Many of us enjoy the classes in which Joel answers questions from students. Sometimes the question is one that we ourselves might have asked. Other times it is one that might not have occurred to us, but which we find interesting, and we are curious about how Joel will answer it.
On this page of our website, on the first and third Saturdays of the month, we will post a new question and answer from one of Joel’s classes or books. We trust that you will find these interesting, helpful, and sometimes an answer to just what is on your mind.
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Posted on 2/21/26
This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 400A: 1961 San Diego Special Class, “The Essence of The Infinite Way, Part One.” It is posted with the kind permission of the Estate of Joel S. 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 Office or by calling 1-800-922-3195.
Goldsmith Global has permission to provide this material to Goldsmith Global participants for educational and study purposes. Please respect the copyright on this material.
PLEASE NOTE: If you have access to the recording from which a question is excerpted, you might enjoy hearing Joel himself answer the question. As of this posting, when feasible, we will provide the time stamp at which Joel addresses the question. The time stamp is from the recording on the Streaming Service, where each recording begins with a 10-second announcement. So if you are listening to your own recording, the excerpt will probably begin 10 seconds earlier than the time stamp.
Q: Why is the healer responsible for the healing?
(If you have access to recording 400A and would like to hear Joel answer this question, he begins at approximately 33:20.)
A: And be assured, nobody but the healer is responsible. The answer is that the degree of spiritual illumination of the individual determines the degree of the healing power. Or, let me make that plainer: In the degree that an individual has inwardly realized God as one, in the degree that an individual has realized Spirit as the only power, the only presence, the only substance, the only activity: in that degree is the healer the law unto the case.
God doesn’t heal us. If God healed us, we’d all be healed instantaneously, for God is no respecter of persons. It is the truth that heals us, but there is no truth floating around in the air. Truth is made manifest through and as individual consciousness. In other words, if we can believe Scripture, it would only have been necessary to go to the Master for one treatment, and we would have been instantaneously healed. If we had gone to the disciples, we would have had some instantaneous healings, but probably others would have taken two or three treatments, and probably others more than that.
And so it is that in the degree in which an individual comes to the realization of God as being infinite omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, of God as being the only law, the only life, the only substance, and in the degree that this same individual realizes that all appearances of discord of any name or nature are but the carnal mind, the arm of flesh, or the belief in two powers, or nothingness, in that degree do the healings take place.
Now, in our work, we handle every claim, disease, sin, false appearance, that is brought to us, not as a person, but as the presentation of the carnal mind in one form or another. Then we recognize that since the carnal mind is not ordained of God, it is not power, has no power, is not a law, has no law, and therefore must fall by virtue of its own nothingness.
By impersonalizing evil in that way, we have found that most of the claims yield quickly and thoroughly, because we have not touched a person, we have not tried to change a person, or psychologize a person. We have known the truth, which is that all evil is a belief in two powers. All evil is this carnal mind operating hypnotically, to make us believe in a million different kinds of sin and disease and death and lack and limitation.
And therefore, whether the claim is brought to us by a Jones or a Smith or a Brown is of no importance. Whether the claim that is brought to us is cancer or consumption or polio or unemployment or unhappy home relationships, is of no importance. What is of importance is this: We know that God constitutes individual being, your being, and mine. And we know that any discord claiming presence is but the operation of this belief in two powers, this carnal mind, which, having no God-ordination, no God-authority, no God-foundation, is no thing and no person and no condition and no presence and no law. And this nullifies the belief in two powers, and thereby nullifies any specific appearing of that universal belief.