Chapter 4: “The Hidden Kingdom”

The Recording for This Chapter 

The basis for this chapter is Recording 489B, “I Have Meat the World Knows Not Of,” from the 1962 London Closed Class. This recording is no longer available on this site. If you subscribe to the Joel Goldsmith Streaming Service, you can listen to it there. To purchase the recording and/or the transcript from The Infinite Way Office, click/tap here.

Please note that while the book chapter is essentially a transcript of the class, the content of the transcript may have been re-arranged in some places during the editing process for the chapter.  Consequently, if you are following the chapter as you listen to the recording, from time to time you may have to skip ahead or go back in the chapter to find the corresponding text.  Even so, overall, the chapter covers virtually everything that is in the recording.  

Optional Study Suggestions

To download or print these, click/tap here.

1.    Contemplations

This chapter is about discovering “The Hidden Kingdom” within, and contemplation and meditation are our tools for discovery.  There are many quotations in the chapter that can serve as the basis for a contemplation.  When Joel talks about contemplation, he often suggests that we read until something “lights up” or resonates with us, and then contemplate that.   For example, any of these passages from the chapter might merit contemplation:

• “We should be willing to stop praying for more of what we already have and say to ourselves, ‘I really wonder what I would find if I ever entered My kingdom, the Christ-kingdom, if I ever received the grace of My peace, the Christ-peace. I wonder what it is like, what it would consist of, what kind of a world it would be.’ …  What is this ‘Thy kingdom’? What is this great consciousness to which the Master devoted three years of preaching and teaching? What is this spiritual kingdom?”
• “Reveal Thyself. Father, I am praying in the name of Spirit. Reveal to me the kingdom about which the Master spoke, taught, and prayed. Reveal to me Thy kingdom. I am not asking for anything in this world. I am willing to leave this world. Only reveal to me Thy kingdom.”
• “It is strange but true that God knows nothing of material clothing or housing. … But clothing, housing, and material food are part of our particular need at our level of consciousness, and since God does not come down to this level of consciousness, we have to raise ourselves up above human consciousness into God-consciousness. When we come down again into the world, we find what we need in forms understandable to us.”
• “I can abandon my prayers for more money, a better position, a better home, or a better marriage. I can abandon all my prayers for any earthly thing and pray only: ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done.’ Thy grace be established in me.  Now let me steadfastly look away from this human picture with all its promised good and discover what happens when I enter that spiritual kingdom.”

2.    Bible Quotations

Joel uses several Bible quotations in this chapter that convey the message he is teaching. These passages can be the basis for contemplation, too.  Joel has said that when we contemplate one Bible passage, often others will come to us that express the same idea. So if any one of these from the chapter resonates with you, it could be a starting point.

• “God is a spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”  (John 4:24)
• “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” (Matthew 6:25)
• “Give us this day our daily bread”  (Matthew 6:11)
• “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4)
• “My kingdom is not of this world.”  (John 18:36)
• “My peace I give unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto you.”  (John 14:27)
• “The place whereon thou standest is holy ground.”  (Exodus 3:5)
• “The kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)
• “For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.”  (Galatians 6:8)
• “I have meat to eat that ye know not of.”  (John 4:32)
• “I and my Father are one.”  (John 10:30)
• “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit”  (Zechariah 4:6)

3.   Related Reading

In this chapter, Joel says, “It is not the books that do it; it is not the tape recordings of my classes that do it; it is not the classes: it is the consciousness that is built by means of the books, the tapes, and the classes. That is why all these adjuncts are helpful to us, not because they have any value in and of themselves. The value is in the consciousness they develop.”  If you would like to read more along the same line as the message in Chapter 4, and if you have these books, these chapters will be helpful:

• Leave Your Nets, Chapter 5, “Hidden Manna”
• Showing Forth the Presence of God, Chapter 4, “The True Demonstration”
• A Parenthesis in Eternity, Chapter 26, “My Kingdom Is Not of This World”
• A Parenthesis in Eternity, Chapter 33, “The Inner Universe”