is matter that needs healing. This of course is not beginning rightly. True, we're not using material means to solve our problem, but the problem itself is seen to be a material one.
[Some people arrive in the room late]
There's some seats down here at the front if you'd like to come down.
Our view of the problem is often just as material as the doctor's. The only difference is that we attempt to use spiritual means to heal it. Now is this Christian Science? No, I'm afraid it's not. It would probably be classified as a form of mind over matter, or psychosomatic medicine Christian Science-style, or at best faith healing. But Mrs. Eddy admonishes us, "It is mental quackery to make disease a reality -- to hold it as something seen and felt -- and then to attempt to cure it [sic] through Mind" [Science and Health 395:21].
In our discussion of beginning rightly let's consider an actual case. I received a call one afternoon from a friend who despairingly told me that the finest clinics in the state had agreed that his mother would be dead of a malignancy within two weeks. And that there was nothing further that could be done medically. He was a close friend of the governor of California who had arranged for the best clinics in the state to examine her. And they had all come to the conclusion that there was nothing further that could be done, that it had metastasized all over her body, and that it was just a matter of trying to keep her comfortable until she passed on. As you can see, he gave me all the details of this. And as you can see, mortal mind, the playwright, was setting the scene. And he asked me if, as a last resort, they could try Christian Science. Now, I went out to the mother's home (I had known her a number of years), and I was met at the door by a medical nurse who advised me of all the other details, if he had missed anything, and the hopelessness of the whole picture -- that it was just too late.
Now, consider for a moment that you're the practitioner presented with such a picture. You are, perhaps, at the most crucial point in the case, at that point. For it is here that the most basic decision must be made, and it must be made correctly in order to facilitate a healing. Now, in spite of the vividness of the sense testimony and its claim to reality, there is a choice to be made, at that point. Now, how will you view the problem? Which premise will you accept? The first, that matter, the body, is real; that it has substance, life, and sensation, yet is destructible in nature; that it has substance and life and sensation; and that it must be restored or repaired in one way or another. Materially or metaphysically, that body must be restored or repaired. Now that's the first premise. Or, two, the premise that spirit is real, that man is totally spiritual, eternal, perfect, and indestructible. And that therefore this so-called matter is but a mental picture that is unreal and illusory. Which premise is to be accepted at the outset of your work?
Now, Mrs. Eddy had a practice in her household. Whenever a member of the household had a claim, they had to put two words in front of it, whenever they thought of it or referred to it. And those two words were "belief of." Now, if you think of something as the "belief of", automatically it's being translated that into something mental, isn't it? The very moment you say "belief of" you have translated that into a mental problem. It wasn't a stomachache. It was a belief of a stomachache, a belief of a sore finger, or whatever. Now, I remember when I first went into the practice when I would have calls for help, I made a practice in my diary as I wrote it down, I put "b-o-f" in front of every claim. I would not allow myself to write done the claim without prefacing it with three letters -- b-o-f. I "bof"-ed it. [Laughter] That was my little shorthand term for "belief of." And I was, I did this religiously until, as time went on, it came to the point where I didn't have to do that. I would remember, immediately.
Now that is a very important thing. It seems like a very small thing. But whatever it takes at that crucial point to consider this a mental problem and not a physical one. We are not in the body repair business. We're in the lie destruction business. That's all we're doing. Now, sitting here in the calm of a hypothetical situation, the choice of the spiritual premise is pretty obvious, isn't it? But as we all know we can often be partially or completely deceived by mortal mind's mental picture before we know it. And find ourselves accepting the material premise.
