A: Two reasons—two very, very good reasons. One is that healing work cannot be performed by a person just because they’d like to do it. It is only performed by a very high degree of spiritual consciousness, and the higher the degree of spiritual consciousness, the greater the healing power, and the greater healings that can take place of the more so-called serious cases.
In other words, you can get a child to a point where it can heal almost all of the minor things. But it takes higher and higher degrees of spiritual consciousness . . . Well, you know the disciples brought patients to the Master that they couldn’t heal, and he said, “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” In other words, you’ve got to get still higher than you are if you hope to meet this type of claim. And he met claims that they couldn’t meet, and they were the closest to him. And so it is with us. The greater the degree of spiritual consciousness, the greater the degree of healing.
Now, if an individual were to dedicate themselves to the healing work and would leave the rest of the world alone, that is, would leave students alone, not teach, not go out and lecture, not have anything to do with the business world, just stay in their home or on their estate or out in their garden, and live and move and have their being continuously in meditation and healing consciousness, you would see healings such as you will never believe possible.
It is only when they come down from that high spiritual level and have to battle students, or battle publishers, or battle expenses, or these things, that they cannot maintain that highest level of spiritual consciousness, and, therefore, they do not reach some of the deeper things. Now that is one reason—the lack of depth of spiritual consciousness of the practitioner. Because I can tell you that you might go to nine practitioners and not get healed, and go to the one that is consecrated, devoted, living, and moving, and having their being in nothing but spiritual consciousness, and get healed.
Now then, there is another reason why all things cannot be healed, and that is this: that there are patients on the material level of consciousness that would not yield themselves to the spiritual requirements of healing. In other words, this healing work is not another branch of materia medica. Spiritual healing isn’t just going around taking people’s sick bodies and making them well. Oh, no. Spiritual healing is a transformation of consciousness, and if a person doesn’t want their consciousness transformed, you’re not going to be able to heal their body because the healing of the body is accomplished through the transforming of the consciousness.
I will illustrate that to you this way. When I first read metaphysical books, I had a condition of my feet: corns and calluses. And every three weeks, I had to go to the chiropodist to have those treated. Well, I was only reading metaphysical books for a very few weeks when all of a sudden, I discovered I had no corns, and I had no more calluses, and I never have had since. But I also noticed a different thing: I wasn’t the same fellow that I was then. I began right there to see that losing my temper or judging other people was a nasty business, and I became a little gentler. I’m not too gentle now, but I’m much better than I was then. And so there was a little change, a little transformation of consciousness, and it immediately outpictured itself.
Now, you watch this. You don’t necessarily need treatment for your ills, unless it’s something very acute requiring immediate attention. You don’t really need treatment, because if you were to undertake this study with the idea that you wanted to be transformed, that you really were seeking that mind which was also in Christ Jesus, that you really wanted to live a spiritual life, not just add health to your old material life, you would soon find that the ills of the flesh would begin to disappear. Evidence of age would disappear, and all of these concerns that come with material living would disappear, and with them, their ills. Very few people need treatment if they are in this work seriously for the purpose of attaining spiritual consciousness.
Now, many people have come through metaphysics to regard this as just another form of materia medica, “Oh, my doctor didn’t cure me, and somebody said you can.” Well, actually, we have no such powers. We’re not doctors; we’re not physiologists, biologists. We’re not chemists. We have nothing to do with healing the body. We are not physicians, neither physical nor mental. We are those whose function is to bring about the spiritualization of the consciousness of those students who are tired of material living and finding no more satisfaction in it, and want to know and understand a higher, better, purer way of life.
Now then, I have had people come to my office and say, “What is your fee to cure this cancer? I’ll give you a check.” I have had people come to the office and say, “Don’t talk to me about God; what I want is healing, and I’ll gladly pay for it.” I’ve had that. Probably every practitioner has. But that’s not our function. Our function is not merely to heal disease. Our function is not to be concerned with whether people are sick or well. Our function is to reveal the kingdom of God on earth, and that cannot be done unless you are willing to learn to pray for your enemies, forgive those who despitefully use you, pray for those who hate you; unless you are willing to abide by the teachings of Christianity, the Master’s teachings. Unless you are willing to conform your life and your consciousness to spiritual good, we have no interest in your health, whether it’s good or bad. Why, as a matter of fact, some people get their healing metaphysically and live to curse the day their practitioner healed them. They’d have been far better off if they’d have been sick in bed for a while than the things they did after they got well that got them into worse trouble.
