A: Well, that is one of those things that comes up because of a liberty with words. We say, for instance, that the Wright Brothers invented the airplane. As a matter of fact, they didn’t, nor did anybody before them. The laws governing airplanes have existed since the beginning of time. Nobody ever invented them; they discovered them. Nobody ever invented wireless; nobody ever invented a telephone. Those are instruments hooked up in accord with certain engineering laws. Now, nobody invented those laws. You can’t say those laws didn’t exist yesterday. Who would ever say that the laws of automotive engineering didn’t exist a million years ago? They’ve always existed, but in the process of time, men drew them forth from their consciousness, these laws, and then hooked them up, but they’ve always existed.
You might just as well say that a composer invented some new music. There’s no such thing in all the world. All the music that ever existed has always existed in consciousness. The composer can reach back and draw it forth into expression. But if it wasn’t there, how did he ever get it? He can’t make it up; he can’t make up music. Music lies way, way back in consciousness, the same place that poetry does, literature, art, painting, sculpture. It’s always there, way back in consciousness, and an individual reaches back and brings it forward into visibility.
Now, do men who build bridges invent those laws of engineering, or do they discover laws that always have been and could have been utilized thousands of years ago? All you have to do is go back to the days of Caesar and look at the wonderful roads he built. There haven’t been any more wonderful roads built than those built by Caesar. So all the roads that look at the… if only all of you, those of you who have been to England and seen the walls, the fences, and some of the old churches. What do they call these? Not fences, these things between farms—no bricks, bricks made out of bricks and stone—walls like the Great Wall of China. All of these walls—you would see that they knew as much about engineering as we know now. There are no better roads than those built by Caesar’s army, none. I doubt that there are any roads in this modern age that could be said to have lasted, that would last 2,000 years. Yet the roads built by Caesar are still the best roads available. They knew the engineering secrets.
Look at the pyramids. They knew engineering secrets. In other words, nobody invents anything. We discover laws and then hook them up. Where were those laws? Out here in space? Were they in time? No, they were neither in space nor in time. They were in consciousness. They’re in consciousness, and we reached back into consciousness and brought them forth.
And so it is with all creation. There is no such thing as a time of creation. In other words, you can’t ever imagine that there was a time when there were no seeds or crops, and then all of a sudden, out of nothingness, seeds appeared, or crops appeared. No, all of these things are evolving out of consciousness.
Can you imagine a time… well, if you can imagine a time when the world was a blank, you can imagine a time when God wasn’t God. Well, let’s put it in a simple way. When did two times two begin being four? Now just, just think about some time that you can think of when two times two weren’t four. When was that? Was there a time when you could have a two here and a two here, and they weren’t four? No. Was that created? No. Actually, it’s a state of is. It’s a state of is that always was: a two and a two is four, a four and a four, eight—always was. Never was a time when you could separate them.
So it is that you can visualize the fact that there couldn’t have been a time, there couldn’t have been a time when do-re-mi wasn’t do-re-mi. There may have been a time when nobody knew it, when nobody could voice it or sing it, but it always existed, ready to be brought forth. Just as there always were these laws of automotive engineering, airplane engineering, but men came along and brought them out of their consciousness.
Look how many millions of years oil has been in the ground. When was oil invented? It was never invented. It’s always been in the ground but evolving there for millions and millions of years. There came a time when we needed it in this form and then began drilling for it. When we did, though, it was there.
When did diamonds begin? Well, before there were diamonds, there was carbon in another form. When did coal begin? Never. It was trees and tree trunks and rotting shrubs, evolution, not creation. Everything changes form, but the principle of the form has always been there, and it has always been evolving.
So when we say God is not a creator, we mean actually that there never was a time of creation; that all that is began through an evolving process. Consciousness has always been here.
