Einstein & Eddy's Kindred Takes on Time
World's most famous physicist had great admiration for Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science
AS YOU MAY RECALL from TSC’s inaugural Substack a couple weeks ago, Albert Einstein, the creator of the world’s most famous equation, showed considerable interest in Mary Baker Eddy’s Christian Science.
“Christian Science is beyond this generation’s understanding, and to think that a woman knew this eighty years ago,” he told contemporary Mary Spaulding after reading Science and Health. He added: “It is pure science.”
The guy who revolutionized our understanding of space, time, gravity, and light, called Christian Science pure science, in other words a way of thinking that can be proven to work.
Though they never met in person, Einstein and Eddy shared similarities in thought, both giving the world a better understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe.
For example, they both blew holes in the way humans perceive time.
Einstein said time is relative, famously explaining it this way:
"Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour; sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That's relativity."
In the same spirit, Eddy believed God measures time not based on a ticking clock but on our spiritual progress. When she said “Progress is the law of infinity” she was basically saying that our identity and worth have nothing to do with chronology, rather, true progress is measured by the good we do and see, and how often we hold “perfect God and perfect man” in thought.
There’s no evidence Einstein ever joined a Christian Science church, but like Mrs. Eddy, he saw the world through different eyes, and even occasionally said things a Christian Scientist would say:
“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
An entire book could be written about the metaphysical duo’s correlation of thought when it came to the cosmos, so let’s shift to another take on time…
I’m sure you’ve heard the expression time heals all wounds.
It may be true on a purely physical level when it comes to say, a cut, a cold, or a stubbed toe. Time heals those things sufficiently.
But there are wounds that time alone likely won’t heal: unresolved resentment, self-hate, low self-esteem — or diseases labelled “terminal” by the medical world: cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s.
Most of us understand that the THAW expression isn’t entirely true, and that in reality it’s love that heals all wounds.
Christian Science takes this even a step higher.
In Science, what heals all wounds is Divine Love, which is perfect, permanent, and from God. Divine Love heals all wounds, even the ones humans say are “incurable.”
God gifts all Love to humans for unlimited earthly use.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights, where there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” (James)
Once we acknowledge where the love we use everyday originates — not from our brains, our emotions, or other people, but from life’s Creator — that alone can permanently heal long held mortal beliefs of ourselves or others, beliefs of physical or mental maladies.
God blesses everyone who lives with love, but he has added blessings for those living with love who acknowledge where that Love really derives from, and that it doesn’t derive from anything we can see or touch.
“Making God man-like”
Mrs. Eddy warned against “making God man-like” — trying to give God human attributes, which well-intentioned believers have been doing since the Adam-dream. God is not person. He is not a material mix of good and evil. He’s 100% good, 100% Spirit, 100% of the time.
God doesn’t look at one person with a cold, and another with cancer, and say, “Jeez, that person with the cold has it much easier.” A human would — but not the Almighty. God doesn’t distinguish between material things, in fact He doesn’t even comprehend what matter or disease is; that would contradict what we know of his divine character.
“God can no more produce sickness than goodness can cause evil and health occasion disease,” Mrs. Eddy writes.
“Making Man God-like”
Mrs. Eddy instead advised “making man God-like” — to know that Divine Love created our bodies in harmony. He didn’t define us by our physique. We are idea, image, of Love. Our bodies perceived in a decrepit state is perceived by our deceitful material senses: vision, hearing, touch, etc. God sees us as perfect ideas, a concept we can only understand using our spiritual senses: seeing and hearing only good, God, in everything.
“Man is not made up of brain, blood, bones, and other material elements,” Mrs. Eddy writes. “The Scriptures inform us that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Matter is not that likeness. The likeness of Spirit cannot be so unlike Spirit. Man is spiritual and perfect; and because he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so understood in Christian Science.”
One person in human history mastered Science, and he was already the Master before he even entered the world: Jesus. We are his lifelong students.
Remember Mrs. Eddy’s advice: “emerge gently.” We progress slowly. If every day we go a little deeper in our acknowledgement of where good originates and how our real identities rest in Spirit, not matter, we “gently” advance spiritually.
“There is no fatal mistake; there is no unforgivable sin; there is no permanent injury; there is no incurable disease; there is no such thing as too late.” Mary Baker Eddy