A: Consciousness is the basic substance, but consciousness cannot be unexpressed; otherwise you would have a total vacuum. Therefore consciousness, when it is expressed, is expressed as form. So it is. Every thought you have is clothed with form; everything that exists has form. It may be a form invisible to your eyesight, but it has form. Every sound has form, even the sounds that you cannot hear.
Many of you, I’m sure, know that animals, especially dogs and cats, have a hearing range greater than ours. It is for this reason that when we have our pets with us, sometimes when we hear nothing, they jump and run to the door or to the window. They have heard something that we haven’t. We would have said there is no form present, but they know there is form because their vision and their hearing are greater than ours, and therefore they know form before we do.
So it is that there are colors so high in vibration that you cannot see them with your ordinary eyesight, and yet they’re right here and have form. If you could step up their vibration, you could see them, or if you could step down their vibration, you could see them. But they are here, and they have form.
So it is that if you close your eyes and say “I,” you will realize that I am an entity; I am an
identity; I am being.” And of course, if I am, then I must have form, whether it is visible or invisible. There could be no such thing as an “I” existing as a vacuum. It has to exist as form.
Jesus came to Mary and his disciples with the same body that was taken from the cross. It all comes back to the same identical thing; it’s all a matter of form—form. Everything has form, but are you at the level of consciousness where you can behold all form? And the answer, certainly, is no. No, you can only behold that which comes into the range of your present comprehension.
It is very much like we often say, after we’ve read a passage of truth or a book of truth, and we don’t understand it, and we come back to it a year later, and all of a sudden we say, “Oh, I see now; I see now.” In other words, the principle now has taken form for me. It always had form; otherwise the author couldn’t have written it. It always had form, but we read it and it was meaningless to us. Then six months or a year later, we read it and it was perfectly clear. We say, “Now I see.” Why do we say, “Now I see,” when we really don’t see anything with our eyes? Because seeing and comprehending really are the same thing, and what we mean is, “I comprehend. Comprehending, I see. Whereas before I was blind, now I see.” But the form was always there.
1 This excerpt is from Recording #225B, 1958 London Closed Class, “Protective Work as It Should Be.” It is posted with kind permission from the Estate of Joel Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on the recorded classes and the copyright on the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available at www.joelgoldsmith.com or by calling 1-800-922-3195.