I recognized recently
that my series of novels, The Lodging for the Rose, which grew out of an effort to contribute to the healing
of the world, corresponds precisely in its sequence as written with the characteristics of the four
development streams that Mary Baker Eddy has outlined and defined in many ways more than a
hundred years go. The series wasn't written to achieve this coincidence.
If this had been the case it would have been subjective and interpretive,
instead of being objective, dynamic, free, and being guided by the one Mind that
is expressed in all. But then why should one be surprised that every product of
infinite Mind in its various dimensions is coming to light in a coinciding flow
of unfolding?
Obviously all of the
coinciding dimensions are mutually enriching. Mary Baker Eddy used this
principle extensively. She made all of her major scientific works contributory
to one fundamental foursquare structure that defines the four major levels of
perception that she recognized as reflected in the four major development
streams in which is summed up
the spiritual and scientific development of mankind. Mary Baker Eddy contributed
10 major structures to enrich this one fundamental, all-embracing
structure. (link
to more details)
One of the
contributory structures is the Christian Science textbook, made up of 16
chapters (not counting the preface and glossary). The unfolding pattern of the
textbook chapters coincides precisely with the unfolding pattern of the 16
segments of her Church Manual, and also with the 16 elements of her book of
metaphors, Christ and Christmas, and with the 16 stanzas of the Lord's
Prayer and her spiritual interpretation of it. And all of that is just the
beginning.
By brining all of her
works into context with the one all-embracing scientific dimension, and by
defining this dimension as she has defined it, she has put the various parts
into a specific context that reflects the natural flow of scientific and
spiritual development, the kind of flow one would expect to see reflected
everywhere.
In the example below
the 16 textbook chapters are aligned in their original sequence with the four
development flows.
In retrospect I have
come to recognize that my series of novels, The Lodging for the Rose, coincides
with the criteria established by Mary Baker Eddy. The series is designed to
explore the demands of the divine Principle of Universal Love reflected in the
social and political world. The alignment of the novels in their original
sequence utilizes the same pattern as that used for the chapters of the
textbook, but is applied only to the top three rows (similar to applying the 24
Recapitulation questions). The links in the chart below bring the novels (and
the textbook chapters) into conjunction with the metaphors in Christ and
Christmas, with the stanzas of the Lord's Prayer, and the 16 segments of
Mary Baker Eddy's Church Manual.
The bottom row, with
the cardinal point, Christian Science (also labeled, night, hell, and
unreality), pertains to the great critical problems or challenges of mankind,
the arena where nothing short of Christian Science healing will ultimately carry
the day, as is evident by the glaring lack of progress by any other means.
This bottom row
represents the frozen-solid sewer of absolute idolatry where humanist movements
have come to a halt. Here society prays to the god of impotence, the god of war,
the god of poverty, and the god of lies respectively. Society prays to the god
of impotence and surrenders its freedom to it. It bows to the god of war,
seeking its security from it, but receives only terror, fear, and death. It
serves the war of poverty in the hope for illusive riches, while it offers up
its power and lays itself down to die at its feet. But worse than all of the
above, it hails the god of lies to which it sacrifices its culture, its
humanity, its future, and its very existence. This ice house of insanity, the
platform of impotence, war, poverty, and lies, is the platform that every empire
has promoted and is still promoting as the only possible platform that an
imperial system can exist on. Society has become trapped into this sewer that is
an ice house in humanist terms where nothing moves. That is why we see such
strange phenomena now as the leaders of society struggling to solve the economic
collapse of the world with the very same processes that caused the collapse. So
far Christian Science is the only platform that offers any hope. Christian Science is designed to
shatter this frozen landscape, unmask it as a dreamscape, supplant its emptiness
with the light of the spiritual reality that every idolatry denies, and sets
mankind free of its captivity in the sewer in order that the
healing currents of Truth may uplift society onto higher ground where God is good,
and good is All.
I
have chosen four aspects that appear to be among the greatest challenges mankind is
currently facing that follow the general pattern of impotence and its gross
manifest as war, and the pattern of poverty and its gross manifest as lies. I
have put them into two groups:
1 - A general sense
of impotence, which I focused on in the novel, Flight Without Limits.
2 - The insanity of nuclear war, the grosser dimension of impotence, which I focused
on with the novel, Brighter than the Sun.
These two novels are
not a part of the series, The Lodging for the Rose, that is designed for
exploring the dimension of the Principle of Universal Love. This separation
appears natural as the series, The Lodging for the Rose, is not designed to
delve into the sewer.
The sewer spots in the third and fourth column are also related. The first of these is one
that everybody knows about and is touched by and seeks solutions for in all
directions except the spiritual one, while the second one, which is vastly
bigger, is being carefully hidden by lies (the poverty to the truth), and quite successfully so.
3 - Here we face the
impersonal god of poverty in economics. The world is economically collapsing while the divine Principle of
Economics is being rejected.
4 - The New Ice Age is not a big thing, though challenge is real. But it is huge
in the shadow of the poverty to the truth, a world ruled by lies. "In lies
we trust!" In this sense the coming new Ice Age presents a spiritual
challenge that secondarily becomes a physical one. The continuity of mankind through the next
Ice Age is physically possible, but to muster the spiritual resources to acknowledge
and then face that challenge with the necessary steps to overcome it, appears to
be almost insurmountable in the current world of mental poverty.
By placing the major
challenges at the bottom row, the healing development above it, in the
columns, opens up a respective scientific focus onto the divine reality.
