Certain truths are fundamental to Christian Science healing, and all other truths are contingent upon them. For instance, we have these statements in "Unity of Good" by Mary Baker Eddy (p. 24): "All consciousness is Mind; and Mind is God,—an infinite, and not a finite consciousness. This consciousness is reflected in individual consciousness, or man, whose source is infinite Mind. There is no really finite mind, no finite consciousness."
In all of her teachings, Mrs. Eddy keeps clear the distinction between Mind and idea, cause and effect, Father and son. The understanding of this distinction is essential in the restoring of healing power, which has been lost, partly, no doubt, through the fallacy that Jesus, our Exemplar, is God. In Science one learns that God is forever the Father and that man is forever the son. Mind and its idea are one in relationship, but distinct in office. Man never speaks or acts as Mind, but always as Mind's reflection.
Being God's inseparable image, as the Scriptures declare and as Christ Jesus proved, man reflects his source with exactness. Because God is incorporeal, individual, and conscious, man is incorporeal, individual, and conscious. But because God is infinite individuality, an infinitude of ideas is required to express that infinite individuality. Each idea images forth infinite Mind, but each one does so in an individual way. One's true selfhood as God's likeness must be understood as an individual consciousness, but only as a conscious, individualized idea, not as a mind. God alone is Mind. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy describes the individual who, when advanced to spiritual being, will neither commune with matter nor be able to return to it. She says (p. 76), "Neither will man seem to be corporeal, but he will be an individual consciousness, characterized by the divine Spirit as idea, not matter." Spiritual being is absolute being, the only real being—the ultimate of existence.
