A: And the answer to that is “No.” You have used too good a reasoning power, and the things of God are foolishness with man. Reasoning power is fine up to a certain point, but do not try to carry it out to an extreme. There is no analogy between matter and Spirit, even though here and there you may use comparisons, parallels, or analogies for points of illustration. But they must in no wise be considered as absolute.
Now, the reason that none of this applies to identity is this: There is no way to explain how it is that God can be one, and yet infinite individuality. We know that it is so. For instance, we know that roses are always roses. Apples are always apples. Peaches are always peaches. We also know that each one of us is so individual that even physically, our fingerprints or footprints are entirely different from each other, and so far as they know, there are no duplicates.
So it is, that God is maintaining oneness, yet maintaining infinite individuality. Let’s see one concrete example of that. Every individual on the face of the globe has life, but they don’t have fifty percent of life, or one percent, or one four-billionth percent. Each individual has the full and complete life. But there are four billion people, and each one has full and complete life. Life is not divided up into four billionths. As a matter of fact, if when there were only one billion people on earth, if life was dividing itself, that billion must have had far more life than we have now that there are four billion.
But you see, the mere fact that the population has quadrupled doesn’t mean that any one of us has lost our life or any part of our life. We still have our full and complete life. How much love can we express? How much integrity can we express? And in how many different ways can we express love, benevolence, charity, kindness, cooperation, justice, mercy?
There are infinite ways to express life; infinite ways of expressing love; infinite ways of expressing integrity; infinite ways of expressing morality. And yet, each person on the face of the globe can be one hundred percent honest, or one hundred percent moral, or one hundred percent alive, or one hundred percent loving. How can you explain that? As far as I’m concerned, you can’t. God is infinite one, and yet God is infinite one in all of Its individualization.
So it is that as you pass from one life to another, or one incarnation to another, you still retain your identity, and when you attain a state of meditation, which is a full and complete realization of God—which probably won’t happen many times in any one individual’s life—you still are yourself. You still have your identity. There is no such thing as being merged into God and losing your identity. You can merge into God and be as individual as you are now. Otherwise God would not be infinite. God would be one in the limited sense of number one, but God is not limited to any such thing as one. The one which is God is an infinite one, and I’m frank to tell you that you cannot understand that with your mind. You have to go beyond the mind to understand spiritual truth. That is one way in which we know that mind is not God, because as long as you are on the level of mind, you cannot come into the awareness of spiritual truth, nor can you ever demonstrate spiritual truth mentally.
Now those of you who have had any instruction from me privately in healing will remember that I have said this to you: “There is no thought that you can think that will ever heal anybody of anything. Thought is not power.” Oh, it may be power on the human level. Oh yes! You can train your thought and begin to control people. You can train your thought and learn about propaganda, and you can control whole nations. You can win elections and be prime minister or president, just by the power of control, mental control, that you can have over a whole nation—on the human plane.
But spiritually, thought has absolutely no power. Who by taking thought can add a cubit to his stature? Who by taking thought can make a white hair black? And if you cannot do the least of these things by taking thought, how do you ever expect to accomplish the greater things? Therefore, thought has no place in our treatment work, except as a preliminary, which helps us to get established. Now I will explain that to you so that there will be no doubt in your mind about the healing principle of The Infinite Way.
Let us assume that someone has—well, it could be someone, or it could be a dozen someones—who have telephoned that they have the flu. It’s fall, and the flu season is on, and they have the flu. Now as a practitioner, it is most likely that you would close your eyes, turn your thought to God, and immediately realize that this whole claim, whether it was one person, or a dozen, or a thousand, that this whole claim had its basis in infection—a law of infection, or a law of weather, or a law of climate. Then you would realize, “No, no. No, since God is the lawgiver, all law is spiritual, and therefore, such a thing as a material law or a mental law is completely without power. There could be no power in infection or contagion, if all power is in God.
Now, that might be your preliminary thought, and then you would settle down into your treatment, which would be without thought. Now you take the attitude: “Speak Lord, thy servant heareth,” and then you wait in silence. You have a listening attitude. Inside, you have both ears wide open as if you were waiting for the still, small voice, or as if you were waiting to hear God speak. Sometimes you will hear God speak. Other times you will just have a sense of release, or relief, or freedom.
One time, when I had thirty-five cases of grip, or flu, I closed my doors and went into meditation, and the Voice spoke to me very clearly, and said, “You only have one case, and that is a belief in God and somebody else; a belief in God and another power. That’s all you’re dealing with—that belief.” And that ended the treatment, because if you are only dealing with a belief in a power apart from God, it’s all right, because a belief can’t do anything to anybody, and there is no other power than the power of God.
By that night, or the next morning, every one of the thirty-five reported in as healed, and no one of them received a treatment personally, or individually, because it wasn’t “they” who had an illness. It was a universal belief, first of all, in a person apart from God, and secondly, in a power apart from God. As soon as that belief is met in the mind of the practitioner, one with God is a majority, and therefore, all those who have tuned in by asking for help receive their treatment. If you want to know why all the rest of the city didn’t get healed, it was because they held themselves mentally out here. They were looking at a pillbox. They were looking at an injection. They were looking out here for their help. They had not tuned in to Truth.
So it is. The thoughts we think in the preliminary stages of our treatment—this is not the power. This is merely to lift us up into an altitude of awareness, into an atmosphere of awareness, of listening for that voice, or for an assurance from God, and that constitutes our treatment. You will see why later, when we go deeper into the subject of illumined consciousness.
God is one, but since God is infinite, God is an infinite one, or an infinity of one, an infinity of one complete Being, and each one of us is that full and complete one Being. Mathematically that can’t be. Humanly that can’t be. Spiritually it is true. “I” is you, and that “I” is God. That “I” is my identity, but that “I” is your Identity, and there can be only one Selfhood, and that’s God. God is the Self of you.
You will find this in the chapter “Love Thy Neighbor,” in Practicing the Presence, and in the chapter “Relationship of Oneness” in The Art of Spiritual Healing. Those are the only two places in which this subject is completely covered, because both of those came through right from the soul of me, the heart of me, whatever it is that you call God, and therefore, it is more clearly stated than anywhere else in the writings, and I think, very clearly stated, because I have used those two chapters with students, and I have given them to students to use in all cases of human relationships, whether relationships in their family, among their friends, capitol and labor, business, offices, wherever human relationship comes in. If you will work with those two chapters, you will find how much harmony you can bring into the subject of relationships. And the reason is that ultimately, even though you can’t explain it any more than I can, ultimately you will see, or realize, that “I” is the only God, and God is the only “I”, and that “I” is me, and that “I” is you.
1This excerpt is from Recording 351A, 1960 Second London Closed Class, “Illumination—Its Nature.” 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.