Right now we are probably quite certain of our own existence. But if we want to understand the Scriptural promise of everlasting life, we must become just as certain that true existence is spiritual and not material. At present, life without beginning or end may seem largely incomprehensible. But through prayer and our faithfulness to the laws of God, thought can be uplifted step by step to perceive spiritual existence—uninterrupted, real, and ever present. We can see beyond material appearances and the limitations that claim to restrict our daily experience.
I asked myself recently, "Am I a human being born so many years ago and living in a material world? Or have I existed, and will I exist, forever? Is the 'me' that eats, gets dressed, and goes to work each day that which lives forever? Or is there another 'me' that is eternal?" The answer came that I have only one identity, which is the perfect, spiritual reflection of God, eternal Mind, the source of all that really is. But human belief incorrectly sees identity as a mind or soul in a material body and in a material universe, separate from divine Mind.
This mortal sense of things, with its limitation, its beginning and ending, can be likened to a dream. When we wake from a dream and perceive its unreality, we leave it behind, and our life goes on unaffected by it. Just so, as we awake from the dream of mortal existence—which we could call the waking dream—we come to see that real, spiritual life, our true, Godlike identity, is completely untouched by the belief called mortality. It is the uplifting of our lives through prayer and the spiritualization of thought that brings the discovery and step-by-step proof that life was never in nor of matter.
