Recording 120B, “Christ Realized Is the Harmony of Being” is from the 1955 Kailua Study Group. It is one of many classes used as source material for Chapter 4, “The Indissoluble Union,” in The Art of Meditation.
To download or print these study suggestions, click/tap here.
Part 1: Introduction
Session 1: Introduction and Overview (Recording 477B)
In this introductory recording, Joel gave a broad overview of spiritual healing in The Infinite Way. He emphasized that spiritual healing is not a technique or a system to be learned. The ability to bring healing is the fruitage, or the natural manifestation, of realized spiritual consciousness. And what is realized spiritual consciousness? It is the realized consciousness of the major principles of The Infinite Way: the nature of God, the nature of individual being, the nature of error, and the nature of prayer. In other words, it is the state of consciousness in which the truth of these principles is real to us; it is our lived reality. Joel emphasized that spiritual healing in The Infinite Way is never trying to manipulate or change conditions. Healing is revealing—the revealing of the truth that already IS. To review the key points in this recording, click/tap here.
Part 2: The Principles and Their Role in Healing
Session 1: The Nature of God (Recording 261A)
There are no special healing principles in The Infinite Way. While Joel does speak of the “healing” principles, they are the same as the foundational principles of The Infinite Way—the nature of God, the nature of individual being, the nature of error, and the nature of prayer. With this recording, we began our detailed review of these four principles, beginning with the nature of God and its relationship to spiritual healing. To review the key points in this recording, click/tap here.
In this session, we turn to the second foundational principle of The Infinite Way—the nature of individual being—which is absolutely essential to healing work.
The nature of individual being stems from the nature of God as Omnipresence. If God is Omnipresence, there can be no other presence. Therefore, if we are “present”—if we exist—our being must be wholly within that Omnipresence and share its qualities. We are infinite, eternal, and unique expressions of spiritual being. As Joel often reminds us, God alone is, and because God is, all individual being is God expressing as.
The only reason for discord in human experience is the sense, or belief, that we are separate from God or somehow outside of Omnipresence. To have a healing consciousness is to recognize that because every individual is one with that Presence, every individual is a perfect spiritual being. While we might be tempted to think that an individual is the physical body, that is merely the erroneous testimony of the senses—a concept, a misperception of the wholly spiritual nature of our true being.[1]
Joel teaches that our oneness with God, also known as “the Christ within,” can manifest in our experience only as spiritual wholeness, completeness, and harmony. If you accept that as truth, you must also accept that when you realize that truth—when it becomes your reality—there can be no discord. That is why, in spiritual healing, we never attempt to change or overcome any appearance of discord. Instead, we rise into the consciousness of the true spiritual nature of individual being as one with God. From this perspective, what we call “spiritual healing” is more accurately called the “realization of oneness.”
As Joel reminds us, reading or hearing about a principle is only a first step toward realizing it. When the principle becomes a living truth for us, it can operate in our lives. In this class, Joel gives us practices for developing our consciousness of the nature of individual being.
Our study recording for this session is 120B, from the 1955 Kailua Study Group, titled, “Christ Realized Is the Harmony of Being.” In the optional study for the previous session on the nature of God, we identified the implications for spiritual healing for each key point. For this session, we encourage you to identify the implications.
Joel calls this statement of Jesus “one of the most astonishing revelations of all time.” The Infinite Way presents this same revelation as the principle of the nature of individual being: God is individual being, and therefore, all that God is, I am, and all that God has is mine. Remember that when Joel speaks of “individual being,” he is not talking about the physical body or the human mind. He is speaking of the Soul, the divine individual expression, the Christ of our being.
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
The realization that God is individual being must be attained in one’s own consciousness. The first step is knowing the principle and accepting it:
Yes, God is my individual being. God constitutes my being. God is the life of my being, the soul of my being, the spirit. God is the very substance of which even my body is formed. God is the only law governing me—not laws of matter, food, climate, or digestion; not laws of medical or theological belief; not laws of sin or purity; not laws of anything. God is the only law. God is the law of my being, and there is no other law. It is a law of immortality, a law of eternality, a law of perfection. Thank you, Father, that God is this infinite law of my being.
