Part3 Consciousness Basic

Part3

Consciousness Basic
The primary fact of individual existence is consciousness, or awareness. This fact is self-evident but much overlooked; yet all ques­tions of life and God must be worked out in consciousness. In the realm of one's awareness dwell all the issues of being. But materialism claims there is something outside of consciousness, a realm of mindlessness, real, fixed, and unaffected by thinking, named matter. How and where does the materialist know this? Why, in his thinking! And intelligent thinking, my friends, is a flat con­tradiction of the claim of mind­lessness or matter! Consciousness is the basic reality, and no expla­nation is valid which loses sight of that fact.

Human life is entirely mental. That primary fact should be ob­vious to all. If this is a new con­cept to you, you only need to work with it to find it true. A person is rich or poor, sick or well, merry or gloomy, only as he believes himself to be. A young engineer was greatly helped and enlightened when he learned, through his study of Christian Science, that his pro­fession was essentially a mental one. 

He had supposed engineering was material because it dealt with steel, wood, concrete, and so on. But be came to see that an engineer deals with those things in thought, and he is a good engineer in the measure that he has good, sound, useful thoughts on the subject. This is true of every human voca­tion; whether you are a cook, a carpenter, musician, farmer, clerk, or storekeeper, your work is pri­marily mental. As you accustom yourself to this fact you will be ready for the next step, which is to learn that in the mental realm all true reality is spiritual and good, proceeding from the one infinite, divine Mind or Spirit. Thus we prove the statement in Science and Health (p. 269), 
"Metaphysics re­solves things into thoughts, and exchanges the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul."

If you believe your universe to be material, that is, outside of con­sciousness, the Christian ideal of God will remain a mystery to you. But when you see that your daily life is a call to mental dominion, if you have accepted the challenge to master yourself, if you are men­tally beset with suggestions of fear, pride, jealousy, and covetousness, if material remedies have failed to heal the body, if you long for moral strength and mental freedom, then you can begin right now to learn the truth about your mental uni­verse, to learn that there is one real Mind, universal, ever present, and divine; that it is creator, king, and ruler in the mental realm; that this divine Mind is your Mind here and now, and that your present understanding of this divine father brings you wisdom, inspiration, freedom, strength, and such a deeply entrenched peace that the storms of earth batter your ram­parts quite in vain.

God Acknowledged
Is it not clear to us, then, that there is a God, since there is something outside ourselves which moves us to good thoughts and deeds? And since God is inescapable, is it not the path of practical common sense to find out about God so that our relations with Him are on an intelligent footing?
Let us have an end of denying the obvious, of doubting things plainly seen and easily understood. Man is alive, he knows he is alive, and since he did not himself create the existence in which he finds himself he must be the result of the working of a higher power, a pri­mal intelligence, Life, or Mind. 

This primal intelligence or power cannot be matter, because matter is by definition mindless. The re­sults of scientific reasoning are here seen to coincide with primi­tive Christian teaching, for Jesus declared, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing" (John 6:63). So it is the divine Spirit, Mind, or Soul, which Jesus understood, demonstrated, and taught, which is now revealed in Christian Science as the true God.

Salvation
"Salvation" is a fine old word which has lost some of its practical usefulness through taking on cer­tain specialized theological conno­tations. A dictionary tells us that salvation refers to being saved. From what do people need to be saved? Obviously, from sickness, danger, poverty, sin, and death. And when do they need to be saved? Well, right now, of course. So the same dictionary gives the Christian Science definition of "sal­vation" from Science and Health as, "Life, Truth, and Love understood and demonstrated as supreme over all; sin, sickness, and death destroyed" (Webster – later editions).

Note how the concept of salva­tion is colored by the concept of God that goes along with it. The belief of a God afar off, living up in the sky perhaps, who is to be met only after death (if at all), logically leads to the belief of sal­vation hereafter, the corollary of which is suffering and trouble in the present. On the other hand, the revelation of the true character of God as ever-present good, all-pervading divine Spirit and power, awakens thought to understand the powerlessness of sin and disease and to the present demonstration of eternal, harmonious Life.

Salvation is individual. There is no mass consciousness. Nations are saved as people are saved. Per­haps someone says, "There are many millions of people in the world, and if they have all got to be converted one by one it is going to take a long time." But the job is not so big as it seems, for it is not a case of converting millions but of saving only one – number one, in every case. If you and I will but take care of number one we may be amazed at the results. Have you ever exchanged your opinion about something for a better one and discovered to your surprise that many others feel the same about it as you now do?

A young man, new in the study of Christian Science, began to wish to be healed of smoking and drink­ing; but as his thoughts traveled down the vista of the future he saw himself attending social and busi­ness gatherings where everyone but he smoked and drank and had a good time! "No," he thought, "that would be too lonesome for happiness." But before long the desire for purity and freedom car­ried the day; with the help of a Christian Science practitioner he was healed of those enslaving ap­petites. To his surprise he found that there are large numbers of nonsmokers and nondrinkers, a great and glorious company of those who did not bow the knee to these twin idols of self-indulgence, and he was not at all lonesome in his newly won freedom.