Recording 461B, “The Name” was not used as source material for any book.
This recording was posted through May 4, 2024, 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.
In this class, Joel turns our attention to prayer in its relationship to spiritual healing. He begins by reminding us that we are building a foundation for true prayer, and that it is through prayer that we have our contact with our Source. He goes on to say that this contact with the Source in true prayer is what enables us to develop a healing consciousness.
He continues with a review of spiritual healing, emphasizing that the healing consciousness is far different from ordinary human consciousness, and that it requires the attainment of some measure of transcendental consciousness, or Christ-consciousness, which is a higher level of consciousness where “everything is different.” What does he mean?
Joel points out that on the human level of life, there are material powers in germs, infection, contagion, poisons, climate, weather, and accidents. There are mental powers that can cause us to lose our free will, as was demonstrated with subliminal advertising. In the human world, there are two powers, a power for good and a power for evil, and material or mental powers can be used for good or for evil.
A person living at that human level of life cannot be a spiritual healer. A spiritual healer must have risen into the state of consciousness where both material and mental powers have lost their power and no longer function. A spiritual healer must have risen into the state of consciousness where there is only one power, and that is God, the creative source, or principle, of life. Actually, there is not even one power. There are no powers–no powers for good and no powers for evil. There is only a divine harmony that never changes. It is only when you have made the transition from human consciousness to some measure of spiritual consciousness that you can be in the realm of the prayer that heals, redeems, and forgives.
Joel reminds us that we should never say things like, “Germs have no power to cause disease.” But he also reminds us that it is absolute truth to say that germs have no power when they come into contact with the consciousness that has risen above the two powers. Jesus could look at the paralyzed man and say, “What did hinder you? There’s no power to keep you there. Rise, pick up your bed and walk.” He could say to the blind man, “Open thine eyes.” In other words, there are no powers here but God-power. In the presence of that Christ-consciousness, paralysis loses its power; blindness loses its power. Spiritual healing happens when the claim is brought to the consciousness of an individual who has in some degree realized the unreal nature of material and mental powers.
There are few spiritual healers today because few have risen above the human level of consciousness into the Christ-consciousness. It is not easy to attain this illumined consciousness by oneself, but it can be done because there is an inner grace, and as we reach out to the attainment of spiritual consciousness, we find that that inner grace works with us to help us.
Practices for Attaining the Healing Consciousness
What can we do to attain the Christ-consciousness that heals? Joel gives us three steps, which we can make the basis of our practice over the next two weeks as we study this class.
The First Step: Eliminate Judgment and Recognize True Identity
Joel says that the first preparation is to eliminate judgment from our own consciousness. It is surprising, he notes, how much of human consciousness is constituted of the judgment of good, the judgment of evil, and criticism. If you want to give up judgment and criticism, you have the God-given capacity to do it. Then you can say with the Master, “Neither do I condemn thee. Nobody has made me a judge over you. I am here to know that in your true identity, you are pure, spiritual being, made in the image and likeness of God, endowed with spiritual capacities, and having dominion over all that is.” In the degree that you drop judgment and criticism, you have dropped that much of human, mortal consciousness.
Look at the entire globe of good and bad men, women, and children, and have the attitude, “My peace give I unto you. Neither do I condemn thee. Be at peace, thy sins be forgiven thee.” Then, in proportion as you pray that their sins be forgiven, your sins are forgiven. The bread that you cast upon the water is the bread that returns to you, and if you cast the bread of love and forgiveness on the water, that is the bread that will return to you.
We are told, “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” How can you love your neighbor as yourself when your neighbor is everyone on the face of the globe? The only way is to know the truth about them: “God made you in His image and likeness and has endowed you with His qualities. The Spirit of God is upon you. God breathed the breath of life into you, and your life is eternal, immortal, and spiritual. Thy sins be forgiven thee.”
