(If you have access to recording 106A and would like to hear Joel answer this question, he begins at time 26:55.)
A: Now, I must explain this. All mental approaches to life, and I mean by that, the mental sciences—mental metaphysics, mental science, psychology and psychiatry, and psychosomatic medicine—are based on a premise that you have a mind of your own, and that this mind is the source of either your health or your disease; that somewhere within your mind lies the trouble. And so it is that you are analyzed. You are questioned. You are questioned as to your present mode of life, degree of happiness, prosperity, or otherwise.
Often, you are questioned all the way back into your childhood, always looking for a cue or a clue to what there is in your mind that is bringing on this difficulty. It is for that reason that there are lists published which indicate that if you are sensual, lustful, you may develop tuberculosis. If you are hateful, jealous, envious, or malicious, you may develop cancer; if you are resentful, worrisome, fearful, you may develop rheumatism or ulcers or some other thing.
Now then, the first thing that we face is this: If this were true, you would be hopeless, because supposing we find that you are jealous, envious, and malicious, what are we going to do about it? Tell you to get over it? How are you going to get over it? How are you going to change your disposition? And I can tell you from long experience that you can’t. You can try, but you will never succeed. There is no way that you can be told your faults and humanly get over them. It’s like telling a drunkard to stop drinking.
You know, there is a story about the perfect way to cure alcoholism. There is a way. It won’t fail ever for those who can live up to it. Oh, it’s really true, a sure cure. Every time an alcoholic lifts a glass of liquor, just let him open his hands. He can’t help it; he’s bound to be cured. Yes, but you know he can’t open his hands. It’s the one thing he can’t do. It’s like the old story of the blackbirds. You know it. Just don’t think of blackbirds, and all will be well. And you go home and see what happens when you are told not to think of blackbirds.
I have seen it in over twenty years of practice how many people have been told, “Of course, I know what’s wrong with you. If only you would be more grateful. If only you’d be more joyous, more spiritual.”
“Yeah, what am I going to do about it?” That’s the answer: What am I going to do about it?
“Oh, you know, you’re quite a liar. You don’t tell the truth enough. You’re a fibber.”
“Well, I know it, but I don’t want to be.”
What are you going to do about it? How are you going to change? Well, I’m going to tell you another secret that I have learned. I have never yet found out some error about a person that they agreed on. The very thing that I found out about them was the thing that they said was wrong with me. No one has ever agreed when I told them they were jealous. No one has ever agreed when they were told they were envious or penurious. Oh no, no, that’s what they were thinking about me.
Now then, even if you could make them agree, “All right. I’m a miser. I can’t help it. I’m afraid of money; I’m afraid to spend it. I’m afraid of my future. I’ll agree; I’m a miser. Now what do you want me to do? Go out and spend money? I can’t; it’s painful.”
All right now, how are you going to get a person to overcome their miserliness? How are you going to get a person to be grateful who isn’t grateful? Or answering this other question: How are you going to get a person to be joyous and to praise God if they don’t feel it? Just go around mouthing the words? That isn’t doing it. So even if it were true that the trouble was in your mind, you would then be in a hopeless shape because nobody would be able to tell you how to get rid of it.
Now there is a way to get rid of it. And there is a way in which we are successful, but it is not by disclosing your error to you and having you try to correct it. And the reason is this: the error actually isn’t yours. Now that’s the secret. It isn’t in your mind at all. I don’t care what it is. It isn’t in your mind at all. Whatever there is of good in your experience is the universal good we call God, which is expressing Itself through you.
The Master says, “Why callest thou me good? There is but one good. That’s the Father in heaven.” And you can be assured of this: nobody has any individual good. If you are charitable, it is merely because you are an outlet for God’s benevolence. If you are loving, if you are kind, if you are forgiving, if you are gentle, it has nothing to do with you. It has nothing to do with your family. It has nothing to do with your inheritance. Why, the same family has brutes in it and Christs in it, with the same inheritance. There is no personal thing about it at all. When you are good, it is because the activity of good is finding outlet through you, and there’s no use in taking credit for it because you didn’t do anything to bring that about.
