Watching Point 244

244 — WATCH lest you fail to differentiate between statements for instruction, growth and demonstration. Statements of Science that are for instruction, involve the analysis of the operation of the lie, as it claims to hold man in bondage in Egypt. Statements for growth are based on man as approaching perfection, having come to himself, remembering his Father’s house, so that he is ready to return.

Statements for demonstration are based on absolute present perfection, declaring man to be in the Father’s house now, to have been there always, and never to have departed for any suppositional sojourn in Egypt, from which he must return.

Instruction is needed to uncover the mystery of iniquity, to show how the lie operates mesmerically and aggressively to make falsity seem either attractive or fearful, so that mortal man yields to its bondage; yet all the time to have no power other than to whisper its suggestions, but to do it in such a way that the suggestions appear to be either mortal man’s own thoughts, or else to be matter talking.

Statements of growth picture man as a pilgrim walking the road from sense to Soul. It is necessary for a student to consider himself as approaching perfection and ‘gaining a little each day in the right direction’ (Science and Health, page 21); otherwise he may not see the necessity for striving.

Demonstration which starts and ends with the realization and declaration of eternal present perfection is needed to silence the lie, or pack of lies of mortal belief. One cannot utilize the healing power of God unless he takes the stand that everything is spiritual and perfect now, that man has never departed from perfection, since God created him perfect; hence there is, in reality, nothing to heal.

The prodigal in Egypt needed instruction and explanation as to the lie that claimed to entice him and hold him in illusion, by making the illusion seem real and desirable. On his way home he needed statements of growth to encourage him; but that which really sustained him and made his experience a scientific one, was the realization from the standpoint of absolute Science that he had always been in the Father’s house, and had never left it; that the sojourn in Egypt was a bad dream — and not even that, since to consider it even as a dream, gives it more reality than one should give it, for in reality the child of God has no capacity to dream. Hence the necessity for naming error nothing.