Now, when I went into the Christian Science practice, my teacher illustrated unforgettably this point of choosing the correct premise. Early in her practice, her infant son had been, come down with the belief of polio, and his little legs were paralyzed. Well, you can imagine how that mother worked -- hours every day. And when she'd finish her treatments for the day, also very natural, humanly, she'd go look under the blankets to see if he could move his little legs. Well, this went on for four months. Every day her just undevoted, unrestricted devotion to Christian Science went on. And finally she decided that she'd go to a practitioner herself. And she told her the circumstances and so forth and the practitioner just kind of smiled and she said three words -- "Quit peeking, dear." And she saw instantly what she'd been doing. And she said, "I could hardly wait to get home and start treating that child as I should have to begin with." She told me, she said, "It never occurred to me to look at his legs again." She, I remember her going, "What had that got to do with it? Nothing, nothing." Sometimes when I'm working on a case and the physical evidence has appeared very real, and I'm by myself, I'll say, "What's that got to do with it? Nothing, nothing." I'll never forget that. It made such an impression on me that the physical evidence had nothing to do with the problem. Well, the next morning she went to bathe him and he about jumped out of the pan. No atrophy, no time of recovery, perfect, complete. The claim had vanished. She had quit trying to heal matter. She wasn't peeking anymore, asking matter to confirm spiritual facts. She had shifted to a spiritual premise, period.
Even the most experienced Christian Scientists can be deceived, it seems. One of Mrs. Eddy's students told of an instant when our Leader suddenly turned from the bedside of a very critically ill patient that she was working for, and she walked to the window, and in abject humility she quietly exclaimed, "My dear heavenly Father, please forgive me for looking at matter." The healing followed immediately. There was simply a change in premise -- leaving the deception of matter for the spiritual reality.
When mortal mind gradually or abruptly presents its vivid mental image to human consciousness -- its picture of disease, discord, or lack -- it always appears to be a material condition or situation, just as our night dreams do. We must be, and remain, alert to the fact that its picture is a mental deception, a lie, not reality as Mrs. Eddy's experience shows. Now may I dwell upon this for a moment?
Mrs. Eddy was well aware how real this sense testimony appears to us. When something hurts, it's pretty hard sometimes to look away from that body and say that it's a false belief. And in the desire to have it quit hurting, often all of the accompanying mortal mind suggestions of a cause in matter -- and it always comes along with them -- present themselves, and if we aren't very careful we can be led off down that road. Now, she realized how difficult this will be and that's been true down through all recorded history -- the reality of the physical claims. So realizing this, Mrs. Eddy gave us that statement. "Sleep and mesmerism explain the mythical nature of material sense." Now that's on 490, 28 and 29. Now what she gave us is a very practical way of getting an idea of what is happening. Because she new we had all had dreams, this thing of sleep. Everyone's had dreams, and they have experienced how real it appears. They cry out or they laugh or they want to get kissed again. But it's very real experience. And we've all experienced that. And so, like Mrs. Eddy in a letter she wrote to Calvin Hill on page 44 of the third series of We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Calvin Hill was having a very severe problem with lungs. His father had passed away from tuberculosis, and he entertained quite a fear of this. And he had not said a thing to Mrs. Eddy about it. But she sensed what his problem was. And she wrote him this letter that I recommend you might want to look at where she talks about this being a waking dream just as the sleeping dream is. And she referred him to paragraph three, page 188 of Science and Health that talks of this very point. And while you're about it, if you want further discussion on this point go on to page 250, on line fifteen. And in this it says, "Now I ask, Is there any more reality in the waking dream than there is in the sleeping dream? There cannot be for both are dreams [sic]." See, she was trying in every way she could to get the idea across that it is just a thought, it's a mental experience. And you know, when we wake up from a dream we know instantly, "That was just a dream, it was a thought." But it illustrates how what we're going through in this experience is a mental dream. It's not a physical occurrence.
