Recording 463B is one of two sources for Chapter 11, “Individuality Revealed through Prayer,” in The Altitude of Prayer. While this recording is no longer available for listening on this website, if you are a subscriber to the Joel S. Goldsmith Streaming Service, you can listen to it there. The additional study material for this recording will continue to be available here on the Goldsmith Global site. To purchase the recording or the transcript, click/tap here.
While the 1962 Los Angeles Closed Class was devoted to the nature of prayer, in this particular session Joel takes up the nature of creation and brings us back to the touchstone principle of the nature of individual being and true identity, including the nature of true body. In the course of this engaging class, Joel addresses:
This summary is provided simply as a reminder of the content of the class. To download or print this summary, click/tap here.
The object of prayer is to bring the Spirit to our individual human experience; to bring us into contact with that Christ, Spirit, Soul; that infinite, transcendental Presence beyond the range of human understanding that is omnipotent and omnipresent. It can never be known through the senses, but It is so real that It can guide you in the most practical matters of life. It goes before you to make the way smooth; It is a source of wisdom and strength greater than your own wisdom or strength. It heals and forgives and assures us that the past is past. The illumined individual has contact with that Presence. Paul speaks of It as “the Christ;” Jesus called It “the Father within.” This Presence must permeate our consciousness and flow through us, and the more we contact It, the more our human life will be an outer expression of an inner divinity.
By studying the nature of creation, we can find a way to bring about that at-one-ment. To illustrate creation, imagine that we have a great big block of clay, and we form men and women out of this clay. Scripture speaks of God the Father and God the Son, or “I and my Father are one.” So, we will say that the Father is the block of clay and the children are the men and women formed from the clay. They are children, but they are still clay. They are nothing separate from clay; they are clay itself formed. Every individual is of God, formed in the image and likeness of God, and just as clay constitutes the substance of the clay children, God the Father constitutes the substance of every individual. Now, God is an invisible substance, so the children of God are also invisible. The child of God is immortal and incorporeal; it is just as much Spirit as God is, and the form of man is of the same substance as God, which is Spirit.
So, we have God, infinite perfection, and we have His sons and daughters, also infinitely perfect, made in the image and likeness of their source. Not one of them needs a truth teaching, a truth teacher, or a prayer. They are just as perfect as God. They have nothing but divine qualities, and they lack nothing. We may think of these children as Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden before the fall. All is perfection and harmony. Then a belief in two powers arose. We don’t know how that was possible or anything about it. We only know that the belief arose, and our perfect men and women lost their awareness of their God-identity. And here we are, trying to find the truth that will free us of this belief in two powers and get us back to our Father’s house.
Now, let us put clothes on these clay figures from head to foot until our spiritual people are lost from sight. All we see now are dresses and suits, and we have become so used to looking at dresses and suits for so many generations that we have forgotten that there is a body underneath. We think that clothing constitutes all there is to men and women. Now, imagine that someone received an illumination that said that underneath those dresses and suits there is the body of God—that original spirit body. Impossible! We look in the mirror and it isn’t there. We search but can’t find it with our eyesight. Only spiritual insight will tell you that underneath these clothes there is a body, a temple made by God, the creative Principle, who formed it and formed it of the substance of Himself.
The person who first caught the glimpse of the truth of identity had an inner vision that enabled him to see that I am not a mortal with a body of flesh and blood; that I am immortal, and my body is the temple of God. According to the senses, we are mortals—born, aging, dying, with limited lives, mentalities, and strengths. But men and women of vision say, “No. You are the temple of God, and God dwells in you. You are the image and likeness of God.” But we go back to that mirror and say, “Can’t be.” Yet these spiritual men and women of all ages keep saying, “Don’t believe what you are seeing. God is not in the appearance. God is in the still small voice. If you would know truth, turn within to the kingdom of God, the Father within you.”
God is Spirit, and the offspring of God is the Christ, or Son of God. In your spiritual identity, the truth of your being, you are that Christ. Yet you are locked up inside of that “suit of clothing,” the physical body, and you can’t get at the Christ-You. You have been told about your true Selfhood, but you have heard it only with the ears. You haven’t yet discerned it. You haven’t yet unlocked whatever is blocking your entrance to your Self, to your Christhood. But when you reach your Christhood, you find that Christ calls Himself by the name of I and says, “I am come that ye might have life, and that ye might have it more abundantly.” That spiritual Self of you, your own Christhood, hidden inside flesh, blood, and bones, is saying, “I am come that you might have life everlasting. I am to be your bread, meat, wine, and water. I am to resurrect you out of any tomb of sin or disease or poverty or unhappiness. I, your Christ Self, am here to restore to you the lost years of the locust; to bring you back to the Father’s house so that you will witness yourself as you are—Christ, the perfect son or daughter of God.”
