Have you ever thought of the immeasurable mounds of recorded human history stored away in all corners of the world; countless statistics giving dates of birth and death of billions of mortals? These material records, based as they are on the assumption that man lives in time, certainly do not contribute anything to one's understanding of man as the likeness of God—without beginning or end. But as we begin to recognize through the study of Christian Science that all real being is timeless, we see the need of gaining a new view of human history. As Mrs. Eddy explains: "The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged." Retrospection and Introspection, p. 22.
Science penetrates beyond the picture of man as merely a material mortal born at some point in time, then aging and dying—a creature whose life finally becomes a historical record. It awakens thought to this great fact: all real being, yours and mine, forever was and is the very evidence of God's present and eternal being—without a material record of past history. This does not suggest that all the good and worthwhile, the beautiful and joy-inspiring, that has appeared throughout the years is lost. Far from it. Revising human history only means seeing it from a new viewpoint, as the spiritual unfoldment of all that is good and beautiful in God's creation and without the restrictions of time.
One of the most valuable lessons we can learn is that we are not acting in a time frame; that we live in the ever-present spiritual now. Isn't it always now? Ask yourself, "Because my real being expresses the divine presence, can I ever get away from 'now'?" As the Psalmist writes, "Whither shall I flee from thy presence?" Ps. 139:7. It is undeniable that everyone in the world, no matter what the clocks say, exists right now. Everyone is saying in some way at this very moment, "I am alive, I am conscious." The reason for this, contrary to the belief that these are declarations of billions of little egos, is that God, the Mind of man, is ever present and that Mind forever is declaring of itself, "I am," not "I was" or "I will be." This one Mind's self-expression constitutes the identity of your present conscious being and mine; of everyone's; of everything good that exists, no matter how large or small.
