A: Let’s stop right there. There is no such thing as a material body. You may be entertaining a material concept of body, but you haven’t a material body. You only have one body. “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the living God?”2 It doesn’t say anything about your real body or your unreal body, or your astral body, or whatever body. It merely says “your body,” and this you may safely accept: your body is the temple of the living God, and that means it is spiritual. It has no organs, and it has no functions. It is spiritual. But we entertain—because of this good and evil business—we entertain a material concept of body, and that concept of body is what gets all twisted up and gets us into trouble. It’s our concept of body, not the body.
The body has no power to cause us trouble. The body has no power to be good or bad, or sick or well. It is our concept that does it. … When you have the concept of a material sense of body, you are opening yourself to all of the sins and the diseases of the body. The moment you drop that concept and realize that there are not two or three or four kinds of bodies; that there is one body, and that body is the temple of the living God, and it is God-governed and God-maintained and subject to the laws of God, you bring this very body under God’s grace. And if you call it material, you’re limiting yourself.
But if you say, “Well as I see it, I certainly have a material sense of it,” I agree with you. We all do. Everyone has, in some measure, a material sense of body. Jesus had it right up to the ascension. Even after the crucifixion when he walked the earth, he still had the marks of the nails and the mark of the sword in his side, showing that he was still entertaining some measure of material sense of body, although far less than we have. But at the ascension, he rose above—not above a physical body; not above a material body—he rose above a material sense of body, and then what became of all his wounds? They were not there anymore. There was just a pure white essence, so light in essence that it ascended out of sight.
So with us. The ills of our body will evaporate in proportion as we give up believing that we have a material body and agree at the beginning that we are entertaining a material sense of body, and gradually lose that material sense in the realization that there is no power in effect, no power in the body, no power in the organs and functions of the body, no power in germs, no power in food. “All power is given unto Me,”3 saith the Lord.
1This excerpt is from Recording #184, Side 2, from the 1957 Chicago Open Class, “Spiritual Healing.” 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 all transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available at www.joelgoldsmith.com or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
2 1 Corinthians 6:19
3 Matthew 28:18