A: Does wrong thinking, then, appear outwardly as sin, disease, and death? No, it does not. It comes to us merely as an appearance or a belief, and we accept that appearance or belief as if it actually were an external form. Can a person who is hypnotized into believing that there is a white poodle on the hypnotist’s platform, ever produce a white poodle there? No! All the hypnotized thinking in the world will not produce a white poodle. It will only produce an appearance or a belief which the victim claims is a white poodle. Wrong thinking will never produce sin, disease, or death. We are not creators; God is the creative principle, and It creates only Its own image and likeness. Our wrong thinking and the world’s wrong thinking, therefore, will never produce sin, disease, or death. Such wrong thinking will only objectify the belief as an illusory picture like our ‘white poodle’ and then look at it and say, ‘How am I going to get rid of it?’ It is not even here, so how can we get rid of it?
There is no such thing as sin, disease, or death; and all the wrong thinking in the world that we can do will not produce such things. But the universal belief in a selfhood apart from God does produce these erroneous pictures which we see as claiming to have substance, law, and reality; but which they do not have. All such pictures are as unreal as the white poodle which the hypnotized man believes he is seeing. Let us remember, he is not seeing it; he believes he is seeing it.
There is no way to remove that white poodle except to awaken the subject out of his state of hypnosis. How do we do that? One with God is a majority. If there were one person of spiritual vision in the audience who could laugh out loud and say or even think that there is not a white poodle to get rid of, the hypnotized man would awaken out of the dream. It is only because everyone is in agreement with him – the blind leading the blind – that it happens. If someone would consciously realize that he is merely witnessing a form of hypnosis, such a realization would quickly awaken him to the fact that hypnosis is not a power. It is a belief in a power apart from the one Life.
Whenever we are confronted with any form of disease, sin, death, lack, or limitation, let us be quick to realize, ‘This is a hypnotic picture, and I do not have to do anything about it.’ In this way, we can very well have an instantaneous healing. Even if the healing is not instantaneous, our holding to that truth will ultimately reveal the harmony which already is.
We must realize that there is no disease: there is only hypnotism; there is only a hypnotic picture appearing as disease. Spiritual healing is not using truth with which to overcome error. It is not using the power of good to overcome the power of evil. Jesus answered the impotent man: “Rise … and walk.”2 This was not using a power to heal disease; it was saying, in effect, “There is nothing to be overcome.” He did not use the power of God to do something to Pilate or to ward off the Crucifixion. He said, “Thou couldest have no power at all against me, except it were given thee from above.”3 Then he let the Crucifixion proceed and he proved life eternal.
A spiritual healer is not a person who develops a technique of using truth to overcome error or of using treatment to overcome disease. A spiritual healer is that state of consciousness, which knows that God alone is the reality of all being, and that anything else is a state of hypnosis. The recognition that he is dealing with a state of hypnosis, rather than with a person or with a condition, is the healing consciousness.
1 This excerpt is from Chapter 2, “Reality of Spirit,” in the book The Master Speaks. It is posted with kind permission from Acropolis Books and the Estate of Joel Goldsmith, which holds the copyright on the books.
2 John 5:8.
3 John 19:11.