christian science academy - ice-age-ahead-iaa.ca science... · 2014. 4. 11. · christian science...
TRANSCRIPT
Christian Science Academy
Science of The Lord's Prayer
By Rolf A. F. Witzsche – 2013 – Published by Cygni Communications Ltd. Canada
Click on the images for a larger view
The Lord's Prayer may be regarded as a quest to experience in life the 'hand' of God
in action, and thereby the essence of God that the senses cannot perceive, such as
the attributes of God as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, and omni-acting
good.
Towards this end a widely famous and profound prayer is attributed to the Master of
Christianity, Christ Jesus. It is a simple prayer arranged in 8 progressive steps.
In many churches that prayer is mechanically recited at great speed as if it was an
insignificant mandatory element that must be dispensed with before the sermons can
begin. However, if one takes a closer look, it becomes apparent that the prayer is not
insignificant at all.
The first part defines a great underlying cause that is intrinsically good. This
progresses on to the point where everything that is real is consciously attributed to
this underlying impetus of good and great power.
If one looks still closer it becomes apparent that the 8-part structure is divided into
four groups of 2 parts each. The first part presents a recognition, and the second
part a scientific affirmation; and understanding.
The idea of Father as universal good is acknowledged with awe: “Hallowed by thy
name.”
In the second part, the idea of an unfolding divine universe leads to the scientific
recognition that the divine intention is evident everywhere, including on earth.
For example, in modern leading-edge physics enormous efforts are made at the Joint
European CERN laboratory to proof that the phenomenon of gravity and mass have a
physical cause. More than 30 billion Euros have been spent on this experiment, with
not much success so far.
It may ultimately be recognized that the basic universal forces and their respective
operating principles are products of an intelligent intention, with the intention being
for the universe to exist, because without a single one of these basic forces and
principles for which no physical cause is known, the universe would not exist.
In the third group the divine process reflected in human economy is addressed. Our
daily bread is an economic product, derived by creative intelligent processes in human
economy. They are the products of the divine quality of Mind reflected in humanity in
rich measure. We live by the products of our creative expression. This is society's
wealth, and its debt to itself to meet the human need richly with its divine qualities.
We have developed the creative process so extensively that a thousand times as
many people now live on this planet than the natural world could support without the
creative human development that profoundly reflects a divine spiritual quality. The
only debt that society owes to one another is to meet the human need as efficiently
and as richly as can be achieved. Towards this end society provides itself financial
credits to get the job done. When the infrastructures are built by which the job is
done, the debt is extinguished. This is the divine economics that Jesus evidently was
aware of and tried to convey to a small-minded society that regarded debt as related
to money. Humanity has not yet come even close to implementing this divinely
oriented principle of economics.
The fourth part of the Lord's Prayer focuses on the greatest challenge that
humanity is facing, which is to overcome the temptation of small-minded thinking. If
this challenge is not met, the failure fosters ever-greater evils in the world.
An example of this type of festering evil is the currently ruling world-empire's
depopulation ideology that has become a policy of reducing the human population on
the Earth from the present population of 7 billion people to less than one. Who
hasn't heard the chorus of cries that the world is over-populated and is running out
of resources. Humanity has been termed a cancer on the Earth from the 1960s on.
This travesty in perception has opened the gates to immensely destructive genocidal
processes, such as the burning of food in a starving world, and the Uranium wars that
have spread deadly radioactive poisons with the air streams across the world, and
also the global warming hype that has prevented economic development and forced
de-industrialization, creating poverty and death, and so on.
Jesus evidently recognized the immense challenge before society to overcome the
tendency to allow itself to be trapped into small-minded thinking, which is the most
fundamental form of self-denial of its divine status as the reflection of God, and is
thereby a denial of God. The last line takes us above that tragic miasma of society's
self-entrapment that has no foundation in the divine universe where God is All and is
manifest in all.