Then, to anchor the principle of the nature of individual being in our consciousness, we practice it through contemplation and meditation—just a few minutes at a time, many times a day. We bring it to mind every time we encounter an appearance that contradicts the truth that God is individual being.
In daily life, we will encounter situations in which we forget that God is my individual being and the individual being of every other. We might pay lip service to our belief in that principle, but our behavior may expose our subconscious disbelief. For example, if someone comes to us for help, we might immediately think, “Oh, I don’t have enough understanding.”
It is true that as a human being, you do not, and never will, have enough understanding to help anybody, even with a minor claim. Spiritual help does not come through your personal human understanding. If you are practicing the principle of the nature of individual being, your response must be, “Humanly, I don’t have enough understanding, but spiritually, I do. So I will go within.”
Then you can say, “Father, this help has to come as the activity of the Christ. I am willing to be still and let the activity of Thy being be the activity of my being. Let Thy grace be the sufficiency unto this situation.” In this way, you “nothingize” yourself, and live by the Master’s words: “I can of my own self do nothing.”
This does not imply duality; you are not turning to a far-off God. You are turning within, recognizing God as your individual being, acknowledging that the allness of God is within your individual being; realizing that you are an instrument for the Father within you, and that you can let the infinity at the center of your own being flow out from you to the world.
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
When Jesus said, “I and the Father are one,” or when Joel said, “God is individual being,” they meant that it is true for every individual. All that the Father is, you are, and all that the Father has is embodied in your consciousness. Therefore, you do not have to achieve or acquire anything; it flows forth from the infinity of your being.
The function of the books, recordings, teachers, and practitioners is to reveal God as your individual being so that you will realize that, just as Moses brought forth manna, a cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, and just as Jesus brought forth food, drink, and healing for the multitudes, you, too, can let the manna for today unfold from your own consciousness, whether it is food, protection, healing, or comfort.
To human sense, there will always be some need, but the fulfillment of that need already exists as the consciousness of individual being, because it exists as God, and God is the consciousness of individual being. It may take a while to attain the deep realization of this, but eventually, you will have the absolute conviction: “God is my individual being. The place whereon I stand is holy ground, and every need will be fulfilled from within my own consciousness.”
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
The core of our healing ministry is the realization of God as individual being. Not everyone who comes to us will benefit from our realization of that truth, because many have not reached a state of consciousness where they can assimilate it.
The nature of individual being is a universal principle that was revealed by Krishna, Moses, and Isaiah. Jesus gave it in these words: “I and the Father are one. Thou seest me, thou seest the Father that sent me.” However, this teaching was withheld by some religious organizations because they needed memberships to meet their needs, and if you realize the principle that God is individual being, you do not need membership in an organization.
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
“Thou couldst have no power over me unless it came from God” captures an essential truth in spiritual healing: God alone is power. You cannot ever heal a disease or reform a sinner, because if God alone is power, and God is your individual being, there is no sick or sinning person to deal with. All there is to deal with is an erroneous belief about individual being.
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
The only place to meet a belief is in your own mind. If presented with the belief that 2 x 2 = 5, where do you meet it? In your own thought. You don’t try to fight the belief or overcome it; you simply know the unreality of it.
You will be presented with beliefs of cancer, paralysis, old age, death, blindness, deafness, lameness, depression, lack, limitation, poverty, diseases, and all manner of discordant appearances. If you try to do something to the appearance or overcome it, you are competing with materia medica. In other words, by trying to change the appearance, you, too, are acknowledging that the discord is real, but you think that you have a different way to overcome it.
At one time, traditional medicine saw disease as solely a condition of matter and attempted to change bad matter into good matter. Later, they began to believe that mental conditions produced physical discords and tried to handle them as mental issues. If that didn’t work, some took another step and tried to influence God to do something about the disease. But behind all three approaches—physical, mental, and going to God—is the acknowledgment that there is a “something” to handle.
This is where spiritual healing in The Infinite Way differs. We stand on the principle that God is individual being, and God is spirit. Therefore the nature and character of individual being is spiritual, and we do not have a person or a condition to be healed. Unlike materia medica, we do not have to do anything to you. We attain a state of consciousness in which we recognize the truth of individual being.
