IN simple directness the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, poses the question that has challenged sage and philosopher alike (p. 281): "What is the Ego, whence its origin and what its destiny?" And the profound, inspired answer which follows solves the mystery of being: "The Ego-man is the reflection of the Ego-God; the Ego-man is the image and likeness of perfect Mind, Spirit, divine Principle." In further explanation it continues, "The one Ego, the one Mind or Spirit called God, is infinite individuality, which supplies all form and comeliness and which reflects reality and divinity in individual spiritual man and things."
The one Ego then is God, the one Mind, comprehending all within Himself in spiritual reflection. Man is not a finite entity in Mind, but the direct expression of Mind. Throughout eternity man can never get outside of God, for there is no outside to infinity. This means that man is forever held in Life, supported in Truth, embraced in Love. He never sprang from obscurity into being, nor does he pass from being into obscurity. As the individualized expression of Mind, he exists in Mind, and his only consciousness, or Mind, is the one Ego, forever cognizant of its own uninterrupted continuity, permanence, poise, and peace.
The forever necessity of Mind is to express itself. Its function is expression, not absorption. Mind could not for one moment cease to express itself, for at the moment it ceased to do so Mind would cease to be and there would remain only the vacuity of oblivion, nothingness. Mind never preys upon itself; it reveals itself in the spontaneity of joyous self-expression. Mind neither absorbs its idea, nor is it absorbed in the idea. Neither does one idea absorb another. Mind holds within itself, in sparkling animation and freedom of self-expression, all that exists in the realm of Mind. There is neither repression nor suppression, neither absorption, amalgamation, nor transmigration, neither division, isolation, nor separation for the ideas of Mind, since Mind expresses itself as one conscious, uninterrupted, indivisible whole, reflecting itself in infinite distinctness, variety, and freshness.
Man, then, is not a mortal passing from one experience of sordid, imperfect, undivine existence into another in the hope of eventually arriving at a state of perfection; he is not migrating from a realm of matter to a realm of Spirit. There is but one realm or state of Mind, namely, Mind experiencing its own conscious harmony in the ever-present now of eternity. So-called mortal mind is illusion, perceiving its own substanceless illusions in mockery of the ideas of Mind. Spiritual sense alone discloses the status of man as God's idea, expressing Life, Truth, and Love, for spiritual sense alone unveils the depth and beauty of Soul.
"The Ego," writes Mrs. Eddy in "Unity of Good" (p. 51), "is divine consciousness, eternally radiating throughout all space in the idea of God, good, and not of His opposite, evil. The Ego is revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost." Divine consciousness, or Mind, revealed as Father, Son, and divine Science, which is the Holy Ghost, cognizes and experiences within itself all action, power, ability, and result. In the revelation of divine Science everything is Mind, going on within Mind, expressing the substance, nature, essence, and wholeness or health of Mind. There is no subconsciousness.
Because there is no finite consciousness, there is no multiplicity of consciousnesses. Consciousness is one and indivisible. It is illimitable, divine, unerring, positive. It is not a finite, personal concept of existence. Finite consciousness would be mortal. Unity as revealed in Christian Science is not many uniting as one, but One expressing itself as All. In the perception and demonstration of this fact lies the peace of men and nations.
There is but one starting-point in Science, the absolute allness and oneness of God. The divine metaphysics of Christian Science makes no compromise with the semimetaphysics of human reasoning, which bases its arguments on the false testimony of material sense as well as on the facts of Soul. Significantly Christ Jesus said (Mark 3:25), "If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand." Science rests on the evidence of Spirit alone.
Opposed and opposite to good there appears in belief to be evil, supposititiously self-created and self-constituted. But infinity is that which by its very nature has no opposite. The so-called human consciousness does not affect, impair, or contaminate real consciousness or being and its joyous cognizance and expression of Life. Let each one ask himself, Am I accepting as my self mortal mind's supposititious, sensuous concept of me, a concept which simulates mind, life, and intelligence; or am I being that which in reality I am, namely, Mind's own glorified, spiritual, immortal expression, and demonstrating this in the purity and uprightness of my daily life? Divine consciousness, the one Ego, holds within itself no belief of finity, whether as heredity, lack, exhaustion, or limitation in any form whatsoever. It experiences no loss. It knows no depletion.
We are living in an age of tremendous discovery, and the greatest discovery of all is already come to pass—the discovery which through its revelation of the omnipotence of Mind has opened the door for all lesser discoveries. It is Mind's revelation of itself, humanly perceived as having come through the Christly woman, Mary Baker Eddy, and known as Christian Science.
When through radar and other discoveries of physical science mortal man contacts the moon and perhaps the planets, and even goes there (which he doubtless will), it will be the breaking down of another false mental sense or suggestion of limitation and separation and evidence in a degree the oneness, allness, and infinitude of being. When humanity sees and demonstrates the limitless, spiritually mental nature of existence—the infinite inclusiveness of Mind—it will put off the human for the divine, for man's sonship with God, and all the unlabored possibilities of Mind, God, will be revealed and utilized as tangible reality.
In sublime summary the textbook states (pp. 465, 466), "Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Being, and His reflection is man and the universe." By no possible malicious misinterpretation can this statement be made to imply that man is God, for first, last, and always "man" is a term which denotes expression. A thoughtful study of Mrs. Eddy's writings discloses numerous passages which elucidate God and His idea, cause and effect, creator and creation, Mind and its manifestation; but in positive terms Mrs. Eddy makes plain that man is not God, effect is not cause, idea is not Principle. Christian Science maintains in uninterrupted harmony the celestial order and demonstrates the scientific oneness of Principle and its idea as the one forever Ego which is God.
