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Home > Books > Christian Science in the World of Today and Tomorrow
Christian Science in the World of Today and Tomorrow
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Product Code: CSWorldF
Manufacturer: Kappeler Institute Publishing
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Booklet, 23 pages
Level:
SUBJECT(s):
History and Development of the Science of Christian Science
Christian Science and World Issues
RELATED RECORDINGS:
M-4, The Contribution of Christian Science to the World (1 hour, audio)
SYNOPSIS: This booklet shows how that, unlike development and unfoldment, evolution brings mutations—new breakthroughs that do not obey the law of causality, where cause, step-by-step, determines effect. Christian Science is revolutionary in its very nature. In Christian Science, the method of allowing the Christ-idea to completely change our consciousness proves to be the only way of achieving true spiritual progress.
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CONTENTS:
Introduction
Chapter I: The Spiritual Method of Understanding and the Divine System of Reference
- Methods of understanding
- The great mutations
- The divine system of reference
Chapter II: The Attitude of Christian Science Toward Recent Findings in Other Fields of Science
- The proper classification of human knowledge
- Our attitude toward human findings and insights
- What makes a true Christian Scientist?
Chapter III: Christian Science in the World Tomorrow
- Questions concerning the future
- The true savior
- New goals and objectives
EXCERPT:
From Max Kappeler, Christian Science in the World of Today and Tomorrow, pp. 1–3.
What is the significance of Christian Science in the world of today and tomorrow? This question can be answered by first examining three other important questions:
I. What state of consciousness or method of comprehension leads to the real spiritual advancement of mankind, and what is the divine system of reference which can be recognized by such an understanding?
II. Where does the teaching of Christian Science stand in relation to recent findings in other fields of science today?
III. Where can Christian Science lead us in the world of tomorrow, when it is understood in its system? I. The Spiritual Method of Understanding and the Divine System of Reference
1. Methods of understanding
Accretion—development —unfoldment—evolution. Progress is essential for mankind in every department of life. This is particularly true in the realm of spiritual understanding, where we must never cease in our efforts to move forward. For we know that standing still always means going back. This raises the question: What is the proper method for making true spiritual progress? It is the method of evolution, which produces great spiritual revolutions. What do we mean by this?
There are, in general, three methods of seeking spiritual progress: accretion, development, and unfoldment. All three methods have one thing in common—they build on what already exists, attempting to create something higher, better or more elaborate out of what is already there. For the comprehension of Christian Science, however, these methods are inadequate. Why?
Accretion always implies addition of the same kind. When used as a way to spiritual advancement, the method of accretion means accumulating more and more single truths, divorced from their context within the whole. In this way we merely add to our existing views on life other views of the same kind.
The method of development goes a stage further. Through development something is built up from what already exists. As a method of understanding, it means that what we already know is broadened, deepened, and strengthened. The main effect of this method is positive. Yet in the long run even this is insufficient; for spiritual advancement constantly requires us to see and understand something fundamentally new. When we fail to move forward from what we already know, we cannot partake of the newness of life simply by elaborating on that knowledge, however intrinsically true it may be. Spiritual progress is not a matter of holding fast to what we already understand, but of being able to grasp entirely new thought-models unknown to us before.
A much better method is the way of unfoldment. This involves not only digging deeper and deeper into what we already understand, but also obtaining higher and broader insights. Just as a plant unfolds from an insignificant seed to full flowering, so higher forms of understanding unfold from quite small beginnings. Often it seems that this higher understanding has little to do with our first feeble insights, just as the flowering plant bears no outward resemblance to the seed from which it springs. Yet, although in outward appearance unfoldment seems to produce something completely different, in reality this process—both in plants and in the realm of human understanding—only ever enlarges what is already latent in the seed. And this is why, even through unfoldment, we are not jolted into a quite different, really new and stimulating realization of being, through which we could experience revolutionary spiritual progress.
Only with evolution do we strike a method that makes possible a fundamental spiritual advance. For, unlike development and unfoldment, evolution depends primarily, not on increasing, improving, and expanding what exists already, but on mutation. Mutations are sudden "jumps," new breakthroughs that do not obey the law of causality, where cause determines effect. Through mutation the previously existing conceptual basis is not expanded or added to in some way, but completely abandoned and replaced by a different and entirely new basic form. This becomes clear when we look at the history of evolution. In the beginning, for instance, there was inorganic matter. From this no form of life could have developed or unfolded, and yet the next stage of evolution led to forms of organic life. These new forms, therefore, did not come into being through the development, improvement, or expansion of inorganic matter, but through mutation—that is, through a complete change in the existing inorganic matter. All the subsequent great strides in the history of the evolution of mankind came about in the same way, spontaneously through mutation—through the introduction of completely new categories. Evolution differs from both development and unfoldment above all in these characteristic mutations. Mutation does not bring about the perfection or expansion of an existing species, but produces quite new and always different species with more complex structures, which ensure progress through the very fact of their difference.
Christian Science is revolutionary. In the realm of spiritual understanding also it is these mutations which lead to true spiritual progress. For it is only through them that we are able to give up our old thought-models and contemplate reality always in afresh way, with a completely new attitude of consciousness; and thereby gain entirely different and new insights. Revolutions are continually taking place in consciousness, impelling us to change our old models of thinking. This process of spiritual evolution, moreover, rests on a teleological principle, which means that each new advance is directed towards a higher goal and has its roots in the universal plan of being.
In Christian Science—as in every science—the method of completely changing our consciousness proves to be the only adequate way of achieving true progress. This is not a matter of expanding our former materialistic notions about the reality of being, but of abandoning them altogether and replacing them with the spiritual concept. This does not mean that we try to improve the old, but rather that we see it in an absolutely new way, thereby arriving inevitably at a better result. This abandonment of all our old, outgrown conceptions of being is a revolutionary process: "[Science] is revolutionary in its very nature" (Mis. 99:1–2). From this revolutionary nature of Science spring those great mutations of consciousness, which give a forward impulse to spiritual evolution.
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