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.
