A: There isn’t anything more that I can add to what I said on that subject. If you will start with the word “God” or “life,” you will see that in spiritual reality there is no such thing as incarnation or reincarnation. There is only the unfolding, disclosing, and revealing—God expressing Itself infinitely and eternally; God revealing Itself in infinite individual forms and variety.
To our human sense there is a birth and a death. There is neither birth nor death, but that process of birth and death continues to appear to human existence. So as fast as we die out of one existence, we are reborn into another existence in order that this play of continuity of life go on. Actually, what is happening is this: We are unfolding states of that one Infinite Consciousness, and therefore, we are appearing to human sense in this stage of spiritual development now.
Now then, there is nothing that was born that mustn’t die. There’s nothing that had a beginning that mustn’t have an ending. Therefore, the shell of us disappears, just as every year our bodies change—skin sloughs off, the blood cells change, and there’s a continuous dying and re-birthing of all of our bodies. Every year this process goes on. Now outwardly, this isn’t death, although it’s just the same as death in that every part of our body dies and every part of our body is reborn. One of these days this shell probably drops away from us, and immediately begins to make its appearance or reappearance with another shell. That’s all happening in the second chapter of Genesis, where there are these mechanical processes of conception and birth. They are not happening in Reality.
Now here’s what’s happening in Reality to all of us. Close your eyes again, and gently say “I.” Now go back in your history five years. See if you can place yourself somewhere where you were five years ago. Say “I” again and see if that isn’t the same “I”that you just voiced. And now, if you can, go back twenty years. See if you can visualize yourself as you looked twenty years ago, and in what part of the country or world you were at that time. Look out at some of the scenery that was close to you twenty years ago. Now if you say “I” again, isn’t it the same Ithat was out there twenty years ago? Wasn’t it the same “I”that looked through your eyes? And now go back to your twelfth birthday and see if it isn’t the same “I.” The only thing that has changed is your outer form and the knowledge that you’ve acquired over these years. But weren’t you the same person—isn’t that the same “I?” You didn’t change “I”s anywhere on that journey from twelve years of age to this present one.
And so it would be, if you could go back, you would find that at your birth you were the same “I”that you are now, if you could have said “I” at that time. You couldn’t quite say it, but soon after, you did. And you were that same “I” that you are now. The body has grown, and you have become more aware of things of this world, but it’s the same identical “I.”
Now let’s come back up to this present minute, and look out and say “I,” and see if you can’t identify it with that same “I” back then. And now, if we look ahead ten years, don’t you see that it’s the same “I”that is going to look out then? That same “I”is right where you are. That same “I”is going to be looking out through your eyes. And, do you know that ten years from now some of us may have passed on, but that same “I”is going to be right there looking out?
You can do anything you want with this body but you can’t do anything to “I.” Twenty years from now, fifty years from now, that “I”is going to be just as intact as it is now, and just as young and just as vital as it is now. It isn’t going to age or change. It’s going to be that same “I.” That is your identity.
That is how we know that you could go back a thousand years, and that same “I” would be looking out of your head, only instead of being in the United States of America, you’d probably find yourself somewhere along the European lands. Two-thousand years ago you may have been over in those Holy Lands or in Egypt. But it was the same “I,”whether you looked out of an Egyptian form, a Hebrew form, a European form, or the form you have now—the same “I.” It just moved from one state to another or one country to another; it just spoke one language or another; but it was the same “I”doing it all the time.
That “I”is the I that I am at this very minute. It’s the same “I”that I was twenty years ago, thirty, forty. The only difference is in what I have learned in those years and the different attitudes I have toward who and what exists in this world. But I am the same “I” that I can remember as myself all the way back. I can see myself this moment, with almost my first memory looking out of a window as the newsboys were calling the assassination of President McKinley, and I’m standing right there at that window looking out and calling my mother to hear the newsboys call “Get the extra” on the paper. Do you see that? It’s the “I.”
Now you can do the same thing. You can go back and remember what happened to you—I mean some of the incidents at ten, twelve, fifteen years of age. Perhaps some of you can go back before that. My life was a little different in that I was only aware of two experiences before I was ten years of age. I know nothing of my first ten years of my life but two experiences. One when I was six, and I threw a doll out of a window, and I can still see it. And the other was this one of President McKinley’s assassination. Those are the first two incidents I remember, and the only ones of my first ten years of, life. But I was the same “I.” That’s the point—I was the same “I.” And I will still be looking out of these eyes a thousand years from now. The only thing I don’t know is the locale.
Now in the meantime, many things will be happening to my body. There may be many births and there may be many deaths, but there will only be this one same “I.” I’m convinced of this, too, that the day will come when we do not have to return to any state of human existence because we will have come into the awareness of our spiritual identity, and our work on this plane and our education will be completed.
You see, we have to be here now because we have not unfolded to the fullest degree possible, and until we overcome this world; until we overcome this material sense of world; we will keep coming back and coming back and coming back until we awaken finally with the realization “I am I.” Then we will fulfill ourselves in our spiritual identity, and it will probably be here. One thing is certain: At this stage of our experience, it will have to be in some land where complete freedom is the law. We will never be able to be confined to any body or to any land where there isn’t complete freedom of expression, for we have gone beyond the stage where we can be boxed up as slaves or peasants. It can’t happen to us, for we have gone beyond that stage of consciousness where we can be confined.
For that reason, our lives on earth will be progressive lives. If they’re on earth at all, they will be in places where either we can live in the complete freedom or where we can lead others to their freedom; where we will be as an influence to set them free. That’s an important thing for you to remember: You cannot retrogress. The butterfly never goes back to a worm. Once you have evolved out of the worm state; once you have evolved out of the finite human being living on bread alone, you cannot return to those older states. Then you have to function either in complete freedom or in a society where you can be an influence leading into freedom those who are not in freedom. That can happen, just as the Master Christ Jesus had to function in a society half free and half slave, whereas he himself was a completely free soul, a completely evolved soul. But he had to take that step of being born into a half free/half slave state in order to set free those who were in bondage to both the ecclesiastical life of the Hebrew temple and the slave life of the Caesars.
It is in the same way, that an evolved soul like Francis Bacon had to evolve in England or in Europe, where freedom was unknown at the time, even though he was a complete mystic, completely evolved, a completely free soul. But by evolving there in England, he was enabled to set in order the Masonic movement, which came to the United States and acted as the major factor in bringing freedom to the United States. In other words, In other words, he laid down principles, and he sent people to this country who became those who participated in the revolution, in writing the Constitution, and in the original governments of this country.
Therefore, in order that we have this country which we—I won’t say “have,” but at least had until thirty years ago—in order that we have it, or have come to it, this man who was already completely evolved had to live in a world of intrigue, a world of political corruption, a world where everyone was operating to see that nobody else got free. And yet, through his being there, he maintained his own freedom and set in motion some of the forces which later became responsible for the fact that our government was founded on such things as freedom, justice, equity, equality, so forth and so on.
1 Excerpt from Recording #214A: 1958 Second Chicago Closed Class, “Spiritual Unfoldment, Not Human Birth.” This excerpt is posted with kind permission from the Estate of Joel Goldsmith, which holds the copy protection on all of Joel’s recorded classes and the copyright on the class transcripts. The full transcript of this recording is available The Infinite Way Office website or by calling 1-800-922-3195.