A: There is no one state. If a man is a mortal when he passes beyond, he is still a mortal. Death never made a mortal into an immortal; otherwise, death would be man’s best friend. But scripture says that death is an enemy that must be overcome.
Now, the spiritually enlightened never know death; they never experience death. Their passing from this stage isn’t death. It’s an awakening into a higher state of consciousness. It’s only a mortal who knows death, and his death is only a temporary one, for he wakes up again another mortal. He has certainly all of the opportunities for becoming an immortal as he has here. That hasn’t changed. But the mere act of death hasn’t changed him, except in the case of those who are on this spiritual path.
Now, it makes no difference if you haven’t outwardly seemed to have made good progress, because you’re no more in a position to judge your progress today than I was a week before the experience2 happened. But if you are on this path; if you are filling your consciousness with as much of truth as you can; you will find then that if you should pass, that it will be as if you had made a thousand years’ progress—and just by the act of passing. All those—and I’ve witness it, so I’m not speaking again from hearsay; I’m telling you from actual experience what I’ve witnessed—all those on the spiritual path immediately make the equivalent of a thousand years’ progress on passing.
However, not by jumping out of windows to get there. But those who are on the upward path, who pass from what we would call natural causes, instantly—instantly—throw aside even the mortal shell that others carry with them across the border, and they are free. But those who are on the mortal level, they waken on the mortal level, and they have to then go through the same growing process as we have been going through here.
I have seen those who have left this plane, sometimes within a few hours, and sometimes within a day or two after they’ve left, and I’ve seen how they were clothed, and I’ve seen how they spoke. Then I’ve seen those who were on the spiritual path, and I’ve seen the transformation in them, and the transformation is something that is beyond our imagination. That is only because in this study and meditation, in the study and meditation of truth, there is a refining process going on. There is a falling away of those veils of spiritual ignorance, and even if you cannot fully perceive the benefit of them in your daily life, they’re there just the same.
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.
2 Joel is referring to the experience he had in 1928 with a practitioner in Detroit, after which his entire life changed and he found that he had the healing gift.