Now also, she said "or mesmerism" which was hypnotism. Now today hardly anyone is very familiar with hypnotism. I don't suppose many of you folks have really seen many people hypnotized. Maybe on a television or something. But in her day, every vaudeville show had, as a part of its program, a hypnotist. And so everybody on the street knew what hypnotism was, and they'd seen it demonstrated time and again. I remember my father telling me about when he was a youngster and in business college, and he and his roommate went to a vaudeville show one night, and his roommate volunteered as a subject for this hypnotist. And he hypnotized the man, and he told him that he was sitting on a hot cook stove. And everyone could see he was just sitting there on a little wooden bench. And pretty soon he was just squirming and pretty soon he was screaming in pain. And finally, the audience, of course, just loved this, and finally he let him off of the bench, and he came down to his seat. And my dad said when they got home he had big water blisters all over his bottom. So real had been the mental picture. Now the people of that day understood this kind of thing and so when Mrs. Eddy said that it was like hypnotism, they had an idea of what you're experiencing. Now if any of you have ever had a headache, a sore back, or you couldn't sleep or a stomachache or whatever, you've been hypnotized. If you want to know what it feels like, you've experienced it! You didn't think so. You thought it was something in your body, perhaps. But you were hypnotized! And that's exactly what hypnotism feels like. So, you have an awareness that it was mental, and the healing of that was a change in thought. There wasn't anything to be done to a body, because there wasn't a matter body to be dealt with.
Now the primary error is the claim of reality in matter. Mrs. Eddy warns us, "Admit the existence of matter, and you admit that mortality (and therefore disease) has a foundation in fact" [Science and Health 368:27]. " [M]atter is sometimes beautiful, always erroneous," [Science and Health 277:29] she tells us. A woman once came to Edward Kimball complaining that she had yellow canary feathers growing all over her arms. And he said, "Madame, there's no canary feathers on your arms." And she was indignant. She said, "Of course there are! Look at here! [Blows]." And she stroked these yellow canary feathers. Now how much time do you think Mr. Kimball spent trying to get rid of feathers? Now, his task, he knew, was simply to dissolve a mental delusion, illusion. And he did this by acknowledging the spiritual fact that man is the image and likeness of God, therefore perfect now. Now, in such a case it's comparatively easy to avoid trying to change matter, but to start from the spiritual premise because we know that women don't grow feathers. Birds grow feathers. But what if the woman had appeared and presented arms that were covered with an ugly-appearing skin disease? Uh-oh. Wouldn't it be tempting to start from a material premise and try and fix matter in some way? In reality, however, would the situation be one bit more material than the feathers? Now that little incident has always been very helpful to me, because I can see very clearly that there wouldn't be any feathers growing on those arms. And that the material picture, no matter what it seemed to be, would likewise be no more real than the feathers would. And I often think of this thing as feathers. Sometimes I just say to myself, "Feathers, feathers, feathers." So wouldn't the same spiritual premise be the correct starting point? Of course. But it requires consistent alertness to be instantly aware that matter, good- or bad-appearing, is the illusion and not to be tempted to assume the premise of material reality and so try to heal it. Have you ever caught yourself in a movie giving a treatment for the, to some actor on the screen? I know I have. I haven't had a single healing, yet, on any of them. [Laughter]
Another very helpful assistance in learning to begin rightly is provided in that wonderful short paragraph on page 123 of our textbook. It reads, "The verity of Mind shows conclusively how it is that matter seems to be, but is not. Divine Science, rising above physical theories, excludes matter, resolves things into thoughts, and replaces the objects of material sense with spiritual ideas." I have never seen a delayed healing but what the beginning rightly was the primary thing to be dealt with. Hiding back in the back of thought, so often, is some kind of a mental retention that there is something physical to be healed. And they go on, many times I've seen patients go on for twenty years conscientiously, earnestly studying and studying. But in the back of their thinking the premise was that they were trying to fix matter instead of merely allowing the truth to destroy the lie in thought, that it was a mental apparition, that was a mental conflict that had to be dealt with. And that the spiritual truths that they were declaring of themselves, let alone, beginning at the right premise, would destroy the lie. And when the lie was destroyed, the claim disappeared.
