Recording 536B, “Consciousness Unfolding As the Harmony of the New Year,” from the 1963-64 Christmas / New Year’s Message, is one of two recordings used as source material for Chapter 12, “Consciousness Unfolding As the Harmony of Our Experience,” in Awakening Mystical Consciousness. This recording was posted through August 5, 2023, and is no longer available on this website. If you subscribe to the Joel Goldsmith Streaming Service, you can listen to it there. You can also purchase the recording and/or the transcript from The Infinite Way Office here.
To download or print these study suggestions, click/tap here.
Consider the Key Points
This chapter addresses the nature of mystical consciousness and living a mystical life. Some of the key points are summarized below; you probably have others as well.
Nothing happens except as a projection of consciousness. Action is projected by consciousness, and the state of my consciousness determines the nature of my experience.
Example: I accept the revelation of God AS individual consciousness, as my own consciousness.
In proportion as I consciously accept this, I begin to give up reliance on anyone or anything external to me. I center my attention on the truth that if God is my consciousness, the kingdom of God, the power, the love, and the grace of God are already within me and must flow out from within me. Then I have less fear of what appear to be outside powers. As I rest in the realization of Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and Omniscience here within me, I know that harm cannot come near my dwelling place. I know that the presence and power of God constitute my being, and in all circumstances, I stay anchored in that, knowing that in this consciousness of God’s presence and power, evil cannot operate. The degree of my God awareness operates for harmony and peace in my individual life.
This is what is meant by “action is projected by consciousness.” In other words, in this example, the actions I take are informed by the degree in which I consciously accept God AS individual consciousness.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for my study and practice?
God constitutes the consciousness of every individual—friend and enemy, Jew and Gentile, white and black, Oriental and Occidental. In the degree that I can see this oneness of consciousness, I am loving my neighbor as myself, recognizing that all God is to me, God is to my neighbor as well. The mystical way of life knows only Oneness; it knows no such thing as denomination.
For years, there has been ignorance of this truth, so we must renew it. As we do, we become a society of friends and neighbors, God-conscious, God-loving people, and we come closer to a united consciousness of one God. The more of us who agree that there is only one God, the more God-consciousness is loosed on earth. Since our state of consciousness determines our experience, those who have attained the consciousness of one God are right now laying the foundation for peace in the future.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for my study and practice?
As we focus individually on attaining God consciousness, we are determining the harmony of our experience. But as our consciousness deepens, it begins to become a law unto our relatives, friends, and neighbors. We draw them into this consciousness, and what was originally our God-consciousness now becomes the God-consciousness of many, first in a minor degree, but gradually in a greater degree.
But we cannot bring life and bring it more abundantly, or bring healing, supply, or spiritual illumination to anyone unless we ourselves have realized some measure of the Christ. That realization of the Christ is what heals the sick, redeems the sinner, raises the dead, and feeds the hungry. The Christ, Spirit, does these works through us.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for my study and practice?
Intellectual knowledge is not ordination. One thing alone will bring ordination. Go away and study. Be secret, be sacred, and let no one know what you are doing. Study until God touches you; until you feel this Something within you, closer than breathing. You will recognize this Presence, and you will know Its power, feel It, and even hear the “still small voice.” Then you can say, “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, and I am ordained. Now I am under orders. I have the armor of God, the word of God.” Then you can walk into the homes of the sick, the poor, the dying, or the dead, and bring consolation, healing, resurrection, supply, all things.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for me?
Never believe that pain or any circumstance is an obstacle to the search for God. When you have attained the awareness of God, the pain, the discord, and the disease will leave. Seek God first, and you will find yourself free. If you try to get your freedom first, you never will get God.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for me?
The goal is the attainment of the Spirit of God. Anyone who is seriously intent on the spiritual experience can attain it, but it takes devotion and consecration. You can have no personal ambition, and you must be prepared to change at any moment, because you can have no idea what the Spirit of the Lord God will do when It descends upon you. But with the Spirit of the Lord working in you, whatever you do, you will do well.
There is only one demonstration to make—the demonstration of the Presence. When you have the feeling of this Presence within you, about you, or next to you, you “take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on.” You take no thought for anything in your life. Spirit, the Presence, functions and becomes your daily bread, your business opportunity, your talent, ability, skill, bodily strength, and everything necessary in your experience.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for me?
