A: You remember that in speaking of our healing principle in The Infinite Way, that I said that we never blame the patient for their ill; we never look for the error in them to be corrected; we never say to them, “Oh, you should be more loving, or you should be this, or you ought to be that.” In other words, we never try to change a person humanly in order to bring out a spiritual healing. And the reason is that all of the evil of the world, all of the sin and all of the disease, all of the lack, all of the misunderstandings may be embraced in the term personal sense. Actually, evil has its origin in the universal belief in two powers. That is what drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, symbolically speaking.
Watch yourself. Well, we could do it right now. We could do it right now. Let’s do this. Close your eyes and think of any person you like, or any condition, or any condition of any person. And let us look right at it and declare within ourselves, “This is neither good nor evil. This has no qualities within itself of either good or evil. Now, if this is a good person or good condition, then I have conditioned my mind and labeled this person good or evil, or this person or condition good.
If I declare this person or this condition as evil, who said so? God said to Adam, “Who told thee that thou wast naked?” Where did this information come from? A moment ago, there was neither good nor evil; a moment ago, you were naked and didn’t mind it. Now, why do you mind it? Something has conditioned your mind, and you see yourself one way as good and another way as evil. But the condition in and of itself is neither good nor evil; it is just a state of being.
Try for a moment to think of a painting or a piece of music, statuary, and see whether it is good or not good. And then ask yourself, “Would the whole world agree with me?” Of course not. That which you are seeing as good, someone else is seeing as not good, or less good, or not at all good, or positively evil. Look at a person and ask yourself if everyone agrees with your estimate of them. And you’ll find that their mother thinks far differently about them than their enemy. Then, is the quality of good in the person or in the concept of that person?
As we know through our spiritual revelation, the Master says, “Why callest thou me good? There is but one good, the Father in heaven,” showing that actually the Master wasn’t good; he was an instrument through which good manifested. But Paul says, “I am not a sinner, yet I feel within myself a sense of sin.” And so, we know that evil is really not personal; it is not a man being evil, even though momentarily a man may be the instrument through which evil manifests.
Now the point that I’m trying to bring to your attention is this: that no man or woman—and you’re looking now in your silence; you’re looking at some man or woman—please remember that man or woman is neither good nor evil, regardless of the judgment of your physical senses. They are not good, and they are not evil. They are just person.
The metaphysical practice proves that disease is not an evil; it is a nothingness. If it were an evil, we could do nothing about it metaphysically. It is only because of its nothingness that we can make it seem to disappear. So that when you are faced with an evil condition of disease, of sin, of lack, be willing to close your eyes and look at it. Don’t hide from it, don’t run away from it, don’t deny it. Look right at it, and realize, “You are neither good nor evil, you are nonexistent.” Think of that: You are neither good nor evil; you are nonexistent; you have no qualities of your own. And the only reason we think it is evil is because universally we have set the name of evil upon it.
Adam named everything, and unfortunately, he named some things good and some things evil. Now, Adam means the human being, mortal man, the man who is a divided household made up of the belief of good and the belief of evil. And so, he can look out through his divided vision and call one thing good and another evil. Whereas there is nothing good or evil, but thinking makes it so. Universal belief pins the qualities or names of good and evil upon persons and things.
Now, in treatment, in healing work, you approach your patient in this light: “You are neither good nor evil. You are spiritual; you are the child of God, the offspring of Spirit, governed by spiritual law, spiritual life, spiritual substance, spiritual abundance. Therefore, you are not good or evil, but “All that the Father is, thou art. All that the Father hath is thine.” And this is wholly spiritual; this is neither good nor evil; this is wholly spiritual. And evil is not of you; evil is this impersonal, universal belief in two powers. It is not in you nor of you; it is no part of you. And because it has no person in whom, on whom, or through whom to operate, it is nullified; it is nothingness. They rested in his word: “They have only the arm of flesh”—temporal power, nothingness—for all power is of God, Spirit, therefore all power is spiritual.
And as you treat in this manner, seeing no person as good or evil, seeing no condition as good or evil, remembering that no one and no thing has a quality of good or evil, but only thinking makes it so, only universal belief. Not your thinking—you never thought two times two is five. That’s a universal belief. You never thought being naked is evil. That was wished on you by those who said, “Be sure to have lots of clothing.” It was pounded into us from infancy almost, until we actually believe that there is something sinful about the body. There isn’t; it’s the way we were instructed that makes us feel that way. Now, there is nothing evil about the body. The body is an instrument of life, and every part of the body has some function in life, but no part of the body is good or evil. And whatever qualities we give to it are only because of universal belief. A body is just a body.
Now, by this type of treatment, you will find that healing work will not be difficult. Let me illustrate that for you. Suppose there is an epidemic of flu. Is that your fault or mine? Is that your wrong thinking or mine? Of course not! There is a universal belief about epidemics, and the moment that you realize that epidemics are only the universal belief in a power apart from God, or a substance apart from God, or an activity apart from God, you are freeing your patient—and not only one. I have witnessed in my practice the healing of contagious disease in a whole public school system, and watched it clear out in twenty-four hours, merely by three practitioners realizing the non-power nature of infection and contagion; realizing it as a universal belief, a temporal power without any person in whom, on whom, through whom, to operate.
In the same way, cancer is prevalent. But why is it so prevalent? Because of the advertising, because of the fears generated in the press, on the radio, and on television until . . . It doesn’t arouse a fear in you; it arouses a fear in the universal human mind, and then we begin to take on its fears. At least the human race does, unless it can protect itself with the understanding that there is only one power and therefore, nothing is good or evil, only thinking makes it so—universal thinking, universal belief. And so, you find that working in this way, you will prove that evil is impersonal. It’s not in your patient; it’s not of your patient, and therefore it’s nullified.
However, and I brought this to your attention, you may find ten percent of your cases or fifteen or twenty even, sometimes, at least it’ll volley back and forth between twenty percent and ten percent of your cases that do not readily yield, and some that will not yield at all. And you’ll say, “Well, here there must be some personal reason.” And you will find this: the evil itself is impersonal, but this individual has made it personal by clinging to it, holding on to it, being unwilling to loose it and let it go—or if not unwilling, incapable for the moment. And I’ll illustrate that for you this way: the whole of human nature is made up of “self-preservation is the first law of nature.” And this means then, that in order to preserve ourselves, we don’t much care what happens to anyone else. It’s just self-preservation that interests us. We can agree to wiping out a whole nation if only it’ll protect us. We don’t mind shooting down another whole nation if it’ll just leave us intact. That’s human nature.
But sometimes we go very far afield with this self-preservation business, and we develop within ourselves a greed, a hunger for money, let us say, such an intense fear of it, such an intense desire for it, such an intense desire to preserve ourselves in our old age that we’ll become miserly or greedy, money-hungry. And, while this itself is not personal, this is really a universal belief of the human race, an individual can hug that particular evil to themselves so tightly and get so involved in it that they just can’t let go of that particular phase of materiality. And you find that you can’t free them or loose them, because they themselves are not yielding to a spiritual realization. But while you’re working spiritually, they’re hugging themselves tightly in their defense of their humanhood, the very thing you are trying to dispense with for them.
Now it isn’t always greed or money, lust. There are hatreds; there are personal hatreds. A person develops such an intense hate of another person that they cannot adopt a spiritual attitude of “Father, forgive them,” or “Let’s pray for them,” or “Loose them and let them go.” But no, they must nurture this hate, and while hatred is not personal, it’s an impersonal thing. And, in our healing work, practically everyone who comes to us is healed of some degree of hate, prejudice, bias, or bigotry. Because they’re, oh . . . they set lightly upon us. They’re probably part of a family inheritance or a racial or religious inheritance, but it hasn’t gone too deeply within us. And so, with every healing, we’re really released from some phase of hate, resentment, bigotry, bias, and so forth.
Ah, but then there are some individuals who develop within themselves—it also may be family reasons or church reasons or national reasons—they will develop such a hatred of a particular race or color or creed, that it becomes an obsession with them. And they hug this very materialism to themselves, while you are trying to set them free spiritually. They’re really defying you or daring you to do it, because in spite of all your efforts, they’re not going to give up that bias, bigotry, prejudice, hatred, whatever it may be. And there too, it’s a universal belief, but they have made it personal by their holding to it and either refusing or being unwilling at the moment to release it.
Now I don’t have to tell you that there are many other human failings which we all have, that we’re all heir to, as human beings. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t lived long or seriously, or else they haven’t observed what’s going on around them. We’re all creatures of some phase of erroneous believing and thinking. But most things rest so lightly within us that if we are led to a spiritual message, we’re happy to be transformed; we’re happy to be renewed; we’re happy to give up these human failings. And with good spiritual treatment, we are released from them; we are freed from them; we’re freed from many of our human fears and resentments. But then, here and there, we may find one that we cannot release and let go, and it is that one that acts as a barrier within our own consciousness to prevent that healing light.
