A: To some minor extent, it does. But the basis of spiritual healing is receptivity. That’s the basis of spiritual healing—that there must be a receptivity, a desire for it on the part of the one to be healed. And the reason is this: spiritual healing is not the healing of the diseases of the body. Spiritual healing is opening one’s soul faculties so as to bring about a complete change of one’s interior life and thereby change the health or harmonies of the outer.
In other words, spiritual healing has nothing to do with disease; it has to do with the soul of an individual. And in opening that—the light from within, the understanding—the change of nature brings about that which is called physical healing.
Now, always remember this: In spiritual healing, you are not a doctor, nor are you a metaphysical practitioner, nor are you interested primarily in the physical healing, but in the spiritual unfoldment, which, in its turn, produces healing. In other words, if we had the ability to go into the hospitals and send everybody home tonight cured, we wouldn’t do it. The reason is this: What will they do with their health after they’ve got it? Go back to their old way of living and get more sick? . . .
So it is, our interest isn’t merely to see that all people are healthy because usually, that just leaves them free to go and indulge their human sense of life again and get two more ills where one came before. You will remember, often when the Master healed, he said, “Neither do I condemn thee, but go, and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” In other words, “I’ve healed you in spite of the fact that your ills have been brought on by your materialistic way of living, but watch out that you don’t go back to that way of living, since it’s going to bring something worse upon you.”
Now, spiritual healing is aimed at a person’s life more than at their body, so that a transformation takes place in their mind, in their character, in their mode of life, in their interests in life. And by spiritualizing consciousness, it brings forth a healthy body, a healthy purse, a healthy mode of life.
That is one reason that we cannot make the appeal to the general public. The general public would certainly like the health that we can give them, if only they didn’t have to give up their materialistic modes and means of living in order to get it. And with us, that is the prime essential—not the getting healthy, but the giving up of the materialistic modes and means of living. That was brought out last night, where it was made very evident that the whole of our purpose is to bring one in contact with God, in intimate contact with God, in personal contact with God.
Now, one could never expect to be in contact with God and be the same human being tomorrow that they were the day before they made the contact. That would be an utter impossibility. Any contact with God is bound to change one’s nature. In changing one’s nature, it changes one’s entire life. But be assured of this, that the biggest change comes in one’s nature.
Now, receptivity is a major factor. It is possible here and there, and it does happen, that people are healed who do not ask for healing. In other words, a wife may ask for healing for her husband, or a parent may ask for healing for their child, and in most cases, they get it. But that is because of the contact with the one closest to that person.
In other words, you will remember the man who asked the Master for healing for his servant, and the servant was healed, and another case where a father asked for help for a child, and the healing took place. The control there was the consciousness of the one who asked for help, and it is very effective, except in such cases where the individual concerned specifically refuses it and refutes it. That does happen—that there are men or women who definitely do not want to be healed through other than medical means, and they have the power of withholding that healing by other means from themselves.
In the same way, there are those of us who cannot be healed by medical means. There is something, after years of being in this life, that just refutes the idea of medicine, and you could just pour it into us, and as fast as you’d pour it in, we would throw it off, just because our natures negate the power of medicine. So there are other natures attuned to medicine that like it, that feel themselves able to yield to it, and those people throw off mental or spiritual healing as if it were just not around at all.
And so it is, it is not possible to heal everybody spiritually. As a matter of fact, it isn’t even possible to heal everyone who asks for it. And the reason is that many of those who ask for it are not really seeking the spiritual healing, but the loaves and fishes part of it, the physical healing, while yet wanting to hold on to the very thing that is producing their ill. It is when a person completely yields and is willing for the action of the Spirit to renew them by the transforming of the mind, by changing their inner nature—that is where you have your very finest healings and your quickest healings. But there must be a yielding; there must be a willingness to give up those traits that really hold us in bondage to our ills.
1This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 134A: 1956 Sydney Lecture Series, “Teaching The Infinite Way, Part 3.” 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 The Infinite Way website or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
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