Chapter 5: Analysis Of The Appearing of Malicious Mental Malpractice

WHOSO READETH LET HIM UNDERSTAND - Chapter 5.

ANALYSIS OF THE APPEARING
OF
MALICIOUS MENTAL MALPRACTICE

THE CLAIM of malicious mental malpractice should be examined just as a claim of sickness is to find out what is involved. As a belief of cells is involved in a case of cancer, a belief of tubercles in a case of pulmonary disease, and a belief of too much or too little sugar is a case of diabetes, so in analyzing malicious mental malpractice and its effects it is necessary to understand how the claim seems to arise. Therefore let us discuss again briefly the origin or basis of malicious mental malpractice. While this has been carefully analyzed from another angle in a previous article, nevertheless the reiteration and amplification of important points should prove helpful and cannot be repeated too often.
To begin with, evil appears in its cruder forms

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as isolated cases of suffering or wrong doing. But because it is the negation of God, it must negate God at every point and in every respect. To the mortal advancing to a clearer sense of God, it necessarily seems to present an ascending scale of evil.
In Science and Health, it is stated that Adam, evil “begins his reign over man somewhat mildly, but he increases in falsehood and his days become shorter.” In other words, evil begins mildly, endeavoring if possible to hide its nature. Science and Health also states that the serpent, subtlety, evil stands as “The first lie of limitation.”
The supposition that God is not All, which of course accompanies any sense of finity or limitation, would necessarily be the first supposition. From that suppositional basis, the whole suppositional structure of evil or negation of God moves forward—always keeping pace in its unfoldment with the advancement of that which it negates.
Thus the divisions of evil—“the beast” and “the false prophet” spontaneously appear; first, as dead matter, which is the most inanimate, nonintelligent and outwardly harmless form of evil. Second, in the more animate form, as “living matter,” appearing as both good and bad, whether as mortals or as things. Third and

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lastly, as pure evil mentality, eliminating matter entirely but again emerging in two forms, good and bad, the good masquerading as harmless in order to hide its real nature, but the bad appearing in its true nature, as evil mentality.
In this final appearing of evil as the “false prophet,” matter as such disappears, and mentality is seen to assume all power. At first it appears mildly in its operation of mind-control promising to bring about the betterment of conditions through the action of one mind over another, e.g., New Thought, Therapeutic Suggestion, etc., etc. Finally, it surrenders all pretense of good, and is found operating in the true nature of “the dragon,” the “last infirmity of sin,” as Science and Health points out, showing its real purpose and character as the suppositional opposite of divine Mind, using mental means to produce every form of sin, sickness, distress, limitation, destruction, and finally death, but also sinking “its perpetrator into a night without a star.”
These last two phases of evil have been classified in Christian Science phraseology as ignorant or sympathetic mental malpractice, and malicious mental malpractice.

Whether appearing as animate or inanimate matter as the “beast” or in its final form of mali-

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cious mental malpractice as “the false prophet,” the whole of evil is animal magnetism, “the dragon” of Revelation. Science and Health declares that “Animal magnetism or hypnotism is the specific term for error, or mortal mind.” This name designates its animal or bestial nature and its mind operation or influence, in contradistinction to the spiritual or holy nature of divine Mind and its activities.
It must never be forgotten that the nature of animal magnetism, whether appearing in its guileless forms of matter, or in its more easily discerned and truer nature as destructive mentality, is always the same malicious mental malpractice, the “son of perdition,” “The great dragon . . . that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world,” always ready to devour those who are not awake to its sinister nature and purpose, which is to bring about their death and destruction.
Let us delve a little more analytically into this claim of evil as the negation of good. Evil being a negation or supposition—purely a mental state, every conclusion drawn by it is a suppositional conclusion, and never the fact, although it always appears in one of matter’s various divisions. It must be remembered that matter is

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as Mrs. Eddy calls it, a “misstatement of Mind,” and a misstatement is a mind activity.
As a result of the mental admission of limitation, matter appears as the evidence of limitation, of finiteness—matter with all of its so-called divisions, and sub-divisions, and with the entire theory of evolution which is simply one belief added to another belief, borrowing from and claiming to reverse everything of God the source of all being. In the end it actually borrows or negates Mind, and operates as evil minds, capable of doing, as evil, everything that divine Mind does, as infinite good—thus it counterfeits God’s presence, Christian Science practice and practitioner, with its malicious malpractice and malpractitioner. Every step of so-called evolution is a belief or mental step which must in the end be scientifically reversed and replaced with the truth.
Notice how, in belief, evil ensures the so-called increase of its mortals as Science and Health points out, “by the parent’s mind, through self division,” and builds up this self division step by step until it calls its belief a new child. This child in turn is put through a series of further beliefs until it ends in that which it calls death, only, however, to find it is not really death, but merely a continuance of belief which goes on

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indefinitely, until destroyed by spiritual understanding.
In handling a case of disease you do not ignore the various beliefs involved—anatomy, “laws” of matter, nature, materia medica, etc., but you take every one of them back to the kingdom of heaven by reversing them and you there find them all, in their true sense, as the activity of God.
You go on from there to discover that the real claim is a vicious mental determination on the part of evil to harass and finally destroy its victim through mental means, that is to say, through hypnotic suggestion. Now at last you have cornered the lie and can correct it.
In the realm of matter, through its various “laws,” evil builds its claim by first creating sickness and finally death. In exactly the same pernicious manner, it builds up its claims of malicious mental malpractice, but instead of operating as matter and “laws” of matter, it now acts as mental “laws,”—“laws” of wish, intent, rule, desire, influence, inclination, determination and so forth. And just as it seems to act consistently and successfully in its “laws” of matter, until destroyed by the law of Mind, so in its realm of mentality, with its claim of mental influence, it is

