There is in philosophy no problem more baffling, and in biology none more hopeless, than the problem of consciousness. The discovery by Mrs. Eddy, that there is in reality but one true, consciousness and that this is spiritual,—the activity of divine Mind,—has changed this ancient problem by taking it out of the field of ingenious theory into the field of practical living; it has shown the possibility and the necessity of its solution by every individual, and that this solution is to be reached only by forsaking matter and the human mentality as bases of research, and turning direct to God for wisdom. Philosophy has made the mistake of accepting the human mentality in its entirety as a basis for its systems of thought. Christian Science challenges the validity of a mentality made up of self-evident contradictions, and asserts that human thought is real only as it reflects the divine thought; that true, conscious being is simply a mode of the divine thought, an individualized expression of God's conscious life. From this it is apparent that in his true estate man can be truly "cognizant only of the things of God"(Science and Health, p. 276), can reproduce by reflection only the activities of God, can know no selfhood but that which centers in God and partakes of His nature.
True consciousness is consciousness of Truth. The only universal truth is spiritual, and Spirit cannot be cognizant of its opposites, matter and evil, as substance or entity, as appearance or reality. Whatever holds human thought in material servitude, whatever in thought is impure or unlovely, whatever does not fit into God's way of thinking, therefore, is not true consciousness; it must be illusion. An apparent cognizance of good and evil, of Spirit and matter, is not awareness of an actual duality but is an illusive state of dream consciousness not yet awake to truth. The dreamer is not truly conscious of either himself or his surroundings. He is an unreal self in an unreal world. His false sense is utterly chaotic and impossible, because it is unrelated to any true selfhood and is therefore undirected by intelligence or purpose. If human existence is likewise an enigma, it is because it also is lived mentally apart from divine Principle and undirected by divine purpose. The sleeping dream is not an integral part of human consciousness, and is remembered by it, if at all, as something external and wholly untrue. So the "I" which believes itself to reside in brain-matter, and to speculate as to what its identity may or may not be, is but a pretentious usurper, to be put aside and forgotten as having no connection with spiritual identity, for there can be no kinship between a true and a false presentation of God's idea.
An erroneous consciousness is simply a self-centered mass of erroneous thought. We as mortals are servants of that mentality to which we yield ourselves as ignorant or willing subjects. Our bodies, our business, our environment are but external signs of this servitude or freedom. This slavery ranges the entire gamut of carnal mind. This false mind may be vicious or vulgar, it may delude itself with the vacuous follies of mere pedantry, or it may delight itself in carving out a hard and intolerant god, and itself in its own god's likeness. But if God is Spirit, and creation is God's thought expressed, the only mental freedom for humanity is to be found in the spiritual understanding of God's creation; that is, in learning to "think God's thoughts after him," and so to reconstruct individual consciousness in His image and true likeness.
