Every conquest of the belief of material selfhood means an advance in the direction of reality. The total elimination of all belief in a self apart from God will mark the consummation of the task which awaits each human being, and Christian Science assists this accomplishment with its light of revelation and exposition of the truth of being. It elucidates the unity of good, or the relation between God and His idea, to which Christ Jesus referred when he said, "At that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." The perfect understanding of this unity of God and man, including individual spiritual consciousness, would mean the complete destruction of the belief of material selfhood and the end of all human suffering. To the unillumined human mind, however, this statement of being appears merely as a threatened extinction of what seems to it an integral element of its real being; so self-interest opposes the advance of spiritual understanding at each step, and erects its own obstruction to the realization of man's present and perpetual perfection.
The only thing which stands between the human being and the realization of heaven or harmony is the belief of material personality, or selfhood in matter. The process of conquering self, therefore, resolves into a question of reversing the testimony of material sense. All that can be stated as a fact about material self and sense is that they hint of, though they by no means represent, the existence of a true selfhood and spiritual sense concerning which an untruth is being uttered. It is sufficiently clear, then, that man's spiritual selfhood can be reached only as the false material self is overcome. Just as the material self is a manifestation of mortal mind which disappears as mortal mind itself is seen to be unreal and nonexistent, so the true selfhood can be understood and proved, or expressed, only as its origin, divine Mind, is scientifically understood. This understanding of God produces in us the effect of repentance, or willingness to surrender the false sense of self, whatever it may cost in the way of struggle, since in no other way can scientific Mind-healing be accomplished and the sufferings of the flesh be exchanged for the harmonies of Spirit. On page 6 of "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy says: "Sooner or later the whole human race will learn that, in proportion as the spotless selfhood of God is understood, human nature will be renovated, and man will receive a higher selfhood, derived from God, and the redemption of mortals from sin, sickness, and death be established on everlasting foundations."
Scientific understanding or worship of God consists, as Jesus explained to the woman by the well at Sychar, in so true and spiritual an acknowledgment of the allness of Spirit that the worshiping consciousness reflects God—is His image. It awakens the adoring desire to become the likeness of Love, to increase in obedience to divine Principle. Such worship leaves no room for a material selfhood. The logic of Spirit's allness precludes the possibility of dualism. What seems to be mortal self is to be considered in the Science of Mind-healing only so long as it is necessary to prove it unreal. Hence to deny the material self utterly, to acknowledge that man is now the immortal idea of God, is necessary to metaphysical healing of physical disease. Every effort to heal by spiritual means is, therefore, virtually an effort to unself material sense, and to rise into the true consciousness of being.