Joel says, “Mysticism is conscious union with God, the ability to receive impartations directly from God.” And he also says, “Mysticism is Self-completeness in God.” The Christ of being is the essence or substance of all form and demonstrates Itself as everything necessary in your experience.
The mystical way of life knows only Oneness. It is a life built on the Spirit of God, devoted to study, meditation, and communion with those who have gone further on the path, through whom we can receive illumination until the Spirit of the Lord God enters us and we are ordained. Then we are on our own.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for my study and practice?
No teacher, teaching, or religion will set the world free. Freedom will come through living continuously in the awareness of Divinity, of divine Power and divine grace within us and within every individual.
As we realize this grace within us, it brings peace to us. In the degree that we perceive that this grace is operating in the consciousness of mankind will this Christ-Spirit be awakened in mankind. We set others free by realizing that the kingdom of grace is operating within them, and that It will not let sin, false appetite, disease, man’s inhumanity to man, or any other evil come near them. Peace does not come through agreements. It comes when there is peace in people’s hearts.
Instead of feeling responsible for people in the sense of being a do-gooder, we take the attitude, “Thank You, Father, for having revealed to me that the kingdom of grace is operating in the consciousness of every individual.”
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for my study and practice?
We understand divine grace through an inner perception, not with the mind. Grace functions as divine love to free those in sin, lack, limitation, and disease. It is not human personal love that flows through us; it is God’s love, and it flows in the form of forgiveness, praying for the enemy, and visiting the sick and imprisoned. Because of the incorporeal nature of our being, we need not visit the sick and the imprisoned in person. We can visit them through our awakened consciousness, realizing the divine grace that sets them free.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for my study and practice?
Consciousness determines the nature of our experience. The state of our consciousness not only depends on what we hold in consciousness, but also what we loose in consciousness. The truth we know deepens and enriches our consciousness, and it becomes a law unto our experience and even a law unto our neighbor’s experience, in the degree of his receptivity. As our consciousness is enriched, so is the consciousness of the world, and the more of us who enrich our consciousness, the higher the world consciousness is lifted.
When we realize that divine grace feeds us, heals us, supplies us, and forgives us, we attain our freedom in Christ. The Christ message of divine grace assures us that we have meat, bread, wine, and water, so we need take no thought for our life. Even if we experience poverty, sin, or disease for a while, the Son of God, the divine grace, is still within us, and one day It will break loose. There is a Presence within us that has come that we might have life and have it more abundantly, and if we live in this awareness, spiritual demonstration will come through, assuring us of a permanent and glorious experience.
Question: What implications, if any, does this have for my study and practice?
Review the Book
Chapter 12 is the final chapter in our study book, Awakening Mystical Consciousness. Upon concluding a book study, it can be helpful to review what we got from the study by doing a review of some sort. We can go over any notes we made about points that were new or important to us, or about insights or revelations that might have come to us. We can peruse the optional study suggestions for the chapters that were most important to us. You probably have other effective ways to review, too.
Ask yourself:
Below is the book description for Awakening Mystical Consciousness that is given on all the book retailers’ sites:
Hidden behind the personal self is the real Self, that which Paul called “The Christ,” or our spiritual identity. To awaken mystical consciousness is to come to that point where we can spiritually apprehend this truth about ourselves and about each other and live by it.
In Awakening Mystical Consciousness, Goldsmith explains the spiritual principles and practices that will help us to awaken. He instructs the reader in how to use contemplation, meditation, and inner communion to attain the realization of the true Self. With care and in detail, he addresses the nature of God as omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience; the nature of spiritual power; our real identity; the nature of concepts; and the barriers that obstruct the way to realization. But Goldsmith clearly emphasizes that these statements of truth are not truth. They only help us get into the center of Being, where we can be receptive to the inner voice.
A mainstay of this book is erasing the false concept that man is separated from God, and that there is a God “out there” that can take away our sins, diseases, lacks and limitations. “Through this work,” says Goldsmith, “you are going to awaken out of the dream that there can be any separation. It wakes you up, and then you look around and realize you are in heaven. You have been there all the time, dreaming you were in hell.”
Goldsmith explains that awakening to mystical consciousness bears great fruitage. Through our realization of oneness, we regain our original dominion over our bodies and our lives. We can also demonstrate the healing consciousness, that consciousness that knows there is nothing to be healed, but only Truth to be revealed. “The goal,” he says, “is the attainment of this Spirit of God”—mystical consciousness. “That is the entire goal of the spiritual life.”
Questions: