(If you have access to recording 106A and would like to hear Joel answer this question, he begins at approximately 14:09.)
A: Let us assume now that the testimony of the senses is not good. And so, we will say that judging by appearances, the situation is kind of bad. But we have come to a place where we say, “No, I’m not going to judge by appearances. I’m not going to accept sense testimony. I’m going to stand in the truth even though I can’t feel it at the moment. I’m going to stand in the truth of God as the substance of all form, God as the only law in this situation, God as the only cause in this situation.” And so, we will rehearse within ourselves the truth of being as we understand it.
Then we say, “All right now, that’s that, and I’ll stand on it.” Well, five minutes later, fifty minutes later, five hours later, the thing comes back to plague us—the thought, the condition, the appearance. “No, I’m standing on the truth that I must not judge by appearances. I must not accept sense testimony; I’m standing on it.” And that’s all you can do. Now, whether you stand on it for thirty hours, thirty days, or thirty months, you have nothing to do but stand on it.
Now, if you want an illustration of that, there’s Mr. Rickenbacker out in the Pacific Ocean in a rubber boat, and there’s nobody coming to find him, and the heat is terrible. There’s an absence of food and water. Now that’s the sense testimony. That’s the appearance. But Mr. Rickenbacker is a student of some form of metaphysics, and he sits this way. (Evidently, Joel assumed a posture to indicate what he meant.) Now what’s going on in his mind? Remember, here’s the big Pacific Ocean—burning up, burning him and his friends up with sun, heat, lack of water, lack of food.
What can he do there? There’s only one thing he can do, and that’s what he did. “I can’t accept sense testimony.” I’m not saying that these are his words, but this must have been his reaction. “The place whereon I stand is holy ground. This very place, even though it seems like hell, Thou art there. You know, if I look around here, this is the ‘valley of the shadow of death.’ It won’t be long now. Yes, that’s sense testimony, but Thou art there.”
Whither can I flee from the Spirit of God? Out in the Pacific? Oh no, the Spirit of God must be there, too. Now you know hours pass and hours, and the cold night follows the hot day, and another cold night follows another hot day. By that time, I guess most of us would be saying, “Well, God, I guess you deserted us, or maybe we sinned, and you are punishing us.” But no, he just sits there calmly, peacefully.
“How can I get outside the realm of God? Where will I go to get away from God’s goodness? Where in Christ Jesus’ teaching does it say that I or anybody else can be punished for sin? If I am to forgive seventy times seven, how many times is God to forgive me? Well, then, I’m not being punished. Neither are these men being punished. And neither are we outside of God’s kingdom. As in heaven, so on earth. God’s right here. All that God is in heaven, God must be on earth and on the waters of the Pacific, too.”
Now I can imagine that that must have been his reaction to the situation. Then all of a sudden, a few fish jump up out of the sea into the boat. And I suppose Rickenbacker says, “Well, God, that’s a pretty good job. Your aim was good.” A little later, a couple of birds come down and sit on his head and wait to be captured. “Well, God, it’s evident you’re right around here somewhere.” And then comes some water down from the blue sky—fresh water. And Rickenbacker doesn’t get excited. It doesn’t say anywhere in any of the accounts that he got excited. He just sort of expected God was there, and God was there.
Well, you think that goes on day in and day out, that he would finally give up hope and say, “I guess we’re doomed,” but not that man. No, no, no. He just says, “I can’t see how God could leave me or forsake me when the Scripture is so clear: I will never leave you nor forsake you; before Abraham was, I am with you; I will be with you unto the end of the world.” “No,” he says, “I guess I can trust that. I’d rather trust that than the evidence of my senses because what I am seeing isn’t so good.” So he has to live with his scriptural promises, knowing that he has fulfilled his part of the bargain.
For years and years and years, he has lived in the secret place of the Most High. He has depended on God in other experiences. He keeps the word in his consciousness and abides in the word and lets the word abide in him. How now, after obedience to all that, how can he be forsaken? And lo and behold, the day comes of rescue.
Now then, if you refuse to accept sense testimony, you can’t say, “I refuse to accept it for twenty-four hours, but if it doesn’t change tomorrow, I’ll begin to accept it.” There’s no room in spiritual wisdom for that. Moses, you know, had to deny material evidence for forty years. Jesus had to deny material evidence in the garden of Gethsemane and up on a crucifix, and three days in a tomb. Nobody says that you can deny the evidence of the senses, and then five minutes later, you find the shade rolled up, and you’re sitting on cloud nine. It doesn’t say that at all.
On the contrary, if you will study Scripture and follow the trials and tribulations of the Hebrew prophets, and then later of the Master, of Paul, of John, Peter in prison, John of Patmos in prison on the island, you will say, “Those fellows really, really had appearances to deny.” And the appearances didn’t always disappear in twenty-four hours. Sometimes they had to stand fast.
Now then, we are called upon to stand fast and refuse to accept the testimony of the senses in all cases, whether it is a case of short duration or long duration. And in my work, I have found this: there are some people of deep material sense. They are just grounded in it. They can’t help it; they were born that way. They came into this experience deeply material, without a single ability to grasp a spiritual truth.
There are other people, and you hear that spoken of a great deal in metaphysics, the intellectuals; it’s almost an impossibility to break through them. Once a person gets to be an intellectual, they’re as near lost as you can get to be, unless they awaken out of it, because it’s a complete barrier to the things of the Spirit, because the intellect demands outside proof. It must be able to see the wounds. It must be able to see, hear, taste, touch, smell, or reason, and the moment you get them beyond that, they’re lost.
Now then, you have experiences like that of Einstein. You have experiences of some of the, well, Sir James Jeans.[2] Many men of that type, who, through their very depth of intellectuality, one day broke through it and said, “My heavens! You’ve got to break that barrier before you can understand.” And so, you have an Einstein saying that you do not rightly understand mathematics until you have gone beyond the figures that you can see, read, and analyze. And he calls it “crossing over into the intuitive sense.”
Now, the Jung School of Psychiatry has almost turned itself upside down, embracing the spiritual approach to life. And psychiatrists of the Jung School are all being taught that they must revamp their understanding; they must go back and study it over again and embrace this spiritual approach to life.
Now, there are those who can break through that shell of intellectualism, but there are many who cannot, who just seem stuck at the barrier of not being able to go beyond reason. For them, standing fast is a difficult thing. And it is for that reason, when they do turn to a spiritual approach, that whoever their practitioner or teacher may be requires patience and perseverance to stand by with them, knowing that they are going through more kinds of hell than any other ten people on the face of the earth. They really are being called upon to give up their Lord. And as long as they’re willing to stick, the practitioner and the practitioner have to do it; I mean, the practitioner and the teacher have to do it so as to lead them to where they want to go.
Now, the answer, summed up, is: Stand fast in what you understand; refute the testimony of the senses; understand that good humanhood or bad humanhood is not the point; sick humanhood or well humanhood is not the point. The point is the realization of spiritual being. And then you will find the divine harmonies made manifest.
[2] Sir James Jeans (1877 – 1946) was an English physicist, mathematician, and astronomer, who made several major discoveries in his fields.
1This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 106A: 1954 Seattle Closed Closed Class, “Infinite Way Treatment Summarized.” 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.
Goldsmith Global has permission to provide this material to Goldsmith Global participants for educational and study purposes. Please respect the copyright on this material.