Mary Baker Eddy
further divided the entire foursquare structure of four columns into two halves.
By this division into a right and left half she divided the focus between the
individual self-development in the 'Temple' of Life in the first half, and the
collective development of civilization in the second half, in the 'Church' of
universal Principle. (more
details) This global
division of the structure into two halves is, amazingly, also reflected in the characteristics
of the series of novels, The Lodging for the Rose
as laid out above.
In accord with this
global division the two novels, Flight Without Limits, and, Brighter
than the Sun, can actually be applied twice. They can be applied once in
each half, because each of these novels is internally, logically divided into
two distinct parts. In each of these two novels an individual or 'Temple'
dimension precedes a collective 'Church' dimension that develops out of it, the
dimension of civilization. In each of these two dimensions we also encounter
distinct types of love relationships.
In retrospect it
becomes apparent that the 16 chapters of Mary Baker Eddy's textbook, and the 16
segments of her Church Manual, and so on, are likewise divided into two halves
reflecting the 'Temple' (individual) and the 'Church' (civilization) dimensions,
and that the individual elements of the two halves are horizontally related
(element 1 relating to element 9 - see textbook chapters above).
In this duality the
novel, Flight Without Limits, deals in its second part with the
civilization-related element of economics, while the novel, Brighter than the
Sun, deals in its second part with the fundamentals of civilization on the
larger scale that is also indirectly reflected in the Ice Age challenge that
wasn't on the radar screen when the novel was written. The horizontal (or
lateral) duality that is built into these two novels reflects one of the five
types of dual definitions that Mary Baker Eddy has incorporated into her
glossary of the textbook. It reflects the nature of the 'horizontal dual
definition.'
The two novels also
reflect the nature of the 'vertical dual definitions' that Mary Baker Eddy uses
extensively in her glossary. The vertical dual definition highlights stark
contrasts. We find this contrast reflected in the two novels, brought out in
individual love relationships, and this uniquely in each of their two parts. The
amazing part about these patterns is that their compliance with Mary Baker
Eddy's outlined structure for scientific and spiritual development was not
intentional as this structure was not known to exist when the novels were
written. The same thing can also be said about the other types of dual
definitions that Mary Baker Eddy put on the plate. They can be seen reflected in
the novels in the corresponding areas where we see them reflected in the
foursquare structure. And again, this was not done by intention. (see: dual
definitions in overview, and dual
definitions in greater details )
One more dimension
may be added here to the unfolding flow of healing. This dimension is
poetry, the poetry of Mary Baker Eddy adapted for hymns. Seven of her poems have
been adapted as hymn, which amazingly cover my 14 novels (at least I like to see
them as applicable that way.) I utilizing the pattern that Mary Baker has
established in Christ and Christmas, I have added one final hymn to the list, a
hymn that takes us back to a Psalm of David.
*1 The cardinal
points or levels of perception. Mary Baker Eddy presented 4 cardinal points for
the 'city foursquare' (The city of our God.) She writes: "This spiritual,
holy habitation has no boundary nor limit, but its four cardinal points
are:
first, the
Word of Life, Truth, and Love;
second, the Christ, the spiritual idea of
God;
third, Christianity, which is the outcome of the
divine Principle of the Christ-idea in Christian history;
fourth, Christian Science, which to-day and forever
interprets this great example and the great Exemplar.
Mary Baker Eddy also
listed two sets of four terms that identify four levels of perception,
respectively:
Heaven, Day
Kingdom of Heaven, Morning
Earth, Evening
Hell, Night
She also describes
four levels of, good, in glossary definition for the term Good:
omnipotence
omniscience
omnipresence
omni-action
*2 The characteristic
of the development streams is described in a similar manner as four main points.
She used the names of the four rivers in Genesis 2 and defined them, not in
their biblical context, but in the context of four flows of scientific and
spiritual development. And since these rivers are out-flowing, to metaphorically
water the world, she also defined the sides and gates of the city through which
they are flowing. The four rivers are (in their biblical sequence):
Pison
(river). The love of the good and beautiful,
and their immortality.
Gihon (river). The rights of woman acknowledged
morally, civilly, and socially.
Hiddekel (river). Divine Science understood and
acknowledged.
Euphrates (river). Divine Science encompassing the
universe and man; the true idea of God; a type of the glory which is to come;
metaphysics taking the place of physics; the reign of righteousness. The
atmosphere of human belief before it accepts sin, sickness, or death; a state of
mortal thought, the only error of which is limitation; finity; the opposite of
infinity.
She describes the
sides to which the rivers pertain saying: "The four sides of our city are the
Word, Christ, Christianity, and
divine Science." She adds, "This city is wholly spiritual,
as its four sides indicate." And she adds further, "It is indeed a
city of the Spirit, fair, royal, and square.
Northward,
its gates open to the North Star, the Word, the polar magnet of
Revelation;
eastward, to the star seen by the Wisemen of the
Orient, who followed it to the manger of Jesus;
southward, to the genial tropics, with the Southern
Cross in the skies, - the Cross of Calvary, which binds human society into
solemn union;
westward, to the grand realization of the Golden
Shore of Love and the Peaceful Sea of Harmony.
Note: The north,
east, south, west sequence that she presents here reflects the progression of
the sun across the sky, from the early dawn to the sunset.
She as describes God
with four special qualities that can be applied to the four columns respectively
as an aid to focus our attention in these four development streams. She writes,
God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite.
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