In healing, an understanding acceptance of man's preexistence in God is helpful. Preexistence means that our origin and destiny are one and the same—spiritual being. Before matter and mortal man claimed existence, the spiritual man is. Spiritual man exists always.

Christ Jesus showed his deep understanding of this preexistence when the Jews referred to him as under fifty years old. In reply to their mockery, he said, "Before Abraham was, I am." ^{John 8:58.}

We can all have recourse to an understanding of spiritual preexistence in proving harmless the seeming trials imposed by the beliefs of life and intelligence in matter. And so we can resort to the grandeur and glory of our spiritual origin—reality. After speaking of the Christ as being unconscious of matter and conscious only of God, Mrs. Eddy writes: "Hence the human Jesus had a resort to his higher self and relation to the Father, and there could find rest from unreal trials in the conscious reality and royalty of his being,—holding the mortal as unreal, and the divine as real. It was this retreat from material to spiritual selfhood which recuperated him for triumph over sin, sickness, and death." She continues, "Had he been as conscious of these evils as he was of God, wherein there is no consciousness of human error, Jesus could not have resisted them...." ^{No and Yes, p. 36.}

Man's preexistent spirituality with God is the truth of his being. This is what is real of each of us today as God's ideas. We can humbly turn to the Father and pray in the spirit of Jesus' great prayer: "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was." ^{John 17:5.}

The immortal, spiritual man—sinless, whole, never materially conceived, never expiring—is our true selfhood. Spiritual selfhood reflects here and now the glory of God's being. This unity of God and man, understood and lived, brings the light that dispels the darkness of the beliefs of mortal existence.

We'll express more spirituality and demonstrate spiritual power and dominion as we gain a clearer apprehension of the glorious truths of our preexistence with God, our divine Principle. Remembering to reason from cause to effect, we'll learn what constitutes man as God's reflection. Jesus acknowledged, "I and my Father are one." ^{10:30 .} Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, writes: "The origin, substance, and life of man are one, and that one is God,—Life, Truth, Love. The self-existent, perfect, and eternal are God; and man is their reflection and glory." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 187.}

Spiritual preexistence is a good starting place in working out a problem in Christian Science. Our real origin and true heredity result in perfection and continuity. This is our basis for the denial of dualism—the belief in a mixture of Spirit and matter, Life and death, health and sickness, abundance and want. The standpoint of perfection provides a sure foundation for scientific treatment, or prayer. As we view ourselves spiritually, whatever seems rooted in laws of matter is left without basis or support. We see it as supposition, the illusive suggestion or mortal belief that fades before spiritual truth realized in consciousness. Mrs. Eddy has defined our spiritual status in this statement: "Never born and never dying, it were impossible for man, under the government of God in eternal Science, to fall from his high estate." ^{Science and Health, p. 258.}

Our original preexistence with God and our eternal coexistence in reflection link man to God in an indestructible spiritual relationship. This relationship ensures our superiority to and triumph over the woes of the flesh. Through living the truth of man's spiritual nature, we express before the world the glory of God and man. Regeneration and healing are the results, as the impositions of mortal mind are proved unreal.

Throughout the writings of Mrs. Eddy there's a continuous theme of what constitutes the real man and what does not. Man is revealed as indestructibly linked with God and reflecting Him now. This indicates that good is at hand now, rather than at some future time when we are supposed to become spiritual and enter the presence of God. Preexistence and coexistence as the effects of God, the only cause, mean that man is spiritual now. This is his glory. He had it "before the world was" and he'll have it after the material world is no more.