Illusion DADA JELLISON CLARK          In an advanced class in a Christian Science Sunday school, a pupil asked the teacher just what would become of mortal mind when no one any longer believed in it, and the teacher replied that it would always be just what it is now — nothing. Then the teacher asked what became of their belief in Santa Claus when they awakened to the fact that they had only been believing a myth. Had not their childish fancy been carried away by the vision of a fat, jolly old man, who on Christmas Eve, while they slept, came down the chimney and filled their stockings with good things, which on Christmas morning seemed proof of his visit? As they outgrew this myth, however, what became of their belief? And after the truth became clear to them did there not cease to be even an illusion?          Shortly after this the teacher had a seemingly difficult problem to solve, and in her work this illustration of the mythical nature of a false belief continually recurred to her, until she asked herself just how much of this she was proving, and whether she was actually demonstrating that statement by Mrs. Eddy in "Unity of Good" (p. 9), "By knowing the unreality of disease, sin, and death, you demonstrate the allness of God." With this there came the message to rise to the altitude of thought where there ceased to be an illusion. The argument that the dream was terrifying could not make it any more real in view of the allness of Love. Mortal mind would keep its victim a prisoner even though the door is wide open. Let us stop our fluttering and being "carried about with every wind of doctrine," and calm our thought sufficiently to see the open door and our freedom near at hand.          There is another side of the illusions of mortal mind which we cannot overlook or pass carelessly by. Sometimes we are tempted to believe that because the illusion is pleasant we may cling to it awhile longer, but this is just another subtle phase of the error, and we are only deceiving ourselves. It is of no more advantage to prolong the dream when pleasant, however enticing the arguments it presents, than it is to desire to tarry in the more painful illusions. These varying manifestations of the carnal mind are just robbing us of our divine inheritance as children of the one perfect Mind.          Man has always been in infinite good in spite of what the illusion may testify. Harmony is just as eternal a fact here and now as it ever has been or ever will be. The law which operated in Jesus' time is just as available now as it was then, just as powerful in one place as in another. Harmony is demonstrated by knowing the truth and thus proving the unreality of the illusion. Mrs. Eddy makes this clear on page 218 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," where she says, "When we wake to the truth of being, all disease, pain, weakness, weariness, sorrow, sin, death, will be unknown, and the mortal dream will forever cease."          To Jesus one illusion was as quickly dispelled as another. To him Spirit and spiritual things, Mind and its ideas, were so real, so tangible, so ever accessible, that error in any of its guises met its instant detection, followed by its immediate destruction. Every step we take in proving the unreality of any illusion by knowing the allness of eternal facts, helps to fulfill that wonderful prophecy on page 64 of Science and Health: "Spirit will ultimately claim its own, — all that really is, and the voices of physical sense will be forever hushed."   "Illusion" by Dada Jellison Clark Christian Science Sentinel, September 27, 1919

 

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