Now, as you look back at these pictures here on the wall and you see these sailboats and the primitive oars, and the primitive costumes, and the primitive weapons, and you can say, “Well, when did killing begin?” A long time back, they had weapons; a long time, and nobody invented it. Cain and Abel do not represent a time in history but an evolution in consciousness. And so, the day will come when there will be no Cain, when there will be no murder in our consciousness. There will be no thieving in our consciousness. Then you will say, “When was the perfect man invented?” Never was. The perfect man was always here. He just evolved out of his old concepts of being.
And that brings us to this. There are no detached outer effects. All flows forth from consciousness. Now, as humans, we are an outlet for two states of consciousness: the material, which includes the mental, and the spiritual. As humans reaching out here to acquire, we are governed by all those laws of acquisition. We are governed by all those laws of outside powers. So we believe that bombs are power. We believe that guns and bullets are power. We believe that medicines are power. We believe that germs are power. In our material state of consciousness, we think of everything out here as power. That’s why we even believe that dollars are power. That’s the material state of consciousness. It has its powers out here, in people, in dollars, in germs, in medicines, in climate, in weather, in food. Anything out here can be a power to the materially minded.
Now, as a person begins to lose some of that materiality, or let us say that as they gain some sense of the spiritual, what happens? They stop placing power out there. The first thing they do, if they’re on this metaphysical path, is they begin to see that medicines aren’t power, that God is power. And so they depend more on God, the Invisible, than on medicine in the visible. They begin to realize that strength isn’t in the muscles. It doesn’t take a lot of exercise to have strength. And so, instead of exercising three hours a day, they might exercise ten minutes a day. But for the rest, they’ll depend on the Spirit. And then they’ll learn that we do not live by bread alone, and so food will not get to be such a . . . I was going to say “necessity.”—I won’t use that word—it [food] won’t occupy quite as much importance in thought, because we know that we aren’t fed by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Every word of truth we know is bread, wine, and water.
And so gradually, in the spiritualization of consciousness, we stop placing power out here in persons, in things, in circumstances and conditions, and we place that power in the kingdom of God within our own being. And so you will find that there are no detached outer effects. All outer effects are determined by our state of consciousness. Now, if we have a material state of consciousness that says, “No, I must get money,” or “I must get fame,” or “I must get recognition,” or “I must get rent,” or “I must get this,” then that state of consciousness places its power out there in those things. Then it’s always a victim of that belief.
The moment that state of consciousness changes, and little by little, you begin to see, “Oh, wait a minute. I don’t think that outer is quite as important as I thought it was. No, no, I’m commencing through study, through spiritual study, I’m really commencing to see that God is a power, and God isn’t out there. God is within me. God is an essence, an invisible. Oh, I have less fear of what’s outside. I have less concern. I have less need of what’s outside. Now, I have transferred more and more of my allegiance and power to the kingdom of God within me so that the kingdom of God within me can now do the things that I used to think people and things out there could do.” And that is, of course, the transition to spiritual consciousness.
Now, there are no detached outer effects. All flows forth from consciousness. Now then, the minute that you no longer have fear of germs, infections, contagions, you can be a healer and go among all the infectious and contagious diseases you want. I’m sure that out of the people here and out of all the practitioners you’ve known, you‘ve probably never known one that picked up an infectious or contagious disease while about their work. Why? Because in the consciousness of a practitioner, there is no power in infection or contagion, and as long as they don’t place it there, it can’t be there of its own accord.
It is in the same way that if you . . . I don’t know the history too much outside of Christian Science, but I do know that in Christian Science, that you will not find, I would daresay ten to twenty percent of the illness that there is outside of Christian Science. Why? Why? It’s the same world; it’s the same universe. They have gradually, over the years, come to take their faith and confidence out of germs, out of infections, out of drafts, out of all the things that other people experience, and now what they externalize is their own state of consciousness, which is fearlessness. To them, the power is within, not without.
