Overcoming illusions

Once, while flying a small aircraft at night and in clouds – which meant that I had no visual reference outside the plane – I became convinced that I was in a steep climb. I recognized this intense feeling as a sensory illusion resulting from spatial disorientation.

During flight training, pilots are taught not to believe or act on the perceptions of the physical senses. They learn to trust instead the information presented by the aircraft’s instruments about the plane’s position and attitude (i.e., how it is oriented in relation to the earth). So that’s what I did when the aircraft suddenly appeared to pitch up steeply. The instruments confirmed that the plane was nearly straight and level, and I trusted that.

Cloudy, rainy conditions continued during the next two hours, and the impulse to respond to false sensory information persisted. My vigilance in monitoring the flight instruments and my unwavering resistance to believing the bodily senses enabled me to avert what could otherwise have been a disastrous outcome.

That experience taught me that an illusion, or error, recognized as such, loses any ability to convince us of its reality when we respond to and act on only what we know to be true because it is reported by a reliable source. Once exposed, the error vanishes from our experience because it was never true.

Christian Science makes clear that whatever is not of God, who is both Spirit and infinite good, is erroneous. Regardless of what appears real to the physical senses, the truth is that all that is real is God and the spiritual and perfect universe of His creating. The Bible records God as saying, “I am the Lord that maketh all things” (Isaiah 44:24). Therefore, no evidence contrary to God’s perfect spiritual creation is ever real.

“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, explains, “Nothing is real and eternal, – nothing is Spirit, – but God and His idea. Evil has no reality” (p. 71).

Christ Jesus, the master healer, rejected as false whatever appeared as diseased, malfunctioning, or abnormal. His innate spiritual sense – “a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (Science and Health, p. 209) – enabled him to perceive instead what was true of each individual. In this way, he healed infirmities of all sorts.

No matter what erroneous suggestion the material senses present to us – whether sickness, loss, lack, or trouble of any other kind – God’s loving, omnipotent care in any situation is a present fact that we can trust. No power exists to oppose God’s goodness and harmony. Holding in thought the spiritual facts in relation to the situation exposes as false anything unlike God and His entirely good creation. The illusion’s imagined power to frighten us then disappears.

As we continually seek the truth of God and His creation, we find that eternal Truth is abiding with us – even when the material senses assert Truth’s opposite.

I pondered these concepts and found them helpful in overcoming a respiratory problem that was becoming increasingly challenging. I called a Christian Science practitioner for help and immediately felt uplifted by her loving prayers. The practitioner spoke to me about the need to see through the deception of material sense.

I recalled my experience while flying, when my physical senses were reporting a flight situation that was not real. Similarly, they were now reporting that I was suffering – something that could not be true of God’s creation.

I saw that, just as I had rejected the illusion caused by spatial disorientation, I could refute the deceptive appearance of illness. As God’s image (see Genesis 1:27), I could never reflect anything unlike God. Moreover, I realized that as the expression of God, divine Mind, I could not be tricked or mesmerized into believing that an illusion was real.

When the illness persisted, I held to the truth of God’s allness and perfection and my likeness to Him. The symptoms soon disappeared completely. I saw that at no point was the suggestion that disease is a bodily condition any more real than the belief that my airplane had been in an abnormal flight attitude.

All that has ever been true is God, infinite good, and that which He creates. This means that all reality is wholly pure, life-sustaining, and guided by the infinite wisdom of divine Love. Daily abiding in the consciousness of Truth, we recognize what is true, and illusions lose their power to deceive us.

Adapted from an article published in the Oct. 21, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.