Recording 23B, “God Is, continued,” from the 1953 New Hawaiian Series, is the basis for Chapter 4, “God Is One,” in Living The Infinite Way. This recording was posted through November 25, 2023, and is no longer available on this website. If you subscribe to the Joel Goldsmith Streaming Service, you can listen to it there. You can also purchase the recording and/or the transcript from The Infinite Way Office here.
To download or print these study suggestions, click/tap here.
This chapter addresses the four major principles of The Infinite Way message—the nature of God, the nature of individual being, the nature of error, and the nature of prayer. It shows how the nature of God gives rise to the nature of individual being and the nature of error and prayer. The key word throughout the chapter is “IS.” As Joel points out, all you can rightly say about God is “GOD IS.”
Joel says that his wish for us is not that we accept what his experience in and with God has been, but that each of us may experience God, know God, feel God, love and understand God, and finally realize Godhood. In this chapter, he continues to lead us on that journey.
As always, these study suggestions are just that—suggestions, ideas for ways to study the chapter and the recording. Choose any that resonate with you or simply let them function as “thought starters” for you to create your own study ideas.
What Joel Said about This Chapter
In the introductory recording, 453A, Joel had this to say about this chapter: “Now, in Living the Infinite Way, we have a chapter ‘God is One.’ Throughout this chapter you have, you might call it, a whole treatment of oneness, and if sometime during the day you can take that chapter, you will find yourself then living in this atmosphere or consciousness of oneness, and you can realize how little chance duality has to get under your skin, to get into your consciousness, to do anything to you.”
Pick Out the “Pearls”
In several of his classes, Joel suggests that we learn to “pick out the pearls” in a lesson, meaning that we should identify the key points or principles, work with them, apply them, use them, and live with them.
Questions to Ponder
Both in the class and in the chapter, Joel asks several rhetorical questions, but he also suggests that we think deeply about them. He says that contemplation helps us come to intellectual agreement with the principle involved, and then at some point, there will come a moment when we go from intellectual agreement to spiritual agreement. Spiritual agreement is the feeling within of “Yes, that is the truth; I feel the truth of that.”
Here are a few of the questions that can be worthwhile to ponder:
In contemplating God as the only power, it is important to remember that Joel also teaches that to say “Evil is not a power” is only a half-truth. We must add, “In the presence of the realized consciousness;” that is, “Evil is not a power in the presence of the realized consciousness.” Indeed, evil appears to be very powerful in the presence of human consciousness, because human consciousness gives it power. You may remember Joel saying that this is an “iffy” path. “IF you dwell in the secret place of the Most High, no evil will come nigh your dwelling place;” “IF you abide in me and let my words abide in you . . . ”
Questions from A New Student
One way to tell how well we have grasped an idea is to see if we can explain it to another. Consider these questions from new students:
Practice
How can we practice the lessons in this chapter? Here are a couple of Joel’s suggestions.
“At this point I remind you: Your difficulty and my difficulty is that as we walk through the experience of everyday affairs, the temptation will continually arise to say good or bad, sick or well, rich or poor, lack or abundance, sin or purity. Continuously we are faced with not only the Master’s three temptations. With us, there are three million temptations—always the temptation to look at the woman taken in adultery and throw a few stones of criticism, judgment, condemnation; to think of the thief caught in the act, about to be sentenced, and judge him, criticize him, call him bad.
“Oh, we are tempted from morning to night and night to morning to believe in appearances and to label them—label them good and bad, label them right and wrong. And the temptation is terrific, but it must be resisted. We must learn to look at person, circumstance, condition, even disease, and withhold judgment. Just realize IS. IS. And then let the Father define that which IS. IS. IS, and let the Father define, let the Father outline, let the Father show forth that which spiritually IS. ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ There’s no use trying to judge the spiritual kingdom from appearances. It will not work.
“Now the study and the practice of The Infinite Way is a development of spiritual consciousness. It is not going through human existence picking out all the wrong things and finding a system whereby we make them right. It is no such thing. It is looking through appearances of both human good and human evil, and learning to behold the spiritual reality, which always IS, even where that appearance seems to be.”
“I can only tell you this, that if you can start, without prejudice, without opinion, theory, concept of what God is, just start with the realization, ‘Of course, God is, that I know. God is, that I know,’ and dwell with that, ponder it, keep your thought in line with that until out of the depth of your withinness, the experience will come revealing what God Is, and how God operates, how God acts in and through this marvelous universe.“But all of that will be through your spiritual discernment and your spiritual discernment will never come through just making agreeing statements with what others have written about God. Spiritual discernment will come with every God-experience you And you can only have a God-experience through voicing the truth. And what is the only truth that you know? God is. That’s all you know. That’s all the spiritual wisdom you know. That’s all you ever can know until God reveals more from within your own being.”
“You won’t find health and wealth added to you. You will find that health and wealth have been included in you since before ever Abraham was. You will find that since God is the Infinite nature of your being, all harmony, all good, is included in the infinitude of that one spiritual being. But this you will experience for yourself, not by believing me; not by accepting my word. . . . Spiritual experience can only come to you through your own experience.”
“One thing you do know—God is. Hold that to yourself, live with it, be satisfied with it until, to what you already know, to what you already have of spiritual wisdom, will be added the balance, ‘For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance.’ You have this spiritual wisdom that God is, and by pondering it, meditating upon it, and thinking upon it within your own being, there will be added unto you all the rest: who God is; what God is; how God is. The way will be made clear to you from within your own being.”
Additional Reference Material
When we studied this chapter in 2018, we provided a list of several wisdoms of The Infinite Way that focus on the word “IS.” All of the wisdoms are included in the book The Infinite Way, and the ones that focus on “IS” complement our study of the chapter “God Is One.” Any one of them could start a contemplative meditation. To view, print, or download a list of these “IS” Wisdoms, click/tap here.