The Mystery of Healing

Mankind has looked upon healing as a bodily process, and there has always been a sense of the mysterious attached to it. Among primitive peoples there are rites and medicinal herbs that are thought to hold within themselves the power of restoring men to health. As you see, faith in something is necessary. While men are believing in these means of restoration, they are shrouding them in mystery. How we have worked to take life out of the natural and to surround its observances with the supernatural. Now we are coming to see that there is no supernatural, for the natural is God in action.

Divine Science is revealing to us two things: first, that healing is not a physical process but, spiritual realization; and second, that health is not a condition of physical well-being only but the realization of a state of wholeness in the individual. Healing is the turning from the belief in disease to the realization of God’s Presence and Perfect Activity. God is health. Do I hear you asking, “Since God is health and God is omnipresent, what is there to be healed?” There is only one condition to be healed -- our misconceptions.

When we understand form, our point of view on healing becomes clearer. In the old thought what was called form or matter was considered susceptible to all kinds of ills. Healing, consequently, meant a righting of wrong conditions, a changing of disease into health. Divine Science holds that Substance is God and that form is Substance in manifestation; hence, form is declared incorruptible because by nature it is perfect. God is being rediscovered. In the light of Divine Science, we see omnipresent Spirit manifesting in an infinite variety of forms. We believe in the perfection of the manifest because God is everywhere. We know that imperfection is only our misconception. Form is the expression of God; it is Spirit manifest, and Spirit is perfect, true, and harmonious.

As the misconception, dualism, passes, and the true conception of One Presence and Power takes its place, the unity of all life is being revealed as well as the perfect nature of all God manifestation -- and there is no other. Divine Science recognizes the unity of the universe, and form and Spirit, not as two, but as one. Just so long as we persist in thinking in terms of two powers, there will be a mystery about all manifestation. So long as we emphasize the power of mind over matter, we are holding on to a dualistic conception; we are proclaiming the existence of two powers. There is danger in this; it retards our development.

While healing to the mental scientist is brought about by exercising the power of mind over body; to the Divine Scientist health is the natural state of the individual and is only waiting for his realization of perfection as his divine heritage. Health always is universal, but we do not always realize it.

Mental healing does not differ so much from the old conception of healing the body by external means, for the mental power of one person is supposed to restore another to health. Spiritual healing is realization; it does not bring about anything but realizes what is already there. The greatest thinkers are agreeing that there is only one Power and its activity is the Universe and that we are one with this activity everywhere.

Divine Science sees God’s creation like its Creator, eternally perfect, and untouched by human thought. The creation of God is eternal; the misconception about it is temporal. Spirit is always expressing in terms of perfection; there is nothing that needs healing in God-Life. Where God is, there Substance is, whole and perfect, and God is in all places at all times. There is no place where God is not. What is it, then, that is ill and sinful? It is only our thought of the body; it is not the Body, the temple of the living God; and remember there is only One Body -- the God-Body. Divine Science knows one Substance -- Spirit -- and one Mind -- Universal Intelligence. You and I are included in this Mind. All that we see with true vision is Spirit brought forth.

Men are not creators; there is but one Creator -- God. Men are sharers in creation which is the very presence of God-Power: Wisdom, Love, Truth, Light. We see what we believe; we believe in imperfection of all kinds, and we see it; hence, there is to you and to me, sickness, lack, sin, as long as we see these. If you are seeing with a limited vision, God seems limited to you. God seems to be a fluctuating power, sometimes in the ascendancy, other times under the domination of another power called evil. It is as we think that we experience.

Divine Science teaches that men cannot recreate or rebuild tissue. Tissue is always perfect and does not need restoring; neither can they reshape or restore a body to health. The body does not need this, for it is always perfect. They can, however, accomplish wonderful results by right thinking, and glorify the world with great healing power by consecrated thinking which brings realization of perfection. Body is Mind in manifestation. Do we believe this? If we do, you and I are healed. Body is perfect as its Source; it can not suffer, be sick, or die. Jesus said, “Be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.” He meant this. Since ye are perfect, why not realize your perfection. Right thinking restores us in consciousness to our normal state -- perfection, although we seem to have been straying far from it.

We are responsible for our wrong thinking as well as our wrong doing. Difficult experiences are the results of misconceptions about our bodies and our affairs. Ignorance is blindness; it is darkness. And in the darkness, yes, even in the twilight, things assume grotesque shapes; a tree stump takes on the semblance of a huge bear, and until our vision is cleared, we fear the bear on the path before us as much as if it were a bear. To us it is. So it is with the body when we see it through the shades of twilight-thinking; it seems to have many ills; it does not look to us in the half-light like the God-Body. Why? Is it the Body or is it our misconception of it? Since we believe that there is only One Substance, God, and that our bodies are Substance in action, these are in truth perfect. We see the body imperfectly and say that it is sick, when we look through the dimmers of sense experiences. Remember always that the senses give us only a partial report of the true state of anything. Let us look with the eye of Spirit, the single eye, and our bodies shall be full of light.

Misconceptions are shadows that fall across sunlit paths only to flicker away. We are emerging into the full light of truth to see that man is perfect Being. When we realize this, we are healed. Faith in God makes us whole; health is wholeness, and it is our normal state. There is no mystery in healing for God is Health.