Since the Lord's Prayer is designed to operate in four progressive stages, it is useful
to arrange the individual stanzas accordingly. I have arranged them here into columns
of development in which the lower idea, the primal idea is located at the bottom, and
the scientific response above it at a higher level.
I have also given the columns a name that accords with the sequence of the Sun
across the sky, from dawn to the golden sunset at the end of the day.
In the second part of the Lord's Prayer the idea comes to light that God is not
mythical, but profoundly substantial. The awakening of such a realization can be
likened to the sunrise in the morning that promises a bright day ahead as this
substance is becoming manifest.
With the spiritual dawning comes the recognition of the creative power that we have
as human beings to enrich our world and our living, and to extinguish this debt to us
by getting the job done. Thus we create a civilization that is as bright as the
brightest noon-day.
And in the last column we celebrate. We rejoice for our achievements won in stepping
out of the trap of small-minded thinking. We step away from the nagging temptation
to deny the fullness of God, to the realization of the full-orbed blessing we have. We
rejoice in the fullness of God's creation, likened to the golden colour of the sunset
that promises another dawning of successive days.
Now it appears that Christ Jesus didn't stop there, but went a few steps past the
simple arrangement of four columns with just two levels of perception. We are told
at the end of the book of Revelation, by John the Revelator, about a slightly more
complex structure that allows for four levels of perception in each of the four
columns. He speaks of a city foursquare, a city of profound spiritual concepts.
It is reasonable to assume that John didn't pick this concept up out of thin air, but
may have given us a hint as to what kind of deeper reasoning was going on that he was
a part of in association with Christ Jesus.
During the Roman persecution of Christianity for nearly two centuries, and of science
in general for several more centuries, the few written documents that may have
existed at the time about Christ Jesus' working and teaching were all burnt and
otherwise destroyed quite early. In order to bypass the Roman inspired madness,
John, living in exile during the persecution, appears to have created a story of the
spirit of those times that is extensively wrapped in metaphor, in a manner that would
not be seen as a threat to Rome, which therefore appears to have survived.
If this is so, then we may assume that much more advanced scientific thinking had
likely been the hallmark of the Jesus era than what has been preserved of it. There
may have been more advanced forms of the Lord’s Prayer under discussion. And why
would this not have been the case? The Christ Jesus era had a great scientific era
preceding it, prominently in Greece, and also in Egypt and other parts of the world.
A foursquare structure can support a vast array of scientific concepts that take us
far beyond what linear thinking can achieve. An advanced type of scientific
perceptions may have stood behind the great teachings and works of Christ Jesus.
It wasn’t something trivial that had shook the mighty Roman Empire so deeply that a
rampage of persecution resulted from it that had lasted for two centuries. A great
treasure has evidently been lost in this long rampage of persecution.
To date no source documents exist or have been found for the stories written in the
Gospels.
John the Revelator seems to tell us that much more went on than what the Gospels
tell us of, or imply, and that this may have also included higher-level concepts of the
Lord's Prayer.
The gap that the failure of historic preservation appears to have left us, was filled in
the late 1800s by America's scientific spiritual pioneer of the time, Mary Baker
Eddy. She presented her highest scientific perception of the original parts of the
Lord’s Prayer and added it as an extension to it, together with a number of definition
for the rows.
Here we have the original parts of the first group highlighted with her addition
presented above them that raises each part a step higher.
She doesn’t change the meaning of the original parts, or the meaning of the group,
but elevates the meaning of them.
The same happens in the column of the sunrise.
Her addition makes the sunrise more substantial.
In the third column, the basis for the daily bread is given a new dimension.
Mary Baker Eddy highlights the essential spiritual dimension of the Lord's Prayer as
grace and affection, and on the highest level, Love being reflected in love.
In the 4th column she tells us that small-minded thinking doesn’t come from God.
She tells us that God gets us out of the trap of small-minded thinking, and she adds
sin, disease, and death as aspects of it. She also vastly expands the image of God as
being infinite, all Life, Truth, Love, over all, and All.
