Claim. The original mind and the conscience are not synonyms — they stand to each other as internal nature to external form. The original mind pursues absolute goodness directly; the conscience pursues goodness only by the standard a person has set in ignorance. The original mind corrects the conscience when its standard drifts.
Elaboration. Per 6.3.3. The Spirit Mind, the Physical Mind and Their Relationship in the Human Mind: “The conscience is that faculty of the human mind which… always directs us toward what we think is good. However, due to the fall, human beings have become ignorant of God and thus ignorant of the absolute standard of goodness… we are unable to set the proper standard of judgment for our conscience. As the standard of goodness varies, the standard of our conscience also fluctuates; this causes frequent contention even among those who advocate a conscientious life.”
The distinction: “The original mind is that faculty… which pursues absolute goodness. It relates to the conscience as internal nature to external form. A person’s conscience directs him to pursue goodness according to the standard which he has set up in ignorance… However, the original mind, being sensitive to the proper direction, repels this faulty standard and works to correct the conscience” (ibid).
Contrast with the evil mind: when spirit mind and physical mind are under “the bondage of Satan,” their joint functioning is the evil mind, which “continually drives people to do evil.” Original mind and conscience together direct us to repel it.
This distinction matters apologetically. The phenomenon of people sincerely following their conscience while doing evil (“contention among the conscientious”) is explained by the conscience having a faulty standard — corrupted calibration, not absent moral sense. The original mind, never fully extinguished by the fall, makes correction possible. Evangelism is therefore recalibration, not creation, of moral sense.