Now, on the other hand, if you are doing evil, or if your patient is doing evil, it isn’t you [or them] doing it either. When Paul says, “The evil that I would not, that I do. The good that I would, I do not.” But he says, “When I would do good, I find an evil law in me. Ah, it isn’t I who am sinful. I find a sinful law in me.” And that wasn’t an alibi; that was a metaphysical truth. Evil is impersonal, and there are people who are instruments for the outlet of evil, just as there are people who are instruments for the outlet of good.
Now, once you see that there is only one universal mind, you do not have to treat your patient. You do not have to hear your patient’s story. If they want to get it off their chest, that’s all right; it relieves them. But so far as you, as a practitioner, are concerned, you are no more interested in their story as to whether they stole ten cents or ten million dollars, or whether they stole once or a million times. It has nothing to do with you. Why? Because that evil is not a part of their mind or being. It is a universal belief for which they are the outlet.
Now, number one is that you, first of all, have to understand that. You have to understand that there is one infinite Mind, and that good is the inherent nature of that Mind, and therefore, good is the only real quality of man. Now, when you come up against evil, first of all, you must know there is no mind from which it can emanate, since there is only the one universal Mind. Therefore, there is no reality or law to that evil.
Now watch what happens. When a person comes to me who is ill, and I don’t care whether it’s a mental condition, or a physical condition, or a moral one, or a financial one, I take no thought about them or about the condition. I turn to my principle, and what is the principle? God is the universal Consciousness. God is the universal, spiritual mind of individual man. There is only one Mind, only one Consciousness, that one universal Mind or Consciousness is the mind or consciousness of individual man, and Its qualities are only good.
That is basic truth. Now as against that, we have an appearance of evil in the form of physical, mental, moral, or financial ill. Now, so far as I’m concerned, there is no patient other than me. I am the patient because it is to me that a case of sin, disease, death, lack, or limitation is being presented. So I’m the only one who has to be treated.
All right. Right out here now is this appearance that has been sent to me in a letter, over the telephone, or in a person coming to my office. It isn’t a person I’m interested in. It’s the appearance, the claim. The claim is sin, disease, death, lack, limitation. The claim is a selfhood apart from God. The claim is a law apart from God. The claim is a substance apart from God. The claim is a mind apart from God, or a soul apart from God, and I won’t accept it. I understand that that appearance is only a mental concept in thought with no underlying law, substance, cause, or reality.
I don’t care who the patient is—Jones, Brown, Smith, Hitler, Stalin. That has nothing to do with me. The only thing that has to do with me is that they have presented this appearance to me. They have asked for help, or one near them who is, you might say, acting as them, has asked for help. And so that unites us. I’ll bring that to you this way: Since there is only one Mind in this room, we are all united in that Mind.
Now then, the moment you bring yourself here, you are elevated by my degree of elevation in consciousness. Why? Because we are one. You have brought yourself here, but you may have left your pet dog or cat at home and brought them here in your mind, and you are presenting them to me. It’s just the same as if you had brought the dog or cat. You don’t have to bring them in body. You’ve brought them in your consciousness, and so they are here, and you have presented them to me. And when you go home, your dog or cat should be healed if they weren’t when you left them. In other words, whatever you have in your mind when you bring it to the practitioner, you are making it part of the practitioner’s mind. Why? It is all one Mind. But there are degrees of elevation, and “I, if I be lifted up,” will draw you to that elevation of consciousness.