I can’t say “you” are spiritual or “God’s perfect child,” because as a human, you are not. My perception of you through the physical senses is a limited, erroneous concept of your true spiritual being. Once I realize that “God is individual being,” I set “You” aside, recognizing that you are a perfect spiritual being, who needs no healing. Then I deal with the appearance, which has nothing to do with You.
I do not have to battle the appearance. I deal with it in my own mind, just as I deal with the appearance of 2 x 2 = 5, or the appearance of railroad tracks coming together. I must overcome the root of all error, which is the belief that you are a human being, separate and apart from God, with a life, will, mind, soul, body, and being of your own, living under a law other than the law of God. I must come to the realized consciousness that God is individual being, and so disease cannot be a reality for you.
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
First, you must at least have these two key points thoroughly in mind: God is individual being, and God alone is power. You use these to lift your awareness. To make them a part of your developed consciousness, many times a day, you go within and recognize:
Thy grace is not only my sufficiency, but the sufficiency of all those who come within range of my thought. I am an instrument through which this invisible blessing may appear in the lives of those who seek me. The kingdom of God is within me, the kingdom of righteousness, and it is Thy kingdom, and Thy power, and Thy grace, and Thy grace is the sufficiency, the blessing, to all who are in the world. It is my joy that this benediction of God, this grace of God, flow equally to friend or foe, near or far. It is my joy that any who lift their thought or voice to God—of any faith, religion, color, race, or creed—find benediction and blessing through Thy grace, which flows through me.
If you have done this faithfully, when someone comes to you for help, you can turn within and realize:
Thy grace is the sufficiency unto this experience, and it makes no difference what the nature of the appearance is. One touch of the Christ is enough to raise the dead, to turn the scarlet sin into purity. Thy grace is sufficient for every demand made upon It. So now, in the name of God, and the grace of God, let Thy blessing and Thy benediction, Thy Christ, be made evident.
That awareness will make you an instrument through which God’s grace can raise the dead, feed the hungry, and comfort the mourner. We can’t heal disease, but if we can achieve a realization of the Christ, It will appear as if we had healed disease, or brought about employment, or enrichment, or purification, or whatever the need may have been.
It might take some time for the person presenting the claim to experience the effect, but the truth that God is individual being is established even before the claim is presented.
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
“Your thoughts are not my thoughts. My thoughts are not your thoughts, saith the Lord.” Your words and thoughts may not comfort or bless anyone. But if you can retire within yourself and know that the grace of God touches the individual, they can feel as if a holy presence has taken the burden from them. Words might come through you, and it will be the grace of God in those words that does the work, not the words themselves.
Joel’s experience was that the deepest comfort to another comes when there are no words or thoughts, just a way opened for the activity of the Christ to pass through you to the consciousness of the one who is tuned in. In maintaining yourself as an instrument, the grace of God is available to those who draw on it, whether they come to you in person or are simply reaching out in thought. Everyone can raise themselves to that same position in which the activity of the Christ is enabled to flow as a blessing and a benediction.
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
If the Christ ever raised the dead, healed the sick, redeemed the sinner, or fed the hungry, the activity of that Christ can do the same things today. But just as there had to be a Jesus to realize the Christ in order for those experiences to take place, so there has to be an individual today to realize the Christ. When we realize our Christhood and make way for Its activity, the Christ appears as individual you and me. But it must be the realized Christ, not just words about it, or intellectual knowledge, or empty claims.
The realized Christ is the secret of harmonious living, individually and collectively, and we as individuals must be the ones to realize it. Stand fast with the principle that God is individual being. Gain the conviction that God alone is power, and that we are not competing with materia medica or the orthodox ministry. When you come to a deep realization that God is individual being, your illumined consciousness can dispel the illusory pictures.
Question: What are the implications for healing work?
In this class, Joel refers to the story about the devil and the priest but does not retell it. If you have not heard that story, this is how Joel told it in Recording 23B, “God Is – continued.”
“Right now, I’m going to tell you a story written by Kahlil Gibran. The story is of a priest walking along the country road and hearing a man cry out for help. He sees a man in the ditch, in pain, dirty, bleeding, and his first temptation is, of course, to go and help the man. But then, fearing that the man may be a criminal, or that he may be dying, and that he might be blamed for the death, he decides to walk on and ignore the man.
