Here is the keynote speech given by Sue Humble, CS:
KEYNOTE: EMERGENCE INTERNATIONAL 11/1/07-11/4/07
Questions about the relationship between God and man, and how God enters into the human to help man, have been hotly debated theological issues throughout time. The peoples’ idea of God has certainly affected their views of man’s relationship to God. Early civilizations saw their god or gods as a power they needed to keep happy so that their lives would be better; which translated into good weather for crops, fertile breeding of their animals, successful propagation of their children, safety, good health and long lives. We read many examples in the Hebrew Bible of people’s worshiping Baal, the Canaanite weather and fertility god.
During the Greek civilization, people worshipped a pantheon of Gods. These gods had many human characteristics, and the goal was to keep them happy and appeased so man could have health, wealth and long life. The gods lived close by, often on hill tops and mountains, and were always keeping their eyes on the people. If you have ever traveled to Athens Greece you will remember seeing the hills that they believed their gods lived on and of course we probably have all heard of Mt. Olympus where Zeus ruled from. If you have read any of the Greek classics you are familiar with the stories of how the gods took on a human form and interacted with humans. If a god got angry at someone, well oops. Philosophers during that period, especially the Stoics, developed the term “fate” to explain why unfortunate things happened to people. Later this idea of fate meant that man’s life was ordered and prescribed by god; in some ways it’s like the term “destiny” that we use today, which then developed into the theological idea of “predestination.”
The Children of Israel believed that their God lived in the “second story” of the three-story universe and that obedience to their God Yahweh would bring about peace and prosperity. Disobedience to God would bring military defeat, punishment and hardship, even the loss of Jerusalem. This theology is written throughout the entire Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). This is a very simplistic historical overview of the development of the various views of God and God’s interaction with humankind. What is common throughout history is the acceptance that God is well aware of what man is doing and takes a very active role in the affairs of man.
During the 6th century BC there was what I would describe as a major shift in how man viewed God. Some scholars argue that it had its beginning during the time of the Greeks and came with the invention of the telescope. Does it sound a little odd that science could have such an impact on theology? Once scientists began to use the telescope to look into the heavens they discovered that they could not locate God there. They looked up and saw stars and planets, and even later calculated that the earth was a sphere not a disk. But where was God? For centuries they were told God lived in the heavens and had a body. This new revelation gave Greek philosophers much to ponder and talk about. This led further into a debate on how God creates man–the concept philosophers titled as the problem of the One to the Many. If God himself did not have a body, how did man end up with a body? Can you just imagine the turmoil to religions and people who had grown up thinking their god lived in the heavens above them?
The philosophers began to reason that God had to be different than how they previously described God. At this time, the name for God began to change to the Greek term Monad, meaning “One alone”. They reasoned that the Monad was the source of all else. All things were made as ideas in the mind of this Monad or God, and existed in an eternal and immaterial divine dimension. The pattern of everything was Good, just like the Monad. The Monad was wholly spiritual. The vocabulary describing the gods and their actions was discarded by some Greeks, because now the One was wholly spiritual, immaterial, a God of light. Any of this language sound slightly familiar? It can’t be emphasized too strongly that these were revolutionary ideas. This theology became the foundation of a stream of thought called Gnosticism, which we discussed yesterday, and in some ways, I would argue this is the birthplace of some of the theology of Christian Science.
Keep in mind, this happened long before Jesus came on the scene. After Jesus’ resurrection, some sects of Christianity, in an attempt to explain who Jesus was, put God back into human form in the body of Jesus. It is interesting to see how the views of God and man change throughout time, influenced by society, culture, science, and the struggle for something different, when the current ways of thinking about things no longer meet every person’s needs. We certainly know of Mrs. Eddy’s struggle as a young woman with the theological view of predestination, and her feeling the need to search for answers that her Church was not providing her.