In this practice, you are releasing yourself from the two powers and from the judgment of good and the judgment of evil, and part of your human consciousness has disappeared. By knowing the truth of individual being, you are overcoming the human traits of your consciousness, and you are developing your spiritual consciousness, that fourth dimensional, transcendental consciousness which heals.
Joel reminds us that in developing Christ-consciousness, we can’t make any exceptions, even though we all have someone or other whom we want to judge. It might be the president of a company, or the president of the United States, but we all sit in judgment on someone because they are our particular “fly in the ointment.” While we may continue for a while to have some individual as our pet peeve, the point is that in proportion as we can loose them and let them go, their own sowing will bring their own reaping. But as Joel says, “Don’t you do the sowing!” Loose them and let them go. Forgive them and even ask that their eyes be opened.
The Second Step: Realize Omnipotence and the Nature of Error
Joel teaches that there is another important step to take if you want to have the healing consciousness. Adam and Eve had to leave the Garden of Eden because they accepted the belief in two powers, good and evil. Up until that time, they were living in a state of divine harmony and peace. This happens in your own consciousness, too. On the human level of life, you may be fighting some evil—a habit, a disease, a false desire. Somewhere you may have a conflict with persons, conditions, or circumstances.
Fighting and conflict are based on the belief that there is an evil power—a person, condition, or circumstance. It may be called sin, disease, lack, or age, but there is some evil, or erroneous, power in your thought, and you are trying to get a power of good to do something to that power of evil. By accepting two powers and not accepting God as omnipotence, you, like Adam and Eve, have taken yourself out of the Garden of Eden. The truth is that God is omnipotence—not a great power or an almighty power, but the All-power.
Jesus taught “Resist not evil,” meaning that evil in and of itself is not a power. So-called evil functions as a power only in the consciousness of those who accept two powers. Joel suggests that we think of the person, condition, or circumstance that represents evil in our experience and look right at it. Recognize that in and of itself, it has no power and no law to support it. God didn’t create it, and God is the only creator, too pure to behold iniquity. God did not create life only to kill it, or create immortality only to make it mortal, or give us life to fill us with disease. God is Spirit. God is life eternal. God has given unto us His life, His soul, His mind, His Spirit, and even His body. “Know ye not that your body is the temple of God?” Therefore, you have no body of your own. You have the body of God.
Beside God there is no other power, and you must be able to relax, give up the battle, relinquish the desire to overcome, and realize:
God alone is power, and God is omnipotence, the only power. And God is omnipresence, already present where I am. I do not have to seek God, find God, or discover God. I don’t have to deserve God. All I have to do is love the Lord my God supremely, recognize God in the midst of me as the only power, and then let the appearance—the sin, the false appetite, the disease—fade away because of its own nothingness.
Joel tells us that we can prove that this is true. We can rise above the human sense of two powers and relax in the realization of God as the only power and the only presence. In the spiritual realm, you do not use the power of God to do anything. Jesus never used the power of God to heal, forgive, or reform anyone. He was living in the consciousness of God, where there are no powers. There is just infinite being, eternal being, harmonious being. So to attain the healing consciousness, Joel says, come up out of human consciousness with its belief in two powers into the realm of no powers. Realize that God alone is being, and because God alone is being, we do not need any other powers.
Joel acknowledges that we will be faced with temptations every day, because when we open our eyes, right in front of us there is sin, disease, death, lack and limitation. Every time we turn on the television, there is more of it. From morning to night, we are tempted to believe in two powers and to sit in judgment. But to have the healing consciousness, we must resist every temptation with the constant remembrance, “Neither do I judge thee, and neither do I accept any powers but spiritual law, spiritual life, spiritual being, spiritual presence.”
Your demonstration of harmony and your demonstration of the attainment of that fourth-dimensional consciousness begins with the acknowledgment that there is but one power—or going even further and acknowledging there are no powers. We do not need any powers.