You may have noticed by now that in this column by column presentation the various
levels hang together also horizontally in a progressive manner. Such as, "Our Father
which art in heaven, thy kingdom come, give us this day our daily bread, and protect
us from small-minded thinking and get us out of its consequences if need be.
The Lord's Prayer stanzas as presented by Christ Jesus, were evidently designed to
hang together horizontally in a progressive manner across each level. This doesn't
happen by chance. This is intentional. The foursquare matrix design that John
referred to as a foursquare city appears to have been pioneered by Christ Jesus,
which is evident in the design of the Lord's Prayer.
Mary Baker Eddy maintains the same pattern that Jesus pioneered with the Lord's
Prayer. At each level that she added we find the same amazing progression evident
for the level's respective theme.
The end result is that the Lord's Prayer is just as profoundly significant when it is
read row by row from the bottom up.
Each layer unfolds a higher dimension of the whole.
This step by step global progressing is not readily evident when the Lord's Prayer is
seen in the normal linear manner.
Since this lateral view enables a profound view of the global progression, it was
evidently intended and built into the design of the whole by the scientific pioneer
that Christ Jesus was.
In this matrix configuration of the foursquare city some rather profound
interrelationships become evident, as for example between the first and last
elements.
The first element here, "Our Father which art in heaven" unfolds upwards into a
whole pyramid of profound spiritual concepts.
In the same manner, the last element that acknowledges the infinite fullness of God
and God's creation, stands on a cascade of evermore progressive developments
beneath it.
If one considers the great potential for scientific and spiritual development that
John's city-foursquare concept enables, which Christ Jesus appears to have
pioneered, it is not surprising that all of Mary Baker Eddy's works have been created
in a manner that matches the foursquare city's design. This includes even her
textbook on Christian Science that she created as a structure of 16 chapters.
The same interrelationship is evident here between the various chapters, both
vertically, column by column, and horizontally row by row, which Christ Jesus appears
to have pioneered with his design of the Lord's Prayer.
The same can also be said about the 16 segments into which Mary Baker Eddy has
divided the Manual governing her church. The topics she focused on come to light in a
pattern that is essential for the development of civilization.
By the manner in which Christ Jesus presented the Lord's Prayer, everything that
supports civilization becomes drawn together into a single structure with a single
purpose, which is to bring God and man together into the universal lateral
relationship that already exists and covers all aspects of living and being.
Mary Baker Eddy's extended definitions for the rows:
Omnipotence
The Word of Life, Truth, and Love;
Omniscience
The Christ, the spiritual idea of God;
Omnipresence
Christianity, which is the outcome of the divine Principle of the Christ-idea in
Christian history;
Omni-action
Christian Science, which to-day and forever interprets this great example and the
great Exemplar.
Mary Baker Eddy's extended definitions for the columns:
Dawn (the Word)
Northward, its gates open to the North Star, the Word, the polar magnet of
Revelation;
Sunrise (Christ)
Eastward, to the star seen by the Wisemen of the Orient, who followed it to the
manger of Jesus;
Noonday Sun (Christianity)
Southward, to the genial tropics, with the Southern Cross in the skies, - the Cross of
Calvary, which binds human society into solemn union;
Golden Sunset (Divine Science)
Westward, to the grand realization of the Golden Shore of Love and the Peaceful
Sea of Harmony.
The danger with prayer begins when it nurtures an ideology that it takes the concept
of God completely out of the human dimension into esoteric isolation that puts God
far above humanity, that humanity becomes a slave to.
Two types of prayer are presented here, by the world's two largest religions. Both
are forms used for reaching out to God. However, the scientific unction is to lift
humanity up to God, not to anthropomorphize God but to render to humanity its
native divinity, to bring humanity into its native sphere in unity with God, and thereby
in unity with one-another.
