Sense & Sensuality
May 21, 1998
When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
This was a hard one. Many approaches but also much recovery were represented in our meetings and from our internet family.
Sensuality is defined by the Heritage Dictionary as "excessive devotion to sensual pleasures....particularly sexual appetites." Orthodox theology, behaviorism, societal laws and customs may provide temporary relief but tend, in the long run, to reinforce the excesses.
Depth psychology can be a helpful tool, and the 12 Step programs promoting spiritual awakening and assiduous character reformation give a useful structure for transformation.
Christian Science however takes the case out of the "court of matter" (see Science and Health, pg. 434:8-14) and brings healing based on perfect God, perfect man as the only cause and effect.
The "court of matter" would keep us pinned down as living in finite concepts or spaces (e.g. bodies, houses, jobs, etc.) trying to relate to others in a similar fix through the five personal senses.
Fortunately, this involves us in so much fear, frustration and perhaps an addiction or two that we eventually seek help. One key point in all this — whether reaching out for a substance or another body or eventually recovery help — is that it's about desire or prayer, as Mrs. Eddy calls it — an attempt to transcend the walls we've erected in building up our personal sense of ourselves.
One of our members read bits of Dancer From the Dance by Andrew Holleran. The passages described the devotion to salvation through sexual and romantic obsession in the East Village of the late Seventies. As some of us swooned, one did recall Carl Jung's advice to Bill Wilson, the founder of AA, that alcoholism (or any addiction) should be seen as a spiritual quest and would yield only to spiritual awakening. This proved to be the case with Wilson and all the 12-Step programs followed.
This is in accord with Mrs. Eddy's own experience of spiritual awakening and healing. Her appreciation of Science as shown in her writings and practice provide many helpful and even electrifying statements promoting healing of sensualism. Here are a few: "The Christianly scientific real is the sensuous unreal" (Science and Health, pg. 353:1); "Desire is prayer..." (Ibid., pg. 1:11); "[Man is] the conscious infinitude of existence and of all identity" (Ibid., pg. 302:6-7). See also Miscellaneous Writings, pg. 60:28-3 for its dazzling vision of what's going on.
Ultimately, as conception is unconfined (Science and Health, pg. 323:6-12) we'll experience Soul as the only sense. This state of irreversible bliss is the infinite God-body enjoying Itself as the one I or Us.
One of our internet friends sent us an excellent paper on the latest in dance movement research. The flow of sensory data from minute propioceptors in each muscle fiber is balanced against the data from the other senses to produce a desired result. As we yield to the fact of one God-body enjoying Itself as all, is this not just another way of saying, "...when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere" (Science and Health, pg. 516:6-8).
Healings:
As noted above, a number of members have seen healings of alcoholism, compulsive overeating, sex and love addictions via practicing the 12-Step program, with help from the unique perspective of Christian Science.
One member had an interesting synchronicity: his practitioner had quoted in passing from Mrs. Eddy to the effect that the right way opens the right of way. After their talk, he went to a concordance to look it up and found therein, between the pages, a piece of paper on which was written out the statement in his mother's handwriting — she had apparently sent it to him some years ago before her passing. (See The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pg. 232:6-8).
One who attends our meetings has experienced some psychotherapy help with painful incest memories and has seen, at least intellectually, the way to proceed metaphysically, but feels there is a need now to live divinely, and thus radically revise the record. "Mere historic incidents and personal events are frivolous....The human history needs to be revised and the material record expunged" (Retrospection and Introspection, pg. 212:5-26 & 22:1-2). There should be more on this demonstration at a later date.
The time is not distant when the ordinary theological views of atonement will undergo a great change,—a change as radical as that which has come over popular opinions in regard to predestination and future punishment.
Does erudite theology regard the crucifixion of Jesus chiefly as providing a ready pardon for all sinners who ask for it and are willing to be forgiven? Does spiritualism find Jesus' death necessary only for the presentation, after death, of the material Jesus, as a proof that spirits can return to earth? Then we must differ from them both.
The efficacy of the crucifixion lay in the practical affection and goodness it demonstrated for mankind. The truth had been lived among men; but until they saw that it enabled their Master to triumph over the grave, his own disciples could not admit such an event to be possible. After the resurrection, even the unbelieving Thomas was forced to acknowledge how complete was the great proof of Truth and Love.
