Editorial August 16, 1969 Issue

Man Is Individual Consciousness

Helen Wood Bauman

The question "What is man?" never loses its interest to humanity. If everyone knew what man is, no doubt every other puzzling question would be answered. Christian Science gives various explanations of man, but none is more thought-provoking than that he is an individual consciousness. Not that this explanation implies that man is an independent mind. Far from it! As an individual consciousness man is the reflection, or image, of the one infinite consciousness, or Mind, which is God.

God, the Maker of man, must be Mind, or He could not create a conscious man, a man made in His likeness. And no one can deny that man is an individual and that he is conscious. The human being's problem is to prove the fact revealed by divine Science that as an individual consciousness he is conscious of God and all He includes, and that the seeming consciousness of something else—of matter and physical personalities, evil and finiteness—is no part of him.

Christ Jesus was constantly rejecting the evidences of imperfection that presented themselves to his consciousness; and he attained perfection in this way. He said, "Every one that is perfect shall be as his master."^{Luke 6:40;} Perfection is the reality of every man.