The greatest platform ever created
Our Father
It renders the whole of humanity as one
in heaven
It renders existence in universal harmony
Thus the Lord's Prayer begins in the first column with the scientific platform of the
most basic fact of the nature of civilization that Christ Jesus challenges humanity to
acknowledge in thought and in deed, individually and universally. Everything in the
rest of the column is built on that basic platform and becomes an expression of it,
and likewise what follows in the rest of the columns.
Society stands presently far from this platform, being trapped into systems of
privatization, indifference, social and national marriage isolation, rivalry, competition,
division, segregation, hatred, war, and so forth. Christ Jesus' challenge is rarely
acknowledged; especially in deeds. Mary Baker Eddy aided the development towards
this realization of humanity's inherent divinity. While some progress has been
achieved along this line, when this is seen in terms of what must be achieved, it
seems we have barely begun.
Ironically humanity seeks riches in property, financial wealth, status, fame, and
power, while it closes its eyes to the greatest sunrise before it that lays potentially
at its feet. The human spirit is rooted in the divine, in Spirit that is God. Christ
Jesus puts no small challenge before us in the second column, but he evidently
expected that the challenge will be met; or else, what's the point then in existing if
we can't make something profound of it?
What's the point in existing
if we can't make something profound of it?
It becomes evident from this progression that the columns built sequentially on one
another. Without the divine Spirit reflected in humanity, what would drive the
creativity and productivity in human economics by which the needs in human living and
human society are met, and without that, how would Love be reflected in love. The
two cannot be isolated.
What powers the creativity, productivity, innovations, technologies, and the entire
economic system by which the human needs or met is the power of divine Mind
reflected universally in humanity. To give it the fullest expression possible is an
aspect of the great debt we own to us and one-another.
The grand obligation we have to us and one-another to express all that God is to the
fullest degree possible, leaves no room for small-minded thinking. God is infinite
Principle expressed in the universe that we are a part of, without which we and the
universe would not exist. But we do exist, and we do exist as God's expression. The
more we develop this fundamental fact in our understanding, the richer and free,
more secure, and more powerful will be our living, our world, and our civilization.
The more this understanding is developed the less-likely it will be for anything to
harm us or place limits before us. The coming Ice Age will then no longer pose a
danger, or any other astrophysical conditions. Christ Jesus opened the divine portal
to us with the Lord's Prayer, towards an endless future, and he suggested that no
other such portal exists.
Mary Baker Eddy built everything that she created on the foursquare platform that
Christ Jesus had pioneered and left to us in the form of the Lord's Prayer for us to
built on. Mary Baker Eddy brought in total 10 major structures into the city as John
had suggested humanity would do. That Mary Baker Eddy followed what John saw as
inevitable is evident by her design of her works as constituents of the foursquare
city. In this she followed the design characteristics that Christ Jesus has pioneered
to the very last detail, whom she referred to as "the most scientific man that ever
trod the globe."
Even her least-known work, her illustrated poem, Christ and Christmas, is designed to
accord with the design characteristics of the city foursquare, and thereby it accords
with the 16 elements of the expanded version of the Lord's Prayer, and also with the
textbook chapters, and with the map for the manual for civilization that we find in
her Church Manual, and so on.
The unction of prayer is that the Face of God be not hid, but gleam through the face
of humanity as the light of the world.
I will close this video with a presentation of the illustrated poem in conjunction with
the Lord's Prayer, the textbook chapters shown in yellow, and the topics of Mary
Baker Eddy's Church Manual shown in blue. Some scenes have two verses associated,
which are typically divided by them.
I present the illustrated poem, divided in four parts, in the manner the Lord's Prayer
is divided.
Christ and Christmas Part 1: Our Father which art in heaven...
Our Father which art in heaven
1. - Fast circling on, from zone to zone,--
Bright, blest, afar,--
O'er the grim night of chaos shone
One lone, brave star.
- The textbook chapter is, Prayer.