Today we will look at the question of how God interacts in the affairs of man from the Christian Science perspective. As students of Christian Science, we know just how wonderfully unique Mrs. Eddy’s discovery and unfolding understanding of God and Christian Science is. When Mrs. Eddy was asked, do you believe in God? Her response was, “I believe more in Him that do most Christians, for I have no faith in any other thing or being. He sustains my individuality, nay, more- He is my individuality and my Life. To me God is All, but this divine Parent no more enters into His creation than the human father enters into his child. His creation is not the ego but the reflection of the Ego. The Ego is God Himself, the infinite Soul.” (Unity 48:6-18). Mrs. Eddy’s spiritual understanding of God and man is the basis of our talk today. So let’s explore more deeply her teachings on this simple but very profound concept called the Human and Divine Coincidence.
What is the definition of the Coincidence? The dictionary definition that I feel best fits is from the American College Dictionary. It reads: Coincidence is “to occupy the same place at the same period of time. To correspond exactly in nature, chemistry etc. Things happening at the same time in exact agreement.” So the Human and the Divine exist at exactly the same place at exactly the same time. Let’s stop and think about this for a moment—(slowly) the human and the Divine exist at exactly the same place at exactly the same time. And it is important to realize that this same place and same time means at all time and in every place. So at this exact moment, the human and the Divine are in this place. Wow. But the Divine can only be coincident with itself, because if you think about it, when things occupy the same place at the same time they must have the same nature; hence only the nature of the Divine is present.
Why is this study important? Because from an understanding of this Coincidence grows a deeper sense of our relationship to the Divine, and how it is only the Divine (and not the human) that can embrace humanity and solve the problems of humanity. Foundation of the Coincidence- Oneness, Allness and Onlyness of God:
So on what is the human and Divine Coincidence based? On the absolute oneness of God and man, divine Principle and divine idea. This point is crucial to understand and is the basis of Christian Science and the Coincidence. For there cannot be the Coincidence if there is duality–God and man as separate beings. We must begin by understanding God – or Divinity — to understand Oneness. One of Mrs. Eddy’s definitions of God reads: “God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite, Mind, Spirit, Soul Principle, Life, Truth and Love (SH465:9-10). She continues: “Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent Being, and his reflection is man and the universe” (SH 465: 17-466:1).
“God is one. The allness of Deity is His oneness”. (SH 267:5-6). So all that is present is God only. “The infinite is one, and this One is Spirit. Spirit is God and this God is infinite good. This simple statement of oneness is the only possible correct version of Christian Science” says Mrs. Eddy (My 356:25-28). “I am infinite All. From me proceedeth all Mind, all consciousness, all individuality, all being. I say unto you, God is All-in All and you can never be outside of His oneness.” (Un 24:2-9). All Consciousness is Mind, there is no secondary consciousness. This is so important to understand and MBE refers to it as the “keynote of being.” (SH 240:10). “To grasp the reality and order of being in its Science, you must begin by reckoning God as the divine Principle of all that really is.” (SH 275:10) So how does man fit into the picture? We’ve established that All is God being God. All is Mind knowing, and what Mind knows is idea or what we call man. “Man is idea, the image of Love, he is not physique” (SH 475:14). Man is the idea, or consciousness of God.
Mind knows and thinks. The activity of Mind thinking can be called reflection. Reflection is the spiritually mental activity of this one Mind. Creation is God’s reflecting on Herself. It is the action of Mind, unfolding Herself within Herself. Mind creates through reflection and so creation is God’s reflection, which must partake of the nature of Mind. And since Mind is wholly spiritual, therefore the expression is wholly spiritual. It is as if God is saying, “This, myself, is what is, this is what I am. Therefore all that I create must be like Me. What I create is never apart from Me. An idea can never be separate from the Mind thinking the idea.” “All that I see is Me. This is My reflection, or manifestation or man.” This includes you. You can’t think, be aware or experience anything on your own because the consciousness that you have is God. As reflection you can only give back to God exactly what God is. It is like the image in front of the mirror. The image can only move and act exactly the way the original in front of the mirror moves and acts. The image can’t think, express or experience anything that is not the original. As reflection, you do nothing of yourself, possess nothing of yourself, originate nothing of yourself. You are permanent and complete. Mind creates, animates, governs and constitutes Her own reflection, you. You are action without stagnation.
