Article July 30, 1979 Issue

Regaining our original self

GLADYS C. GIRARD

Who does not want to feel whole, capable, free? This is really one's status now as the child of God. Our shower of the way, the Master, Christ Jesus, said, "I know whence I came, and whither I go."^{ John 8:14;} Surely he did not state this just for himself. Wasn't he implying that this spiritual knowing is a possibility for everyone? How can this be realized? In one of her sermons Mrs. Eddy states, "Even the pangs of death disappear, accordingly as the understanding that we are spiritual beings here reappears, and we learn our capabilities for good, which insures man's continuance and is the true glory of immortality."^{ The People's Idea of God, pp. 1-2;}

Endeavoring to drag a mortal—oneself or another—into heaven, or harmony, would be an impossible task. Why? Because the sons and daughters of God have never been mortals. They have never left heaven. It is not possible for anyone to be mortal except in a false sense of things—the mortal dream, the Adam and Eve story. The Master said, "No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven."^{ John 3:13;}

Mrs. Eddy asks, "Who wants to be mortal, or would not gain the true ideal of Life and recover his own individuality?" And on the next page, referring to the Master, she states, "His physical sufferings, which came from the testimony of the senses, were over when he resumed his individual spiritual being, after showing us the way to escape from the material body."^{ Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 104-105;}