SCIENTIFIC TRANSLATION - The Mary Baker Eddy Science Institute

consequently our experience. But with what is that 'understanding'achieved? When we make five times five twenty-five, who is doingthe making? It must be the principle's own knowledge or science,which likewise works in us. The golden thread whereby we retraceour way to unity with source - whether it be with God, or with music orwith the principle of a science - is the same thread by which it hasfirst come to us. The process is one, yet twofold in operation, like theflow and return of an electrical circuit. This concept has been the coreof truly spiritual teaching from the most ancient times. The Bibleabounds in examples. In Jacob's vision he sees the archetypal ladderset up between heaven and earth, with the angels of God ascendingand descending upon it. Or we find Paul describing it in Ephesians4:8-13: “Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descendedfirst…? He that descended is the same also that ascended up . . .” Ifwe take as an analogy the hands continually revolving on a clockface, the way they get to twelve o'clock is by starting out from twelveo'clock.Pre-eminently, Christ Jesus states the principle: “no man hathascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven . . .”(John 3:13). He is speaking on behalf of all humanity as well as forhimself, declaring that the ascending way and the descending wayare but two phases of the one cycle of being. As though to show thatthe departure and return happen only in consciousness and that realbeing remains a steady state, he completes his statement with “. ..even the Son of man which is in heaven.” The urge to rise inunderstanding and achievement would be in vain unless it had beenpreceded by the fact that we have already 'come down from', that inreality we are forever the Christ-idea in its Principle.This cycle of spiritual translation is entirely different from theconventional religious belief, in which spirit is said actually to becomematter at our birth, this matter then having to die in order to releaseus to become spirit again. In complete contrast to this theory is thecycle of divine metaphysics which explains away matter. Here, the'descent' is the coming of heavenly things into human consciousness,while the 'ascent' is human consciousness gradually recognizing thatit is reflection, not mortal counterfeit. Scientific translation, therefore,sheds an entirely different light on the nature of the human.21