And so it is that you find that wherever there are people in the metaphysical world who have really caught a vision; if they’ve caught Christian Science, good; others have caught the vision through Unity, but no matter how you do it, if you’ve caught the vision that God is the power, and that there’s no power in externals, you’re not subject to ten or fifteen or twenty percent of the disease that your neighbor is. I’ve seen it in schools. School teachers show me their records. You don’t find absences, long absences, with Christian Science children. You don’t find long absences with grown-up Christian Scientists from their business. Why? Because disease has dropped off about 80 percent.
Now, so it is with anyone, and should be certainly in The Infinite Way, that much or more: that as you commence to see, power isn’t outside; power isn’t out there in a germ; power isn’t out there in heredity; power isn’t out there in a body. Power, the kingdom of power, is within me, in consciousness. The Infinite Invisible is the power. And so it is, then, that that state of consciousness outpictures itself as health and harmony. We cannot eliminate evil, but we can transform the material sense which produces the evil. Now remember that. That’s the secret.
You don’t remove evil. You don’t remove evil. If you have a state of consciousness that has evil in it, you must externalize evil. But if all purity is found in you, all innocence is found in you; then you must externalize good. And so if you have a state of consciousness that has in it fear of disease, fear of death, fear of age, fear of contagion, fear of infection, you are externalizing it. If you have attained a state of consciousness in which you have caught the least bit of glimpse that God is the principle of life, you are beginning to externalize fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty percent more of health and harmony.
There are no detached outer effects. Every effect in your life is the product of your consciousness, and the only way to change it is not to get rid of the effects. That’s why I say over and over again, it’s a nice thing to be able to bring healing to our patients and students, but it isn’t the highest form of ministry. The highest form of ministry is when you bring to them a state of consciousness free of fear. Then you don’t heal their diseases. They haven’t got any more disease to be healed of, and what few do come to them, they can handle themselves because they’ve lost their fear of externals.
Now, when you no longer fear or hate externals, you’re free. And you’re not free from anything; you’re free in Christ, in truth, in God. You’re never free from it. You’re always free in spiritual truth, in spiritual life. Christ is an activity of individual consciousness within you and me. But each of us must find a way to find it, contact it, realize it within himself. This is not easy, since we have known generations of a sense of separation, but it is a task to which we can and eventually must dedicate our lives. Christ is the secret of harmonious, joyous, peaceful, and fruitful living. Therefore, we dedicate ourselves to inner prayer, contemplation, meditation, and communion until sooner or later, we actually realize Christ, after which we eagerly surrender ourselves and become a beholder as it lives our lives.
Now what does all this mean? To begin with, what is Christ? Remember, we said it has no relationship to a man named Jesus. Christ isn’t Jesus, but Jesus was Christed. In other words, Jesus had access to this Christhood; Jesus attained his Christhood. That is much like saying that Paderewski was a master pianist. What do we mean—that he was music or something? No, but he had musical consciousness and could draw on it and bring it through. We say that Einstein is a mathematical genius. What is he—mathematics? No, he’s a state of consciousness through which mathematics is flowing. What do we mean by Christ? Christ is a state of consciousness. It’s a pure state of consciousness because it is a state of consciousness that does not hate or fear externals. It says to Pilate, “Thou couldest have no power over me lest it came from the Father in heaven.” It says to the impotent man, “What did hinder you? Pick up your bed and walk.” He has no fear of externals. That’s Christhood.
When you attain a state of consciousness in which you do not fear or hate externals but realize that all power is within you, in that degree, are you attaining Christhood. Now that’s all within you, not outside. But the moment you can, through meditation, contact It, feel It, become aware of It, trust It, rely on It, rather than relying on things or persons in the external, then, in that degree, does it take up your life and live it for you.
And so, in that state, you can be like the Master. You can surrender yourself, and you can say, “The Father within me doeth the works.” Then I lose all significance, from the standpoint of “I fear,” “I hate,” “I want,” “I desire,” “I need.” There’s no such word as that, no such terms as those in the vocabulary of those who attain a measure of Christ. Rather do they say, “I can feed five thousand.” Rather do they say, “I can heal the multitudes.” Out of what? Out of the depth of that Christhood.