Watching Point 298

298 — WATCH lest you accept the belief that there can be a phenomenon without a noumenon, a material manifestation without thought to support it. In reality Science shows us that all cause and effect are mental, never physical.

Once a patient had a belief of cataract, and yielded to the temptation to believe that a simple operation would remove it, and then she would be free. In striving to help her to see the entire error as mental, her practitioner told her to think of it as a cane held up to her eye, with the cataract represented by the tip, or ferrule. This helped her to see that if she had an operation, it would only remove the ferrule, while the cane would remain, until it was removed through the power of Truth. In this way she was able to meet this temptation. In this illustration the cane is intended to represent the erroneous belief.

This practitioner wrote a jingle in regard to this case, which he found helpful in realizing that he was dealing with a problem that was wholly mental.

Once a lady saw and felt a lie;
She thought it was an awful fact.
She stuck her mental finger in her eye;
But the doctors called it cataract.

At another time this practitioner was treating a lady for eye trouble. The patient wrote him that her eyes were not troubling her nearly as much as they did. He wrote back that she should have said, “I am not troubling my eyes nearly as much as I did.” She could have written, “I have been distressed because of my wrong conception of my eyes; I have been improving since I have realized that it is this conception that needs correction, not my eyes.” One might define matter as the belief that there can be a phenomenon without a noumenon, an effect without a cause. Food as matter appears to have the power to sustain life, or to destroy it; but as you realize that it is the tip, or ferrule, of the cane of divine Mind, sent to man to sustain him, you will cease to regard it as matter, and it will become a channel for God’s blessing to man.