Hello there,
In reading your reply to the questions of a J. N. on your blog, I struggled to understand why Mary Baker Eddy was led to accept this system. Here’s the paragraph:

“What Africa really needs is the pure divine mystery. And I do not see in the Western system a pure divine mystery. Christian Science is a system of pure divine mystery, but the practice itself as defined in Miscellaneous Writing (page 220: 4-15) belongs actually to the human mystery! Because one can use exactly the same kind of mental practice to harm people. Why, you ask perhaps, Mary Baker Eddy left this system? It is for he same reason that Moses could not teach the higher law of love to the public, but the law of retaliation: It was a concession.”

In the case of Moses I do understand, for Mary Baker Eddy I wander why? For Moses I know that the unbelief of the Jews and their hardness of hearts was the main cause. However, for Mary Baker Eddy I do not know why she had to make a concession.

Etienne Kadima

Hi Etienne Kadima,

Let’s begin with Moses. It is often argued that this prophet was a Black man; this is seen in the fact that he certainly grew up in the court of Pharaoh, and in his love for the Black Egypt (one of his wives was an Ethiopian). He wanted to “civilize” the Jews by bringing them to the high Egyptian religion. Josphus Flavius reports in his book entitled Antiquity of the Jews that for the Egyptian historian Manetho, Moses was in reality an Egyptian, a priest of Osiris whose true name was Osarseph .

At the time of Moses the Jews were still in barbarism! Their cousin in Africa; the Arabs, are still called the Berbers, which means barbarians! The biblical story tells us that when a daughter of Dan was raped, his brothers decimated the entire village of the rapist and they took the women and children into slavery. This degree of revenge shows in what state of barbarism the Jews were in that time; forgiveness was something that seemed to them really impossible. It is also due to their state of barbarism that Joseph did not want the children of Jacob to mix with the Egyptians, hence he asked Pharaoh to allow them to live in Goshen, apart from the Egyptians (who were at that time the most advanced civilization).

Moses could not transmit to such a community a spiritual teachings which required a strong sense of love, a radical negation of materialism (materialism involves the attachment to the material through the personal sense, the corporeal sense and through human will). That is why wisdom led him to split the Jewish population into two groups:

The majority had to learn by the way of fear of punishment, because punishment is the language barbarism listens better. For this majority was unable to forgive and incredulous to Truth, Moses established the law of retaliation: an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth. But compared to the state of barbarism in which they were, this law was a big progress. However, when compared with the high spirituality of the Egyptians of that time, this law was a concession to materialism.

The second group is a minority that the Bible calls “the son of the prophets,” i.e., the disciples of the prophets. Samuel was therefore the son of Eli. These disciples did learn the high spirituality that Moses had acquired in Egypt. That is why in the Old Testament only this minority crossed the veil of the temple, and only the high priest entered the Holy of Holies.

This situation continued until the time of Jesus when the veil of the temple was torn in two (Matthew 27: 51). This veil originally separated the people (the majority), from the disciples of the prophets. So with Jesus’ teachings, the two factions of the Jewish community were unified, any one could enter the Holy of Holies through Christ; i.e., any one in the Jewish community could learn how through the Word to come into contact with the illuminated ancestors. Because the mystery taught in Egypt and “hidden for centuries” (Romans 16: 25) was now unveiled.

When Mary Baker Eddy came, the West was deeply immersed in materialism again for several reasons:

Materialism is the foundation of Western civilization.

The unification of pagan religions and Christianity in the year 325 by Constantine I, Roman emperor, introduced materialism in the church, Westerners have therefore missed the opportunity to raise their civilization to high spirituality of the Blacks.
This materialism introduced in the Church led to excesses that have marked the history of the Church during the Middle Age and whose culmination was the inquisitions and witch hunts.

The Church controlled, through fear of violence, the mass; but also the intellectual elite. These ones eventually rejected the ideas of the Church to the Renaissance. But one major consequence of this revolt was also the separation between science and religion. This separation was reinforced by the ideas of Charles Darwin which depicted man as the product of evolution, removing any need for a creator God; materialism has reached the peak.

It is at this juncture that came the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy, the West was already deep plunged into the night of materialism. Like Moses, it was impossible for Mary Baker Eddy to teach upper aspects of Divine Science. Meanwhile, the Africans still had their initiatory schools of the divine mystery. Thus, unlike the Blacks/Africans initiatory schools of the divine mystery, Mary Baker Eddy has allowed his students to use the material means for healing in the divine metaphysics; physical manipulation, mind control, and the use of the will human.

Physical manipulation: Mary Baker Eddy quickly realized that the imposition of hands was a bad practice and brought students to the belief that they had a personal power. And this induced pride and ended outright into bad mental practices (illustrated by the case of Kennedy, a student who manipulated mentally even his master: Mary baker Eddy). Thus Eddy forbids this approach, leaving only mental approaches. But she has not completely eradicated mental manipulation, as seen in her book titled Miscellaneous Writings. .

Mental manipulation: talking mentally to someone is mental manipulation; the hypnotist uses the same technique. And this is the case especially as in the practice of Christian Science it is done without the knowledge of the patients. Mary Baker Eddy says in Miscellaneous Writings on page 220: ” Let us suppose that there is a sick person whom another would heal mentally. The healer begins by mental argument. He mentally says, “You are well, and you know it;” and he supports this silent mental force by audible explanation, attestation, and precedent.” I use to call this method “positive hypnotism”. It is a concession that Mary Baker Eddy has introduced due to the depth of the commitment to materialism of Western civilization.

As for human will, she says on page 144 of his book Science and Health that: “Human will-power is not Science.” She sees the possibility of using the same power on page 206: “The power of the human will should be exercised only in subordination to Truth.”

History attests that Mary Baker Eddy never used these concessions in her practice, so it is the difficulty for the students to achieve the highest approaches of the practice of the Divine Science which led her to keep in the practice of Christian Science those two last concessions.

It is also noteworthy that these concessions were not at all necessary for Africans. Unless they are removed in their case, they lead the Blacks to a faulty practice of Christian Science. They can do wonders when they are taught this science in its highest approaches. When the use of positive hypnotism is brought to African practices, it shows glorious start then results in the belief in personal power, in pride, and eventually in the fall of the mental healer.

That is why in the metaphysical practice of the Institut des Sciences Animiques (ISA) we proscribe all these concessions. In order to do this; we consider that:

Whatever the nature of disease, it is always an outside suggestion and not a belief in the mind of the patient; because if the disease were a belief in the patient, he is not perfect. But we rather know that spiritual healing starts from perfection to demonstrate the nothingness of imperfection. All healing practice starting from imperfection is material, whatever the nature of the arguments that are used.
Thus in reality, the treatment does not change the thinking of the patient, nor even that of the healer, but realizes the Truth to destroy impersonal suggestions that seem to overwhelm the patient.

The treatment starts from the perfection of God to affirm the mental and physical perfection of the patient and then deny any suggestion of imperfection.