A: Now that’s a good question. It is. It is. It is a good question. I like it, because it is not that affirmations and denials are forbidden in the sense of acknowledging the truth and denying the error, because I have just been affirming my conscious union with God, my conscious oneness with God, and I have been denying power to mental malpractice, to the universal imposed suggestions from without. So I have been affirming and I have been denying.
But when it says in our literature that we must not use affirmations and denials, it means repeating statements of truth over and over and over again for the purpose of making something happen. In other words, we don’t take a prayer and recite it a hundred times, and then say that by the time we get to the hundredth time, the ill will be gone. We don’t repeat it and repeat it and repeat it for the purpose of making something happen, but we do consciously remember it. That is what Paul calls “praying without ceasing.” Morning, noon, and night, we are affirming something to ourselves and denying something. Morning, noon, and night, we are affirming, “I and the Father are one. All that the Father hath is mine.” We may not use that terminology, because the same statement is written in our writings a thousand different ways. So it isn’t necessary to use the same statement, but the same theme is there.
In the same way, the major principle, healing principle, in The Infinite Way is this realization of the nature of error, because now you don’t need any God to get rid of it for you. You don’t have to make a God contact to heal disease. Now it’s only necessary to know the truth—the nothingness of that which is claiming to impose itself upon you from without, and its universal nature.
You’re going to discover a great secret very soon, and that is that the very minute you’re asked for help and don’t pin something onto your patient, they’re going to get well so suddenly—well, sometimes it’s going to shock you, because the only thing that has held them in their disease is the personalization of the evil. Somebody has been blaming it on them, including themselves. Somebody has said that it’s their fault, it’s their wrong thinking, it’s their lust, or their malice, or their enmity, or they may not like their mother-in-law. Well, you can’t love all mothers-in-law, you know. I mean, let’s be reasonable.
There’s a limit, but that shouldn’t make anyone ill, and certainly this fantastic notion about hate and jealousy. All my metaphysical life, I’ve been hearing how it causes cancers, and if you’d know the type of women that I’ve met that have had cancer, I can’t find any of that hate and jealousy in them to that extent. A little bit of it, of course—we all have that, but not enough to cause cancer. I know it isn’t true. And I’ll surprise you with something else. I have had cases of new-born babies with cancer, before they had a chance to hate. Now who are you going to blame it on? How are we going to blame these diseases on the wrong thinking of the unborn babies?
Do you see that you’ve got to wake up now and bear with us in this work, because The Infinite Way hasn’t covered this globe in thirteen years by being promoted, or financed, or advertised. It has gone on its own power of healing, and what has brought about this healing? The impersonalization of evil, the recognition that evil doesn’t start in you. It starts in an Adamic belief in two powers, and then it keeps imposing itself in one form or another, until it comes to us as a suggestion—a suggestion of weather, a suggestion of climate, a suggestion of one thing or another—and we admit it into our consciousness and then say, “Now, how shall I get rid of it?” It’s much better to keep the locks on the door and keep the thief out, rather than worrying how to get rid of him after he’s in. So it is with this.
Two points I bring to your attention in The Infinite Way, which can change your entire life. Begin to know your own identity and do not fear to claim your sonship with God, for you are a divine being. The essence of you is God; the very life and fiber of your being is God. All that constitutes your being is God, and you can demonstrate that in proportion as you realize that all the negative things of life—sin, disease, death, lack, and limitation—are imposed beliefs. They are superimposed upon you, and ignorantly you accept them, whereas if you would know that God is too pure to behold iniquity, and therefore nothing is truth that comes to your consciousness unless it testifies to immortality, eternality, infinity, abundance, twelve basketsful left over, and so forth.
So it is that in answering this question then, you must affirm the truth, or else how could you know the truth? And in knowing the truth, you are always denying the error, or the nature of it, or the fact of it. But do not use affirmations and denials in the form of “I am rich, and I know it; I am rich, and I know it;” and then have to open up your purse and say, “I can’t find a dollar in it.” And the same way, there is no use saying, “I am well, I am well, I am well,” if you’re sick—none at all.
I remember in the days when I was exclusively practicing, and on several occasions in winter in New York, New England, I came to my office with evidence of a cold. And many times, patients would say, “Oh, you have a cold?”
“Yes.”
“Oh!”—surprised that I would go to the office and reveal it. I should stay home and conceal it. I said, “Look, I’m not ashamed of a cold. I’m really grateful that I know something to meet it with, and I can do my work in the office as well as home and not claim to have made a demonstration that I haven’t made, so let’s go on with this.”
Now, all of this thing about “I am well, I am well, I am well,” is a form of hypnotism. It was used by Coué in the days of Couéism: “Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better.” Only the metaphysicians went him one better and said, “I am already perfect.”
That is not the type of affirmation to use, but this is a good type: “I.” Just think of the meaning of that word “I.” “I.” It means—do you know what it means? Well, just listen to what Jesus said about it: “I am the bread, and the wine, and the water. I am life eternal. I am the resurrection. I am life eternal.” Isn’t that wonderful what Iam? And that is what you must realize—that that is what I am. That is what “I”means. “I in the midst of thee is mighty. I am the way, the truth, and the life.”And as you stand on that and then look out and say, “Ah, and all this else that appears as limitation, finiteness, negativeness, this is carnal mind, nothingness, the arm of flesh. This is a universal belief in two powers, but I am the only power. I am the way, and the truth, and the life, and that Iin the midst of me embodies all of the God power there is.” That’s why I can’t use It. It can use me.
If I am still, Iin the midst of me will live my life, just as Paul told us: “I live, yet not I. Christ liveth my life.” I live, yet not I. There is a Spirit in me that liveth my life. Ilive, yet not I. The Father within me liveth my life. Those are affirmations, if you want to call them such. They’re more than that. They are declarations of truth, but you must remember that while there have been many mystics in life, in the life of the world, very few of them were healers, and the reason is—as a matter of fact, some of the mystics have been the greatest sufferers, physically and mentally— and the reason is they never discovered this second step. They never discovered where evil comes from, or what its nature is, and of course, the human world doesn’t know, and that is why the human world can’t meet it.
It is only we who have this secret of the source of evil, who by demonstrating it in our individual lives, will attract to us a group here and a group there, and so spread around the world until one day somebody will ask the question, “What makes you people so immune to most of the world’s disasters or the world’s tragedies?” And then it will be possible to reveal, “I know the source of evil. I know whence it comes and how it operates. It operates as a mesmeric suggestion coming to us for acceptance, and in our ignorance, we accept it. It operates as a universal malpractice. It operates as imposed belief in two powers. It does not operate when I know that God constitutes my being. All that God is, I am, and nothing can enter my consciousness that defileth or maketh a lie.” There you have the whole process.
1This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 302A: 1960 Los Angeles Closed Class, “Nothing Takes Place Outside of Consciousness.” 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.