The Third Step – Recognize that You Embody All of God’s Good and Begin to Share
Joel says that the third part of our preparation for developing the healing consciousness and engaging in healing prayer is an absolute reversal of human consciousness. It is realizing that I embody in my consciousness my entire life’s demonstration; I embody the infinite storehouse of God, and therefore I can pour out and share. He suggests this exercise:
Close your eyes and let it be black as night inside, so that you are not distracted. In this darkness, the earth is without form and void. There is only one thing present here, and that is I. I am in the midst of this darkness, and out of this I that I am must flow my entire life’s demonstration. Whatever is in my consciousness is going to face me outside in the world. Therefore, if I acknowledge that in the consciousness which I am, God has given me Himself, His life, His substance, His supply, His grace, His power, then I and my Father are one. All that the Father hath is mine, and I embody it in my consciousness.
So I need not look outside myself to get, achieve, or accomplish. I realize that I embody all of God’s good, and that I can open out a way and begin to share it out of the infinite consciousness which I am, out of that infinite storehouse of God which I am. I can love my neighbor, forgive my neighbor, share my worldly goods with my neighbor, and give cooperation and understanding. What I pour out will return to me. As I sow, so shall I reap, and if I sow love, service, sharing, forgiveness, harmony, abundance, this is the measure of God’s grace that returns unto me.
But if I sit around and wait for somebody else to give something to me, I may sit forever. If I realize that I possess the infinite wealth of the Spirit, then I must be the giver and the doer, and with no thought for a return. All that God has is mine, and all that the Father hath is embodied in my consciousness. I need not look to God for anything more. I need only let pour out of me all that the Father already has given me.
The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, and I am ordained to heal the sick, feed the hungry, preach the Gospel, visit the prisoners, and comfort the comfortless. I am ordained because the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, and I need not look to God or to man. I need only look within myself to find that infinite Being is my individual being.
The Christ-consciousness sees no sins to be forgiven, no powers to be overcome. It recognizes that there is nothing more to come from God. In the beginning, God is God; and in the end, God is God. God never changes. All that the Father hath is mine; all that God is, I am. I must open out a way to share it, and in proportion as I can let the Spirit of God, the spirit of love, truth, justice, forgiveness, flow through me, I live in a transcendental world that is untouched by matter, mind, or the human beliefs in powers for good or for evil.
Your consciousness already IS God-consciousness in Its fullness, but it has been hidden behind the human consciousness of self. Now you are rising out of that human consciousness into Christ-consciousness.
Supplementary Recording
Recording 183B is a beautiful complement to Recording 461B, and you might enjoy hearing it. It is titled “Spiritual Healing – Worldwide Interest,” and comes from the 1957 Chicago Open Class. Joel elaborates on many of the same themes that we heard in Recording 461B. This recording was posted through May 4, 2024, 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.
In this supplementary recording, Joel suggests one more practice for us to consider—living from the principle that there is no good or evil. He says:
“You would be surprised at what happens in your individual experience for the period of a week or two, if you were to faithfully practice the principle that there is no good or evil. You’d find yourself pretty nearly torn apart, if you really caught the awareness of what you are doing. For a week or two, you would not be able to live your normal, natural life. You’d be upset, and you’d be in conflict with yourself and with every appearance that you meet, because at this moment, as you look out, you are very well satisfied with some things, and very much displeased with others. There are some things that you like so well you wish you had more of them, and some things you dislike so much you wish you could get rid of. And that’s what’s causing our trouble, and for a week or two, it’ll cause a little more trouble when you try to change that situation and come to the realization: There is nothing good or evil. Therefore, there is nothing for me to desire, nothing for me to change in myself or in another. There is neither good nor evil. . . .
“Ah, I know how hard it is. I’ve been through it more times than you have, probably more times than you will. . . . My sharing this with you will enable you to get over it much more quickly than I was able to get over it. I didn’t know what I was doing when I was doing it.”