A: It isn’t duality if you can see that by “Father” is really meant the Spirit that is within us, the creative Principle, that which is given to us to maintain and sustain our being—the Father.
Now supposing I were to say, “I and my intelligence are one.” That wouldn’t be duality. Or, if I were to say, “I and my morality are one.” That wouldn’t be duality. There would be no way of separating me from my intelligence; they must be one. There’s no way of separating me from my morality, my honesty; there’s no way of separating me from anything that is mine. I and my intelligence are one; I and my lovingness are one; I and my morality are one; I and my strength are one. This is oneness; this is not duality.
Only if you can see that there is an inner Self and the outer form can you see oneness; only if you can see that there is something within us that appears outwardly as form, just as there is an inner invisible mind, and then there is an outer external body. But that inner mind and that outer body are one. They’re not separate; they’re not two. If I say to my hand, “Go up and down; go up and down,” it follows because the hand and the mind are one, and they’re here right where I am. I don’t have to call on my mind from some other place to operate my hand.
This idea of oneness also cannot be understood through the intellect, because you have the word “are” in there—a-r-e—which would mean duality. It isn’t possible with the human mind to understand that I is God, because I seem to be a human being. It is only through spiritual discernment that the mystics were able to declare: “I am He. I am God. I am that I am.” It was only through spiritual discernment that the Master could say, “I am the bread, the meat, the wine, and the water.”
Isn’t that one of the mistakes of some of the churches that try to present the blood of Jesus as our salvation, as if at any time in the history of the world, fleshly blood could be anyone’s salvation? Isn’t it clear that only spiritual sense can? Oh yes! I’m thinking of one that’s clearer even—the time when someone disagreed with me when I said that we should not pray for anything. Then I was told that Jesus prayed for bread in the Lord’s Prayer: “Give us this day our daily bread.”2
Now you know right well that the Master didn’t pray for baker’s bread, because if you study the Bible and don’t take it out of its context, you’ll find out that I am the bread, I am the meat, I am the wine,so you’ll know that he was praying that that I be revealed, that Selfhood, that spiritual awareness. And we have the right every day to pray that the staff of life be revealed to us—the word of God. This is bread. This is the spiritual bread, the bread that cometh down from heaven, the word of God, the spiritual bread.
But, if you’re going to read a book with your eyes, and it says, “Give us this day our daily bread,” then I suppose every day we should pray for bread, even if we don’t eat it. Or probably we wouldn’t even be allowed to change it from “Give us this day our daily bread” to “Give us this day our daily toast, our daily rolls.” No, it says “bread;” you must say “bread.” Well of course, if you take the Bible that way, that’s the way it must be. But don’t!
And remember this: what you see, hear, taste, touch, and smell through the fleshly senses is fleshly, and there is no use of denying it, and there is no use of affirming, and there’s no use of battling it.
If you want divine harmony revealed to you, disengage yourself from the argument; disengage yourself from battling error or looking for a power with which to battle error. Go within, listen, meditate, cogitate, wait until the spirit of the Lord God is upon you. Then when you look up, you’ll find that divine harmony has been made manifest, and that which seemed so real before isn’t even remembered any more. There isn’t even the smell of smoke. You know when the smell of smoke disappears from a fire, it’s pretty clear there wasn’t any fire there. So it is.
We have seen this week a miracle of scripture, the raising, the lifting of the Son of God, from the tomb of fleshly senses. That has been the subject all through the week of this class. And every single session has pointed itself to that end; that we be lifted up, that we lift up the Son of God of ourselves out of the tomb of the fleshly sense that sees, hears, tastes, touches, and smells its own image and likeness. Whereas, in quietness, in stillness, and in peace, we are given the spiritual vision to discern the pattern that was shown thee on the Mount: spiritual Sonship lifted up, right out of that tomb of fleshly sense.
1This excerpt is from Recording 399B, 1961 Los Angeles Closed Class, “The Function of Mind—Part Two.” 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.
2 Matthew 6:11