A: No absolutely, you cannot rule out of you a hunger for food or a desire for water. You cannot rule out of you entirely the sensations of pain, although there are ways to develop such a high consciousness that even if you had pain, you wouldn’t know it. But ordinarily speaking, and for the ordinary student, the average student, oh, even for the advanced student, unless they have taken pains to develop that faculty, you are going to have hunger, and you’re going to have thirst, and you’re going to require some exercise. You’re going to require proper food. You’re going to require bathing, and the natural affections must be fed.
You’re not supposed to rule those out, but when the Spirit touches us, all of those things are under control. Then you can say, “Man shall not live by bread alone.”2 But that doesn’t mean that man won’t eat some food. Man isn’t living by water, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t take some water into his system. Man doesn’t live by taking baths or exercises, but that doesn’t say that in our present development, we won’t bathe and we won’t take exercises. But those things are incidental to our lives; they are not important. And therefore, the appetites are always under control.
And one way that you’ll notice the effect is this. If you are acquainted with people who have been for some time on a metaphysical path such as Christian Science, Unity, or The Infinite Way, you will find that alcohol drops away from them entirely. Smoking drops away from them entirely, and as a rule, overeating, overindulgence in foods. And that is without any special treatment. That is just a normal, natural happening that the desire for alcohol, the desire for smoking, the desire for overindulgence in any way, drops away.
Also, the desire for, shall we call it, overindulgence in amusements? Whether it’s the overindulgence in theater, or the overindulgence in dancing, or the overindulgence in card playing, or the overindulgence in sex relations, that drops away. And that doesn’t mean that a person may not enjoy an occasional good show or good music. It doesn’t mean that they will not occasionally enjoy a good television show, or a good moving picture show, nor does it mean that they will not be happy in their married life, if they are happily married.
But it does mean this—that when the Spirit touches you, it absolutely rules out overindulgence in the senses, and the proof of that I have seen in all of these twenty-seven years in the people with whom I’ve mingled in Christian Science, and in Unity, and in The Infinite Way. Very seldom do you find anyone that still partakes of alcohol. Oh, I don’t mean that, more especially in Europe, that they may not take a glass of wine or a glass of beer, but that is not the indulgence in alcohol. There again, that is no different than our indulgence in an ice cream soda or a Coca Cola. But the use of alcohol as a stimulant, the use of tobacco as a stimulant, these things drop away.
The desire for gambling drops away. Can you see the reason for it? Gambling has behind it the desire to gain, and let’s say easy gain. But if one has been touched by the Spirit, what do they want that the other fellow has got? Certainly not his money; certainly not without giving something in exchange for it. And so, there is no longer an appetite for gambling, because the product of gambling, which is money, is no longer needed, except that which comes in a normal, natural way.
And so, these things have a rightful place in our experience at our present level of development. But by reaching Spirit, or when Spirit touches us, be assured of this, that all of the human senses are under control. Is that clear? We are not ascetics in the sense that we give up all of what the world calls normalcy.
1This excerpt is from Recording 190B, 1957 First Halekou Closed Class, “Prayer in Action–Isaiah 58-60.” 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 Matthew 4:4