God sent Himself forth as incorporeal, spiritual you, and as His son, your name is Christ. But you identify yourself by the name of I. Heretofore, you have thought of I as what you see in the mirror. That is not true. I is this invisible Selfhood within you. The outer self is the masquerade born of the belief in two powers. I am Christhood. I am spiritual being. I am the embodiment of the power of resurrection and the power of life eternal. I embody my own food, clothing, housing, and transportation. I am the way, and I must dedicate my life to the way of I. I have God-given dominion. I am the Christ of God, the spiritual offspring, and I embody the potentialities of infinity. Divine Selfhood is my being. I can do all things through my Self. I live, yet not I; the Self of me lives me.
Because the Self of me is the Self of you, we are brothers; we have the same Father. We are all made of this big lump of clay, representing Spirit. We are of the same substance, the same essence, the same Father. We all have the same name—I. It is a family name, and it describes our Selfhood and our relationship to our Source. Embodied in the I that I am is the power to do and to be all things. I live forever because I and my Father are one. God-Self is my Self and God-Self is your Self. I is not mortal; I is God, and therefore it is my Self that is omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience. How ridiculous that I ever accepted I to be a limited self that was born and will die; that I have believed that I could be sick, or dead, or poor! Let this glorious I that I am shine forth, because It is Spirit. It is God in action; It is God individualized.
While you are declaring this, you are praying, knowing the truth of your Self that makes you free, communing with your inner Self. In this sense, prayer is a recognition of my true identity and the infinite nature of my own being. At first, we don’t believe it. But once I know that hidden within me is the I that I am, I know that my real name is I, and that the Self of me is the Self of you. There is only one Self, and that is God-Self. Anything I do to you, I do to myself because I am your Self. We are discovering the truth of our own being and the truth of the one spiritual universe. At first, it takes a lot of words and thoughts. You can say this in a thousand different ways, and it will always be the same truth: I and my Father are one, and we are brethren; and there is an indwelling Christ—my true Selfhood.
Eventually, prayer is without words and thoughts. Since I carry my Christ with me and Its name is Omniscience, why do I need words and thoughts? Eventually, I can rest and let It perform Its work. Christ is my identity, and I have nothing to do but let Christ live my life. Then you can heal because you are no longer dealing with corporeality. You are dealing with truth and letting the truth make you and your patient free. You do not need words and thoughts; you need the realization of Self. When I recognize I as within my own consciousness, the solution appears. Once we have touched the fourth dimensional realm, we are incorporeal and not dependent on material processes. Prayer reveals that realm to us. You will be demonstrating Christhood when you agree that there is only one I, and that that I is your enemy neighbor as well as your dearest friend. This alone eliminates religious and racial bigotry.
As you work with this principle of true identity, living and practicing it, eventually you need no thoughts. The truth of Being, namely that I means God, and I means you, and I means oneness, omnipotence, and omnipresence, will be present in your awareness. It will be there as automatically as 12 x 12 = 144 is in your awareness after you have mastered the multiplication tables. When you realize that I is locked up within you, you will learn to meditate and make that I talk to you. Sometimes it will even thunder in your ears. That I is locked up in you just like the clay figure is locked up inside that dress or suit. Rip that suit or dress off and you will see the clay figure. Rip this outer selfhood off and you will find I in the midst of you. You can spend hours searching yourself from head to foot until you gain an absolute conviction that you are not in that body; you are omnipresent. Then you will know that not only I and the Father are one, but I and all my brethren are one. You will be dwelling in the secret place of the Most High, abiding in the Word and letting the Word abide in you, and you will bear fruit richly.
If you are going to pray, or bless, or be a benediction, it must be the spontaneity of I flowing out from you. And when you say “I,” say it with respect and love; you are in a holy presence. Individually, we are sacred. This is why Orientals are taught to bow to one another upon meeting. It is the recognition of their divinity. We are divine beings, and we should bow our head when we meet each other. Then we learn how to treat each other in peace and in love.
As we conclude this series of recordings about body, we invite you to review the sessions in some way that resonates with you.
However you choose to do it, spending time reviewing the study program is a valuable investment that will help strengthen your connection to the Infinite Way teaching on body and support deeper, more profound realizations.
For your convenience, the links to all of the summaries for the study program are listed below:
Session 1: “My Identity – Body – Communion” (59A)
Session 2: “Flesh and Flesh” (102B)
Session 3: “Attaining Dominion through I” (513B)
Session 4: “Self-Government of Organs, Functions, Food” (605B)
Session 5: “Questions and Answers on the Mystical Life and Healing” (213A)
Session 6: “Spiritual Healing” (17A)
Session 7: “Spiritual Healing, Part 2” (17B)
Session 8: “Infinite Way Healing Principles (Specific)” (498A)
Session 9: “The Simplicity of the Healing Truth” (551A)
Session 10: “‘I’ Revealed” (463B)