You see, being healthy is not a very noble ambition—not at all. It’s just an animalistic ambition. Everybody likes to have painlessness instead of pain. Every animal feels that way, and we are merely animals when our life is dedicated to having a painless body. Now that has nothing to do with our experience. We have no right ever to come to this work for healing of the body. Our function should have been to seek the kingdom of God and let these things be added unto us, just as the Master fed the Hebrews, and believe it or not, the next day, they chased him over the sea and wanted to be fed again. “What? What? I fed you yesterday.”
“Well, but we’re hungry today.”
“Oh, that’s what you want, loaves and fishes, not to understand the miracle. Oh, no, no, that doesn’t enter your mind. I’m the miracle maker.”
Well, you know, for their sakes, they would have enjoyed it if he’d have just set up food kitchens all across the Holy Lands, and they wouldn’t have had to bother. And I’m sure they would have loved it if he’d have set up healing clinics across the Holy Land, so they wouldn’t have had to bother with bad health—just go and have Peter say a prayer and drop a pence. Oh, that’s pitiful.
Now then, we are in the same boat when we think we can go to a practitioner and say, “Here’s a pound, heal me,” or a 1000 pounds—makes no difference. You don’t purchase spiritual health. You don’t purchase the kingdom of God. When you come to this work, if you are to receive what you are seeking, what you should be seeking is a realization of the kingdom of God, a revelation of God in human consciousness. But then you have to be able, or rather be willing, to mold your lives to a spiritual pattern, not say, “Well, I expect to be well, but I’m going to be the same human I was before.” It doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t work that way. Those people who do get healed without a transformation of consciousness must, at some later time, have another experience that will open their spiritual consciousness.
So, this is the reason why it isn’t possible to cure everybody, for the simple reason that everybody isn’t ready to have themselves molded into spiritual consciousness. Everybody isn’t willing to live the spiritual life that brings spiritual health and harmony. A spiritual ministry does not bring physical health. A spiritual ministry brings a transformation of consciousness, which out-pictures itself as spiritual health. Then you’ve got a health that you can say is not subject to the laws of matter. At least you’ll be able to prove it eighty, eighty-five, or ninety percent. And in this age, that’s a very, very good record.
Because remember, I don’t know what conditions are in Africa, but I can speak very well for the United States. Every time a person sits down to a meal, they poison themselves because all of the flour that they use in their breads, cakes, pies, pastries, are poisoned. To begin with, they don’t get flour; they get the husks of flour; the flour itself, the kernel, is sold separately in other stores for high prices. So what goes into flour is only the husk of flour, then a preservative is put into it, which is a poison. So, to begin with, it’s hard to stay healthy when you eat that kind of whatever its name you would like to give it.
And then, in addition to that, we have other bad eating and drinking habits in the States. In some parts, where there are warm climates, people are filling themselves all day with drinks like Coca-Cola and things of that kind which, in and of themselves, would not be harmful if they were taken in moderation, but when you start to think of the cartons of it that they drink, it’s a wonder that their health is as good as it is.
Then, of course, there are the eating habits. We eat over there five, six, seven, eight times a day. First place, everybody has breakfast before they leave home. Then, if you work in a business, you have to be allowed at ten o’clock to have your coffee break, which means a coffee and one of those coffee cakes made out of that sweet flour that is destructive. Twelve o’clock or one is your lunch hour. Three o’clock, you get another coffee break for coffee and cake. And then, in the evening, you go home to dinner, and if you’re an average American, of course, you have your midnight snack or eleven o’clock bite before you go to sleep.
Now you know as well as I do that it isn’t easy to stay healthy that way, is it? It just cannot be. And then, of course, come all of the pleasant things that happen to people sitting for hours and hours a day, watching wrestling matches, prize fights, comedians, burlesque shows. Now, how do you expect these people to really stay healthy, even physically, with that kind of life going on?
So it is that if you were living that physical life, you’d be presenting terrible obstacles to a practitioner when you’d say, “Heal me, but tomorrow I’m going to eat some more of that stuff and look at some more of those movies and get back where I was before.”
No. Let me explain this to you. In the degree that a person lives a consecrated spiritual life, they can do fine healing work. That healing work will depend first of all on the degree of their own spirituality, secondly, on the receptivity of the patient. If you do not have a patient who is willing to yield themselves, then you will have a patient who, like Judas Iscariot or Thomas or Peter, after three years with the Master, they still aren’t convinced; three years with the Master, they’re still not ready for the full spiritual life.
1This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 646AB: 1956 Johannesburg Closed Class, “From Law to Grace.” 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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