Corporeal self-consciousness is generally regarded as an undesirable quality or state of mind. It continually centers thought on material personality, on limited, selfish wants and aims, and it tends to preclude the broader, less selfish thought which is concerned for the well-being and happiness of others.
A definition of "self-conscious" is "conscious of one's own acts or states as belonging to or originating in oneself." Applying this definition to Deity, we can see that God is divinely self-conscious Mind, as Christian Science teaches. In "Unity of Good," Mrs. Eddy writes (p. 3): "God is All-in-all. Hence He is in Himself only, in His own nature and character, and is perfect being, or consciousness. He is all the Life and Mind there is or can be. Within Himself is every embodiment of Life and Mind.
"If He is All, He can have no consciousness of anything unlike Himself; because, if He is omnipresent, there can be nothing outside of Himself."
The only real consciousness, Christian Science reveals, is Mind, for God is Mind and All. Man, who is forever embraced in Mind as idea, reflects the divine consciousness. Mind is the Life, Soul, substance, intelligence, and condition of its idea. Since sin, disease, and mortality cannot be found in God, they. cannot be a part of man's nature. It is impossible for God's idea to have whatever is not in and of God. Man is conscious of good only, of his true self as God's likeness, and of God's perfect government.
As we understand and acknowledge this truth of being and prove this Mind to be our Mind, we are freed from the belief that we are self-conscious mortals existing apart from God. Moreover, as we realize that the divine Mind is the only Mind, that Mind sees man as its perfect idea, and that there is no other mind to see him, we are delivered from any self-conscious fear of others' thoughts of us.
Christ Jesus manifested true self-consciousness in unlimited measure. He was ever awake to his spiritual identity as the Son of God, forever one with his divine Principle, or Father. It was the activity of the Christ, the spiritual idea of sonship, which empowered Jesus to do his mighty works of healing and redemption. He said (John 14:10), "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works."
Mrs. Eddy writes in Science and Health (pp. 29, 30): "Jesus was the offspring of Mary's self-conscious communion with God. Hence he could give a more spiritual idea of life than other men, and could demonstrate the Science of Love—his Father or divine Principle." Christ, the impersonal Saviour, is ever present. In proportion as we open the door of our thought to perceive and welcome Christ into individual consciousness, we become aware of the true sense of life and proportionately lose the false consciousness of sin, sickness, discord, and mortality.
As we grow in the understanding of the truth of being through the faithful study of our Leader's writings in conjunction with the Bible and the daily practice of what we are learning, we begin to discern and to express our spiritual selfhood. Progressively we cease to regard ourselves as material personalities, and instead we apprehend and affirm our oneness, or unity, with God as His individualized expression or idea. We reflect the Godlike qualities of unselfed love, goodness, purity, wisdom, humility, gentleness, and the like, and false self-consciousness, with its self-love, self-justification, self-righteousness, and self-will, begins to drop away from us.
Mrs. Eddy writes in "Retrospection and Introspection" (p. 67): "Silencing self, alias rising above corporeal personality, is what reforms the sinner and destroys sin. In the ratio that the testimony of material personal sense ceases, sin diminishes, until the false claim called sin is finally lost for lack of witness."
True self-consciousness, with its spiritual awareness of ever-present good, brings about healing in Christian Science. The activity of Truth in individual consciousness destroys sickly thoughts manifested as a sick body. Personal sense must yield to the spiritual idea. The divine consciousness of ever-present good must be acknowledged and proved to be our only consciousness. Following the Master's commands and the loving example of our Leader, we can deny the belief of a selfhood apart from God, maintain a spiritual sense of unity with our Maker, and demonstrate this unity each day, letting divine qualities shine forth to identify us as we truly are now, the sons of God.
Christian Science lifts humanity out of materialism and opens the way now for all men to rise above corporeal selfhood to the spiritual recognition and the establishment by demonstration of man's real self as God's beloved idea.
Thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I, even I, will
both search my sheep, and seek them out.... I will
feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be: there shall they lie
in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed
upon the mountains of Israel.—Ezekiel 34:11, 14.