Now, the only thing we’re ever dealing with is not sick people and not diseases. That is out entirely. We have no sick people, and we have no diseases. We have a principle, and that’s all we are dealing with. The principle is: God made all that was made. All that God made is good. God being infinite, all is good. As against that, we have an appearance, and that appearance is sin, disease, death, lack, limitation, stupidity, insanity, immorality—it doesn’t make any difference. It’s an appearance. It’s a claim of a life apart from God, a claim of a mind apart from God, a claim of a soul apart from God, a claim of substance or form apart from God, and that I understand to be a mental image in thought without substance, without law, without cause, without reality.
Now that’s all I have to do—maintain myself on that level of consciousness, and whoever brings himself to that state of consciousness is lifted up to where the so-called law is nullified. For instance, there isn’t a year that we don’t have calls for poison ivy and poison oak. And so far as material law is concerned, there is a poison ivy, and there is a poison oak, and it becomes painful, and so forth and so on. I have never known of a single case of that that lasted twenty-four hours after it hit the consciousness of a practitioner; that is, after a practitioner was called. Why? Because in the practitioner’s consciousness, there is a realization that God is the life of all that is, whether it’s physical, animal, mineral, or vegetable. If God is its life, it is not diseased life; it is not infectious; it is not contagious. And the belief that it is, is not law. The moment it is handled from that standpoint, it loses its power and disappears.
All right. There’s another way to handle the same thing. Anything that exists as externalized form is not power. I don’t care whether it’s a brain, or a body, or poison ivy, or poison oak, or whether it is a snake. I don’t care what it is. If it exists as externalized form, it isn’t power. Why? All power is in Me, God, Spirit. All power is in Spirit acting upon form, just as this hand cannot pet or punch. It just can’t. It can only stay here dormant until I decide to pet or punch. I decide that, and the hand must be obedient to me. Let it try to disobey. It can’t. I am the one who decides.
Now then, you carry that out in the entire world, and you will find that there is no form, no creature that has power, will, jurisdiction, judgment, government. “The government is on His shoulder.” That means the Invisible. Whenever we talk of “God,” or “His” [as in “government is on His shoulder], or Christ, we mean Invisible.
Now then, all power is in the Invisible acting upon the visible. How many people do you know who, before they came to truth study, were continuously taking cathartics and found them absolutely necessary? Now, how many people do you know after they have been in metaphysics who are ever called upon to use any? I know from my experience that it’s practically an unheard-of thing among truth students. I’ve never known such a thing for twenty-five or more years, or digestive tablets, or any of these common remedies that people are always taking for ailments because the body refuses to eliminate, or the body refuses to assimilate, or the body refuses to digest.
Rarely, rarely do you find a metaphysician having recourse to such things. Why? Because the very first lesson that is learned is that it is the Invisible that governs the visible organs and functions of the body, and the moment you stop trying to interfere with that, you will find that there is an Invisible that does act upon the body and governs it harmoniously.
Now, to us, it doesn’t make any difference whether the name is Jones, Brown, or Smith, who is not digesting or eliminating. We don’t care anything about that. It could be Jones, Brown, or Smith asking for help, or it could be this whole roomful. As far as I am concerned, there is only one treatment, and that treatment is, “What is the principle?” The principle is that the organs of the body are not self-acting, that they cannot act or stop acting any more than this hand can. I govern it, and I am the Invisible.
So it is, regardless of the nature of a disease, if it governs organs and functions of the body, there is only one remedy. And that is not in addressing your patient, not calling your patient by name, not calling the disease by name, but turning within yourself and saying, “What is the principle here?” Then you say, “Oh, the principle is that the Invisible governs the body. The Invisible forces are the life and health and activity of the body.”
Well, that’s right. That’s the principle I will stand on. That’s the end of it. The patient may call up the next day and say, “I’m worse.” That sometimes happens. But that’s all right; you go right back to your principle. You may have to go back to it the third day or the thirty-third day, but all you have to do is stand on your principle.
1This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 106A: 1954 Seattle Closed Closed Class, “Infinite Way Treatment Summarized.” It is posted with the kind permission of the Estate of Joel S. 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 Office or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
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