A: No, no. You must realize this: There is a universal claim of a selfhood apart from God, of a law apart from God, of a health apart from God, of a power apart from God, and this is always operating.
Now, it is for this reason that people are sick. It is not because of any fault of theirs. It is not because of any sins of omission or commission, except the sin of not knowing the truth, the sin of ignorance. But all the human race is ignorant, and that is why all the human race suffers sin and disease and accident.
Now, in proportion as you live this life of contemplative meditation, in which you are acknowledging God as the only power, God as the only law, God as the only life, God as the only health, God as the only being; as you live this contemplative life in which your mind is constantly resting in the assurance that all power is in the Invisible, not in the visible, all of a sudden you are no longer quite so subject to disease. And if you will examine the history of families who have lived ten or fifteen or twenty years in teachings like Christian Science—and now we find this in The Infinite Way—you will find that their history indicates far less disease, far less accident, far less sin, far less of any of the world’s discords than is normal to the regular run of families.
In other words—well, to be exact, it has been found on checking that in Christian Science families, that children only averaged twenty percent of the absences for sickness of those from non-Science families. Now, the reason is that in these Science families, they do this daily lesson; they are continually reading books which assure them and reassure them of one power, one law; and therefore, to that extent they become free or immune from most of the world’s claims.
Now, we are finding, after fourteen years of The Infinite Way, that whereas students in the first two or three years of their study are pretty regularly calling upon me—and lately upon some of our other students who are practitioners—for help for problems of one nature or another, . . . after a period of about three years, the calls are few and far between. And by the time we are up to six and seven years, we’re getting almost no calls from our students, because they are able to handle the problems that arise themselves. I’m speaking now not of all of them, of course, but of those who are most serious, or those who are most receptive, those who catch the inner glimpse of this principle.
And so it is that you find that your illness or mine is only an occasional affair, and when it is, it is not your fault or mine. It is just the heavy pressure of the universal belief. And you’ll usually find too, that it will come on days when world news is worst, on days when we’re either fearing the bomb, or fearing the Russians, or fearing the flu epidemic, or fearing the polio epidemic. Those are the days when we are the most subject to the ills of the flesh, and it is on those days that we need to be even more alert in our realization: “You cannot convince me that there is any power in the visible universe in man, or in germs, or in weather, or infection, or contagion, or whatnot, for I am convinced that God is the only power, and God is invisible, and therefore, all power is in the Invisible.” And so it is that as we pray without ceasing, which means knowing the truth without ceasing, the truth that we know keeps us free.
Now, if you will always remember to impersonalize and never blame yourself, or never blame your patient or your student for their ills, you will have half the victory won, and the other half comes with this realization of what we call one power, but which actually means no power. It means no power in any form or effect.
Is there a fever? Let there be a fever, for there is no power in form or effect. Don’t fight it. Don’t argue with it. Don’t try to get rid of it. Recognize, know, the truth that all power is invisible, governing visible form and effect, and then you can sit beside your patient with a fever and rest in the assurance, “I in the midst of thee, the invisible power, is the only power, and that which is visible is not power.”
The other day this came to me as I was writing a letter to one who had asked for help, that the soldiers always say they never fear the bullet they can hear. Why? It has already gone by. And the thought came to me too, “Why fear the condition that we can see or hear or taste or touch or smell, since it has already gone by?” The power itself is in the Invisible. Try it and see how you lose your fear. Once your fear of any personal condition is lost, it has no hold over you whatsoever.
1This excerpt is from Recording 347A: 1960 Manchester Closed Class, “The Invisible.” 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.
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