The spiritual essence of blood is sacrifice. The efficacy of Jesus' spiritual offering is infinitely greater than can be expressed by our sense of human blood. The material blood of Jesus was no more efficacious to cleanse from sin when it was shed upon "the accursed tree," than when it was flowing in his veins as he went daily about his Father's business. His true flesh and blood were his Life; and they truly eat his flesh and drink his blood, who partake of that divine Life.
When understanding changes the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall gain the reality of Life, the control of Soul over sense, and we shall perceive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle. This must be the climax before harmonious and immortal man is obtained and his capabilities revealed.
Through the wholesome chastisements of Love, we are helped onward in the march towards righteousness, peace, and purity, which are the landmarks of Science. Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause,—wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory.
Inspired thought relinquishes a material, sensual, and mortal theory of the universe, and adopts the spiritual and immortal.
ELIAS. Prophecy; spiritual evidence opposed to material sense; Christian Science, with which can be discerned the spiritual fact of whatever the material senses behold; the basis of immortality.
RESURRECTION. Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding.
To be immortal, we must forsake the mortal sense of things, turn from the lie of false belief to Truth, and gather the facts of being from the divine Mind. The body improves under the same regimen which spiritualizes the thought; and if
Spirit's senses are without pain, and they are forever at peace. Nothing can hide from them the harmony of all things and the might and permanence of Truth.
The Jury of Spiritual Senses agreed at once upon a verdict, and there resounded throughout the vast audience-chamber of Spirit the cry, Not guilty. Then the prisoner rose up regenerated, strong, free. We noticed, as he shook hands with his counsel, Christian Science, that all sallowness and debility had disappeared. His form was erect and commanding, his countenance beaming with health and happiness. Divine Love had cast out fear. Mortal Man, no longer sick and in prison, walked forth, his feet "beautiful upon the mountains," as of one "that bringeth good tidings."
Sight, hearing, all the spiritual senses of man, are eternal.
Nature voices natural, spiritual law and divine Love, but human belief misinterprets nature. Arctic regions, sunny tropics, giant hills, winged winds, mighty billows, verdant vales, festive flowers, and glorious heavens,—all point to Mind, the spiritual intelligence they reflect. The floral apostles are hieroglyphs of Deity. Suns and planets teach grand lessons. The stars make night beautiful, and the leaflet turns naturally towards the light.
To believe is to be firm. In adopting all this vast idea of Christ Jesus, the eunuch was to know in whom he believed. To believe thus was to enter the spiritual sanctuary of Truth, and there learn, in divine Science, somewhat of the All-Father-Mother God. It was to understand God and man: it was sternly to rebuke the mortal belief that man has fallen away from his first estate; that man, made in God's own likeness, and reflecting Truth, could fall into mortal error; or, that man is the father of man. It was to enter unshod the Holy of Holies, where the miracle of grace appears, and where the miracles of Jesus had their birth,—healing the sick, casting out evils, and resurrecting the human sense to the belief that Life, God, is not buried in matter. This is the spiritual dawn of the Messiah, and the overture of the angels. This is when God is made manifest in the flesh, and thus it destroys all sense of sin, sickness, and death,—when the brightness of His glory encompasseth all being.
^Is it correct to say of material objects, that they are nothing and exist only in imagination?^
Nothing and something are words which need correct definition. They either mean formations of indefinite and vague human opinions, or scientific classifications of the unreal and the real. My sense of the beauty of the universe is, that beauty typifies holiness, and is something to be desired. Earth is more spiritually beautiful to my gaze now than when it was more earthly to the eyes of Eve. The pleasant sensations of human belief, of form and color, must be spiritualized, until we gain the glorified sense of substance as in the new heaven and earth, the harmony of body and Mind.
Even the human conception of beauty, grandeur, and utility is something that defies a sneer. It is more than imagination. It is next to divine beauty and the grandeur of Spirit. It lives with our earth-life, and is the subjective state of high thoughts. The atmosphere of mortal mind constitutes our mortal environment. What mortals hear, see, feel, taste, smell, constitutes their present earth and heaven: but we must grow out of even this pleasing thraldom, and find wings to reach the glory of supersensible Life; then we shall soar above, as the bird in the clear ether of the blue temporal sky.
To take all earth's beauty into one gulp of vacuity and label beauty nothing, is ignorantly to caricature God's creation, which is unjust to human sense and to the divine realism. In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: "I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied. Matter is a frail conception of mortal mind; and mortal mind is a poorer representative of the beauty, grandeur, and glory of the immortal Mind."