I was having dinner with a man a couple of weeks ago who said he had died twice and come back to life over the years.

The first time he was being operated on and died during the procedure. “But,” he said, “I didn’t die. I got up from the table and walked across the room. I saw the doctors. I heard what they were saying and saw what they were doing to the body on the table.”

“Then shortly,” he said, “I went back to the table and appeared to live in the body once again.”

The second time he died, he had discovered Christian Science in the interim, and knew how to apply its principles. So, when he expired physically, again, “he didn’t die,” he emphasized. He was very much alive, he explained, conscious and thinking, just not in the earthly body. He treated himself spiritually to not go through “the door” that stood before him, symbolizing an exit from earth. His prayers broke the mesmeric suggestion that death was necessary, and he came back to the earthly sense of existence.

Christian Science, he explained, teaches that Life is ever-present, not in the hereafter or on some other plane. God is our Life, and we don’t go anywhere to find more of Life than we already have.

“There is no death,” he proclaimed with confidence. “And there are no planes. Life is here and now and we are in full possession of it.”

In thinking about his story, I’m reminded of Mary Baker Eddy’s words:

“In the illusion of death, mortals wake to the knowledge of two facts: (1) that they are not dead; (2) that they have but passed the portals of a new belief.” Science and Health

I’m heartened to know that we’re all living our eternal Life now. Material existence offers a very limited view of what spiritual life has to offer, but with enlightened spiritual understanding, we shed that constricted view and glimpse more of reality—Life in the here and now.

We don’t have to die to find Life. We already have it!

Ever-present eternal life is the message Jesus sought to drive home to his followers.

He did not give into death. He conquered it.