A: Well, I would just like to see you have faith enough to move a mountain or even to move a little lump. Heaven knows, there are lots of lumps around, but you don’t find much faith that moves them. It takes something more than faith, unless you can give a different meaning to “faith” than the one that we understand as rule.
In other words, you may have faith in God. Billions of people do, and just see what happens to them. You may have faith in a religious medal. You may have faith in a figure on a crucifix. You may have faith in a Bible. But just look what’s happening to the world with all that faith.
That kind of faith isn’t really faith. It’s belief. And actually, if you were to stop and analyze it, you’d find that it’s a belief in something that has been created in the mind. In other words, nobody knows what God is, and yet everybody says they believe in God. Now tell me what do you think they believe in? Nobody knows how God acts, but most people will claim to their last breath that they have faith in God. Faith in God to do what? Faith in God as what? What does that faith mean exactly?
No, as a matter of fact, it’s all right to have faith that two times two are four, but actually, because it is [i.e., two times two is four], you don’t need any faith. It is whether or not you have faith.
And if you’re willing to be deluded with a false sense of religion, you can go on saying, “I have faith in God,” but to tell you the truth, God is going to be God whether or not you have faith. And if you’d like to see it proven, when you go into the practice, see how much easier it is to heal an atheist than it is a good old-fashioned religionist who has faith in God. Their very faith is the stumbling block, because it isn’t God they have faith in; it’s some concept of God that they have created, or that has been created for them.
Now faith, when it becomes understanding, is quite a different thing. If you don’t know how to drive an automobile, and you have faith that you do, you’re in for trouble. After you have learned to drive a car properly, it’s fine to have faith in your ability, because you now have faith in something known and understood.
So it is, we have faith in God, but that faith is not a blind faith, nor is it a faith in an unknown God. It is a faith in that which has been demonstrated as truth, and so faith passes on into another word which is understanding, and when one has understanding, their faith is on the Rock.
As long as one is believing, or having faith in that which is unknown, untried, unproven, anything can happen, and most things do. Faith, in the ordinary sense of the word, is something that is a stumbling-block to spiritual demonstration. Many people have faith that their church has the only truth. The fact is that no church has truth. Many people have faith that they understand God, and only a few actually do. That’s blind faith, ignorant faith, faith in “a God whom ye ignorantly worship.”
But faith, when it is the result of an understanding, a demonstrable understanding, becomes an entirely different subject, and so again we come back to semantics, don’t we? What does the word mean to this individual or another?
1This excerpt is from Recording Recording 304A: 1960 Los Angeles Closed Class, “Transcendental 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.