1959 San Diego Special Class
Tape 269 Side 1

The Nature of God

By Joel Goldsmith
Part 5 of 5
Now, illumination isn’t anything of a material nature or even of an occult nature. Illumination really means light, the receiving of light, and light doesn’t mean light in the physical sense but in the mental. It means understanding, awareness. Therefore, when you are illumined, it means only that you have received the actual experience of knowing God’s presence, knowing God’s grace. There is nothing emotional about it, I can assure you. Those who look for emotional experiences not only miss it but are apt to be led into occult experiences and, like mental powers, occult experiences can partake of the nature of good and of evil because all occult experiences are on the human plane even when they involve personalities that have passed on from sight. That is why it is that some people have an occult experience which results in their being guided and directed from someone on the other side and may even be a great human blessing in their lives. It has happened many, many times. But they have no way of knowing. Someone of evil entity or mental activity may enter that sphere because the occult, like the mental, is of the realm of both good and evil.design5
Always remember this: Physical power can be used for good and it can be used for evil. You can use your hand to pet or to punch, just to use an expression. You can use your hands to give or to steal. Physical powers may be used for good or evil, and as we know from the history of all original races – and they are the ones who knew mental powers – mental power can be used for good and for evil, and as we have witnessed in the case of Hitler’s use of mass mental powers and some of our American officials who learned from Hitler how to use it, it can be evil as well as good. But, when you reach the spiritual level – now this is the very heart and soul of The Infinite Way – when you reach the spiritual level, neither physical evil or mental evil can be experienced through you or by you. In other words, you no longer can be an instrument of evil to anyone, but you are also immune from the physical and mental evils from any source, whether individual or collective. You are only immune when you have touched the realm of God. When the Master said the devil cometh and findeth nothing in me, that is the point to which you come. The devil comes – it may be, it’s always – in the form of temptation, but it may be in the temptation to be sick, the temptation to be poor, the temptation to be unemployed, the temptation to be lonesome or frustrated, the temptation to be unsuccessful, but it will not come nigh your dwelling place. You will have become immune.
Now the human race is not immune. God can’t save the human race. A thousand shall fall at your right hand, it will not come nigh your dwelling place. Who, who is this your dwelling place? You who live in the secret place of the most high, you are the only ones who are immune. You may think that this is a Hebrew psalm and perhaps that particular Hebrew leader wasn’t fully illumined and so we will turn to the Master Christ Jesus and receive his confirmation: You abide in me and let my word abide in you, you will bear fruit richly. If you do not abide in me and let my word abide in you, you will be as the branch of the tree that is cut off and withereth, and he was talking to his disciples. He was talking to his followers, but he was telling them that you cannot have immunity from evil unless you are keeping your mind stayed on God, unless you are filling your consciousness with the activity of truth, unless you are abiding in the word of truth; unless you are acknowledging God as your life, your mind, your soul, even of the substance of your body, for even your body is the temple of the living God.
That is why as you progress in your understanding and demonstration of the message of The Infinite Way, your body will shed some of its years. That inevitably follows. Of course, these years have been added to our frame not by the passing of time but by our absence from the house of the Lord, and we have let the law operate upon us instead of grace – the law of time, the law of climate, the law of foods, all of these in the human sense are laws and therefore we in The Infinite Way do not claim this to be an absolute message because we do not claim that there are no such things as material laws and forces or mental laws and forces. We know only too well there are, and the world is suffering from them. But we acknowledge that in God’s contact, neither material laws or mental laws are operative. None of these things shall come nigh thy dwelling place, but the Master never denied that they would come to this world. He never denied that they would not be of those who wither. He said only those will not wither, only those will not die, only those will live spiritually who abide in this word, live in it – not Sunday morning for an hour, and not one evening a week at a tape meeting, but he assured you must pray without ceasing.
Therefore, the entire message of The Infinite Way is aimed at encouraging us to meditate, to ponder the word of God, to acknowledge Him in all of our ways until in a moment that ye know not, that ye think not, the bridegroom cometh. The actual experience of God contact takes place. Then, if you prove faithful, you will spend the rest of your days in a great deal of harmony, wholeness, completeness and fruitfulness and be prepared for even greater experiences when we leave this plane because our spiritual development does not keep us on earth.
In other words, longevity has no relationship to immortality. Jesus was only 33 years of age when he left this plane, and the disciples were probably not over 50, but that had no influence upon their immortality. We, as more is learned of the nature of the material and mental causes of disease and age, will live longer spans on earth, but that will have no relationship to our spiritual development. In other words, when I was a boy the life expectancy according to insurance policies was 50 years, and those who lived to 70 were looked upon as patriarchs and men of great years. Now we have reached the age of 74 for women and 67 for men as life expectancy, but our New York Masonic bodies have been conducting experiments for quite a few years past in geriatrics and they now report that they have lifted the span to 82, and they are beginning to teach it to the medical people and they promise us that the generation now being born has as actual expectancy of 100 years without mental or physical deterioration – not a hundred years as cripples but a hundred years without physical or mental deterioration.
So you see that our physical well-being will be continued for a longer span but that has no relationship to our spiritual development. Our spiritual development may cause us to leave this plane at 30 or 40 or 50 or 60. If we are given a work to do, we may be one of those left here for a hundred. But passing from visible sight for those on the spiritual path is not death – it is a transition to a higher plane of work.
Alright, we are going to have that interval now.
End Part 5