The basis for this chapter is Recording 325B, titled “From the Law to Conscious Knowing of the Truth, continued,” from the 1960 Chicago 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 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.
To download or print these, click/tap here.
1. In this chapter, Joel addresses protective work as part of spiritual living. He emphasizes that in doing protective work, you are not protecting yourself from a power, but from the universal belief in two powers. To better understand protective work, he recommends that we read:
In other books and classes, Joel recommends the chapter “Break the Fetters that Bind You,” the October 1958 Infinite Way Letter, as another resource on protective work. We studied that chapter as part of our program on the eight most important chapters in The Infinite Way writings. There are several short contemplative meditations for protective work in that chapter, and during our study, we prepared a card with those meditations. It might be helpful to revisit them. You can access the card by clicking here.
2. Once again, Joel suggests in this chapter that we should not try to live on yesterday’s manna, but recognize that we can go within at any time for fresh illumination and instruction. He even suggests that we consider skipping reading or listening to recordings some days to make room for Truth to reveal Itself to us from within ourselves. Certainly, this is a practice worth considering as part of our work with this chapter. Joel says:
“In every phase of life, do not try to live on yesterday’s manna. Do not learn formulas and repeat them each day. Act as though you had entrance to the kingdom of God and could go to God any minute, any second, any hour for fresh illumination and for fresh guidance, for fresh instruction, or instruction in different ways or new ways. Never be satisfied with the truth you knew yesterday. God is infinite. Truth is infinite, so we have no need of anything that we had yesterday. Infinity is pouring Itself through today. Understanding that, the study of truth does not become stale. It is always appearing in fresh forms. We do not have to go over the same lesson day after day. We do not have to go over the same books day after day.
“There is no loss if some days we skip reading or hearing truth, because we are making room for Truth to reveal Itself to us within ourselves. We must make time when we do not live in the books or in the tapes. We must make time for saying, ‘God, You spoke to that man. You can speak to me. If You speak to anyone on the earth, You can speak to me.’
“‘God is no respecter of persons.’ To God there is no high or low. To God there is no rich or poor. To God there is no such thing as a religion. God forbid that you ever find a religion in heaven. There would be no disgrace on anyone’s part if he threw every teaching out of the window and said, ‘God, I don’t believe any of them unless it comes to me directly from You.’ There would be no harm in that, no loss in that, because no teaching is so important that a better one cannot come to you if you listen to God.
“God is infinite, and ‘God is no respecter of persons.’ . . . If you insist, if you knock, if you seek, the answer will come. But it will come from within you from an infinite center, an infinite storehouse that is already within you, just waiting for you to open out the doors to release it.”