Health Care: Starting With Mind

IT was totally unexpected.

The book made its way into my hands because it promised to feed my spiritual hunger. Immediately it began to give me a completely new understanding of God as the one infinite Mind that forms man in its own image and likeness--spiritual, whole, perfect, eternal. That would have been enough. But as I continued to read the book--and to accept what I was learning of the oneness of divine Mind and man--the unexpected began to happen: my mental and physical health simultaneously improved.

For thirty-eight years now that book has been engaging me daily in the care of my own mind and body through understanding and putting into practice my unity with God. I keep going back to that book--Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science--because the results are so consistently satisfying and practical. Its healing impact reaches into every aspect of my life.

You can see, then, why I would take an interest in the current series hosted by Bill Moyers on public television in the United States this week, ``Healing and the Mind." It is encouraging to see intelligent people exploring the connection between the human mind and body and seeking new ways to improve health care, even involving people more in the care of their own health.

My own experience has convinced me that the human mind and body are indissolubly connected but also that it is the influence of the divine Mind--not the human mind--that is best able to preserve, promote, and restore the health of both. In fact, I've learned that God is the only genuine healer.

As individuals, study groups, and health-care professionals begin to explore more deeply the human mind's effect on bodily health, I would be heartened indeed if they should include among their study materials the book that has been instructing and healing me for so long. If they do, they will soon find themselves--as I did--studying the Bible as well. The two books are inseparable, for Science and Health contains the Christian Science of Mind-healing revealed in the Scriptures and practiced by Christ Je sus. As Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: ``Divine Science derives its sanction from the Bible, and the divine origin of Science is demonstrated through the holy influence of Truth in healing sickness and sin. This healing power of Truth must have been far anterior to the period in which Jesus lived. It is as ancient as `the Ancient of days.' It lives through all Life, and extends throughout all space."

No one has ever equaled, or will ever surpass, the healing ability of Christ Jesus. But we can learn from him. His success lay in his unity with God. He said, as John's Gospel tells us, ``I and my Father are one." This is the Father he identified in the Lord's Prayer as our Father--the Father he prayed we would find our own unity with. John also records Jesus' prayer: ``Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me . . . ; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me , and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one."

If Jesus, the most successful healer ever known, started with God, the divine Mind, as the universal cause of perfect health, can we do less? The Bible and Science and Health are two very special books waiting to show us how to follow his example.

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