- The Manual's segment is named, Church Officers, but in the wider context the
focus is on all officers, offices, and governments in general as a functional element in
civilization. The officers, whoever they are, have only one mandate, which is to
implement the government of "our Father" that has its root in heaven and its
expression in harmony.
Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious,
2. In tender mercy, Spirit sped
A loyal ray
To rouse the living, wake the dead,
And point the Way--
- Atonement and Eucharist
- The Manual's focus on membership, reflected in the wider context, highlights our
universal membership in the sphere of humanity that we shouldn't let fall to the
ground.
Hallowed be Thy name
3. The Christ-idea, God anoints--
Of Truth and Life;
The Way in Science He appoints,
That stills all strife.
-The chapter is, Marriage; the segment is Discipline. The binding between them is
Christ Science in which we are more deeply married to one another by our humanity
that reflects the divine, than by anything superficial.
Adorable One
4. What the Beloved knew and taught,
Science repeats,
Through understanding, dearly sought,
With fierce heart-beats;
- Christian Science versus Spiritualism
- The Manual's segment on, Meetings, closes the door to mass-gatherings. The hype
in mass-gatherings in built on the denial of the always existing oneness of humanity
as an expression of God. Instead of denying that, we need to gleam the reality of its
ever-full, unbroken expression.
Christ and Christmas Part 2: Thy kingdom come...
Thy kingdom come
5. Thus Christ, eternal and divine,
To celebrate
As Truth demands,--this living Vine
Ye demonstrate.
- Animal Magnetism Unmasked
- The Manual's segment is on services. For civilization to function society provides
for one another numerous services, for transportation, education, culture, healing,
etc, including church services. The scientific Church Services are designed to furnish
an environment for spiritual healing.
Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present
6. For heaven's Christus, earthly Eves,
By Adam bid,
Make merriment on Christmas eves,
O'er babe and crib.
- Science, Theology, Medicine
- The Manual's segment here is on Reading Rooms. We have a moral responsibility to
keep our consciousness vibrant, orderly, and unpolluted.
Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven
7. Yet wherefore signalize the birth
Of him ne'er born?
What can rehearse the glorious worth
Of his high morn?
- Physiology
- The Manual's segment is about, Duty. Each human being has the inherent duty to
serve the cause of humanity in whatever form individual situations may require,
whereby the divine design becomes fulfilled.
Enable us to know,
- as in heaven, so on earth, -
God is omnipotent, supreme.
8. Christ was not crucified--that doom
Was Jesus' part;
For Sharon's rose must bud and bloom
In human heart. *
* "God was manifest in the flesh." -- St. Paul.
- Footsteps of Truth
- The Manual's segment is on Sovereignty. Mary Baker Eddy stipulates that all
churches of Christ Scientist are sovereign. No one is a slave to another. Likewise, all
human beings are sovereign and free, and omnipotent and supreme in individual divine
reflection.
Christ and Christmas Part 3: Give us this day our daily bread...
Give us this day our daily bread
9. Forever present, bounteous, free,
Christ comes in gloom;
And aye, with grace towards you and me,
For health makes room.
- Creation
- The Manual's segment here is focused on, funds, or more specifically the
guardianship of church funds. But on the wider horizon, humanity lives and dies with
the funding of its economies. Poverty is a deadly sickness in this realm. Being choked
to near-death by unfulfilled debts, nothing but the power of Christian Science can
bring life back to the scene.
Divine Economics
Divine Debt
We owe a profound debt to God and to one-another to meet all human needs.
Money
We utter monetary credit to one-another to furnish the means for meeting the
needs.
Debt Free
Our debt is extinguished when the human needs are met. Money gains its value in the
process of meeting the human needs.
The footsteps are grace and affection
Here Love is reflected in love
Civilization flourishes with divine economics or collapses in denial
Give us grace for to-day; feed the famished affections
10. Thus olden faith's pale star now blends
In seven-hued white!
Life, without birth and without end,
Emitting light!