Since God is the only Mind, it means that you do not have a mind of your own to know God, it is only Mind knowing its own manifestation, you. “Mind is the only I or Us” (SH 591:16). You have no capacity to say, I must know the Truth, I must make my demonstration. You are what God knows, you are not a knower, because the capacity to know always resides in Mind. You are the magnificent experience of all the living, moving and being that God is doing. There is no capacity outside of Mind to cause, to know, to act or to experience anything. When the ideas of Truth are in consciousness, it is Truth itself being your conscious. You are not a “knower”. You are not a pray-er, for prayer is an activity of Mind, not the idea. You are not a demonstrator, for you are God’s demonstration. Reflection is letting what God knows about Herself constitute consciousness.
This is the Coincidence, the Divine and You being at the same place at the same time! Right Here, right now, always.
Review: So we established God as the only being or consciousness, and man as the idea of Mind. You only experience what Mind, God, is being. This is a very important point as we begin to explore the Coincidence more deeply. You only experience what Mind, God, is being.
Earlier this year Oprah Winfrey hosted a panel that discussed what I might describe as a theology of sorts, the summary of which had been published in a book called the Secret. How many of you are aware of this book and its incredible popularity? Friends and I were in northern Italy in September, and while having dinner at a small restaurant we noticed the lady at the table next to us reading the Secret. It has been on the best seller list for many months. We ordered the CD and the book and went through it. I was aware that some of the statements sounded an awful lot like Christian Science, but I could also recognize many often subtle differences to Christian Science. So I headed back to Eddy and her writings to make sure I was clear on her teachings, particularly focusing on the idea of God’s involvement in our daily lives and meeting all of our needs. In thinking about this keynote address, I thought that in light of all this attention the Secret has drawn, it would be helpful for us to look more closely at the Coincidence and use a few of the teachings of The Secret to help us draw out some of the finer points of Christian Science. I have no intention of criticizing the teachings in the Secret nor carry an air of the superiority of Christian Science over the teachings of the Secret.
As odd as it may sound, comparing the Secret to Christian Science may help us better understand Christian Science.
Law of Attraction- One example of the Coincidence in human experience-
As we begin to explore the theology of “the Secret” I would like to make a couple important points: First, what I discuss is a summary of a summary of the teachings behind the Secret. I have chosen a few specific quotes out of a book titled the Secret, but this book does not include the entire teachings of the Secret. Second, as I said a minute ago, the purpose in talking about the Secret is to help bring out some of the finer points regarding the Coincidence. Many comment that the Secret sounds like CS, and in some ways it does, in other ways it does not. I’m not a student of the Secret so I don’t know much more about the teachings than what I’ve read and seen in the video. Third, the “Secret” has swept this country like a wild fire. People have seen it, are talking about it, using it, and sharing it with others. The interest in it is huge. The purpose of this discussion is to have us think more deeply about CS and be able to enter into a dialogue with family and friends on the subject when it comes up.
What is the theology in the Secret? The primary teaching in the Secret is the law of attraction. “Everything that is coming into your life you are attracting into your life, and it’s attracted to you by virtue of the images you’re holding in your mind. It’s what you’re thinking.” The Secret teaches that there is: The One Universal Mind: “All exists in the One Universal Mind and there is nowhere that the One Mind is not. It exists in everything. The One Mind is all intelligence, all wisdom, all perfection and is everything and everywhere at the same time. If everything is the One Universal Mind, and the whole of it exists everywhere, then it is all in You!” Other terms they use for Mind are energy and Universe. In the book they never use the term God.
Continuing, “Like attracts Like”: “The simplest way for me to look at the law of attraction is if I think of myself as a magnet, and I know that a magnet will attract. You are the most powerful magnet in the Universe. You contain a magnetic power within you that is more powerful than anything in this world, and this unfathomable magnetic power is emitted through your thoughts.”
