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.
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Posted on 1/18/25:
This copyrighted excerpt is from Recording 363A: 1960 Hawaiian Village Open Class, “Transcendental Consciousness Through Scriptures.” 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.
Goldsmith Global has permission to provide this material to Goldsmith Global participants for educational and study purposes. Please respect the copyright on this material.
Q: How does one attain the healing consciousness?
A: And the answer in the message of The Infinite Way is really a simple one. It is working with specific truth within yourself, constantly, continuously, religiously, until at some certain moment, an inner realization takes place, an experience takes place, in which you inwardly perceive that the very allness of God makes any other claim of power null and void; that there cannot be an infinite God, an infinite Power of Good, and then something else besides.
Now remember, it isn’t just the ability to read these statements and agree with them. Probably, there is where the major mistake has been made among metaphysical students—the reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, and not applying—because it is only in the applying of these principles that, ultimately, the consciousness develops.
Now, in the very earliest days of my practice, this was given to me—that you cannot meet a problem on the level of the problem. In other words, you can’t take a fever and reduce it; you can’t take a lump and reduce it; you can’t take nerves and overcome them; you can’t take a chill and raise the temperature.
You cannot work with the problem on the level of the problem, and that means that when confronted with the problem, we have to have something else to turn to in order that we do not work against the problem itself. To work against the problem itself means not only to perpetuate it but probably to aggravate it and make it worse.
The harder you try to get rid of a disease metaphysically, the chances are the more you’re going to increase its intensity. The harder you struggle against evil, the more real it becomes, and that’s why, again, the Master has given us specific principles of “Resist not evil,” “Put up thy sword,” “My kingdom is not of this world.” Do not try to overcome evil with evil, but do not even try to overcome evil with good because it will not work.
You cannot overcome. You can enter another realm. You could turn the other cheek. You can agree with your adversary, and if it gives you a one-hundred-degree fever, you can say, “Go ahead and be one hundred and two,” but the moment you try to fight it mentally to bring it down, you’ll send it up. You have a far greater chance of meeting it by bidding it to do its worst: “Go ahead. Be something if you can.” But only don’t fight it.
The transcendental consciousness, the fourth-dimensional consciousness, the Christ consciousness, is one that does not fight evil. It does not argue with it; it doesn’t answer back any more than Jesus answered Pilate when he said, “What is truth?” Inwardly, Jesus must have thought, “What difference does it make to you? You wouldn’t accept it if I gave it to you.”
Now, every one of the principles used in the healing work in The Infinite Way is aimed at developing that very state of consciousness which enables you to realize that we are not fighting the things of this world. We are not trying to get rid of a pain by having an antidote for a pain, but by entering a whole new kingdom or realm.
This kingdom or realm is spiritual consciousness, or the consciousness that does not refute, does not deny, does not answer back or fight back, but resists not evil in the realization of God, Spirit, as the central theme of life.
It is true that the mind plays a part in this development of spiritual consciousness, because it is with the mind that we are declaring or remembering whenever an appearance, let us say, of some material law confronts us—infection, contagion, or heredity—that we remember consciously that such law cannot be power if God is the law-giver, because God is both infinite and spirit.
Therefore, the only law that can be is spiritual law, and so we need not fear material or mental law. Now, this is a process going on in our mind, but remember that this is true during the days of our studenthood and discipleship. This is true only until that experience of inner realization comes: “It IS true! There are no other powers!”
We develop this higher consciousness through the conscious remembering of these principles and applying them to specific problems, not only those that confront us as individuals, but those that confront the members of our family and, eventually, of our community and, later, the world at large.