A: Everything that you see, hear, taste, touch, or smell exists as an effect. And the moment you perceive that there is neither good nor evil in that effect, you lose your fear of it. You can’t fear something that has no effect, any more than you fear a glass of pure water. As a matter of fact, you not only can’t fear a glass of pure water, you can’t even love it. You can enjoy it and benefit by it, but there’s nobody yet who ever fell in love with a glass of water, nor hated it, nor feared it. You just take it as it is for what it is, a glass of water.
Now the Master felt that same way about leprosy. He didn’t hate it, and he didn’t fear it. He certainly didn’t love it, but he went up and touched it, and showed by that that he had risen above the belief of good and evil. He knew leprosy wasn’t good, but he also saw that it wasn’t evil; that it had no power.
So we have to do, with every form of sin and disease that appears before our gaze. We have to be able to look at it and say, “Never again can I fear you; never again can I hate you.” There is no power in that which is seen, heard, tasted, touched, or smelled. That doesn’t mean that it isn’t useful. Water is useful; food is useful; electricity is useful. Loads of things are useful; many things are beautiful; loads of things are harmonious and joyful; but none of them have a power for good or evil, except such power as “thinking makes it so.” Now, when you agree not to think that it is good or evil, you will find it has no power. When it has no power for good or evil, then you’ll find that divine harmony establishes itself in your experience. So it is.
The principle is that you are suffering from those things that you hate, fear, or overly love. And when you no longer hate them, fear them, or love them, but treat them as they should be treated as a part of this universe, and each thing serving its purpose, then you will find that in one way or another, those things that should not be a part of your experience will be withdrawn from you, and those things necessary to your unfoldment will be provided for you. Then you have to watch yourself that after they’re provided, you don’t go around thinking they’re good. They’re not good, but they are useful or beautiful, enjoyable, so forth.
Now, practice this principle in just that way. You can look around at your rooms, look around your home, look into your gardens, and begin to agree that whereas these may be beautiful and useful, they have no powers of good or evil within them. All power is in God. Only the invisible—only the invisible—is good; only the invisible. If it’s visible, it’s neither good nor bad but sometimes useful, practical, beautiful, joyful, and so forth and so on.
This changes the entire nature of one’s life. A person who realized that there’s nothing good or evil couldn’t steal, nor could they lie for anything, or cheat for anything, because there wouldn’t be anything that would have that much value to them, if it’s neither good nor evil. If all the good is in the invisible, one would then abide in the invisible and let the invisible flow out into the visible.
1This excerpt is from Recording 173B, 1956 Portland Closed Class, “He Hangeth the Earth on Nothing.” 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 at www.joelgoldsmith.com or by calling 1-800-922-3195.