A: Yes, this is the very subject of today’s class. I brought in this memorandum with me, because that was the subject of my work since very early this morning.
A letter came to me in the mail this morning, and it was from a student in the States, and in this letter he said, “We are studying the writings and the recordings, and we are growing spiritually, but the lump is still there, and the fever is still there, and the sore is still there, and all the other symptoms are still there, and what shall we do about it?” And as I turned away from this letter, there flashed instantly into my consciousness a statement which I believe is in the old original book The Infinite Way, and I’m sure it appears in my letters long, long before there was an Infinite Way: You cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem.
Now, that was one of the earliest unfoldments that came to me in my practice, one of the very first. When I was probably … I don’t remember the exact case that brought this unfoldment, but it was undoubtedly a struggle with some case that wasn’t yielding, and some physical illness, and all of a sudden, this statement came: You cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem.
Now, let us see, what is the level of the problem? Well, the first situation we meet is this. We have a person saying they are ill. At the same time, we have a condition called disease, and thirdly, we have a physical body manifesting discord, inharmony. Now there’s the level of your problem. The level of the problem is a person, a condition, a thing, and we’re told that spiritually you cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem.
Now, in material sense, you can. If you have a human being with some discord, you can correct that human being. If you have a physical body that isn’t correct, you can patch up the physical body. If you have a diseased condition, you can medicate it, or operate on it, and you can meet the problem on the level of the problem. But the very moment that you turn to spiritual wisdom, you no longer can do it. The first thing you must eliminate is the problem, but the problem is a person, a sick person. The problem is a disease. The problem is a physical condition, a body. All right, let’s eliminate them right out.
Now, we cannot meet the problem on the level of the problem, so we’ve discarded our person, and the body, and the disease. Now where are we? We’re in meditation, and we have one function—to realize the presence of God. Now I ask you, if the presence of God is realized, what has become of the person, the body, and the condition? Can they also exist in the presence of God? No, you will find that if you attain the realization of the presence of God, the person, the body, and the condition will have disappeared, and what will be there in their place? “Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased. Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” In other words, mortality will have been swallowed up in immortality.
If you try to get rid of mortality, you will fail. If you try to overcome mortality, you will fail. If you try to change mortality into immortality, you will fail. But if you will drop person, place, thing, circumstance, and condition from your thought, sit back quietly, and be satisfied to mediate until you find yourself in the presence of God, you will find that when you open your eyes, you will literally feel that “Thou art my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.”
Thou art not Jesus, the carpenter. Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. Flesh and blood will not tell you this. Judging by appearances will not tell you this. Don’t try to look at a human being and visualize them as a spiritual being, and don’t try to look at a sick human being and try to visualize them as a well human being. If you use any human mental or physical means, you will defeat your purpose in a spiritual wisdom.
You must be willing to drop from your consideration person, place, thing, circumstance, condition, and then get inside and “Speak Lord, thy servant heareth,” and be in meditation, and dwell in the idea of God and God’s perfect creation, God’s perfect life, and God’s perfect law. And then, when you come to your period of listening, quietness, peace, the grace of God descends upon you. My peace give I unto you. My peace, not as the world giveth; My peace. And some kind of an assurance comes forth from within you, and reveals to you that this, whom you thought was sick, sinning, mortal man, is in reality the Christ, the child of the living God in whom I find no fault.
You see, error will always present itself to you as a person, a place, a thing, or a condition. Never forget this. Error will always present itself to you as some person, some person who has to be removed, or some person who has to be healed, or some person who has to be reformed, or some person who has to be enlightened, or it will appear to you as a disease that must quickly be gotten rid of, a disease that must be overcome, or it will present itself to you as a place—“I’m in the wrong place,” or “If only I was over in that other place,” or “The climate is wrong,” or “The weather is wrong; the place is wrong,” and if not, “The time is wrong.”
Error always presents itself to you as person, place, thing, or condition, and if you are to succeed in your spiritual ministry, you must, first of all, drop that person, and the condition, and the name, and the place right from your thought, and then turn to God: “Now God, here are we, Father and son. I and my Father are one. I am in Thou, and Thou art in me, and all these others are in us, for we are one.” Apart from God, there is no being, and I and the Father are one, and all that the Father hath is mine, and this is universal truth.
God is the mind of individual being, the life, and the soul, and the spirit. God constitutes even the body, for your body is the temple of the living God. I and my Father are one. My body is the temple of the living God. This is a universal truth. God is infinite; therefore there can be no other presence. God is one; therefore, God is one power. There can be no other power. God is law; therefore, there can only be spiritual law. There cannot be physical law, material law, mental law, medical law, theological law. There can only be the law which is the law of God, for God is the only lawgiver, and God’s laws must be spiritual.
God is One. God is substance, infinite substance out of which this universe is formed. Therefore, the substance of being is God—the substance of my being, the substance of your being, the substance of his being, the substance of her being, the substance of its being. There is only one substance, and that is God. God is the substance of all form.
And you see, you ponder these things, you meditate on them, you know specifically these truths, and then you pause, you get still, and you listen: “Speak Lord, thy servant heareth.” When God utters His voice, this whole earth, this whole earth of error will melt.
1This excerpt is from Recording 226B: 1958 London Closed Class, “The Letter and the Spirit.” 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.
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