Now on page seventeen of the Manual there is an explanation about the formation of our church. And it says that we are to reestablish primitive healing. Now primitive healing spoke about the period of 312 years from Jesus' ascension until the Roman emperor that decreed Christianity for the entire empire. Now in those early years the pagan historians talk about the healings that took place. And in many of their history books they told that it was not an unusual thing to raise the dead. Every manner of disease and so forth was healed. And I felt this was so important I gave an association address on that point. And in looking into it you find that they had a firm foundation based upon the concept of casting out of demons. Now demons was just the same as our word for claims or errors or whatever we choose to call them. But they cast out the demons because they understood that when the demons were cast out, the physical claim, whatever it may be, even death, disappeared simultaneously. So often in Science we accept the position that if we take in a false belief that it causes a condition in body. That's not true. The false belief doesn't cause the condition; it is the condition. If we think it causes the condition then we're still dealing with a matter body trying to get rid of the condition in it. And that's not true. And they realized this. And so, though they had physicians and so forth, aplenty in that day, they just went to the proposition that they were going to cast out demons. Their practitioners were called exorcists. Now it's a little different than the exorcists that we know. We know them like "ghost busters" or something. But they cast out demons! And it spread like wildfire all over the Middle East, all over the Roman Empire. The Emperor Constantine, who ultimately selected Christianity, his mother had become a Christian way before. And there were the terrible executions and so forth with the Romans because the Romans had a form of government that said that the emperor was god. And here this cult was going around saying that there was a god apart from this. And so they had to put it down, they thought. And that was the reason for their terrible executions of the Christians. Some of the historians talked about them being killed by the hundreds of thousands, some of them by the millions. But they could not stamp it out, because these people saw the healings that took place. And they took place because of that one simple thing. This thing of realizing that it was simply a demon to be cast out. Now that primitive healing is what Mrs. Eddy said that Christian Science was to espouse. And that's what we're doing; we're casting out demons. Because as the false belief, alias the demon, is cast out, what appears to be a physical condition disappears simultaneously. They're not two; there's only one. And that's the concept that Mrs. Eddy is trying to get us to assume. But you see what I'm talking about is sense testimony. Sense testimony appears to be so real that it dupes us, it fools us into accepting that it's real.
Now, let's look more closely at the reminders contained in this statement on page 123. The verity of Mind, Truth, shows us conclusively, that is beyond question, decisively, absolutely, categorically, that matter only seems to be, but is not. Two. It's Divine Science which enables us to rise above physical theories, to exclude matter, and to resolve things into thought. That is to see that everything which appears to be material is only a thought, a mental concept. When we see this, of course, the claim is recognized as a mental one and so can be dealt with. But so long as one is dealing with things, matter, he's not even in the ball game. He's still out in the parking lot. Why is this resolution of things into thought so important? Well, in the first place, when you're dealing with thought, you're dealing with something that can be changed, replaced, or corrected. For whoever heard of an unchangeable thought? Do you see what this does to the claim of incurability? Whoever heard of an incurable thought?
May I suggest to you, that you all should read a testimony? It's in the March 1918 Journal. It's the first testimony. And it is probably the most remarkable testimony that you will ever read. Now, I think that the healings that took place were remarkable. But why I'm recommending it so to you is to see the manner in which this woman read. She had never read Science and Health before. She had been in a tubercular hospital, and she ran out of money, and she had to leave. And the only place she had to go was to a friend that was a Christian Scientist. But she didn't want to be told that she wasn't sick when she knew she was sick. And so she exacted a promise from her friend that she wouldn't talk Christian Science to her. When she got to the front door step, she collapsed. And they helped her to bed. And this sneaky Christian Scientist, when she left her, she said, "If you can't sleep, here's a book you can read." And left the textbook there by the bed. The lady laid there a while, and in pure curiosity -- she said she never had a thought that this would heal her -- she picked up this book and began to read it. Now her eyes were so weak, she had big thick glasses, she could only read a line at a time. Then her eyes hurt so she had to stop. And she would take the time then to review what she had just read. Now mind you this is the important part. She would go over it and over it, turning it this way and that way, simply reviewing to see if it was true! And every time she came to the conclusion that it was true. She accepted it. Then she went on to something else. She did this for twenty minutes, and she got out of that bed healed. Her eyes were completely well. She couldn't even see through the glasses. She was at a point of a nervous breakdown, and she said, "My nerves heard the command of 'Peace, be still,' and that was the end of it." She was examined for the tuberculosis by two of the best physicians in the state and given a certificate so she could go back and teach school. That night she went to wind her little wristwatch. Now, by mistake she held it up to her left ear. As a child she had had a mastoid operation, and they had surgically removed her eardrum and her ear bone, and she had been stone deaf all of her life. But when she held up her little wristwatch she heard it ticking perfectly through an ear that had no eardrum or no ear bone.
