“Surely, Padre!” she exclaimed. “The plus sign is followed by a minus sign, isn’t it? And the man made of dust is the real man with a minus sign before him.”
“The man of dust is the human mind’s interpretation of the spiritual man, dear child,” returned Josè. “All human beings are interpretations by the mortal, or human, mind of infinite Mind, God, and His spiritual Creation. The interpretation is made in the human mind, and remains there. The human mind does not see these interpretations outside of itself––it does not see real men, and houses, and trees, outside of itself––but it sees its mental interpretations of God, which it calls men, and houses, and trees, and so on. These things are what we might call mental concepts. They are the man and the creation spoken of in the second chapter of Genesis after the mist went up from matter, from the ground, from materialism, resulting in the testimony of the physical senses.”
“But, Padre, they are not real––these mental concepts?”
“No. They are illusions. They are formed in mentalities that are themselves wrong interpretations of the infinite Mentality, called God. They are formed without any rule or principle. They are made up of false thoughts, false opinions, beliefs of power opposed to God, beliefs in evil, in sickness, disaster, loss, and death. They are the results of educated and inherited and attached beliefs. They are largely made up of fear-beliefs. The human mentalities see these various beliefs combined in what it calls men and women, houses, animals, trees, and so on, all through the material so-called creation. It is this wrong interpretation that has caused all the suffering and sorrow in the world. And it is this false stuff that the good man Jesus finally said he had overcome.”
“How did he do it, Padre?”
“By knowing its nothingness, and by knowing the Allness of his Father, infinite Mind. He called this false stuff a lie about God. And he overcame that lie by knowing the truth––just as you overcome the thought that you cannot solve your algebraic problems by knowing the truth that will and does solve them.”
“But, Padre, you said once that Jesus was the best man that ever lived. Was he just a man?”
“Yes, chiquita. That is, the human minds all about him saw their mental concepts of him as a man. But he was a human concept that most clearly represented God’s idea of 215 Himself. Mortal, human minds are like window-panes, chiquita. When a window-pane is very dirty, very much covered with matter, only a little light can get through it. Some human minds are cleaner, less material, than others, and they let more light through. Jesus was the cleanest mind that was ever with us. He kept letting more and more light––Truth––through himself, until at last all the matter, even the matter composing the material concept that people called his earthly body, dissolved in the strong light, and the people saw him no more. That is called the Ascension.”
“And––Padre, don’t we have to do that way, too?” she asked earnestly.
“Just so, chiquita. We must, every one of us, do exactly as Jesus did. We must wash ourselves clean––wash off the dirty beliefs of power apart from God; we must wash off the beliefs of evil as a power, created in opposition to Him, or permitted by Him to exist and to use His children; we must wash off beliefs of matter as real and created by Him. We must know that matter and all evil, all that decays and passes away, all discord and disease, everything that comes as testimony of the five physical senses, is but a part of the lie about Him, the stuff that has the minus sign before it, making it less than nothing. We must know that it is the suppositional opposite of the real––it is an illusion, seeming to exist, yet evaporating when we try to define it or put a finger on it, for it has no rule or principle by which it was created and by which it continues to exist. Its existence is only in human thought.”