People sometimes say, "If Life is eternal, with no beginning and no ending, as Christian Science teaches, we must have been living before what is called birth." What was it like, we may wonder, and how does our present situation compare to it?
These questions tacitly assume there was a material birth so that there could be a spiritual life "before." The underlying error is that although we say Life is eternal, we believe in a material origin and the present reality of a finite, material life. Reasoning from the human sense of things, we are bound to be confused and get the wrong answers. Mrs. Eddy sets the record straight: "Science reverses the evidence of material sense with the spiritual sense that God, Spirit, is the only substance; and that man, His image and likeness, is spiritual, not material. This great Truth does not destroy but substantiates man's identity,—together with his immortality and preexistence, or his spiritual coexistence with his Maker. That which has a beginning must have an ending." Miscellaneous Writings, p. 47;
There's nothing in this description of man's identity that involves mortality. "Immortality and preexistence," "spiritual coexistence"—the man these pertain to must be wholly immaterial, incorporeal, fully reflecting Spirit. Thus if we would know our preexistence, it will only be by recognizing and claiming our eternal identity as Spirit's image.