Twenty minutes of reading! Now do you see why I recommend that you look at how she read? That's what I want you to see it for. That's the way we should read. I recommended this to a patient a couple of months ago and she said, "My eyes were perfect," so she said, "I couldn't use that same method." But she said, "I went to bed with the text book and a little flashlight." And she said, "I'd read one sentence, and I'd turn the light off." And she said, "It was dark. I couldn't see anything else, and so I thought about it. Then I'd go back and read another sentence." And she got out of the bed well the next morning, she said. Now, I'm not recommending flashlights or something, but it's a question of being thorough in what you read. Think about it! Turn it around and around. See that within that is the Word of God, the Christ Truth, and that Truth, that Truth, that Truth destroys the lie. You don't have to push on it. You declare the Truth; it enforces itself. But have an awareness of what you are doing. Have an awareness of the power of the Word that you're declaring.
First, of course, you're going to deny it. And don't think you can Some teachers, even, have taught that you don't need to deny. That's a bunch of bologna. Mrs. Eddy said to deny -- that's part of the system. It's like wiping the blackboard. It removes the scribblings of mortal mind and allows us to have a clear tablet of thought that these truths stand on in clear distinction. These resolutions, this resolution of things into thoughts, allows us to see things as simply illusions, mental mistakes or errors rather than realities or frightful, material conditions. Therefore, it keeps us from trying to heal, or repair, or restore materially. What we now recognize to be mental illusions, we can deal with.
Have you ever thought of trying to heal train tracks? That you look down the track and they appear to merge in the distance. Wouldn't you feel a little funny about going to try to get your practitioner to heal merging tracks? Now what happens in this? Your eyes tell you that those merging tracks, or if there's ten guests there, twenty pairs of eyes will tell you that the tracks appear to merge right outside of town. But relying upon what you know, you know it through education or experience, you disregard the sense testimony, and you get in the train and go hurtling off at eighty miles an hour unafraid, because we've learned better. Now, understanding, understanding the nothingness of mortal mind, and the sense testimony, the sense testimony, the sense testimony, understanding that allows you to disregard what it says, if you understand it. And that's what our reading and studying is for.
If I appear to emphasize something, I remember I had a class in college, and this instructor every day he started out the class by saying, "Mere repetition does not ensure learning. Mere repetition does not ensure learning." It's the only thing from the course I remember. [Laughter] So if I repeat something to you, understand what I'm doing.
You realize that these mental illusions of sense testimony are as unreal as the feathers, or the merging tracks, or anything of that nature. You know the answer so well as to how to do this; you dwell on the fact, the spiritual fact as taught in divine Science. Dwell on it so single-mindedly and resolutely that only this truth has reality to you. The illusion will become self-evident. This is destroying the illusion through divine metaphysics and not through an act of human will power. It is the power of the Truth that heals. Mrs. Eddy tells us that "Truth has a healing effect, even when not fully understood" [Science and Health 152:9]. Isn't that reassuring? To know that it's having a healing effect, even if you don't understand it all the way.
