Editorial January 20, 1951 Issue

CONSCIOUSNESS

Robert Ellis Key

Consciousness is fundamental. You cannot get back of consciousness. The nature of consciousness is either human or divine. Which is it? Mary Baker Eddy, writing in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 462), asks: "Are thoughts divine or human? That is the important question."

True consciousness is divine. In the divine consciousness are holiness, health, and immortality. In the so-called human consciousness, however, we find sin, sickness, and death. The human and the divine do not dwell together; when one appears the other disappears. Christian Science teaches that the mortal, or carnal, mind is a myth. It simulates consciousness and appears to be conscious, but it is not.

Since the visible world—the world which we appear to be conscious of through the material senses—is a myth, how can we lay hold of anything real? There is much that is beautiful in our concept of the universe. Is all this beauty to be discarded as unreal? Mrs. Eddy in "Miscellaneous Writings" answers this question (p. 87): "In our immature sense of spiritual things, let us say of the beauties of the sensuous universe: 'I love your promise; and shall know, some time, the spiritual reality and substance of form, light, and color, of what I now through you discern dimly; and knowing this, I shall be satisfied.'"

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