As long as there is a belief in mortality and materiality, there will be the need for resurrection and ascension. The thought of resurrection is generally associated with death. Before one is acquainted with the understanding Christian Science gives regarding this, one is likely to think primarily of Jesus' resurrection and to hope that there will be individual or personal resurrection at some future time after the individual experience of death.

Christian Science teaches that resurrection is going on continually because it is a mental process or experience. The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, has defined "resurrection" in the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," as follows (p. 593): "Spiritualization of thought; a new and higher idea of immortality, or spiritual existence; material belief yielding to spiritual understanding."

Paul wrote to the Romans (8:6), "To be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace." The resurrection from death, then, is the resurrection from carnal, or mortal, thinking—an awakening from the belief of life in matter to the understanding of life in Spirit. This spiritual awakening is possible now and has nothing to do with what is generally accepted as death. In the Glossary of Science and Health, one meaning of "death" is, "An illusion, the lie of life in matter" (p. 584). How, then, may we resurrect our thinking from "the lie of life in matter"?

Mrs. Eddy says on page 468 of Science and Health, "Life is divine Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit." These are synonyms for God. She further states, "Life is without beginning and without end." All Christians accept the Biblical teaching that God is Spirit and that He is Life. So it follows that one's life must be spiritual. Because there is but one God, there is but one Life, and this one Life must be the Life of all.

There can be no evil in God, who is supreme and infinite good; and because He is Life, there can be no evil in Life, hence no evil in our lives. That which appears to be evil in human experience is never true, because it is not of God, who is Truth. It seems to be real just as a mirage seems real until its illusory nature is discerned. But the fact is that evil is never real despite the testimony of the material senses.

As we find our life in the Life which is God, we give up the false beliefs of life in matter. Thus we are resurrected from the beliefs of sin, disease, and death and ascend above them.

What does life mean to us individually? Is it not the consciousness of being? We know that we exist, and we know this through our thinking, not through matter. Arms, limbs, or physical organs do not tell us that we live. In fact, there is nothing in what appears as a matter body that gives us the sense of existence. Without consciousness there is no awareness of being, so it is obvious that consciousness, or life, is not in matter or dependent upon it.

How impossible it is to find oneself in a matter body! If one were to stand before an X-ray machine or if it were possible to place the body under a microscope, could one's selfhood really be found? No, because man can never be found in matter in any form; he is not material, he is spiritual.

Because God is the Life of man, man's life must be as perfect as God. Life must be and is manifested in our individual experience and is evidenced in right activity, as the consciousness of joy, power, vitality, and dominion. The unfoldment of Life as Mind appears in our individual experience through ideas and through such qualities as intelligence, wisdom, and acumen. Life's revelation of itself as Truth dispels the erroneous beliefs of mortality and brings to light the realities of being, the ever-presence of good, of health, or wholeness, and man's indestructibility.

At one time the writer seemed to be buried in a pit of deep mental depression. Weakness and loss of appetite resulted in an alarming physical appearance. At the time she was living in the home of a relative who was not a Christian Scientist, and it seemed necessary to accede to the relative's desire for a physical diagnosis by a physician. The verdict of extreme anemia was given with the prediction that if it were not healed quickly, pernicious anemia would follow.

The writer realized that what was needed was a resurrection from the false beliefs she was entertaining and an ascension of thought to the realization of her true selfhood as the reflection of God. Through the use of the Concordances to the Bible and to the writings of Mrs. Eddy, she gained an increased understanding of the meaning of resurrection and ascension. She learned that meekness, purity, selflessness, integrity, obedience, gratitude, and love were necessary qualities of thought for ascension and that they must be demonstrated continuously. May this not be the meaning of Paul's words (I Thess. 5:17), "Pray without ceasing"? Her persistent efforts to pray in this manner were reflected in a complete physical healing of the disease, and the mental depression gave place to a sense of joy, freedom, and assurance that has been permanent.

Christ Jesus said (John 11:25), "I am the resurrection, and the life." He did not mean that he as a person was the resurrection, or the life, but that the Christ, or the nature of God, which he exemplified and demonstrated in healing the sick and sinning and raising the dead, was the power which made resurrection possible and revealed Life. Through understanding the truths he taught and following his example, we prove this to be a present possibility.

We must resurrect our daily thinking and living through spiritualization of thought and action. We must constantly ascend in thought; we must reject the false suggesions of mortality and materiality and experience the glorious ideas of Mind, the realities of being.

We achieve pure exaltation through our understanding of God and our likeness to Him. As we comprehend the allness of good and the consequent nothingness of evil, we find the loveliness, indestructibility, and eternality of our life in God.