1959 London Closed Class

Tape 274, Side 2

Spiritual Consciousness

By Joel S. Goldsmith

Part 2 of 4

Now I would like for a moment to return to last night.  I’m sure that many of you must have thought of our glass of water with its floating piece of ice.  And I’m wondering if you also consciously remembered that the water is H2O, and ice is H2O.  The substance of the water and the substance of the ice are the same.  And all that is of water is of ice; whatever water has, ice has.  These are not two separate substances; these are not two separate qualities; ice and water are one. Two different forms, yes; but they are one – one in essence, one in substance, one in quality.  The ice does not turn to the water for anything that the ice hasn’t already got, and yet the water, in this particular case, is an activity of the ice since the ice, as form, has no activity of its own.

Now we bring you to an exact relationship between man and God.  It is true that God is invisible to human eyesight, but God is the substance in which we live and move and have our being; and God is the substance of which we are formed; therefore, the qualities of God are the qualities of man and yet God is always the greater, for God is the law and the activity of man.

To understand this, makes you see that in your spiritual identity all that God is you are; and therefore there is no need to turn to God for something.  There is only the need to recognize this relationship and then create within yourself a vacuum so that you can say, “I of my self am nothing; it is only the quality of God which is my being, the substance and essence of God; and it is the law of God which governs me – guides, directs, instructs.”  Then you can understand why the Master could say, “Thou seest me thou seest the Father that sent me, for I and the Father are one; and yet I and the Father are one, but the Father is greater than I.”

The nature of our being is the same as the nature of God’s being for we are one, and yet relaxing in that oneness we permit the invisible to uphold us, sustain us, move us, feed us, clothe us, house us, direct us, instruct us.  We learn to relax and let God’s grace govern us.  Now, there’s quite a difference between this and thinking of ourselves as something separate and apart from God – having to ask God, instruct God, influence God; quite a difference – all the difference between successful spiritual living and nonsuccessful living of any type.  “God’s grace is my sufficiency.”  This is a truth; but God’s grace is not brought into experience by this praying to God in the sense of asking, pleading, seeking; but rather God’s grace is brought into our experience by relaxing, relaxing into an atmosphere of, “Speak Lord, Thy servant heareth.”

Now try for a moment to understand that at this very moment you live and move and have your being in God; try to understand that in this room, right here where we are, we are relaxing not in a chair, and not in the air, but we are relaxing in God, the invisible.  You can’t see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, or smell it; but through faith, through an inner conviction, you can understand that the place whereon I stand is holy ground; that where I am God is; that God is neither lo here nor lo there; that the kingdom of God is within me right where I am; and then, feeling that, relax.

Now you know that the God that made this universe, that formed it, that gave it its laws, is certainly capable of maintaining and sustaining your identity and mine unto eternity.  Therefore it is necessary to relax in It . . .  “Closer to me than breathing, nearer than hands and feet.”  And now, since God is the infinite intelligence of this universe, let God’s intelligence move us as It will, feed us, clothe us, house us, direct us, resurrect us, restore the lost years of the locust, return us to the Father’s house – let Thy will be done in me – without any idea at all of any need for telling God what we need or what we would like; without any idea at all of advising God as to what we should have or what we think we should have, or what even we would like to have.  Not at all!

Let us acknowledge God as infinite intelligence and divine love, and say, “I’m satisfied with that; I’m satisfied to be what You want me to be; to do what You want me to do; to be where You want me to be; Thy grace is my sufficiency.”

Let me so understand the nature of God that I, too, can say, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; I know that He leadeth me beside the still waters” without my asking, without my directing.  But I must relax in His consciousness.  I must relax in His Spirit, in His wisdom, in His judgment, in His will; and this in mystical language is called self-surrender, yielding, dying daily – not having a will of my own, a desire of my own, not even a care of my own, but always living in the realization: “I live and move and have my being in God consciousness; It is closer to me than breathing; therefore, It knoweth my needs before I do – or He knoweth my needs before I do; it is His good pleasure to give me the kingdom,” and I can rest in that Word, relax in that Word.

Then, you will see that you are now developing a healing consciousness because now you are not seeking a God power; you are living in a God power, and you are not acknowledging a power that has to be overcome.  Now you are getting back to the fullness of mysticism in which we learn that evil has no existence at all outside of the mind that believes in good and evil – and that is, of course, what has been called the carnal mind, or mortal mind, mesmeric mind, and other names it has in different literature.  But the mind that is composed of good and evil, that is capable of good and evil, that believes in the power of good and evil – this is not the healing consciousness.

And so the healing consciousness only comes to those who arrive at a state of consciousness in which they can live consciously one with God, in full and complete confidence that God is the mind, the intelligence, the wisdom, the love, infinite; therefore, needing no help from us; and that in this God consciousness, there is nothing to battle with God, nothing to war with God, nothing for God to overcome.

Sometimes it is helpful to have a specific statement, and the one that is the most helpful to me is remembering Paul’s statement that “The carnal mind is enmity against God.”  I can laugh!  I can.  It brings a smile to my face and I can relax.  “How foolish can you be?  Enmity against God . . . where is God’s infinity?  Where is God’s all power?”  And who created this enemy of God’s?  God made all that was made; God looked upon all that He made and found it good.  Where then do you get a power to war with God?  And you will find as you are called upon for help, or as you attempt to give help, that you will only succeed in proportion as you reach an inner state of grace in which you do not battle error; you do not war with mortal mind or carnal mind; you do not seek to use truth over error.  You rest in this Word; you abide in God, and in the realization: “There is no enmity in God; there is no power in anything that God did not make; therefore there is no need for a God power to overcome or destroy or remove or reform.”

When you are abiding in the consciousness of God, as omnipresence here and now where I am; as you abide in the consciousness of God as the creative, maintaining, and sustaining power of the universe; as you abide in this consciousness of God with no opposition, no enmity, no powers to overcome, something takes place within you; it is a fourth-dimensional experience, or a mystical experience in which there is a real realization: “Of course, God is all.”  It’s an actual experience, no longer just an affirmation or a statement in a book; it is an experience:  “Of course, how could there be God and something else!”  And in that moment of spiritual union – for that is really what it is – in that moment of spiritual union, everything that had existence as evil dissolves.

End Part 2