A: There’s that old thing about language again isn’t it, and words? Certainly, if you are going to be technical and stand for an absolute statement of truth, not only you can’t bless anyone, but you can’t even forgive anyone. Because in forgiving them, you would be making an acknowledgement of the offense. You’ve got to learn to spiritually interpret scripture and make use of not only its absolute statements, but its application to relative conditions.
Now, had Jesus lived in the absolute, you don’t think for a moment that he would have said, “Go show John what things ye have seen. The sick are healed, the dead are raised, the blind have their eyes opened, the deaf have their ears unstopped”? Don’t you know how relative that statement is? That’s not absolute; it’s not even truthful from the standpoint of spiritual truth, because how did Jesus heal the sick and raise the dead? By knowing there weren’t any such things. But he had to use language, our language, to make us understand.
He wasn’t so absolute that he didn’t recognize a hungry multitude that had to be fed. He didn’t make any statement of, “Why do we need loaves and fishes? There’s nobody hungry. Error isn’t real.” He never said anything like that. He started with the relative appearance. There is a multitude to be fed. Now what are we going to do about it? What have we in the house? What have we? We have a few loaves and fishes. There’s nothing absolute about that either. The absolute statement is: All that God has, we have.” But he didn’t get an answer like that, and he didn’t expect an answer like that. He was dealing with a relative situation, and he was going to apply to it an absolute spiritual principle.
And so it is with us. In the absolute, how can you forgive anyone, when everyone is the spiritual offspring of God? And I have had students who have been reading the absolute come to me and say, “Your teaching must be wrong, because there is no error. We are all the children of God.”
“Why come and tell me that, then?”
“Well, I need some help.”
“Oh, no, you can’t in the absolute. Go back to your absolute. Find out you don’t need any; all these things are nonsense.”
We know what the absolute is, certainly. But if you and I were living in the absolute, would we be here in this room? Would we ever sit at the feet of the Master? Would we ever need a spiritual teacher or a spiritual teaching? Heavens, no! It is because, to our sense, we are living a relative life. We have been thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Now we’re earning our living by the sweat of our brow. We’re toiling and trying to find our way back to the kingdom of heaven. Now someone comes along and says, “Oh, but you’re already there.”
Actually, in our work we know what the absolute is, and the books are full of it. And yet we’re dealing with the relative situations that we have on earth today. And, you know as well as I do that if you’re in a great deal of pain and ask me for help, and I say to you, “Why, you know there is no pain; there is no error,” you’d like to throw me out of a window, even if you’re too respectful to say so. And I wouldn’t blame you, because that isn’t the answer. That isn’t the answer Jesus Christ would have given you. He says that the spirit of God is upon him, and he is ordained to heal the sick. Yet he knew when he was saying it that the child of God is never sick. And so he’s using the language of our state of consciousness while lifting us up to his. Probably when he was on the Mount of Transfiguration with students who understood him, probably he said, “You’ll have to talk to these poor fish the same way that I did at Lazarus’ tomb—not because God needs my prayer, but because these people expect a prayer, and they won’t be healed without a prayer.”
And so it is with us. When anyone asks for help, when they ask me, you know the answer they get because you’ve gotten it. “I will be with you,” or “I am with you this instant. I will help you. I will continue to be with you until you realize your freedom.” Now that’s what I’m saying with my lips. And now what am I saying inside of me? “I and the Father are One.” That’s it. “I and the Father are One.” And I stand on that realization of what I have learned about our true identity. And so it is with this.
Don’t, don’t try to get beyond Jesus Christ yet. And don’t try to be so absolute that you overlook the fact that there are those of us who are in prison of one sort or another. And, if you find us in prison, come and comfort us, visit us. And if we’re hungry, come and feed us. And if we’re sick, come and heal us. And then, when you’ve lifted us out of our misery, start to teach us about this absolute truth. And thereby we will be enabled to go and help others.
1This excerpt is from Recording 222A: 1958 New York Closed Class, “Soul—Mind—Body.” 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.