A: Trying to still the mind is a dangerous practice, and if I did use those words, what I meant was this: Do not let the mind reach out mentally to a God to do something, which is why I used the illustration today of the tree. When you are watching that tree, your mind is beholding; it is not trying to do something. In other words, the mind is doing something, but it is doing something by beholding, and that is a quieting process, not an active process. This is the difference between beholding, which is an activity of the mind, and reaching out to God by taking thought. Do not let the mind do that, but instead settle down and let the mind behold.
This is the attitude we use in healing. When someone asks for help, instead of the mind of the practitioner reaching out to see how quickly he can heal the patient or get God to do something, he lets the mind settle back so he can behold God in action. If the practitioner can get quiet and not try to stop the pain or save the patient’s life, but behold God in action, the appearance will dissolve.
That is part of the experience of the whole mystical life in which, no matter what you are doing, you are never looking at people as male or female. The ordinary person is looking at this world and seeing male and female with whatever reaction that has on them, but in the mystical life, you see men and women but it does not register to you in that way. In other words, it makes no impression. One cannot afford to see students or patients as attractive women or beautiful women or plain women. You train yourself so that your attention is always on listening. That is what I mean by stilling the mind, but I really do not mean stilling it in the usual sense, because that can be dangerous by getting you into the occult. This is why I do not believe in long meditations, because eventually the mind gets into the mental strata, which consists of good and evil. By stilling the mind, I mean not using the mind.
Let us take the subject of eyesight. You see through the eyes, but you are not really using your eyes. If you try to use them, you will quickly see that you are feeling pain. No, you do not see by the eyes, you see through them. Likewise, you do not hear by the ears, you hear through them. It is the same with the mind. The moment you start “using” the mind, you are making a creative force out of it and are thereby misusing its function. Remember, you think through the mind. So the step from metaphysics to mysticism is accomplished in proportion to the degree in which you can become a beholder.
You use the mind only in the sense of awareness, never in the sense of power. When I can be still and receptive, no matter what is “out there,” the awareness of spiritual Reality will come into me. My eyesight may see the same things for a while, but someone will soon say, “I feel better,” not because I did anything, but rather because I had the attitude of a composer. What is a composer’s attitude? Listening.
The mystical mind is not used; it experiences. I remain perfectly quiet, and my mind interprets to me what it sees. If I am thinking humanly, I will see male and female, tall and short. But if I am using the mind spiritually, I do not see this universe humanly. I see what the Soul reveals, which is the spiritual identity that is nothing I can describe. You must never still the mind, but you must let the mind become still through making it your interpreter. Joan of Arc was asked, “Does God speak to you in French?” to which she replied, “I do not know whether he speaks to me in French, but I hear him in French.” In other words, we know God speaks in the language of Spirit, but we “hear it in English.” The mind is interpreting it to us but without any activity on our part.
You have a fourth-dimensional consciousness, but in most students, it is used only slightly or not at all, and the work you do in studying and meditating is for the purpose of developing that fourth-dimensional consciousness. It might be compared to the student who is studying music. He cannot ever make his fingers play. It is consciousness that does that. So, by developing his musical consciousness, his fingers then fly. So it is with you. Your studies and your meditations are meant to develop your consciousness, and then your body and mind work automatically, without any conscious volition.
Here is an illustration. To me, the greatest passage of Scripture is, “I have meat” or “I am the bread, the meat, the wine and the water.” What makes these passages so important when humanly they do not even make sense? They have significance to me, and the reason is that to me, it means that when God made me, he incorporated in me everything I shall need unto eternity. He embodied everything within me, or the power to draw it forth, as in the example of the root of the tree.
With every appearance of a claim, I can close my eyes and say, “I have meat,” and that breaks my attachment to this world and everyone in it. Why? Because of an experience. In my early years I too depended on God for supply, and I depended on patients to be the instruments through which supply would reach me. After a while this did not work, because it is not truth. But then the I dawned: “I is God. I is the Christ. I is the Source. Then I is fulfillment, and I do not need God or man.” It makes no difference what kind of a claim can arise of insufficiency or limitation in any area, that word “I” pops up in my consciousness, and then all attachment to this world is broken.
Everything is embodied in the I that I am, and whatever is necessary to bring about healing is embodied in the I that I am. God fulfills Itself as my being, so I need not reach out to God. I reach within to the I that is “closer than breathing” and then be patient and wait. I am not stilling the mind, but I am getting very still while I am listening. Then the fourth-dimensional consciousness is on the scene, and if it has to do something, it will.
Always remember that no matter what language I use, I do not mean to still the mind by disuse, but by using the mind in a different way. It goes back to the Master’s term “the Father within” or Paul’s term “the indwelling Christ.” These both mean that within your consciousness is this Presence and Power. How else can you go into your consciousness except in quietness and receptivity, and then let It come forth as bread or meat or resurrection or life eternal?
1 Excerpt from Consciousness Transformed, Lecture of February 15, 1964, “Into the Mystical Consciousness.” This excerpt is posted with kind permission from Acropolis Books and the Estate of Joel S. Goldsmith, which holds the copyright on the books.