You see, forgetting healing for a moment—no, we won’t forget it, we’ll just lay it aside for a moment. Healing is too important to ever forget, but laying it aside for a moment, we are on this path primarily for spiritual illumination. That means purification. And as human beings, we have much within us of which we must be purified. There must be a cleansing process. There may be no evil in us, but actually, a greater evil than evil is goodness. Being good is very often a worse sin than being bad; at least it’s a more difficult one to heal someone of. And everyone has to be healed of being good before they can be spiritual. And I’m asking you to take me seriously on that.
When you first come to the metaphysical world, you naturally have only one thing in mind, and that is getting rid of bad health and substituting good health, or getting rid of lack and limitation and substituting abundance, or getting rid of sin and substituting purity. But when you have fully accomplished this one hundred percent, you have only arrived at the end of the second degree of your journey. And when you enter the third, you have to wipe out that entire picture of goodness that you’ve spent so long to build up, because in the spiritual kingdom there is no more goodness than there is evil; there is no more health than there is disease; there is no more purity than there is impurity; there is no more youth than there is old age. Yes, you even have to be healed of youth.
Why? Because the spiritual kingdom is not of this world, and it isn’t anything like this world. The spiritual kingdom isn’t a human world improved; it isn’t just a human world with everybody at thirty-five years of age, much as we’d like to make it that way. It isn’t just a human world with everybody having an abundance of money or property. It isn’t that way at all in the spiritual kingdom. The spiritual kingdom has no trace in it of anything that we can see, hear, taste, touch, smell, reason, or think in the human world. My kingdom is not of this world.
And so, while all of our efforts in the early part of our metaphysical life are to change the negative aspects of life to the positive, the bad to the good, once you have gotten past that stage, you will realize that if you had perfect health and an abundance of wealth, that you’d still be unhappy, you’d still be miserable, you’d still be lonesome. There would be something missing. Ah, there are loads of people in the world that are thirty or thirty-five or forty, and healthy and wealthy and miserable. There are loads of people who are going to die if they don’t get this girl or this man, and they get them, and wish they could die.
Attaining the very height of our best imagined humanhood leaves us with a tremendous void, a hollow inside. And we realize then that with all our getting, we have just gotten nothing; with all our getting, we’ve missed the mark. And when we realize that, we are approaching spiritual wisdom, for then we begin to know that until I have God, I have nothing, but if I have God, and even if I have God and nothing else, I have everything. If I have everything and not God, I have nothing. If I have God and nothing else, I have everything. And then you discover the difference between good health, good wealth, human happiness, and the Peace that passeth understanding, or what the Master called “My peace.” “My peace give I unto thee, not as the world giveth”—not the peace of health, not the peace of wealth. There is a “My peace,” something that transcends earthly wisdom. And that’s why we have the word “transcendental” wisdom, “transcendental” knowledge, “transcendental” experience—a wisdom, a knowledge, an experience, that transcends even earthly good. And that’s the goal of everyone on the spiritual path.
Even though we dally for a while, turning our bad into good, and our sickness into health, and our lack into abundance, we dally with that for a while, but the sport gets boring. And pretty soon you ask yourself, “Supposing in my lifetime, I could change ten thousand sick people into ten thousand well people, and there are still four billion people on earth, now how much have I accomplished? And sooner or later, they [the ones healed] are going to die anyhow.” Remember that all of the people that Jesus healed eventually died or passed on. Remember that all those he fed eventually knew persecution and hunger. Now tell me, supposing in your lifetime you can heal, well, let’s go far and say fifty thousand people out of four billion. Do you think you amount to so much? It isn’t quite as glorious as you think.
But, if you could lead an individual from the material sense of life to the spiritual, just one individual, you’ve set a great part of mankind free, because it only takes one here and one there, set free from even good materiality, to transform the entire world. Ten righteous men in a city can save it. And so if you, in your lifetime, can bring about the transition, just of taking ten people from mortal, material standards of life, even the good ones [the good standards], and lift them into the transcendental experience of spiritual awareness, you’ll have done much more than the practitioner who healed fifty thousand people from sickness to health. These very people that you heal, you know, next week, next year, two years from now, they’re going to be sick again. The only permanent good you bring to them is if you bring to them a lifted consciousness above the level of good and evil, above the level of sickness and health, above the level of poverty and wealth, into the realization of spiritual identity.