Then, “thoughts become things”: “As you think, those thoughts are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract like things that are on the same frequency. Everything sent out returns to the source, and the source is You. Your transmission creates your life and it created the world. If you want to change anything in your life, change your thoughts.” Keep in mind that, “Here is the problem: Most people are thinking about what they don’t want, and they’re wondering why it shows up over and over again. The law of attraction doesn’t care whether you perceive something to be good or bad, or whether you don’t want it or whether you do want it. It’s responding to your thoughts. The Law of attraction simply gives you whatever you are thinking about. Become aware of how incredibly powerful you are, to be able to THINK your life into existence. What you are thinking now is creating your future life. Because you are always thinking you are always creating. With this powerful knowledge, you can completely change every circumstance and event in your entire life, by changing the way you think.”
So, how would you Use The Secret: “If you think about Aladdin and his lamp, Aladdin picks up the lamp, dusts it off, and out pops the Genie. The Genie always says one thing, ‘your wish is my command.’ The Genie is the Law of Attraction. The Genie assumes that everything you ask for you want! The Genie never questions your commands.” With me so far?
The book goes into specific steps on how to implement the Secret but I will not go into the details, you can read them in the book if you are interested. I will briefly mention the steps:
- Step One: “The first step is to Ask. Let the Universe know what you want. Write it out on a piece of paper. Just ask once. It is exactly like placing an order from a catalogue.” They suggest using Visualization: “The reason visualization is so powerful is because you create pictures in your mind, seeing yourself with what you want. Create a Vision Board, where you take a picture of something that you want to have, like a car or a watch or a soul mate and pin it onto a board. Look at it every day and start to visualize it.”
- Step Two: “Believe.” “Believe that what you want is already yours–have unwavering faith. You must believe that you have received. You must act, speak and think as though you are receiving it now. The entire Universe shifts to bring it into your life. Why? The Universe is a mirror and the law of attraction is mirroring back to you your dominant thoughts.”
- Step Three: “Receive”: “Ask once, believe you have received, and all you have to do to receive is feel good.” They immediately follow with a discussion about the importance of Gratitude: “What can you do right now to begin to turn your life around? The very first thing is to start making a list of things to be grateful for.”
The primary purpose of the Secret is to Attract Abundance, in the form of money, cars, houses and all kinds of things. “The only reason any person does not have enough money is because they are blocking money from coming to them with their thoughts. Every negative thought, feeling or emotion is blocking your good from coming to you, and that includes money. It is not that the money is being kept from you by the Universe, because all the money you require exists right now.”
And, The Secret to Health: “Thinking perfect health is something anybody can do privately within themselves, no matter what is happening around them.”
So, what does the Secret say they should do for good health? They must “Think thoughts of perfection. Illness can’t exist in a body that has harmonious thoughts. Imperfect thoughts are the cause of all of humanity’s ills, including disease. Declare: I think perfect thoughts. I see only perfection. I am perfection.”
There is my short summary of the Secret. Some of it sounds much like the teachings of Christian Science, some does not and is not. Let’s delve a little deeper into the Coincidence in light of these points I just mentioned.
What the Secret calls the “Law of Attraction” and what we call the Human and Divine Coincidence are to me just different titles for discussing the same questions–how God interacts with mankind, how the divine becomes manifest in the human. Mrs. Eddy refers to the law of attraction when she says “Adhesion, cohesion, and attraction are properties of Mind.” (SH 124:20), but in my research on her use of the word “attraction”, it is not used the same way the teachings of the Secret uses it.
Let’s begin by discussing the two views of the Divine: The definition of the Universe: The Secret: As I mentioned earlier they have substituted the word God with the word Universe and in some cases the word energy. They make reference to and define The One Universal Mind as “All exists in the One Universal Mind and there is nowhere that the One Mind is not. It exists in everything. The One Mind is all intelligence, all wisdom, and all perfection and is everything and everywhere at the same time.” If I understand it correctly, the function of the Universe is that it receives man’s requests and then sends back in human form what man is asking for.
Definition of God in CS: Eddy uses some of the same language to describe God. God is Mind, intelligence, wisdom, perfection, omnipresence. We are all aware of her use of the synonyms for God: Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, and Love. One reason that I became a Christian Scientist is because of how MBE was able to explain God. She provides the most thorough explanation that I have ever read. Her description of the Divine is alive with detail, and a sense that she really “knew” God. “To me God is All. He is best understood as Supreme Being, as infinite and conscious Life, as the affectionate Father and Mother of all He creates; but this divine Parent no more enters into His creation than the human father enters into his child. His creation is not the Ego, but the reflection of the Ego. The Ego is God Himself, the infinite Soul.” (Unity 48:6).
