I just finished reading Bruce Lipton’s book, “The Biology of Belief.” A cellular biologist with a Phd, and a past researcher at Stanford University, Lipton contends that cells act as receptors for beliefs that in turn control and dictate actions to those cells. What you believe affects your biology, he argues. He also explains how beliefs change your genes, according to studies he’s done over the decades.

From a Christian Science point of view, Lipton’s theories fall short of explaining ultimate reality for his universe is the universe of matter mortals live in, renamed energy and Spirit. He sees Spirit in matter and acting on matter, whereas Christian Science starts with Mind and reasons out to divine idea, rather than starting with matter and trying to reason back to Spirit. He also is a proponent of Karma and reincarnation.

But nonetheless, Lipton has made many valuable observations about the mental nature of the material so-called realm that illustrate the unreality of matter and the power of belief over the human body.

Here’s one such account, on page 126…

“My favorite example of scientific denial of the reality of mind-body interactions relates to an article that appeared in Science (published in 2000) about nineteenth-century German physician, Robert Koch, who along with Pasteur founded the Germ Theory. The Germ Theory holds that bacteria and viruses are the cause of disease.  That theory is widely accepted now, but in Koch’s day it was more controversial. One of Koch’s critics was so convinced that the Germ Theory was wrong that he brazenly wolfed down a glass of water laced with vibrio cholerae, the bacteria Koch believed caused cholera. To everyone’s astonishment, the man was completely unaffected by the virulent pathogen.”

This story reminds me of what Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health over 125 years ago…

“Disease arises, like other mental conditions, from association. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should be regarded as contagious, this law obtains credit through association, — calling up the fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation in the body.

“This fact in metaphysics is illustrated by the following incident: A man was made to believe that he occupied a bed where a cholera patient had died. Immediately the symptoms of this disease appeared, and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material contact, because no cholera patient had been in that bed.”

When will humanity learn that disease is not a physical condition, but belief manifest in the physical condition?…

More tomorrow…