God's laws are perfectly reciprocal laws of being that coordinate and are fitly joined together. Now what is apparent to human thought as one person or thing supplying the need of another person or thing is actually the reciprocal law of being reflecting the wholeness of itself. We should, more and more, realize and utilize this reciprocal law of being that is ever in operation in our behalf and in behalf of those with whom we deal. It's sometimes said that we do our work in the absolute, the spiritual, and it manifests itself in the world of symbols, humanly. One thing we do know is that we don't start out to heal lack, or feathers, or disease, or any other illusion or delusion, metaphysically. We practice the Science of the Christ by denying understandingly the falsity of the belief and affirming with confidence and constancy the Christ Truth of man's continuing relationship to God. This Truth dissolves the misleading lie of mortal mind and its all that can or will destroy this false belief. You see, that's what we're doing. Right from the outset we're realizing, "Now this is not a reality. It's a false belief." And you deny it. Now, that denial is something that so often we find Christian Scientists going on and on and on denying, denying all over the place, because it's much easier to deny than it is to affirm. But the denial only tends to wipe the mental blackboard. It's helpful, and we should do it, Mrs. Eddy says. But the thing that does the healing is the affirmation. After we have denied, or we can do it before hand. In the Scientific Statement of Being, first comes the denial, you'll notice, in that wonderful treatment. That treatment, the Scientific Statement of Being, when she first wrote it said, "There is no matter." Then she changed it in order to make it a little more palatable, and she said, "There's no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter" [Science and Health 468:9]. Well, you take away those things, and you got no matter anyway. But first comes that denial, you'll notice. Then comes the affirmation of what is true. And we have to realize this, that it is the affirmation that is the strong part of our treatment. Why? Because the affirmation destroys the lie. No lie can remain unaffected in the presence of the Truth. No lie can remain unaffected in the presence of the Truth. Now this woman in this testimony -- she was looking for the Truth. And it was that Truth in consciousness -- without any knowledge on her part -- that Truth destroyed the lies. And that's what we're doing in our treatments -- destroying lies. And we call this healing, but it is really revealing. But its results are simply the side effects of this affirmation of what is real.
Now, start practicing some this affirmation. One good way of starting is to describe yourself without reference to your body. Just start doing it when you are by yourselves. Just think about it. Describe yourself spiritually, what you are. Affirm this. Years ago my wife was teaching a class of little guys, and she asked them to describe their mother. And every one of them described their mother as loving, kind, thoughtful, and so forth. So the next Sunday I asked my class of college kids to describe their mother. How do you think they did? Five foot two with eyes of blue. Every one of them, physically. Now, who was closer to right? The little guys. Now, it's by this means you can describe yourself. Begin thinking that way. And you don't have to be bashful about it, because these qualities come from God. You didn't generate them. But to begin to see yourself that way and to describe yourself, pretty soon it's easier to make these affirmations that are visible through the spiritual sense. And let these truths that are contained within those wonderful affirmations, let these truths destroy the lie. And they will. It's just a matter of us putting them face to face with the lie and letting them do their work. It's the Christ within them that is doing the work. Not you folks. It's like you turn a flashlight on. You don't push on the flashlight. The light goes through the darkness. And so it is with the Truth. Mrs. Eddy tells us that "matter, examined in the light of divine metaphysics, disappears" [Science and Health 274:30]. Of course it does.
Now, our books provide this wonderful healing light through their inspired statements of spiritual truth. It's a wonderful source to go to. Now, I can talk the rest of the afternoon about our books. But they are a source that are just marvelous. Declare one. Take one of those statements of truth like this woman did in the testimony. And read it, and think about it. Don't rush! For instance, isn't this a practical way of dealing with moral error. Think of it carefully. "The counter fact relative to any disease is required to cure it" [Science and Health 233:28]. Now stop and think of that.
