ON page 531 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy makes the following statement: "The human mind will sometime rise above all material and physical sense, exchanging it for spiritual perception, and exchanging human concepts for the divine consciousness." If we must exchange the human dream for the divine understanding eventually, beginning with the most obviously erroneous mortal beliefs and progressing through even the highest human concepts, we should be finding out daily how better to do it.
A dictionary defines "consciousness" as "a state of being aware—a form of mental activity." True consciousness, then, is a state of being aware of reality, of divine Mind's ceaseless activity, of the perfection of God and man and universe. And through the eternity of our growth into that complete state of awareness when we shall possess no consciousness except that of good, we must build on an ever clearing and ever broadening comprehension of divine Principle, with a consequent diminishing awareness of all to which the material senses testify.
A so-called patient—a mortal concept of a sick man or a sinner— comes to us. Our work is to exchange the false concept for the divine consciousness of man. The temptation to believe in the mortal lie about one's self, or others, as poor, troubled, sick, sensitive—any of the many false beliefs that may come to one—must be overcome through the realization of the truth about man, God's perfect idea.