- Science of Being
- The Manual's segment is about the functioning of a Christian Science Publishing
Society. The literature that society publishes for itself needs to be focused on
human development and universal good. Society owes a debt to itself to meet this
need in the most effectual manner. It owes it especially to its children. This, of
course, means that nothing should be published that tares humanity to the ground, no
matter how much profit or political advantage can be gained thereby.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors
11. The Way, the Truth, the Life--His word--
Are here, and now
Christ's silent healing, heaven heard,
Crowns the pale brow.
- Some Objections Answered
- The Manual's segment is on, Teaching, especially the teaching of Christian Science,
which unfolds the Science of the Christ. Here, teaching is a solemn trust that builds
society up towards mustering the spiritual power to extinguish the human need, and
thereby its debt to one-another.
And Love is reflected in love
12. For Christian Science brings to view
The great I Am,--
Omniscient power,--gleaming through
Mind, mother, man.
- Christian Science Practice
- The Manual's segment here focuses on, Education. Formal teaching in Christian
Science provides only a small step, and awards only a bachelor degree. The real
education is rooted at a higher level than that which teaching can furnish. But it can
be taken on a higher plane where no one certifies another and awards diplomas,
where the results furnish the proof.
God gave us his promise
He gave us His Word
This promise is immediate,
for Love IS reflected in love
Christ and Christmas Part 4: And lead us not into temptation...
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil;
13. As in blest Palestina's hour,
So in our age,
'T is the same hand unfolds His power,
And writes the page.
- Teaching Christian Science
- The Manual's segment is on Lectureship, and on the framework for providing it as a
sacred obligation by society to take concrete steps to rouse itself out of the evil
trap of small-minded thinking to the contemplation of divine Truth as it applies by
reflection to humanity. That's how civilization is raised at the grassroots level.
And God leadeth us not into temptation, but delivereth us from sin, disease, and
death
14. To-day, as oft, away from sin
Christ summons thee!
Truth pleads to-night: Just take Me in!
No mass for Me!
- Recapitulation
- The Manual's segment is called, Committee of Publication. Its duty is to assure
truthfulness in matters related to Christian Science and its officers in general
publications, in order that the gem of Truth that Christian Science presents to the
world is not being tarnished. In the larger context this requirement applies to
Christianity as a whole and the vastly greater task to discover the truth about Christ
Jesus who stood in the middle of it, and to assure that this truth is not hidden under
the mantle of convenience, politics, and religiosity. Humanity is presently far distant
from meeting this goal.
For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever
15. No blight, no broken wing, no moan,
Truth's fane can dim;
Eternal swells Christ's music-tone,
In heaven's hymn.
- Genesis
- The Manual's segment is about Church-Building. Ultimately this isn't about
constructing a physical edifice, but building the edifice of civilization without
smallness, impotence, and timidity in its design. The building committee, symbolically,
has three members: Discipline, Duty, and the sacred trust of Teaching Christian
Science.
For God is infinite, all-power,
all Life, Truth, Love, over all,
and All.
And he that overcometh, and keepeth my
works unto the end, to him will I give
power over the nations:
And I will give him the MORNING STAR.
- Mary Baker Eddy attributes this final verse in Christ and Christmas, not to herself,
but to Christ Jesus whose work she had built all of her achievements on. In the
Manual the final segment is about the Church Manual itself that ultimately may form
the basis for a constitution for civilization, or a Manual for Civilization. With her
Church Manual being founded on the Lord's Prayer, as evidence suggests, Mary Baker
Eddy has published it without her seal being applied to the front cover as she did for
all of her other published writings.
- John describes in the book of Revelation the type of apocalypse that results from
the progression that was begun by Christ Jesus, which is the only apocalypse that is
possible, an apocalypse that marks the end of all evil with the unfolding of the golden
fullness of God's creation. Mary Baker Eddy's manual appears to be dedicated to
that.