A: Yes indeed. Yes indeed. The only thing that comes into question there is this: that as you know, it also requires some measure of receptivity, and the person who has closed their mind to spiritual help is not as apt to receive the protection, the benefit of your protective work, as those who make themselves subject unto the spiritual law.
Now, here is what I would like to say. In our work in The Infinite Way, we have many avenues of activity, all of which have one purpose, and that is helping us to attain spiritual awareness, helping us to attain spiritual consciousness. Whether it is a closed class or lecture, whether it is the writings, or the recordings, or the Monthly Letter, the purpose of all of them is really to keep us in the Spirit so that we may more easily meditate and make contact with our inner Source.
If I had to give up all of The Infinite Way activities but one, the one that I would keep is our Monthly Letter. That Monthly Letter is a precious, precious activity, and for this reason: It is to keep us with a fresh message every month, a large enough message to last a whole month, but with specific principles for use and application in our daily experience.
Now, every year since these letters began—1954, ‘55, ‘56, ‘57, and now ‘58—there are letters on this subject of protective work, and the subject of protective work is without doubt one of the most important in the entire Infinite Way activity. And the reason is this: Every discordant human experience in our lives could be prevented if we consciously know the truth and keep ourselves clothed in spiritual armor.
Now, what do we mean exactly by knowing the truth and keeping ourselves clothed in spiritual armor? Well what is the great evil that gets us into trouble? The belief in two powers. That’s what does it. It comes down to a simple a matter as that—that it is the belief, the universal belief which we individually accept, the belief in two powers. There isn’t one of us that would ever have a discord in this whole world if we could come to the full and complete realization of one power.
Now, we are under the daily suggestions from this world by our families, and by our newspapers and radios and televisions and all the rest of it. We are under the daily hypnotic suggestion of two powers. And to some extent, we respond. That response sets up in us, consciously or unconsciously, a fear, so that we fear accidents on the road, or we fear the results of alcohol, or we fear the wet weather, or we fear the germs that are going around, or we fear the polio season, or we fear the cancer propaganda, and in one way or another we are played upon every day by this human scene with its fears, and certainly they’re thrown at us.
Now, the only way that we can be clothed with the armor of the Spirit is to consciously remember, starting out with the morning, that God is the only Power in our experience and that there is no power in effects, no power in weather, no power in germs, no power in heredity, no power in alcohol, no power in bad drivers, since God only is the Power, and God is closer to me than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. Where I am God is, and where God is, there is divine protection.
Now, when I say that to you, in this moment, this is a treatment. It is protective work, and if you are receptive to it, you can go out of here and rejoice in the fact that every step you take, God is taking with you, and you are maintained and sustained. But you will not be away many minutes until this pressure comes in from the world: “Oh, there’s an accident over there,” or “There’s a headline over here,” and back again comes this human sense of fear, or belief in two powers, and so again you have to remind yourself.
This might go on, at the beginning, twenty times a day that you are reminding yourself, “Remember! Remember there is only one power. Do not fear what mortal man can do to me. Do not fear what mortal conditions can do to me. Do not fear what human belief is saying. Do not fear what human thought is doing.” You have to remind yourself of that over and over and over, until a day comes when, like a burst of light you realize, “Oh, it’s true! God Is the only power!” And then, from there on, it’s just an occasional reminder comes into you, and you smile when you hear these talks about two powers—germs, weather, climate, wars, bombs. Inwardly you smile, not outwardly, because you don’t want to offend your neighbor who is still living in fear of two powers.
Now, I ask our students, wherever they possibly can, to own this Monthly Letter; to subscribe for it, to receive it, to work faithfully with it. And then, when they come out in book form, to own them, have them, refer to them, and then be sure that they know every word that’s in those books on the subject of protective work, because you’re not protecting yourself from evil. You are protecting yourself from the belief in two powers. Do you understand that?
If you were protecting yourself from evil, you’d be back in orthodoxy again. You’d be afraid of mortal mind, or the carnal mind. Do you see that? But if you are protecting yourself spiritually, you are only protecting yourself from the universal belief in two powers. That must be very clear to you, or you will not progress spiritually. Spiritual progress is an awareness of God. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”2 In Him there is no fear. Why? There is nothing to fear; there are not two powers.
Yes, there are two powers operating in the human world through belief. That’s what’s called being under the law—the law of good and evil, the law of sin and purity, the law of health and disease, the law of life and death. But come out and be separate. Separate yourself from the universal belief in two powers.
Now you can do that in this minute, but you can’t hold it forever. You can’t hold it forever if you were in class every day. You must consciously do your own protective work, not once a day, but twenty times a day. Every time a suggestion of two powers comes to you from any direction, you have to declare: “Aha! But I’m living under God’s grace, where there is only one power.”
1This excerpt is from Recording 237A: 1958 Manchester Closed Class, “Spirit, Grace, and Meditation.” 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 at www.joelgoldsmith.com or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
2 2 Corinthians 3:17.