A: Now you see, passing on is part of the illusion. Therefore, in the ordinary sense of passing on, man doesn’t really make a decision. No part of man makes the decision; it is purely an illusion. Therefore it never takes place.
Man may come to a place in his life where he sees no further use of going on, or his difficulties are such as to make him want to jump out of his skin, and he can then gradually give himself up and walk out of this picture by what we call death. But remember, all he is doing is living an illusion, because it can’t really happen. There is no such thing as passing on. There was a time when it was called “death” and then we changed the name to “passing on,” but it was the same thing, just under a different name. But there is no such thing as death, and there’s no such thing as passing on. That whole picture takes place as an illusory experience.
Now the experience of transition, that’s quite a different thing. Those on the spiritual path do not die or pass on. They make a transition, which has nothing to do with dying or passing on, because it’s not an act of theirs. It’s an act of God. Transition is not what we do, but what happens to us by the grace of God.
And you can understand it better if I describe it this way. Let us say that you’re an infant, and you make the transition from infancy to childhood. Now you have an entirely different looking body. You haven’t died or passed on; you’ve just made a transit from infancy to childhood. Now you reach the age of puberty, and another change takes place in your body, but it is not dying, and it is not passing on. It is a transitional stage into another phase of life. Now as you reach the upper teens, you pass into still another phase of life, completely different from twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. All of life looks different. Everything takes on a different complexion, and that is because you’ve made a transition out of childhood. Not only dolls and toys don’t interest you anymore, but even baseball and basketball and football are getting a little bit monotonous because there are wider horizons ahead. You’re commencing to see a world outside of the playground, a world outside of your neighborhood movie. That’s a transitional stage.
All of you who have had children, you don’t remember how bad it was for you to go through. Your parents remember, but you do remember how difficult it was for your children to go through, and you know, with feeling, just what they are experiencing when they go through that transitional stage that’s going to take them into adulthood, where they really have a thinking, reasoning mind, where they really can be logical, and now you’ve made another transition. But they didn’t do it consciously. It was done for them. As a matter of fact, they had to struggle to accomplish it, to get through.
So you keep right on, and one of these days you find yourself in truth, and when you get into truth very far, you find you’re in another world. You’ve left all of that other world of bridge and golf and tennis. You’ve left all that world of dancing and theater, and you’re in an entirely new world where you’re thinking of God, talking of God. Well you know, other people looking on must think you’re crazy. I know I’ve been called that many times—and with good reason, when you stop to think of the basis that they were thinking out from.
We’re in a different world. We’ve already made a transition. We’ve already made a transition from “this world.” That’s what Jesus meant when he said, “I have overcome this world.” And there’s no death about that transition, except what Paul called “dying daily.” It is a dying daily to old modes of thought, old means of thought, old reliances. There again, we were relying on how much the heart beats; we were relying on the blood pressure; we were relying on the foods, or climate, or diet. Now we’re only relying on our realization of God, a complete transition into a new world, a new state of consciousness. It has rightly been called the fourth dimension of life, in which you are dependent on nothing and nobody in the external world. Your entire dependence is right within yourselves.
God is my life, not the heart, liver, or lungs. God is my life. God is my supply, not the dollars. God is my supply. This is a transition out of “this world” into the fourth dimension of life, in which you live very nearly a complete spiritual existence. And so we go on from transition to transition until one day—we don’t do it, remember, this is all being done to us. None of us came to truth of our own accord; we were pushed in. That’s why the rest of the world isn’t here. It hasn’t been pushed hard enough. When it’s pushed hard enough, it also will be in truth.
And you’ll find then that a day will come when you will pass from sight and undoubtedly, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, you will leave a body to be buried or cremated. But you can take my word for it, that there will be no body there. That also will be an illusion in their thought. You will have your body right where you are.
Now, I know from a long experience of work with Christian Science practitioners who have had—like I have had—many, many years of reading funeral services, that many of them have had the experiences that I have had of actually seeing the person standing at their own casket, looking out and smiling, and saying, “Uh-uh, I’m not there.” That has happened in my experience several times, and I have spoken to many, many practitioners who have had the same experience of actually seeing the person and seeing them laugh and say, “It’s no use.”
Of course, that is the meaning of the whole story of the resurrection: “He is not here. He is risen.” That’s the whole meaning of the story of the resurrection: He is not here. He is risen. Where is he? There he goes, talking to the gardener, and then pretty soon his mother catches up to him and they have a talk, and then a couple of the disciples come along, and they have a talk. Why certainly, he is not here. He is risen. And you are not here in your flesh. The moment you have come into truth, you have risen to some measure above the illusion that you are in a physical body, and you’re commencing to perceive that your body is something within your own consciousness. That’s what gives you dominion over it. It is within you, and it is subject to you. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the law. I am the resurrection. If you destroy this temple, in three days I will raise it up again.
So it is that by virtue of I, which is consciousness, we have dominion over this body. When it’s sick, we can raise it up, and if it claims to die, we can lift it out of the tomb. He is not here. He is risen. This is not an isolated experience of one man because if it were, it would have no value. What value would it have if somebody was great enough to raise their body from the tomb, unless it was done as an example to show us the immortality of life and body and show us that we have the power to be raised out of the tomb? By what power? I-power, consciousness.