Practically everyone you heal spiritually, you do lift spiritually into higher altitudes of consciousness. Your struggles come with those who have taken one or two facets of materialism and hugged them to their bosom so tightly that you just cannot release them from it. The Master recognized this when he healed the sinner and said, “Go and sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” In other words, I have removed this burden from you, but if your state of consciousness hasn’t changed, and you go back to the same mode of life, even a worse thing will come upon you because now you know better. So it is, the Master warned about healing—removing one devil to make room for seven more.
Now, just think, if someone could come along, and let us say, go through a hospital, and in twenty-four hours empty it out; turn all the sick people into well ones; that’d be quite a miracle. But let us suppose a miracle worker came to earth and could do it, how would you like to follow all those people around the next day and see what they’re doing? How many do you think would be on their way back to the hospital soon? Because if they have only been physically healed, aren’t they going to go back to the same type of life that brought them to the hospital in the first place? Whether they acquire the same disease or another, it’s inevitable that they’re going to bring something upon themselves.
So don’t think for a moment that it is any great miracle or any great virtue in being able to go up and down among your friends and relatives and heal them all. That’s not a virtue. We’ve seen too many in this work who have had healings through their practitioner’s realization but haven’t had a change of consciousness and went right back to their regular way of living, and soon after, either had the same or another complaint. Why? There had not been a transformation of consciousness; there had not been a renewing of the mind. And the same consciousness that brought on one condition brings it on again or brings another one.
Always, our consciousness must be changed. And that is why I said the other evening that often the fortunate people are those who have slow healings, because the very struggle that they make, the very amount of treatments that are necessary for them to receive, helps to break down in them some phase of mortal, material consciousness and enables them to have more and more of that mind which was also in Christ Jesus. And it is for this reason that the major part of healing is not attaining instantaneous healings or quick healings.
The major part of the healing work is bringing about the transformation in the consciousness of our patients and our students. So that, as we watch their lives after a year, two, three, five, and see the change in them, see the change in their nature, see the fears drop away, the anxieties drop away, see prejudices, biases, bigotries drop away, impatience, intolerance, then you can say, “Ah, I have a jewel laid up in my future crown.” Because that is really the function of the Christ—the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the feeding of the hungry. These are the signs following the attainment of Christ consciousness, but they in no wise liberate the patient or the student.
The individual who attains spiritual consciousness will, in some degree, heal, reform, improve, forgive. But the one who has received that benefit has received very little unless it encourages them to find out how it took place, unless it encourages them to dig more deeply into the realm of their own soul until they make contact with that Spirit within. I do not know how other practitioners feel, but I know how I feel when often I receive letters after someone’s asked for help and says, “Oh, I’m all healed now. Enclosed please find check. Thank you.” Not a sign of, “Oh, please tell me about it; oh, please explain; or how am I?” No, no. Just “Oh, thank you.”
And as sometimes happens too, a letter: “A year ago I wrote you for help and was healed, will you please heal me again?” I mean, those are discouraging letters for a practitioner, a teacher. Someone who has come to you for loaves and fishes; someone who’s come just to get rid of a pain and then wants to go back to the world until they get another pain, and then sometimes says, “And what is your fee?” You’d really think that you were healing a headache with some aspirin, instead of devoting your life to changing their consciousness.
No, evil is impersonal. Now realize that, and do not hold evil against anyone. And if you would heal them, disregard even the evil that you witness about them. Don’t even believe what you see. But hold to the truth that the whole fabric of evil is just the carnal mind, or a belief in two powers, and that it has no law to sustain it, no God to ordain it, and therefore it is nothingness. And by impersonalizing it and nothingizing it, you bring about healings, and really fine healings too.
My experience in this work in thirty years is that impersonalizing evil, nothingizing evil, brings out the finest healings. Once in a while, I get stuck because a person presents such pictures of evil to me that they make it hard for me to un-see it. They are adamant in showing me how mean they can be. And I do have difficulty with those, because it only means that they are intensely hugging to themselves some facet or phase of materialism or materialistic believing, and it’s difficult to crack their knuckles and make them let go. And yet you have to stick [at it] as long as they will. As long as they want your help, you have to stick with them and keep giving it in the hopes that you can bring light and freedom. Because under no consideration can you hold them personally responsible for their evils, regardless of how much they may be personalizing it themselves. It isn’t personal.
1This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 404B: 1961 Mission Inn Closed Class, “The Mystical Approach, Part Two.” It is posted with the kind permission of the Estate of Joel S. Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on the recorded classes and the copyright on the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available from The Infinite Way Office or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
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