A: And there again, you see that I’m not absolute, not even absolutely consistent, because—and I’ve brought this out to you before—there are two distinct parts to our spiritual unfoldment. That’s why we’re not absolute. There are two parts: the letter of truth, and the spirit of truth, or consciousness of truth.
Now, there are certain individuals so gifted right from the beginning by the grace of God that they never need to know the letter of truth; they never need to think truth. They are divinely gifted and are in the awareness or consciousness of spiritual truth without ever being able to voice it, or explain it, or teach it. They just have it; they just are it. But we aren’t that way; we aren’t that way. So, what do we have to do? We have to take the human footsteps leading up there.
And so it is, in every phase of our work I’ve given you this: in treatment, in meditation, in living, that you must take the letter of truth, such as the statement “He performeth that which is given me to do;” or ponder the nature of God as spirit, as omnipresence, as omnipotence; or meditate on forms of nature and learn to see behind nature to the Invisible.
Now of course, that’s devotion of thought; that’s a mental practice. There’s nothing spiritual about that; that’s entirely mental. But if you persist in it; if you will go about your daily business and every hour realize, “I’m not doing this alone. ‘He performeth that which is given me to do;’” or if there’s some claim of insufficiency of any nature, remember, “Thy grace is my sufficiency in all things;”or if there’s a lack of understanding, remember “His understanding is infinite;” or in sitting down to treat or meditate, remember, “His voice is uttered, the earth melteth;” then if you consciously bear these thoughts in mind, one day you pass through a transition to a state of consciousness where all of that is unnecessary; where never again—or rarely; I won’t say never, but rarely—do you have to indulge thoughts or thinking or remind yourself that God is ever-present. You enter into the life of the Spirit, where Paul says, “I live yet not I, Christ liveth my life,”and Jesus says, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed,”because it’ll be there every minute of every day.
You enter that state of consciousness, but you don’t enter it just by saying, “Oh yes, that’s the truth in the absolute.” Oh no! You grow into the demonstration of that truth, and you grow into it through the letter of truth, and that’s the relative way. You have to first learn thoroughly the nature of God, the nature of error, the nature of the Christ.
When you know those, you gradually make the transition out of your mortal selfhood to where you can truthfully say, “I don’t want anything. I don’t want anything. I haven’t a desire. I haven’t a need. Whatever there is that’s necessary in my experience, it just appears every day as the need arises. I don’t have to give myself treatments for supply, or for companionship, or for home, or for activity, or for a practice, or for a student body. I have to wake up in the morning and go in and look at my desk and see what’s to be done and sit down and do it, and then wait for the mailman and start doing it over again, and then wait for the telephone and do it over. I don’t have to go out and seek. The activity comes in—any activity, every activity—and the same is true of all the companionships that are necessary, all the employees that are necessary, all of the help that’s necessary, all of the ideas that are necessary. They just flow in as they are needed.
But never forget this: that every one of us who is working in this way took the original steps of learning these passages of Scripture, and as you will find on page—what is it … 94 to 103 in The Infinite Way3—waking up in the morning and consciously remembering: “God is with me. God will be before me during this day,” and so forth, and so on. Sitting down to a breakfast and stopping to realize, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. God is the source of this breakfast. God is the source of the food. God is the source of my supply.” Walking to the door to go out and then remembering, “Wait a minute. The Presence goes before me to make the crooked places straight. ‘He performeth that which is given me to do.’”
It isn’t easy. It isn’t easy. Scripture says, ‘Acknowledge Him in all thy ways and He will give thee rest.’ And that’s what it is. It’s acknowledging God from waking in the morning to sleeping at night and when waking up in the middle of the night. And then on top of that, you’re not only acknowledging God, but remember you’re facing problems. And so you have to go around the other side and begin to know the nature of the error that’s facing you, so that regardless of its nature, you can say, “Oh, that’s an arm of flesh.”
I’ve told the story in one of our classes many years ago, and it came back to my thought today with someone. This was in my Boston days, when I had several cancer cases that I was wrestling with, and they were giving me a very hard time. And I really was wrestling with them and trying so hard to meet them and rise above all the appearances and everything. And lo and behold, in the midst of those two or three cases of simple cancer, why, a lady walked in and said, “Oh Mr. Goldsmith, I have seventy-two cancers.” And you know, I just laughed out loud. Yes, just like you’re doing, that’s what I did. I did! I laughed out loud and said, “I’ve been sitting here working on just one little cancer.”
In three days, this lady didn’t have any of those seventy-two cancers, not one of them. And that was the only treatment she got, too. It seemed to me so complete, so ridiculous. Now what will you do with seventy-two cancers? You’re either going to jump out of a window, or you’re going laugh it off, and when you laugh it off, it’s healed. Do you know why? Because it’s plumb ridiculous! God never gave any woman seventy-two cancers unless—unless they [the cancers] were very good. And as you begin to realize that, you’ll just know that if God didn’t give them to her, nobody else could. God is the only Presence and God is the only Power, and that’s all there is. And there are times when I feel like going back and laughing about it again when I see some of these cases that really, really, really try to get the best of me. Because there are such cases, and there probably always will be until I develop a higher sense of humor.
But that’s the truth. Until you learn the nature of error, until you really and truly can get down to brass tacks and say—what did Jesus say—”Who convinceth me of sin?” “‘Who convinceth me of sin?” Who do you think could convince me that God would inflict any discord on His world? I don’t believe it for a minute, and I don’t believe that there’s a devil. I think that the only devil is the one that was given to us in the Garden of Eden—this knowledge of good and evil. That’s our devil. We’ve said, “This is good,” and it is so unto us. We’ve said, “This is evil,” and it is so. Nothing is good or bad but thinking makes it so. Nothing is good or bad. There it is—only thinking makes it so. And all you have to do to get rid of it is stop thinking. Now that’s not difficult. That’s not difficult.´
I have been asked, “How do you stop thinking?” And I’ve only found one way. The minute I could look at this and say, “It’s neither good nor evil,” my thoughts stopped. That was the end of it. There’s nothing left to think about then, because right then, you’re right back at the center of your being, where all power is. You only think when you’re out here thinking good and evil about things and persons. But you don’t have any thought once you have no good and evil. You are right back here tabernacling with God.
I’m telling you nothing absolute about that. It’s discovery. It’s revelation. It’s experience. That’s what it is, after you’ve had enough experience hitting up against every form of error that can conceivably come to the human race, and then have seen at least a portion of them rendered nothingness, not by might, not by power, but just by knowing this truth; just by realizing, “There is neither good nor evil—neither. There’s only one thing and that’s God.”
Then you are approaching the place where eventually you may get absolute enough to stand in front of Pilate and say, “Thou couldst have no power over me unless it came from God.” Ah yes, you might even get with Paul and say, “I live not. I do not live; only Christ liveth my life.” And that’s the way it is.
1This excerpt is from Recording 160A: 1956 Chicago Closed Class, “Infinite Way Is Not an Absolute Teaching.” 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 This quote is in the chapter “Putting on Immortality.”
3 These pages are in the chapter titled “Meditation.”