I and my Father are one, and all the Father hath is mine, and I have God-given dominion over everything there is, and it cannot talk back to me. I function it, not by conscious thought, but by letting the body rest back in the I, and then let the I take over and govern without any conscious thought on my part. I never have to tell the body what to do. I don’t have to tell my heart how much to beat. I don’t have to tell my digestive organs anything or eliminative organs anything. I don’t have to tell any part of my body anything. I release it into the I, which is Consciousness, or God, and then let—let That function, for It is the infinite intelligence of the universe. It created this body, therefore It has the power to maintain and to sustain this body, if I release the body into It.
If I take over with the human mind, first I have to determine how many times I want the heart to beat, and then I’ve got to sit there and be sure that it obeys. But the real teaching is, “Take no thought for your body. Your heavenly Father knoweth how many heartbeats you need, and it is His good pleasure to give them to you.” Full measure! He won’t hold out one. On the other hand, He’s not too generous. He won’t give you too many. He’s just even and right, normal and harmonious.
Do you see this brings us right back up again to that cloud twelve, where you do not live by taking thought? Even though you’ve used all of this to come up here, now here you are up here again, where you don’t have to take thought for your body—how it shall move or not move, how it shall rest or not rest, how it shall eat or not eat. Now you’re up here where you can relax. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” and that includes my body and its functioning. And my thoughts are not God’s thoughts, and God’s thoughts are not my thoughts, so there’s no use of my taking thought for this body. So now I’ll rest.
And you see how quickly it comes. It says, “Peace, be still,” just as the Master said to the storm. What’s the difference whether there’s a storm at sea or a storm in your body? In either case don’t you say, “Peace, be still?” I don’t think either one will obey, but sit here patiently and let I, Consciousness, take over, and pretty soon It will say, “Peace, be still,” or “I in the midst of thee am mighty,” or “I am thy only life, and I am infinite.” Somewhere deep down within you, something will come up into expression to assure you and reassure you that you have relaxed and yielded; you have surrendered yourself to the Infinite Invisible. And in one way or another, It will let you know It has taken over. Whether this is your body or your patient’s or your student’s, it makes no difference.
You see, you plant a seed in the ground, a seed of a rose, and you don’t sit there telling that seed that it should come up a rose bush, and that it should have roses. You don’t take conscious thought. You just surrender that seed to its own environment, and then you wait patiently, and much to your surprise, a rose bush comes out of a rose seed. No, you’re not surprised at all. That’s what you expected. That’s what you knew would happen. Why? Because you weren’t governing. If you were, you may have preferred a papaya tree. Probably I would sometimes, but if it has to be the rose, I’ll take the rose if that’s what God says, but I do like papayas. I’d have more papaya trees than I would rose bushes.
Now, just see this. You plant your seed; you obey whatever you know to be the laws of planting; and then you let the law take over. You don’t know what the law is. I could just as well call it the soul of this earth, or I could call it the mind, or intelligence of this earth, or I could call it God. I could call it the principle of nature. It would make no difference to you because you don’t know the meaning of them any more than I do. It just means that you relax that seed into whatever its native element and law may be, and you let whatever that law is govern it until it comes out into flowers or fruit or whatever its nature may be.
So it is, we give back our bodies. We take them right out of the mind. We place our body right back where it belongs in its native element in the consciousness that formed it in the womb. Now, could it be in better care than that? We didn’t tell the body to have heart, liver, lungs, and so forth, legs, eyes, ears, hair. Being in its native element, the law took care of it and provided everything necessary. And now we place the body right back there in its native element, Consciousness. And the first thing you know, up comes from the depths an assurance: “I am on the field. Take no thought for your life, for your body. Your heavenly Father knoweth, and it is His good pleasure to govern.”
Every day you have to relax your body back into Consciousness so that you’re sure your body isn’t being operated on by human belief, because if it is, you’re going to watch your body get sick and die, you’re going to watch your body get old, and why should we have that? “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” so I relax my supply back into God. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof,” and now I rest back in Consciousness and let Consciousness feed me, support me, maintain me, sustain me. I’m not looking at man, whose breath is in his nostril. I’m leaning back on Consciousness and realizing, “Thou art my bread, my wine, my water. Thou art my inspiration. Thou art the staff of life unto me. Thou art the resurrection of my being and of my body. Thou restoreth the lost years of the locusts.” I take my body, my life, my wealth, right out of the human mind, right out of human experience, and place them back where they belong—in their native element.
God is my consciousness; I rest in God. God is my consciousness; I am fed by God—my consciousness. The activity of my being, of my body, of my business, of my work, of my home, I rest it back in God. I do not place it at the mercy of man, whose breath is in his nostril. And without taking thought, I learn to wait for that still small voice, and It says, “Knowest thou not, I am closer to you than breathing and nearer than hands and feet? Knowest thou not, I am the rock?” And then I see, I feel, something that sayest, “Whither shall I flee from Thy Spirit?” Indeed whither? I’m right here in Thy Spirit, resting in Thee, relaxing in Thee. Thy grace is my sufficiency in all things”—in bodily things, in monetary things, in home things, in family things, in student things, in practitioner things, in patient things, in travel things. Thou, Thou art the activity of my being.
1 This excerpt is from Recording 213A: 1958 Second Chicago Closed Class, “Questions and Answers on the Mystical Life and 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 the transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available from The Infinite Way website or by calling 1-800-922-3195.