I know one weekend I had six heart attack cases. Three of them passed out on the phone. There was a lot of screaming and yelling and crying going on, and you have to look away from that sort of thing. And I began to think about this. And I had read recently that this statement about the counter fact. Now if you've got a stomachache or something, you think, "Well, in a little while it's going to be all right anyway." But you have something about your heart going on, and what's the great fear? Fear of life, isn't it, of death. So I took the counter fact of this belief of death. Now there was only one real counter fact and that was life. So, from my law days I always keep a legal pad there, I began to write down all of the ideas that came to me that were the counter fact of death, of life. Energy, vitality, movement, strength, so forth. And I began to make a list of these things. And I worked on for quite a little while and pretty soon I ran out of things, so I went and got a thesaurus. And I looked up some more words, and then a dictionary. And I exhausted everything I could think about in this list. And mortal mind kept coming to me and saying, "You'd better get back to work on this case or you're going to have a bunch of dead patients!" But recognizing it as mortal mind, I stayed on what was revealed to me to do. And I kept at this list until I had sixty-some words in that list. I remember one of them was evergreen. Now, that might not have meant anything to anybody else but this was my list, and it depicted a picture of continuing life and vitality to me.
Then I went to the concordances, and I looked up every single one of those words. Now not all of them were "on the spot," but an awful lot of them were. And as I went through those -- and that's before I had a Concord [concordance software] -- I went through them, and I was three, four hours doing this. But when I finished, I had an awareness of life like I had never seen before. I saw it as absolutely unconnected with a body. Certainly not with a little bundle of muscles and valves and arteries and red water. All that I was dealing with was a false belief. And the truth about this, that I was gaining from the textbook, was just utterly changing that. Well, Monday morning all six of them were back at work. Now if I had been trying to fix arteries or valves or seizures or something of that nature, I could've been working yet. You see, it was the Truth that was doing it, and I've so often now I've used that thing of working out a list of the counter facts. And now that I've got a Concord, I go to my Concord and I run out a list of citations about it. And then I can just read them, one after another. You can do it a lot faster, but it's the same process of letting these truths become paramount in your thinking. And merely the presence of these truths, they contain the Word of God. And let them do the work. And in proportion -- by the way, if you want to read some wonderful citations, look up "proportion," "proportionately," "proportionably" in both Science and Health and Prose Works, and you will find some real meat and potatoes citations. There are no pabulum there. And it's in proportion, in proportion, in proportion to our seeing it this way that it destroys the lie. And that's what we're busy doing.
Or we work from the Biblical truths such as "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?" [Isaiah 2:22]. Now, that was a long time ago they were saying that. You see, the man whose breath was in his nostrils was very real then. What does this say to mortal mind's demand that we heal matter? "Cease ye!" it said. Well, we all know these and hundreds of other familiar spiritual tools and have often used them in our healing work. But it behooves us to be alert at the outset, at the first onslaught of mortal mind's pictures so that we begin rightly, from the spiritual premise and do not think we are using these spiritual truths to try and heal matter. This is the constant struggle.
Now, before we close let me tell you the outcome of the real-life example that we mentioned earlier. When the patient reported that every vestige of the disease had vanished, for a moment I tried to think back a week to when I had first seen her. I then realized that the important thing about this healing was, that for the life of me I could not remember seeing a single physical symptom or appearance of that problem, so completely free from matter had become my view of her. Not for one moment had there been an effort to heal or repair a material body. Every denial and affirmation was single-mindedly devoting, devoted to dissolving a lie and seeing in its place this perfect idea of God. I wish I could do this consistently. We try to do it, but sometimes we begin to see matter. And we can sure tell it in our work when we do.
And you dear ones that are in the nursing, it's so important that you not allow these physical symptoms -- I've been so grateful so often for those nurses that were in those rooms taking care of these patients and of necessity applying the dressings and so forth and seeing this. Well, I was privileged to stay apart from that, and it was easier. But I've been so grateful for the services the nurses that allowed me to do that.
Our Leader sets forth in a statement you know so well, "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick" [Science and Health 476:32]. Once again, healing is simply the practical application of the rules of this Science of the Christ, and beginning rightly is one of the rules. It's pretty well summed up in this: we're not trying to see mortal man as the image and likeness of God. We are trying to see the image and likeness of God instead of mortal man. Doesn't that make our goal in healing clear? And that's beginning rightly. Thank you.
[Applause.]