Recording 652B, “From the Law to Conscious Knowing of the Truth, continued,” is from the 1956 Cape Town First Practitioner Class. It was not used as source material for any book. This recording is no longer posted on this website. If you subscribe to the Joel Goldsmith Streaming Service, you can listen to it there. To purchase the recording and/or the transcript from The Infinite Way Office, click/tap here.
To download or print these study suggestions, click/tap here.
In the first session of this study program, Joel taught the meaning of Reality and unreality, or Reality and illusion. In the second session, he explained that what appears to be good is just as unreal as what appears to be evil. He emphasized that what we behold is not the illusion. Our sense of what we behold, our perception of it, is the illusion, and that an illusion is always in the mind; it is never externalized.
In the third session, Joel connected illusion with the spiritual principle of one power, pointing out that if there is only one infinite power, there can be no other power, so what is perceived as another power must be an illusion. He spoke about the practice of protective work and explained the role of the mind in forming illusions.
In the fourth session, Joel related Reality and illusion to the healing work, emphasizing that to be effective, we must come to the realization that God is the only Reality, and that sin, disease, death, lack, limitation, and any other appearances must become as unreal to us as the water on the desert.
In this session, Joel revisits two key points: one power and illusion. He focuses on another facet of the truth of one power—that nothing and nobody is either good or evil—and he explores the implications of that in healing work. Then he reiterates and expands on the idea that there is no such thing as an externalized illusion.
The Lesson
In this class, Joel emphasizes two key points: “One power” and “illusion.” In essence, he says:
Certainly more reading or more listening on these two topics can be helpful to understand what Joel is saying, and the recordings and recommended readings for this study series give us ample material to consider.
But there comes a point when we know pretty much all that we can know intellectually about one power or about illusion. Contemplation and meditation are the practices that will take us deeper to where “one power” and the “unreality of illusion” are REAL to us; to where they become our “REAL-ity.”
So for this lesson, we suggest contemplations on “one power” and “the unreality of illusion,” followed by periods of stillness and listening. Many of us are quite familiar with these ideas, but there is always something more to be revealed, something deeper to be experienced through silent receptivity and listening.
A Practice
In this class, Joel gives us a practice that is very timely today, as we see so much division and conflict between political parties and ideologies, and as we watch each “side” demonize the other. We can be fountains of peace by holding the altitude and attitude that Joel suggests:
“Even while standing up against the evils of the world and making every effort to correct them, do not sit in violent judgment of the individual as if they were personally at fault for the evils that are being manifested through them. They can no more help it than the other one can help the good that is flowing through them. Each is following his life in accord with the way they see it. . . . Call no man good or evil. Try, insofar as you can, to hold the attitude that every individual on the face of the globe is an instrument for God, and whatever of good flows through them is God flowing through them, and that the evil that men do is not a power and nullify it for them.”
The Wisdoms
At the end of this lesson, Joel takes us through a few of the Wisdoms, and recommends that we take the time to really study each one until we “have” it before going on to the next.
The Wisdoms are included in any authentic version of The Infinite Way published after 1955. If you would like to have the Wisdoms on separate cards for study, you can download them in card format from The Infinite Way Office website here: https://joelgoldsmith.com/wisdom-cards/.
Recommended Reading for the Study Program
The recommended reading list is for the entire study program was given at the end of the Optional Study material for Session 1.