Dear Student:

When our work seems to be interfered with, it is always the belief of opposition to the Christ, the same thing that has always opposed the Christ – just the claim of a mind apart from God. It is afraid of our Christ and so attempts to dethrone it in our consciousness.

Sometimes it operates as jealousy of our understanding. The person who lets in jealousy has lost his Christ for the time being. I see this one fact, that all men have one Mind, that every creature in the universe has that Mind and there is no other. When I have been confronted with a situation where somebody was manifesting resentment or jealousy, I never had any success in meeting it until I could see the only Mind that individual has got is God (good); the other isn’t anything. The real denial does not consist of merely resisting it, but in getting to the attitude of thought where you see it isn’t anything – it is nothing.

Just realize that the Christ has not had any such experience and is not having it now. There is nothing arrayed against the Christ. This belief of opposition to the Truth or the Christ might operate through a patient who might sense the overthrow of some of his most cherished beliefs without really understanding what it was all about (chemicalization). Jesus caused a great deal of discomfort. The carnal mind would like to be rid of “troublesome truth.” “Art thou come to torment us before the time; let us alone.” Error wants to be let alone, and when it senses the condition of thought or understanding which sees it is unreal and nothing, it resists it. Also sometimes the belief of opposition to Truth is universal belief.

A human being who is immersed in sensuality is under extraordinary mesmeric belief. He cannot conceive of happiness that in any way interferes with that. Sometimes very good people chemicalize many years over that very question, because they feel as though they were depriving themselves of the thing they most like in the whole universe. When a Christian Scientist comes to them and they begin to see that it exalts Spirit, they do not accept Mrs. Eddy’s statement that true sensation is purely spiritual.

The harm in petting parties is that this jeopardizes a certain self control, without which a human being is not even human, and they don’t control their own thinking or think as clearly and consecutively under such constant stimulation or intoxication. Sometimes as men become a little old, it’s the autumn of their lives, and they become soft. They need to demonstrate more self-control and strength of character. Sometimes when Christian Scientists come under this belief of sex mesmerism, it is the belief of malpractice.

Sometimes with people who have been addicted to sexual excesses, we need to handle this belief that brain acts that way – that it’s a kind of habit. Handle the belief of excitement or stimulation of brain or nerves. If there is a brain, it could not be anything else than an infinite spiritual idea and that means that everything has got it and got it in perfection. It’s the possession of man and there is no other. There isn’t a brain that could be manipulated or impressed by error or that could be made to manifest or show forth error. It is perfect; if it has any faculty or functions they are all perfect in accordance with the divine Principle or Mind in which they have their origin.

Here’s the divine body or embodiment, complete, perfectly satisfied. That’s the eternal fact. Soul has its own body and owns it and is wholly satisfied with it; here comes a false presentation of that fact, wholly perverted, separated from it, and being separate from it, must necessarily express itself after its own false nature, which is that of separation. So instead of having its concept as a complete satisfied body, the nearest it can get to it is two bodies; that is, a divided body, a male and female body, sexual beliefs.

But there is always that thing inherent and that cannot be entirely hidden or destroyed even by the false concept that presents itself as men. What is it? It is that completeness, and the human sense of body being deprived of that individual completeness is always in a state of longing for it. So it reaches out always in the way for the other half of itself, and that’s the only thing that is the matter with men and women. The best thing about the whole claim is the very thing that seems the worst. The thing that is good about it, is the desire to be complete, and that desire, not understood and not properly handled in Science as yet, is about the root of all the trouble that people have.

Science is occupied with its own concept of being and is always satisfied. Sensuality is an attempt on the part of human beings to find completeness and satisfaction. If they had satisfaction, many of these things would not occur.

Bicknell Young