Editorial September 29, 1951 Issue

OVERCOMING PERSONAL SENSE

Helen Wood Bauman

Personal sense is the consciousness of corporeality, the belief that man is a mortal; and Christian Science denies reality to this sense on the basis that there is but one consciousness, Spirit and its reflection, and that man is incorporeal and discerned by spiritual sense alone. In her article "Personality" in "Retrospection and Introspection," Mary Baker Eddy contrasts spiritual man and physical personality, and she tells of her own efforts to overcome personal sense. She writes (p. 73), "I endeavored to lift thought above physical personality, or selfhood in matter, to man's spiritual individuality in God,—in the true Mind, where sensible evil is lost in supersensible good." And she proceeds with the counsel, "This is the only way whereby the false personality is laid off."

To be rid of personal sense is to be rid of error, for all of mankind's troubles may be traced to an undestroyed personal sense of existence. Disease involves bodily sensation and disorder; sin pursues the will-o'-the-wisp of personal pleasure in matter; inequities in the social order hark back to beliefs of personal superiority; national animosities resulting in stark war represent multiplied personal grievances. But the moment real life in Spirit begins to unfold in one's affections, when God is seen as All and man as His impersonal spiritual formation, the mesmeric pull of thought to material personality as a basis of satisfaction and action begins to give way. The restlessness that would satisfy itself with personal communion and interests is stilled, and the quietness of spiritual communion with God takes its place.

Christian Science impersonalizes the mortal sense of life by showing that it is a dream state and that the concepts appearing in it have no more reality or identity than those which seem present in a night dream. In our night dreams we seem to be associating with human personalities which speak and act, are sometimes disagreeable and intimidating, sometimes kindly, sometimes inane and unpredictable. But no one would ascribe identity to these frail conceptions. Their words and thoughts vanish with the dream sense, and they are soon forgotten.

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