THE questions, Who am I? Where did I come from? and, Where am I going? are of paramount importance to everyone. The world has searched and searched, yet until the advent of Christian Science it had escaped the answer. Christ Jesus knew. Rebuking human ignorance he said (John 8:14), "Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go." Unswervingly he claimed his individuality and identity as revealed in the first chapter of Genesis, where God made man in His own image and after His own likeness. By revealing the nature and essence of God, Christian Science reveals and makes practical the truth about man. When God pronounced His creation finished, the possibility of a lesser creation or dream was excluded.

From earliest times spiritually enlightened thought has perceived in a degree the fact that mortal, material life, so called, is a dream. So Adam was supposed to dream. "The Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept," says the Bible (Gen. 2:21), and nowhere does it tell us that he ever awaked. So much is Biblical legend. Christian Science reveals the immortal truth that man is wholly spiritual, conceived by divine Mind, fashioned of Spirit, dwelling forever in Life. Man in God's likeness has no underived power; God alone is his Mind, and man has neither the ability nor the capacity to dream. Thus Adam himself is a dream, and neither God nor man dreams that dream. In her sermon "Christian Healing" Mary Baker Eddy discloses error's fallacy thus (p. 11): "A dream calleth itself a dreamer, but when the dream has passed, man is seen wholly apart from the dream." The dream is not an interlude in the reality of being. From first to last it is an illusion. What can be more substanceless than a dream that is itself the only dreamer?

Thus Adam, alias mortal man, being merely a dream, is a myth. He has neither actual origin, existence, nor continuity. He cannot account for himself or be accounted for. All human theories seeking to trace the origin of that which they misname material life lose themselves in a mist of ambiguity. Divine Principle alone is the source, origin, and continuity of life, and that which originates in Principle and derives therefrom expresses the nature, substance, and permanence of Principle.

In the textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Mrs. Eddy puts the interesting queries (pp. 491, 492): "Who will say, even though he does not understand Christian Science, that this dream—rather than the dreamer—may not be mortal man? Who can rationally say otherwise, when the dream leaves mortal man intact in body and thought, although the so-called dreamer is unconscious?" The marginal heading under which these questions occur is "Spiritual existence the one fact," and the remainder of the paragraph makes it clear that right reasoning begins with the fact that existence is spiritual. Obviously, conclusions arrived at from the standpoint of the dream are foundationless and erroneous.

To understand that the dream itself is the dreamer robs error of identity and reveals the fact that spiritual individuality is forever safe and consciously at rest in the harmony of divine Love, despite the changing vicissitudes of the dream. The belief that there is a dreamer is as much the dream as are the contortions of the dream. Thus the human self that appears to be anguished by the fears and failures, the grief and separation, of human experience, like the human self that is gratified by the fulfillment of worldly desires, is nothing more nor less than a substanceless dream. In the whole of God's universe there is no dream, nor anything capable of dreaming. Entirely separate and apart from the illusion of mortal life, the reality of being is forever unfolding the stateliness and grandeur, the harmony and peace, of ageless, endless, deathless Life.

The belief of the little human "I" which we take such good care of—or try to— which appears to come and go, to run hither and yon, to succeed or fail, the belief of the human "I" that is sick or well, happy or unhappy, rich or poor, young or old, is not spiritual identity but is a misconception thereof. Christian Science breaks the illusion of this dream. It reveals the fact that God alone conditions man. Thus Science enables us to claim our individuality through recourse to our true, spiritual selfhood. So sure was Christ Jesus of his real being that he could say (John 12:45), "He that seeth me seeth him that sent me."

Birth and death are phases of the mirage of mortal existence. The fundamental error is the belief that there is matter and that life is in matter, dependent upon it for expression, sustenance, and continuity. The life of man is self-sustaining, for it reflects the one Life, God. Conscious being never passes through birth or death. It does not develop from materiality to spirituality, from immaturity to maturity, nor does it decline from the apex of manhood to frailty or imbecility. Identity is neither a tortured nor a complacent mortal. It is the conscious expression of the one ever-present, forever I AM.

Mortals are prone to grieve over death while they glory in birth. They resist and, when instructed in Christian Science, deny the claims of old age (approaching death), but often they glory in the development from infancy to manhood. Yet one is the counterpart of the other. All human records bind humanity with the shackles of mortality. Man exists as God's idea at the standpoint of perfection, untouched by the dream which calls itself a dreamer. To spiritually understand this fact ensures to human sense normal development, spiritual balance, and right accomplishment. It eschews alike the claims of infancy, adolescence, and age. It banishes the possibility of aught which can end in breakdown or failure. Christian Science makes no compromise with human theories or opinions. Referring to the allegory in the second chapter of Genesis and to changes which have since occurred in prevalent beliefs concerning man's origin, the textbook says (p. 529), "Another change will come as to the nature and origin of man, and this revelation will destroy the dream of existence, reinstate reality, usher in Science and the glorious fact of creation, that both man and woman proceed from God and are His eternal children, belonging to no lesser parent."

Conscious individual being has nothing whatever to do with a material belief of birth; it is not furthered or hindered by so-called human development, nor is it removed or separated from Love and the expression of Love through any belief of death. The allness and oneness of Mind ensures the completeness and continuity of being. It solves the problem of human relationships, for divine Mind and its unfettered reflection knows no interference, monopolization, selfishness, or domination. It knows no separation. Mind is the eternal consciousness of harmony, freedom, peace, and satisfaction. It holds within itself no sense of being crushed or hurt. True self-expression, freedom, peace, and lasting satisfaction come not from human relationships, persons, or human contacts, but from the Mind which was in Christ Jesus, from a deep, Soul-filled realization of the spiritual completeness of being. Thus does truth prove that there are no vacuums in Love, and that Love meets every need by destroying the dream that there is a need.

All belief in human history, of human past, present, and future, is the mythical reverberation of the echoing dream of a life and existence separate from God. It is the dream that calls itself a dreamer and is without entity, substance, presence, or power. Thus the questions, Who am I? Where did I come from? and, Where am I going? are answered in the fact that divine Mind alone is All, and within its own infinitude forever embraces in conscious harmony and uninterrupted being all individuality and identity.

L. Ivimy Gwalter