Article November 12, 1949 Issue

ONLY ONE EXISTENCE, THE SPIRITUAL

MARY R. HASTIE

In the seventeenth chapter of John we read these words: "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." What a clear realization Jesus had of his true spiritual selfhood, of his pre-existence with God, his oneness with the Father, and his eternal continuity with Him, for to Jesus there was only one world, one existence—the spiritual. This realization was based on his understanding that man, created in the likeness of God, is the idea or expression of God.

Jesus never recognized any other power, presence, or Mind but God, and he knew that this understanding is based in true consciousness, which emanates from God. Then what was the world to which he referred?

It was the belief of a material world in which man is thought to be separated from God, dwelling in an orbit of his own and governed by a supposititious mortal mind embracing sin, sickness, disease, and fear. Mortal existence begins in material birth and ends in death. Jesus referred to a dreamworld such as we read of in "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany" (p. 167), where our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, writes: "The suppositional world within us separates us from the spiritual world, which is apart from matter, and unites us to one another. Spirit teaches us to resign what we are not and to understand what we are in the unity of Spirit—in that Love which is faithful, an ever-present help in trouble, which never deserts us."

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