1959 San Diego Special Class
Tape 269 Side 1

The Nature of God

By Joel Goldsmith
Part 2 of 5
Probably one of the reasons that our great Herbert Hoover has reached this magnificent age of 85 in full possession of his faculties and at the very height of his mental capacities and in good physical health is due to the fact that all of his life he has felt that it was a demand upon him personally and upon all mankind to help those who at the moment could not help themselves – even when they were enemies. He brought upon himself great censure during and after World War I because some of the supplies entrusted to him were sent into enemy hands; but to him friend or enemy, they were either God’s children or they were human beings, fellow beings, and all entitled to eat. After all, we were enemies of those enemies. But when you tithe, please do not believe you are pleasing God. Remember you are bringing yourself into accord with the laws of God, which is the law of love, and you benefit by it. It brings great blessings. So it is, you can never look to God for anything except the understanding that God is already fulfillment; God is already performing Its functions; God already is the great intelligence and divine love, but you can bring yourself into attunement with God and the laws of God, and that is the function of our work.
Now, Jesus Christ – who is actually the Way-shower, who actually is the teacher, the exemplar, the foundation of this Infinite Way work – has taught us not to go to God – seek not what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, or wherewithal ye shall be clothed. Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things, and it is His good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Therefore, seek God and his righteousness, and these things will be added unto you. Then he tells us if you pray for your friends, it profiteth you nothing. Pray for your enemies that you may be the children of God. Well, children of God are heirs, they are joint heirs with Christ in God, and the moment that you are a child of God, you have no needs; you have no desires; you have only fulfillment because, as the child of God, you no longer earn your living by the sweat of your brow; you inherit it. In other words, it has a way of coming to you without labor – not without work – don’t forget the further we go in this work, the harder we work, but that isn’t labor – that’s love. That’s divine activity; that’s joy.
In the same way, he teaches forgive 70 times seven. Forgive – do not hold anyone in condemnation, even the woman taken in adultery or the thief on the cross, or even Judas Iscariot. Rather, Father forgive them, they know not what they do. It makes no difference whether they are stealing, robbing, cheating; it makes no difference whether it’s adultery in one form or another. It makes no difference what form of sin it is, it’s all done in ignorance. There are no spiritually enlightened people who do those things; therefore, it must be those who are in spiritual darkness. Can you not forgive them when you know that what they are doing, they are doing only through their ignorance and for no other reason? Because they do not know any better, they do not know how spiritually to attain their good.
Now you see why obedience to these teachings of Christ Jesus – and I am going to refer you to the Sermon on the Mount – you will find that you no longer have to pray to God or let me say it in a different way – that your prayer will take a different form. You will still pray, but your prayer will be a different form and your good will unfold to you without effort, without even mental or spiritual efforts because there will be a presence going before you to prepare the way, to make the crooked places straight, to provide all that is necessary for the journey. Ye need not take purse nor script once you have come into obedience to the Christ principles which make you heir to God. So that our work does not consist in getting God to do anything for us. It consists of a spiritual preparation of ourselves to be fitted to receive the grace of God. And the grace of God cannot enter the mind or consciousness of an individual bearing hate, greed, lust, animality or these intense selfish modes and means of life.
Oh, yes, when there is an inner longing for God, that transcends one’s evil. Let me put it this way: It really makes no difference how evil a person is at any given moment – it really makes no difference what their present sin of omission or commission may be – they need make no effort to get rid of them or to stop them if within them there is the desire to know God aright. No one need engage in psychological means to change their nature or to repress their evil instincts, or their evil thoughts. As a matter of fact, these never succeed. You must always remember that our greatest – when I say greatest I mean in name – psychologists have openly acknowledged that they have never yet witnessed a healing through psychology, and only last week a meeting of psychiatrists acknowledged that they have never yet witnessed a healing through psychiatry. So there is just no use of applying the psychological or psychiatric approaches to your life since at least up to this present moment, no principle has been discovered in them which could help you.
Now, incidentally, in our conference last year, five of Europe’s great psychiatrists attended. The object of the conference was to discover if spiritual power could be exerted on human affairs. These five great psychiatrists came because they hadn’t found any human way even in psychiatry to meet the problems of human affairs. Only a few years ago, we were sent for by the head of a mental institute who is one of the big-named psychiatrists in the United States who said that he has never yet witnessed a healing through psychiatry and is now investigating the subject of spiritual healing and wanted to spend an evening with us to talk about it. On a lecture trip last year in Indianapolis, another psychiatrist attended the lecture – one connected with a mental institute there – and came to me afterward and said, “In 10 years in this institute, I have never witnessed a healing through any medical means, and I am searching for spiritual help.” And next week it will be my pleasure to be at one of the largest mental institutes in this state where I have been invited because there are 30 students of The Infinite Way there, and they have shown so much in healing and harmony that some of their families have been brought into the study of The Infinite Way. The head of the educational bureau has written me his entire life has changed, so I am invited there.
End Part 2