Mrs. Eddy’s description of God is throughout her writings. There are a few places where she actually gives her definitions of God. One is in the chapter called Recapitulation, the other is a section in the chapter entitled Science of Being, where she elucidates the platform of Christian Science. In Recapitulation, after she lists the synonyms for God, she includes a few of God’s attributes, including omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. “Omni is adopted from the Latin adjective signifying all. Hence God combines all-power or potency, all-science or true knowledge, all-presence.” (SH 465:9-18). Understanding God as All is the foundation of the Coincidence, as we discussed earlier this morning. When you read Mrs. Eddy’s writings you can’t help but have a warm comforting sense of God’s active and loving presence. Definition of man: The Secret: From what I can tell, they allude to three points about man. First, they reason, “If everything is the One Universal Mind, and the whole of it exists everywhere, then it is all in You! The key word here is “in”- Mind is “In” man. Second, man has a mind of his/her own to think, and thirdly, what man thinks is transmitted to the Universal Mind, hence a separation between the Universe and man.
Definition of man: CS: Here is where MBE took on a very radical and different approach in CS. For example, in her chapter entitled Genesis, she writes, “The first record–referring to the creation story in Genesis 1–assigns all might and government to God, and endows man out of God’s perfection and power (this is reflection). The second record chronicles man as mutable and mortal, as having broken away from Deity and as revolving in an orbit of his own. Existence, separate from divinity, Science explains as impossible.” (SH 522:5). For “Principle—God–and its idea is One, and this One is God”. (SH 465:17). So man is inseparable and indivisible from God. What God is, man is through reflection, as we discussed earlier. So man is not created separately from God to live in an “orbit of his own”. This is an important point of distinction from the Secret.
The Secret moves from a discussion of man into the “law” of “Like attracts Like”: To reiterate: “The simplest way for me to look at the law of attraction is if I think of myself as a magnet. Our job as humans is to hold on to the thoughts of what we want, make it absolutely clear in our minds what we want, and from that we start to invoke one of the greatest laws in the Universe, and that’s the law of attraction. Thoughts then become things. If you think about Aladdin and his lamp, Aladdin picks up the lamp, dusts if off, and out pops the Genie. The Genie always says one thing, ‘your wish is my command.’”
So, as I understand what the Secret is saying, man thinks, wishes, desires and even requests things that he wants. These thoughts and requests go out to the Universe and then the Universe returns these thoughts as material things, exactly how they are requested. My observation is that the Secret assures people that if they follow their philosophy they will have all the material possessions and money they wish for. As an example, let’s say one wants a new red Porsche, one would put that request out to the Universe and then one would receive a new red Porsche. Let me rephrase this in a slightly different way. You are in need of a new car. You pray to God asking that Love meets your need with a new car. You feel the demonstration is made and your prayer is answered when you get a new car. The requests are the same, but I have just phrased them differently: the phrasing of the first is an example of using the theology of the Secret and the 2nd is using a somewhat misunderstood sense of Christian Science.
So, is God aware of our needs? In the chapter on Prayer, Mrs. Eddy describes the “divine ear” as not an auditory nerve but as the all-hearing and all-knowing Mind, to whom each need of man is always known and by whom it will be supplied. (SH 7:22). But to need something suggests that we don’t have it. Divine Love meets our every need not by entering into the human or by sending us material things. We will see Love always meeting our needs as we are consciousness of ever-present Love, because the belief that we have a need is changed into the understanding that we already possess all that we need. There is no need to wait, and pray for anything. We already include all that we need and at this instance we are aware of it. This is the Coincidence in practice.
The Secret teaches that one needs to communicate to God what one needs or wants. Can we communicate our needs and wishes to God? Eddy says that “Thought passes from God to man, that the intercommunication is always from God to His idea, man.” (SH 284:28). To believe that man can communicate to God, can send thoughts and desires to God, assumes two minds–man’s mind and God’s mind–each separate and distinct. This is duality, not Oneness, and is an important difference to the Secret.
