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Home > Books > The Science of the Oneness of Being in the Christian Science Textbook
The Science of the Oneness of Being in the Christian Science Textbook
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Product Code: 0-942958-03-9
Manufacturer: Kappeler Institute Publishing
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Cloth, 274 pages
Level:
SUBJECT(s):
The Structure of the Christian Science Textbook
RELATED RECORDINGS:
C-7, The Science of Oneness in the Christian Science Textbook (23 hours, audio)
SYNOPSIS: This book shows how Christian Science finally resolves the question of oneness and duality. The question of oneness has occupied humanity from earliest times. The Bible repeatedly asks: Is there only one God, or many gods? The Greeks tried to trace the multiplicity of phenomena back to one primary principle. Through Science, however, we see how the One becomes the many (infinitely individualized) yet still remains the One. In Science and Health, the first 16 chapters reveal 16 fundamental laws that uncover 16 root-beliefs of duality and establish the true oneness of being.
CONTENTS:
PART I: Fundamental Questions
Chapter 1: Oneness: The Fundamental Problem of Being
Chapter 2: The Development of Monotheism
Chapter 3: The Development of the Idea of Oneness in Christian Science
Chapter 4: Spiritual Monism
Chapter 5: The One and the Many
Chapter 6: The Part and the Whole
Chapter 7: The Oneness of Being
Chapter 8: The Distorted Concept of Oneness
Chapter 9: The One Being in the Light of the Divine System of Reference
Chapter 10: Multidimensional Oneness
Chapter 11: The Different Science-levels in the Textbook-chapters
PART II: The Textbook-chapters
PART III: Summary
Chapter 1: The Matrix of the Oneness of Being
Chapter 2: The Oneness-matrix in Relation to the Textbook-matrix
Appendices
EXCERPT:
From Max Kappeler, The Science of the Oneness of Being in the Christian Science Textbook, pp. 49–51.
Chapter 10: Multidimensional Oneness
What is dimensionalism? Ontology—the Science of being—has to do with the nature, essence and relations of all being (see S&H 460:3–8). In its classical form, ontology teaches that the identities of being never change but always preserve their selfsameness. This is accepted as the principle of identity: something must always be the same thing, because it cannot simultaneously be something else. According to this view, the One excludes the many, for the One cannot be both one and many. This concept finally leads to reductionism, to an exclusively one-sided way of looking at all things.
Today reductionism is challenged by dimensionalism, presenting transclassical ontology as dimensional ontology. In dimensional ontology, the drama of divine being is played, so to speak, on several stages at once. This means that being is not restricted to one realm only but embraces multiple levels or dimensions at once. Though being is always the whole, this whole appears simultaneously on different levels, giving a different understanding and interpretation of being according to each level. This may perhaps be most clearly illustrated by taking an example from geometry.
The sketch below shows the inside lower left corner of a room (A). In this room and, as it were, suspended in the air, there is a half-cylinder (Z). From the sketch certain facts become clear: a cylinder is a three-dimensional object, defined by length, breadth, and height. What happens if we project this three-dimensional object onto a two-dimensional plane? If we project the half-cylinder onto the back wall, for example, a rectangle appears. If we move the source of light to the right and project the half-cylinder onto the left-hand wall (another two-dimensional plane), a square appears. If we choose another position for the source of light and project the image of the half-cylinder onto the floor, a semicircle appears. Every time the light is thrown onto the half-cylinder from a new position, a new image appears on the walls or floor—that is, in the two-dimensional realm. Although the half-cylinder always remains the same, the projected images vary greatly, having very different shapes. This leads to the fundamental conclusion that, when projected from the three-dimensional realm into another dimension—to the two-dimensional level, for example—one object can produce many different phenomena, bearing little obvious resemblance to itself. Throughout, the object never loses its identity; in our example, the half-cylinder remains a half-cylinder, irrespective of its appearance when projected onto the two-dimensional realm. One thing can appear on different levels in different forms.
Another well-known example, taken from chemistry, further illustrates this basic concept of dimensionality. The chemical compound H2O remains H2O, irrespective of whether it appears as ice, water or steam—irrespective, that is, of whether it appears in the form of solid, liquid, or gas.
As a third example, we can consider the question: What is man? Using a reductionist's approach, we may receive many different, even contradictory answers. For instance, the theologian regards man as a sinner, fallen from divine favor, still being punished by God, but having the possibility of redemption through divine grace. By contrast, the physiologist regards man as a combination of organs, a kind of machine, in which each part of the body must perform its specific function for man to remain alive. From the chemist's standpoint, man is a composite of chemical processes, incessantly interacting to constitute the real essence of man. Projected onto the level of corporeality, man appears as something somatic or corporeal; projected onto the psychic level, man appears as a mental phenomenon. These very different pictures of man never actually contradict each other except when the answers are couched in reductionist terminology: "man is nothing but…"—nothing but a sinner, nothing but a body, nothing but a psychic being, etc. When we realize that in all these cases the identity of man is only being translated to different levels, we see that the view presented by each standpoint is but one aspect of man, even when that aspect appears as a so-called mortal. However, such an analysis presupposes that we accept dimensionalism as our method of understanding.
The fundamental translatability of the one Being. If we apply this dimensional method of understanding to the oneness of being, we see that when an identity is projected (or, more exactly, translated) from one dimension or level to another, its appearance changes but not its original identity. What changes through translation to another level is the way in which this identity is expressed; the identity itself remains the same.
Such varied phenomena of one identity appear only when translation to other levels takes place. As long as we consider an identity of being within the same level, its appearance does not change. Thus, the art of the dimensional method lies in recognizing the common identity underlying the varied phenomena appearing on other levels. When we learn to see this, we are able to discern which original form (or noumenon) lies behind the phenomenon, even when the phenomenon no longer seems to bear any resemblance to the original form.
In this way, dimensional ontology gives us the scientific tools for resolving the age-old dichotomy of the one and the many. In divine metaphysics, what appears to us as the many is really the One translated to different levels. On one hand, the infinite One is able to manifest itself, through its translatability to other levels, in an infinite number of forms—namely, as the many. On the other hand, the One never loses its identity as the infinite One; the selfsameness of the One is preserved on every level.
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