This class was source material for Chapter 4, “Transition” in the book Our Spiritual Resources. 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 will be able to 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.
This summary is provided simply as a reminder of the content of the class. To download or print this summary, click/tap here.
In the course of this class, Joel provides answers to questions about the body. Some are asked directly by students; others are just questions we might have as we consider the topic of body:
Sometimes in order to go forward, we have to take a backward step. These questions take us a step back into the letter of truth, but only so that we are more solidly established on that level and can proceed with greater assurance to the higher one.
The first question is: “Please define soul.” It is impossible to define soul because soul is God, and nobody has ever been able to define God. God can never be known; God can only be experienced. Lao Tzu said, “If you can name it, it isn’t that.” The Hebrew mystic Maimonides said, “If you say that God is good, or that God is love, or that God is all power, or that God is grace, or that God is infinite, you are saying no more than if you say, ‘God Is.’” There is only one thing that we know beyond all doubt: God IS, and that is self-evident. If there wasn’t a God, we wouldn’t be, and the sun, moon, and stars wouldn’t be going around in their orbits. Apple trees wouldn’t always produce apples and rose bushes wouldn’t always produce roses. Like begets like because something is maintaining the is-ness of that law, and we call that something “God.” But it is impossible to define it, and so soul, which is God, cannot be defined either.
We may know that God is the soul of man and the source of man’s purity, spirituality, eternality, and immortality. We can say that God is the soul, spirit, life, law, and activity of man. We can say that the body is the temple of God. But that doesn’t define God. Even in the experience of God, you are aware that God is, and that God is the Presence that you feel, but you still do not know what God is. In meditation, when you enter the stage we call “communion,” it is still as if there were two: Joel and God. Joel is aware of something greater than himself, but this something is also aware of Joel, because it is embracing him within. But this is not twoness; it is a communion between one’s self and one’s higher Self. There is only one being.
There is an even higher stage after “communion,” called “union,” in which there is only me, but not a conscious, thinking me. I become that consciousness which operates without thought or action; which is just a state of being. In that oneness, I can look at a star or the branch of a tree, and also look at myself from that star or branch, as if I were in two places at once. But even though many mystics have had such experiences, no one has ever defined God or soul.
The next question is: “Please explain illusion.” That is simple. Anyone who has seen water on a desert road has witnessed an illusion, because actually, there is no water on the road. An illusion is a mental picture of something that does not have material existence. Seeing railroad tracks come together in the distance is an illusion because the tracks do not really come together. The illusion of disease is also a picture in thought of a condition that does not exist materially. A child with leukemia may be given up by the doctors, but then healed spiritually. If there were such a condition as leukemia, where did it go? What cured it? There was no material help. Actually, the condition did not exist in the mind or body of that child. It existed as an illusory concept, or a belief, in the universal human mind, and it outpictured itself in the mind of that family. The child was not responsible. The “condition” of leukemia was not dispelled; the picture was dispelled. How? In the same way that the water on the desert is dispelled—by knowing the truth. The moment you know there is no water on the road, you drive on. Knowing that the water was an illusion dispelled it for you.
The illusion of sin, disease, or death, or even the illusion of physical health are pictures in the universal human mind. In ordinary metaphysical practice, the object is to exchange the pictures of sin, disease, and death, for the picture of health. But the condition of health is just as much of an illusion as the condition of sickness. In The Infinite Way, we “unsee” the illusions of sin, disease, and death, as well as the illusions of physical health and physical wealth. Physical health is an illusion because someone with a physically healthy body can drop dead tomorrow. Physical wealth is an illusion because a millionaire can lose everything.
The point is that sin, sickness, disease, and poverty are illusions of human sense, and so are physical health and physical wealth. The only reality is your spiritual identity, your Christhood. You are not wealthy when you believe that you are wealthy, but when you realize that God is your wealth, and that all that the Father hath is yours—whether of supply, life, intelligence, or wisdom. You are not safe while you believe that you are alive, or while you believe that you have life, or you have health; you are safe when you realize that God is infinite and therefore, God constitutes your being; God is your life, your soul, your spirit.
