A: It must really be understood that there is only one mind. Unless you understand that there is only one mind, you will make the eternal mistake that has been made ever since Adam and Eve. You will have good and evil, or you will change the terminology and say that we have a divine mind and mortal mind, or a divine mind and a human mind.
Now, there are not two minds. There is only one mind, and that mind is yours. It is not you; it is yours, just as much as your body is your body. Now, the mind is a reasoning faculty, or as we use the terminology in The Infinite Way, it is an avenue of awareness. Through the mind, I know that you are here, but I can’t create you. Therefore, mind cannot be God, because it is not creative. Mind is an avenue of awareness.
With my mind, or through my mind, I know that this is a tumbler of water, but my mind cannot make it so. My mind cannot create it. That is one of the terrible faults of many forms of metaphysics. They are trying to use the mind to create supply or to create a home or to create companionship or to create health. Now, understand that God is the only creative principle, and God is Spirit. God acts through law. God is a lawgiver, the creative principle of the universe, the maintaining and sustaining principle, but mind cannot be that.
Now, there is no reason why you cannot, if you wish, take the word mind and put a capital M before it and make it a synonym for God and say, “Oh, that is not the mind I’m talking about.” If you do, you have to have two minds. Now actually, that is what Mrs. Eddy did. She took the word mind and put a capital M before it, making it a synonym for God. She put a small m and called it the mortal mind, or the human mind. Thereby she had two minds and said there is only one mind.
Now, as I came into this work, I naturally used Mind as a synonym for God, and it is for that reason that in many of my writings you will still see Mind used as a synonym for God. There’s nothing wrong about it, if you understand that it’s not literally truth. It’s just we have coined, or rather Mrs. Eddy coined, and we’ve continued to use, a capital M Mind, a small m mind, but at the same time insist there is only one mind.
Now, what I am trying to do is to say to you that even though you continue to use a capital M Mind as a “suffer it to be so now,” just the way Jesus allowed himself to be baptized, not because he believed in it, not because he approved of it, because he definitely said, “Suffer it to be so now.” [In other words,] “It’s all right if you want it that way;” the same way that he said before Lazarus’ tomb, “I don’t have to pray; but here are these ignorant people here who expect me to, so I will say, ‘Lazarus come forth.’ But I don’t have to do that. It isn’t I who am raising Lazarus, it’s God.”
Now, there is no particular harm in using Mind with a capital Mas a synonym for God, except that it’s going to perpetuate two minds in your mind, and when that happens—you watch this—you’re going to use one to overcome the other. You’re going to have one of them the good mind and one the bad mind, and so you’re going to use immortal mind to overcome mortal mind.
And what we’re trying to do in The Infinite Way is get away from that. And the only way to get away from that is this: to recognize that there is no power in any effect, whether that effect is a mind or a body, and to have a power only in God, and then have the mind and the body as instruments to show forth the power of the Spirit, or God. Then through my mind and through my body I show forth God’s glory; that is, in the intelligent use of my mind and in the intelligent use of my body, I show forth God’s glory. But it isn’t the glory of my mind or body, and it isn’t my personal glory; it is the glory of the Father, the Spirit, God.
So then, try to realize this. We do not have a capital S Soul and a small s soul. We don’t have a capital S Spirit and a small s spirit. We don’t have a capital P Principle and a small p principle. We have only one, and that one is God in action. Now, as a matter of fact, none of them are God. None of them are God. There can’t ever be a word that is God.
I hope you understand that not even the word God is God, and that the word Mind or Soul or Spirit or Truth isn’t God, for those are effects objective to yourself. That’s why a lot of praying is useless. We pray to a word in our mind. We pray to the word God, or we pray to the word Soul. We pray to the word Spirit, and we expect an answer from it, when the “we” that is doing the praying is the God-power, I. I is the God-power. There is no other word in all the vocabulary that is really a synonym for God. There are no synonyms for God in absolute truth. The synonyms that we use for God really are descriptive of attributes of God.
The word soul is an attribute of the absoluteness and purity of God. The word mind really is an attribute describing intelligence. The word spirit is an attribute really describing the incorporeality of God. The word principle is another attribute; law is one of the facets of God-being. None of those things are really God. There is only one word that describes God, and when Moses was given this revelation of the true name of God, it took him from being a shepherd and transformed him quickly into the leader of the Hebrew people. Only one thing did that—the realization of the true nature of God: I AM THAT I AM. That’s what did the trick for him.
Now, when Jesus came, did he not follow that same teaching and declare, “I AM THAT I AM;” “I am the way, the truth, and the life;” “I am the bread and the wine and the water;” “I have meat ye know not of;” “I am the resurrection.” That’s the true name for God.
1This excerpt is from Recording 221B: 1958 New York Closed Class, “God Is I.” It is posted with kind permission from the Estate of Joel 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 website or by calling 1-800-922-3195.