“But the man cries out again for help, cries out desperately in his hurt. The priest turns back again to help, but this time fears that the man may be an escaped lunatic, and fearing him, decides to walk on. Again, the man cries out for help, saying that he’s wounded, bleeding, dying, and that he’s afraid of death.
“The priest turns back and decides to help the man. But the man’s face seems familiar, though not in a nice way, and the priest voices that thought. ‘Haven’t I met you? Don’t I know you?’ And, the man says, ‘Why yes, I’m your best friend.’
“’Best friend? I don’t recognize you.’
“’Why yes, I’m your best friend. I’m the Devil.’
“Oh, the priest then goes on at a great rate, berating the Devil and asking for the Devil’s death, wanting the Devil’s death. But the Devil says, ‘Oh no. Hold on! I’m your best friend. How would you make a living if I weren’t alive? How do you get your pennies from the people, except by saying prayers to protect them against me? How does your church survive? How do they get money for these edifices, except by overcoming me? But suppose I were dead. What would you do then?’ And the priest took the man to his home and nursed him back to health.”
If you have studied Joel’s message for any length of time, you have heard the words “God is individual being” hundreds of times. But have you realized how momentous and, as Joel says, how “astonishing” that truth really is? “God is my individual being.”
For many of us, while it might resonate with us as truth, and even though we accept it intellectually, we haven’t experienced it. We believe it; we say it, but we have not realized it. Yet, if it is the truth, it is true of us now. At some level, we must be “experiencing” it, although we are not conscious of that experience. What is missing is realization; it is not yet real to us; it is still just an idea we hold in mind, and not the living truth of our everyday reality.
Once we have deeply experienced the truth of our own being, then we can discern the same truth about the individuals who come to us for help. It is this elevated consciousness of the truth of being that does the healing work. Therefore, if we hope to develop a healing consciousness, it is essential that we work to experience the truth of our own being.
These are some interesting questions to ponder in this regard:
Several examples are given below for ways to detach from humanhood and experience more of your true Self, God as individual being. Work with any that resonate with you, or let them serve as a catalyst for generating your own ideas for experiencing your true identity.
Detaching from Humanhood
Joel said that humanhood is the veil that separates us from the experience of our true being. So in proportion as we can detach from humanhood, we can have a deeper experience of our own identity. “Dying daily” can be a living spiritual practice, a conscious surrender of the false sense of self, so that the Christ of your being can be revealed. These practices can help with that.
Witnessing thought and sensation
Alternatively, you can try this:
Begin each day by recognizing the truth of being.
At the start of the day, inwardly declare:
I am not [your name]. I am not a man or woman, a body, a mind, a personality. I am not the product of my past, my race, my gender, or my nation. I am not a limited self.
This declaration is a release, not a rejection. You are not destroying yourself; you are removing the mask to reveal the truth.
Continue:
I and the Father are one. I release the belief in a selfhood apart from God. I surrender every thought, desire, fear, and human identity. I am nourished from within. I am lived by the invisible I that I Am. I seek nothing, want nothing, need nothing. I am fulfilled now because God is being Itself as me.
“I Am” practice
Withhold judgment on every appearance.
The human mind quickly labels people, circumstances, and events as good or bad. Dying to humanhood means refraining from judgment.
When facing a person or situation, say inwardly, “I do not judge by appearances. I do not accept this as good or evil. God is my individual being, and I wait for the Father to reveal what is true.”
Refrain from taking thought.
Human beings are constantly taking thought—worrying, planning, fearing, analyzing. Throughout the day, take moments to go within: “I take no thought for my life. All that the Father hath is mine, because I and the Father are one. God is my individual being.”
Let go of trying to figure things out. Let the I within lead. In quietness, go within and ask: “What would You have me do, be, or say? You live my life; I yield.”
Refrain from identifying with the body.
When discomfort or illness arises, or when aging or sensation dominates your awareness, gently declare: “This body is not my identity. It is not my Self. God is my being, and I am Spirit—indivisible, incorporeal, infinite, eternal. I am not in this body; the body is in my consciousness.”
Joel’s “body exercise” can be helpful in de-identifying with the body. To listen to Joel lead students through the body exercise, click/tap here and scroll to the bottom of the page.
[1] Goldsmith Global conducted a study program “About Body,” which might be helpful if you find it challenging to de-identify with the physical body.