Do not feel confident of your health because your blood pressure or your heart or your digestion or your elimination is normal. All of that can change in the twinkling of an eye. To have the assurance of your health and your supply, recognize that God is infinite being; that God is your life; and that that life is eternal and immortal. Know that God is your strength, so you cannot be weak. While illusion says that health is in the body and wealth is in the bank, reality says, “God is my abiding place. I dwell in the secret place of the Most High, not in a body of flesh. I and my Father are one, and all that the Father hath constitutes my being. God is the activity of the organs and functions of my body, and as long as God is active, the organs and functions must respond to that activity. I and the Father are one, and I am not dependent on anything external. God constitutes my Selfhood, and in that Selfhood is the infinity and allness of harmonious being.” Then I am not attached to physical health, physical wealth, physical strength, or physical goodness. I am living in the fullness of my own being; I am self-complete in God. I do not live by virtue of a harmonious physical appearance, but by virtue of the grace of God, which ordains me to live harmoniously, joyously, peacefully, and prosperously forever.
The next question is: “Is it the mental part of man on the subliminal level which makes the decision as to the time of passing on?” Passing on is part of the illusion, so in the ordinary sense of passing on, no part of man makes the decision. Because it is an illusion, passing on never takes place. Man may come to a place in his life where he sees no further use of going on, and he can then gradually give himself up and walk out of this picture by what we call death. But all he is doing is living an illusion, because it can’t really happen.
The experience of transition is quite a different thing. Those on the spiritual path do not die or pass on. They make a transition which is not an act of their own, but an act of God. Transition happens to us by the grace of God. To clarify this, think about yourself as an infant. You made a transition from infancy to childhood, and your body took on an entirely different appearance, but you did not die or pass on. At the age of puberty, your body changed again, but you did not die or pass on; you transitioned into another phase of life. When you reached the upper teens, you passed into still another phase of life that took you into adulthood. None of these transitions were made consciously by you. They were made for you. When you found yourself in a truth teaching, you transitioned to another new world where you started thinking of God and talking of God. You transitioned from “this world,” but there was no death—except “dying daily” to old modes of thought and old reliances. Whereas you had relied on the heart, the blood pressure, food, climate, and diet, now you rely only on your realization of God. You depend on nothing and nobody in the external world; your entire dependence is within yourself.
And so we go from transition to transition, and it is all being done to us. A day will come when you will pass from sight and, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, you will leave a body to be buried or cremated. But there will be no body there; that will be an illusion in their thought. You will have your body right where you are. That is the meaning of the resurrection story: “He is not here. He is risen.” You, too, are not here in your flesh when you have risen in some measure above the illusion that you are in a physical body and realize that your body is within you, within your own consciousness. By virtue of I, which is consciousness, we have dominion over this body. When it appears to be sick, I can raise it up. If it claims to die, I can lift it out of the tomb. The body cannot talk back to me, for I function it. I do not function the body by my human thinking, but by letting the I take over and govern. Then I don’t have to tell my heart how much to beat or tell my digestive or eliminative organs to function. I release my body into the I, which is Consciousness, or God, the I of my being, and then let That function. It is the infinite intelligence of the universe; It created this body and has the power to maintain and sustain it.
If I take over with the human mind, I have to determine how many times I want the heart to beat and then be sure the heart obeys. But the real teaching is, “Take no thought.” Your heavenly Father knows how many heartbeats you need, and it is His good pleasure to give them to you in full measure. You do not have to take thought for your body. You can relax and let I, the Infinite Invisible, take over. It is somewhat like planting a seed and letting the law of nature take over. We take our body out of the human thinking mind and place it back in its native element, the consciousness that formed it in the womb. Could it be in better care than that?
Every day you have to relax your body back into Consciousness so that your body isn’t being operated on by human belief. Likewise, I relax my supply back into God. I rest back in Consciousness and let Consciousness feed, support, maintain, and sustain me. I take my body, my life, and my wealth out of the human mind and place them back in Consciousness where they belong. God is my consciousness, and I rest in God. Without taking thought, I learn to wait for the still small voice that says, “I am closer to you than breathing and nearer than hands and feet.” I rest and relax in Spirit, knowing that “Thy grace is my sufficiency in all things.”
As we have mentioned, when we previewed recordings for this study program on the body, we found several classes in which Joel teaches some wonderful lessons about the body, but covers other topics as well. We chose not to use these for our weekly sessions, but to post the best of them from time to time as “Additional Offerings for Study.” We offered another of these recordings as a complement to this study session. It was recording 230A, from the 1958 London Open Class, titled “The Secret of the Resurrection.” This class reinforces several of the themes we heard in our online sessions for this study program. In this class, Joel addresses these topics:
Recording 230A is the basis for the March 1959 Infinite Way Letter, “The Secret of the Resurrection,” in The Heart of Mysticism, Volume VI – 1959 Letters. (Please note: There is a 30-second pause near the end of the recording; please listen through to the end when Joel says “Thank you.”) 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. To purchase the recording or the transcript, click/tap here.