The natural question to ask is, if you’re right and God does not create or know matter, how does She meet our needs in our human experience? An important distinguishing point between the Secret and Christian Science is that everything exists as consciousness and nothing is ever external or apart from consciousness. But this does not mean that ideas are not tangible and practical, just because they are not material. Mr. John Hargraeves, a CS practitioner and lecturer gave this example: “Abundance is all that is true of a positive bank account, but the bank account is not abundance, completeness is all that is true of companionship, but a companion is not completeness.” What we call material things, when correctly understood, are divine ideas. The thing and the divine idea are not two, but one. Whenever we see or use something, like a car or a house or even our body, we are aware of these because Mind is aware of these as Her own ideas. Eddy says “Spiritually interpreted, rocks and mountains stand for solid and grand ideas. The fowls, which fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven, correspond to aspirations soaring beyond and above corporeality to the understanding of the incorporeal and divine Principle, Love.” (SH 511:24).
When we correctly understand the fact that all so-called things are thoughts, or divine ideas, we will instantly see that we have everything that we need at every moment. It is because we believe that everything is material and that we can be without things, lose things, and use things up that we have so much difficulty in demonstrating our daily supply. It is actually wonderful to understand this spiritual fact because it means we don’t have to labor to obtain, nor do we have to do without. We don’t have or acquire abundance, but we are living the abundance that God is expressing. Imagine, everything you need you include as reflection–nothing to demonstrate, nothing to obtain, nothing to earn, nothing to acquire–just the acceptance of this reality right now. Be free to experience all that God is providing you at all times. We simply, gratefully acknowledge the presence of God and understand the Coincidence, and we will have what we need every moment. How do we live this? Mrs. Eddy teaches us, “As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible.” (SH 264:13) The rule is to always stay with the spiritual fact, and to never outline exactly how our need will be met. In every situation, the spiritual fact and its tangible expression will be become obvious to us, so often in ways better than we could have ever imagined. I suspect that each one of us in this room could share experiences of how things worked out better than we ever planned.
Don’t get mesmerized by focusing and ruminating over the lack in your experience and worrying about how your needs are going to be met. Focus rather on the spiritual fact and you will see the symbol that is exactly right for you will be present and evidenced in your experience; this is the Coincidence of the Human and Divine.
No doubt gratitude plays an important role in this. For gratitude enables us to recognize the presence of spiritual good, right when the material senses scream that good is not present now. Gratitude lifts our heart by acknowledging the good being showered on us by God. And certainly gratitude opens the doors to accepting, not attracting, the good in our experience.
The last point of comparison with the Secret that I will make concerns Health.
The Secret says, concerning having good Health: We must “Think thoughts of perfection. Illness can’t exist in a body that has harmonious thoughts. Imperfect thoughts are the cause of all of humanity’s ills, including disease. Declare: I think perfect thoughts. I see only perfection. I am perfection.” Health and healing is a very important aspect of Christian Science. We don’t have the time today to go into depth on this part this morning, nor should I since we are all “practitioners” in CS. We all know that the application of CS in healing is much more than “positive thinking” and thoughts of “perfection”. One point I would like to make, relating healing to our topic of the Coincidence. Mind, divine consciousness, being aware of Her own perfection, has no awareness or consciousness of disease. This Mind is your Mind and your Life, knowing only the perfection of your own being.
Conclusion: In conclusion, we have only begun to scratch the surface of the topic the Human and Divine Coincidence. We’ve covered a lot this morning, so let me summarize the primary point that was made. The Coincidence is the human and Divine existing at exactly the same place and exactly the same time. The foundation for the Coincidence is the Allness and Onlyness of God. MBE states it beautifully, “When we fully understand our relation to the Divine, we can have no other Mind but His—no other Love, wisdom, or Truth, no other sense of Life, and no consciousness of the existence of matter or error. (SH 205:32), and this is our Coincidence with the Divine.
Let us take a few moments, sit quietly and feel the presence of God with us here, right now. Let’s close by saying the Daily Prayer, Thy kingdom come, Let the reign…
Thank you.