What a great blessing it would be if we might awake to find ourselves free from the false sense of self to which each of us refers as "I." We should no longer bind ourselves with such thoughts as, "I am overburdened; I am growing old; I am a mortal sinner." We should be loosed from bondage to a self which we intermittently love and distrust, have hope for and despair of.
Christian Science enables us to attain this freedom. It does so by replacing the tyrannical, idolatrous concept of "I" with the true and lovable concept of man as a spiritual idea. In the Glossary of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, gives us a thought-rousing definition of "I, or Ego," which reads in part (p. 588): "Divine Principle; Spirit; Soul; incorporeal, unerring, immortal, and eternal Mind. There is but one I, or Us, but one divine Principle, or Mind, governing all existence."
Here is an enlightening concept of "I" which is wholly unlike the one commonly entertained. The one "I, or Ego," is not mortal, material man, who is struggling, weakening, dying. It is divine Principle, God, including all His ideas. In this ennobling sense of "I" there is no place for the hurry and worry imposed upon us by the false sense of ego. The "one I, or Us," knows only the serenity of heavenly order and perfection, the forever calm of conscious well-being, the irrevocable harmony of spiritual law, and man reflects this Ego.
To think of God as the only "I, or Us," is to recognize man as forever encompassed in God's tender care. It is to see that man is as necessary to God's expression of Himself as God is to man's capacity for existence. Understanding the only "I, or Us," broadens our concept of God to include the whole family of His ideas, in which each of us finds his place. And this understanding likewise broadens our concept of ourselves to perceive that each individual includes by reflection all the good that emanates from God.
It would be erroneous to say that God and man are one and the same, for God is not man, and man is not God. God is cause; man is effect. God is Principle; man is idea. God is the origin of man; man is the offspring of God. They are distinct and individual; neither is absorbed in the other. Yet it would be equally erroneous to say that God is without man or that man is without God. They are interrelated, coexistent, and inseparable as Father and child. Mrs. Eddy tells us in "Miscellaneous Writings" (p. 18), "Thou shalt recognize thyself as God's spiritual child only, and the true man and true woman, the all-harmonious 'male and female,' as of spiritual origin, God's reflection,—thus as children of one common Parent,—wherein and whereby Father, Mother, and child are the divine Principle and divine idea, even the divine 'Us'—one in good, and good in One."
Christ Jesus gave us profound spiritual truths concerning the one "I, or Ego," and man's relationship to God. "I am come in my Father's name," he said (John 5:43). "I and my Father are one" (John 10:30). "Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me" (John 14:11). In all these statements the great Master referred to the Christ, his spiritual selfhood, the reflection of the "one I, or Us."
It is important that each of us gains the correct sense of his real selfhood in order to destroy the false sense of self, which gives rise to all the difficulties that encumber human experience. Fear, disease, sorrow, sin, and death are all based upon an erroneous sense of man as an ego dwelling in matter, apart from God and subject to the varied discords of material existence.
An instructor in the speech department of a university has said that students commonly overemphasize their enunciation of the word "I." Is not this the outcome of the overemphasis which the material concept of "I" receives in our thinking? Too often we consider the mortal "I" as the center of our universe around which all things revolve. It is inevitable that one who regards himself as the center of existence and who constantly takes thought for mortal selfhood, seeking to advantage it, satisfy it, or glorify it, finds himself becoming increasingly miserable. Conversely, one who thinks of God as Principle, the center, as well as the circumference, of all being, and who consecrates himself in an unselfed service to divine Love finds life growing luminous with beauty and finds a happiness beyond any previously known.
If one regards life from the inside of a sphere, the boundaries of which are his own personal interest, these boundaries become more and more confining, more and more stifling, until they close out all sense of joy. But if life is regarded from the expanding concept of God's infinitude, how boundless becomes the vision of spiritual beauty and goodness!
Let us think for a moment of what the true concept of God as the one "I, or Ego," will do for us. It will correct the erroneous belief that we can be ill, weary, or poor, since God cannot be so. It will ease the smart of wounded feelings with the fact that the "one I, or Us," divine Love and its object, is never touched by unkindness of thought, word, or deed. It will alleviate the burden of false responsibility with the joyous realization that God alone maintains the health, harmony, and perfection of each idea in the vast universe of Mind. Inferiority and superiority complexes, those twin denials of God's impartial justice and love, will be dissolved in the recognition that the one infinite Ego, God, bestows all good on each one of His beloved children.
A friend of mine who has been a student of Christian Science for many years was privileged to be among those who heard Mrs. Eddy deliver an address from the balcony of her home, in Pleasant View, Concord, New Hampshire, in June, 1903. This friend had been healed through Christian Science of a condition in which one eye was sightless, and the other, according to the doctors, was expected to be sightless within two years. As a result of her healing she was deeply desirous of seeing and hearing the woman through whose revelation of Truth the healing had come.
She arrived at Pleasant View early in the day and waited expectantly in the front line of those assembled to hear the address. It was her eager desire to see what Mrs. Eddy looked like, but she was not prepared for what followed. In her own words, this is what occurred: "When Mrs. Eddy stepped out on the balcony, the tears streamed down my face. All I could see were meekness, humility, and love." Our Leader's expression of unselfed love was so great that my friend lost sight of human personality.
How may we exchange a false sense of selfhood for conscious unity with the only Ego, God, and so have dominion over the ills that afflict us? Jesus disclosed the way to his followers when he said (John 14:12), "I go unto my Father." He identified himself as the individual expression of the true Ego, the only "I, or Us." And our Leader tells us how we too may have recourse to this true Ego. She says in "Miscellaneous Writings" (pp. 195, 196), "The 'I' will go to the Father when meekness, purity, and love, informed by divine Science, the Comforter, lead to the one God: then the ego is found not in matter but in Mind, for there is but one God, one Mind; and man will then claim no mind apart from God."
