This class is the primary basis for Chapter 4, “Truth Unveiled” in Beyond Words and Thoughts. 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 to remind you of the content of the class. To download or print this summary, click/tap here.
Joel begins by saying that the fruitage of his experiences has been given to us as specific principles, with instructions for embodying, practicing, and living them. Each year of his ministry has brought forth the revelation of some specific principle. The year 1963 has revealed the highest unfoldment thus far in The Infinite Way, and it is a message of going beyond words and thoughts, beyond the mind. It is revealing the nature of life when we go beyond the mind, thoughts, and reasoning. It is revealing the nature of Sabbath and of grace.
The Infinite Way is a middle path in which the sense of good man is as illusory as the sense of bad man. Spiritual consciousness does not exchange the sense of erroneous man for the sense of correct man, but knows only the spiritual man, the Son of God. In healing work, we “unsee” or “unknow” the corporeal or physical sense of man. We do not “unsee” or “unknow” a corporeal or physical man, for there isn’t any. Our healing truth is our consciousness of incorporeal man and the universe. That which we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell is our false sense of that incorporeal man. We entertain the corporeal sense only in our mind—not in our spiritual faculties. In our spiritual or soul faculties, we see each other spiritually. But we never attain this goal until we reach beyond knowing truth and become the truth. Jesus realized and became the truth, yet a sense of the personal Jesus remained, and that had to be crucified before he could ascend to the fullness of spiritual identity. The ascension is always a rising above mind, a rising above knowing the truth, to Truth Itself.
It was revealed to Joel that Jesus chose to accept corporeal death so that he could reveal to his disciples that death is not an experience of our true being, but an illusory experience of corporeal sense. The purpose of this revelation about Jesus to Joel was to prove the message that Joel has been teaching this year (1963)—that there must come a rest from the activity of the mind; a rest from taking thought for our lives and fearing for our lives; a rest from constantly knowing the truth in order to avoid some experience. There must come a rest, a Sabbath, in which we live by grace; in which I no longer know the truth; I am the Truth, and Truth reveals Itself to me. This is not an activity of mind; it is Soul revealing Itself.
Instead of searching for a truth, or feverishly reading to find a truth, you can relax and rest in the truth without taking thought, and without speaking. You can be a state of awareness. Then you can live by every word that comes to you from the deep withinness of you. It guides, directs, sustains, protects, and goes before you to make the crooked places straight.
Our ultimate goal must be to live in God, through God, and as God. Life is to be lived by grace, without might or power, by every word of God that we receive in our consciousness, and not by taking thought. God is not in the whirlwind. God is not in your problems. God is not in your thinking or in your books. God is in the still small voice. How quietly and peacefully we have to live within in order to hear that voice, receive Its impartations, and receive Its grace.
You have learned to work hard and long with the principles of The Infinite Way, but sometimes you must stop doing this and say, “Let me not trust in my mind. Let me relax in God. Let my Soul take over.” Once these principles are embodied in you, your soul begins to feed you. So, until you really have that hidden manna, keep on with the principles. But do not make it an eight-hour day. Take time out to work in the garden or read a good book. Relax in your soul without words and without thoughts. Your labor to know the principles will eventually bring you to a place of Sabbath, which means that for the rest of your days, you live by the grace of God, by “My Spirit.”
You have entered the Sabbath when you stop your metaphysical struggling; when you have attained quietness and confidence; when there are no words, no thoughts, no might, no power. In that consciousness you do not have to pray for anything, for you already have hidden manna that “the world knows not of.” In the Sabbath, you realize, “Thy grace is my sufficiency for this moment,” and you are satisfied. You rest in that and settle into a consciousness of peace. Then you are no longer living your own life. Every word that flows from God into your awareness becomes the bread, meat, wine, water, health, strength, vitality, and everything necessary for our experience.
We are on earth is to show forth God’s glory, not our own. What appears as our talents and skills is not really ours, but God’s. Joel says that he realizes that the whole activity and message of The Infinite Way is Truth expressing Itself, God’s grace and God’s glory being revealed in human consciousness. We too must realize that our experience is for the purpose of glorifying God. God may speak through you, or sing through you, or do business through you. But always, it is God functioning through and as your individual being.
In all of us there remains a finite sense of self, which must be crucified until you can realize, “I do not have any truth or know any truth; I do not have any skill or art. I am the truth, I am the art, I am the skill.” Then humanhood has died, Christhood has been born, and the ascension can take place.
The Infinite Way itself is a revelation of God revealing Himself on earth, and the purpose of it is that we understand that we may go and do likewise. If we think that only Moses, or Jesus, or Isaiah, or John, or Paul, or Joel could make a demonstration of God revealing Himself on earth, we will miss the fact that each of them demonstrated this in order to reveal the universal nature of truth. What always puts the veil on truth is that those who have not yet come into the fullness of spiritual awareness love the message so much that they become do-gooders, going out to spread the message, even though they haven’t yet got it. Then the message is lost because truth can only be revealed through the soul faculties, not through the mind. So we must be watchful when we seek to teach or be taught.
Rising above the mind, above words and thoughts, does not eliminate the mind or words and thoughts. But we are not living by them. In our metaphysical days, we may have lived primarily by affirmations, hoping to bring out harmony. But in the days of the Sabbath and grace, we do not live by words or thoughts. We live by grace. Now, the activity of grace can come to us in words and thoughts and may be imparted in words and thoughts. Yet we do not live by those words and thoughts themselves, but by the grace that produced them. The Spirit of God is in them because I didn’t think them or make them up. I let them flow to me and through me, so these words and thoughts are with power. These are the words of God that make the earth melt. As you come to the place where you live by grace, that grace can appear as the message you may speak or write, and because it is a message of grace, people hearing or reading the words can be healed or have their lives transformed.
(Note: In this recording, Joel references the “mimeographed talks.” He is referring to the Hotel Talks that he gave in 1963. These are collected and published in the book Consciousness Transformed.)
To broaden our understanding and experience of the message in this class, it seems that one of the best things we can do is to simply follow Joel’s instruction about how to go beyond words and thoughts. He says:
“As you have learned to work hard and long with the principles of The Infinite Way; so you must learn to stop doing this, sometimes for a day or two, and say, “Let me not trust in my mind, let me relax in God.”
“When these principles are embodied in you, your soul begins to feed you. But until you really have that hidden manna, keep on with all of these principles that we are going through, but do not make it an eight hour day. Take time out to work in the garden or read a good book, or perhaps a good novel. Never believe that The Infinite Way is trying to teach you to mentalize. This is necessary only when you are learning the truth, when you are feeding consciousness with the letter of truth. We want no student to live by affirmations and denials, because that is not living by the grace of God.
“Invite the Soul … Relax in it, without words and without thoughts. The fruitage of abiding in these principles is a period of rest, and this is the true meaning of the Sabbath.”
Joel’s direction is particularly welcome during the holiday season, when we are bombarded with so much “noise” from material sense. We can give ourselves a beautiful Christmas gift—the freedom to have that Sabbath; to simply “relax in God,” with no pressure on ourselves to “do” something, to “read” something, or to “think” something, but simply to BE in the here and NOW, calmly and contentedly letting what IS reveal Itself.