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successful until met and mastered by the practice of Christian Science as intelligent Mind action.
This mastery is obtained just as it was in the case of evil’s so-called law of matter. As you painstakingly destroyed each belief by taking it back to God, and by rising to the true sense of being, so every “law” of malicious mental malpractice must be denied, and its entire operation translated back to God. It was by reversing in belief, the true sense and statement of Christian Science, that malicious mental malpractice came actively into being. It began with one reversal of a scientific statement of Truth, and from that it multiplied its lies until today it has gone entirely beyond matter into the realm of pure malicious mental malpractice.
Mrs. Eddy tells in one of her early editions of Science and Health about the one so-called original malpractitioner, and says plainly that had it not been for this original one there never would have been another. That is obviously true because, all being divine Mind in reality and mortal mind in human belief, there could be no continuance if the original erroneous thought could be annihilated. Mind cannot duplicate its thought, and this applies equally to the negation, malicious mind. A disease begins with one person believing or expressing it, perhaps first the

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victim and then the doctor or nurse. Or both begin to believe it, and unobserved it spreads entirely beyond its origin and becomes a recognized belief of the human mind, losing its personal sense and becoming an impersonal claim of disease, with its so-called laws and history. “Therefore the lie was, and is, collective as well as individual,” as is stated in Retrospection and Introspection.
In the same way, malicious mental malpractice started with what appeared as one person voicing its lies, but it afterwards was to be discerned wholly as an impersonal claim of evil. The original malpractiser appeared to accomplish his wickedness, by reversing in belief, the statements of Truth. This reversal which Christian Science designates as malicious mental malpractice must be destroyed in exactly the same way sickness is destroyed, that is by taking each lie, or mental argument of “law” and reversing it with the truth. However, instead of handling the “laws” of matter, as such, which are involved in a simple case of sickness, and which are in one sense harmless, you handle every claim of evil as a mentally directed belief operating as the so-called law of vicious minds. This “law” can be and must be as readily discerned and destroyed

as the simple beliefs and “laws” of matter, nature, materia medica, etc.
Malicious mental malpractice, with its malicious mental malpractitioner, can operate only as the negation of Christian Science practice, and in no other way. The positive must always precede the suppositional opposite, therefore, Christian Science had to be in operation before it was possible for mental malpractice to seem to appear. This fact should give a great sense of security and freedom to the Christian Scientist, for he realizes all he has to meet is the negative of what he already knows of Christian Science. Thus he is fore-armed and understands he can “be brought into no condition, be it ever so severe, where Love has not been before,” as Mrs. Eddy says.
Paul said, “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.” So the Christian Scientist no longer looks “through a glass darkly” but “face to face.” He is no longer a child in the realm of Mind, but has reached man’s estate and he now sees clearly that every error confronting him is a mental lie, deliberately directed. He no longer deals with the belief of material things.
Malicious mental malpractice as the highest

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form of evil is the same impersonal ignorance that confronts a student in learning the simple multiplication table. The only difference is that the student of the multiplication table seems to be confronted with nonintelligent ignorance, whereas the student of Christian Science in mastering malicious mental malpractice seems to be confronted with “intelligent” ignorance, if such an absurd contradiction could be used. This “intelligent” ignorance seems to be wilfully and maliciously imparted with the avowed purpose of keeping its victim ignorant.
Even as Christian Science treatment is good imparted with the avowed purpose of bringing to light good and more good, intelligently directed, so evil, in its last analysis is “intelligently” directed evil with the avowed purpose of bringing to pass evil and more evil. The former says, in the words of Christ Jesus, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly,” the latter the reverse, “I am come that they might have death, and have it more abundantly.”
Mrs. Eddy illustrates with an analogy, in Miscellany, the two phases of evil—“the beast” and “the false prophet,” or as we term them today “matter,” and “ignorant and malicious mentality,” in these words, “The alcoholic habit is the

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use of higher forms of matter, wherewith to do evil; whereas animal magnetism is the highest form of mental evil, wherewith to complete the sum total of sin.” She thus expresses the difference between the ordinary claim of sickness and the vicious claim of the sickness that is the result of malicious mental manipulation. Both have to be destroyed by diligently reversing the “laws” operating in each case; one seemingly an ignorant “law” and the other a wilful malicious “law” deliberately formulated with malice aforethought. No presentation in either case can be neglected if the problem is to be scientifically solved.
The Christian Scientist lives and operates today in the realm of pure Mind, and consequently has to meet the negation of that Mind just as the student of mathematics, when reaching the higher rules, has to meet the ignorance about those rules and not the simple ignorance that he met in his earlier studies of mathematics. So, as you, the Christian Scientist, the intelligent metaphysician, gain the understanding of the operation of intelligent good, you necessarily have to meet the belief of “intelligent” evil. This, however, involves only the same fidelity to Principle which you expressed when first introduced to Christian Science. Unswerving consecration to

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what is true is imperative. The demand is no greater, the consecration no less, for in both cases the understanding is the use of what is true. You must have the same supreme confidence in what is true, as you have in God.
It is absurd for the advanced Christian Scientist to think he can use the simple arguments and understanding he used when first becoming interested in Christian Science. He cannot. He must practise his advanced understanding just as he would in any other study. Mrs. Eddy stressed this very point when she said to a student, “Keep your thought clear to work, and protect it from mental psychic malpractice, rather than struggle with the physical ravages of the influence and manifestation.”
The Christian Scientist must go on to more advanced rules continually, and unless he recognizes this fact and joyfully keeps step with the advancing unfoldment, he is not only waiting for “a more convenient season” but when that more convenient season appears he will discover his lack of progress and will have to take every step he has heretofore neglected. How much easier it is to enjoy the present moment’s unfoldment and go forward happily. As Science and Health points out, “Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea.”

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