1959 San Diego Special Class
Tape 271 Side 2

Specific Principles – continued

By Joel S. Goldsmith
Part 5 of 5

        Here again, scripture tells us: Elijah, persecuted by his own people, driven into the woods, into the forest, with no means of support, but every day he eats.  One day a poor widow supplies it, another day the ravens supply it.  It’s always there, always there.  The secret of life is in the wordI.  I and my Father are one, and as long as you can say I, you are realizing God in the midst of you, inseparable and indivisible from you.  And that I, when you live in Its consciousness, goes before you to make the crooked places straight.  It goes before you to prepare a place.  It is that which goes into what we call the future.  It isn’t really the future at all, for there is no future.

        I am asked here to tell you the story again, I think it’s in one of our writings, about the man in the boat, the man in the boat who was here, and he rowed upstream for an hour, or a mile, and then he was there.  And he looked back to see where he had come from, and he found that where he was now is here, and that is there.  So he goes on further, and what do you find?  Where you are now is the present. Anything else is the past or future, but you can’t be there.  We now have had the opportunity of going up in airplanes, we have the opportunity of seeing the city where we are, and in a few minutes looking at it and discovering it’s the city where we were, turning around and seeing the city where we’re going to be, and finding it’s the city where we are.

        You see that it is all, it is all really a matter of here.  The past is gone, the future never will be, and so we are living here, in an IS.  In this moment, all good is, and all good is omnipresent and infinite and eternal.  And there we make the word IS really our shibboleth, our password to harmony.  IS – the Lord IS my shepherd.  That’s why I shall not want.  The Lord does, now, lead me beside the still waters. The Lord does, now, or IS now leading me into green pastures.  It is all taking place in the present tense, but if we got no further than the first line, “The LordIS,” that’s enough.  That’s enough. As long as the Lord IS, we’re alright.  Our worries can only begin if we do not have the conviction that the Lord IS, for if the Lord IS, the Lord is omnipresence.  If the Lord IS, the Lord is omnipotence.  If the Lord IS, the Lord is supply, is companionship, is home, is safety, is security.  And as we live in that IS, we bring it into our experience.

        And then we can see how foolish it is when the psychologist or the psychiatrist says you mustn’t worry.  You can’t stop worrying, if you have a future.  You can’t stop worrying if you have any concern.  You can’t stop worrying unless you’ve got a God.  That is why Mr. . . . Dr. Jung could write this passage.  Dr. Jung wrote this: “Among all my patients in the second half of life, every one of them fell ill because he had lost what the living religions of every age have given their followers.  And none of them has been really healed who did not regain his religious outlook.”  You see, he didn’t speak of church religion; he said, “the living religions of every age,” meaning that declaration of God – not ceremony, rite, or creed, not Sabbaths, not kneelings or prayers, but the living religions have given to the world a living God, a God whom I am; a God which is I am; a God in the midst of me; a God that created me, and maintains me, and sustains me in Its own image and likeness; a God of whom we may say:  “If I go to heaven, thou art there; if I go down to hell, thou art there; if I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, thou art there.”

        You see, it’s all IS.  All IS.  God IS, in any hell through which I go, in any heaven which I experience; and when that moment of transition or passing comes, always remember this:  I will be doing it, so I can never be dead.  Even if you say “I am dying,” I am doing it.  And if you ever say, “I am dead,” remember it is I who am doing that.  We have nothing to fear from transition or passing, for it is I who am doing it, and I am immortal.  I walked into this life, not knowing from whence I came, and I can pass from this experience, even not knowing whither I am going. But always it is I.  Always, it is I.  And always, this I is providing for me, for It already is my life, my resurrection, my truth, my stronghold, my fortress.

        In this recognition, we need not care whether we have fortresses in our back yards. We need not care whether we have temples to hide in.  God is the fortress, God is the temple, God is . . . God IS . . . and that is enough to know. . . God IS.  That is, of course, our work in The Infinite Way.  Once you realize God is individual being, as we had in the first hour of work, and then realize that you are talking about this I that is at the center of your being, you are dwelling in the secret place of the most high.  When you, then, know that you don’t need the power of God for overcoming, for there is nothing to overcome, all that the world has embraced in the terminology of evil, you have consigned to the term carnal mind or nothingness; the arm of flesh, or nothingness.  So you have nothing to combat, nothing to use God for.  The Lord IS my shepherd, I shall not want for anything.

        Now, there is a message here about the subject of Yoga, which of course you know is a Hindu or other Oriental teaching.  The word “Yoga” itself means “union with God,” and the purpose of all Yoga teaching is the purpose of consummation, which is union with God.  Therefore, we could say that The Infinite Way is Yoga, because the object of our study and practice and meditation is attaining union with God – first, through meditation; next, through actual communion; third, through actual union.  However, Yoga teachings – just like Christian teachings or Hebrew teachings or any other teachings – are conducted by men or women.  Therefore, all Yoga teachings aren’t good because all Yoga teachers aren’t good for the same reason that all of Christianity isn’t good because all Christian churches aren’t good and all Christian ministers aren’t good.  In other words, a teaching can only be as good as its teacher.  It makes no difference what that is.  The Infinite Way may be bad, if you find the wrong teacher.  A teaching, in and of itself, is nothing unless you want to take that teaching in its pure state and make your own demonstration with it.  Then, as in the case of The Infinite Way books, you could make no mistakes because there has only been one author and one writer of them, and he has never found anything in the books to change.  Therefore, they must all have come from revelation.

        So, if an individual worked only with the books, they could, perhaps, work out their own salvation.  But remember that the minute you have a teacher of The Infinite Way, the teaching is no better than the teacher.  And if the teacher doesn’t know the principles correctly, or if the teacher hasn’t attained the consciousness of the teaching – even if they have the letter – The Infinite Way is no good to you. That is why we are using tapes more than teachers.  You see, even if teachers learn the correct letter, even if they could tell you every one of the principles, unless they’ve attained the consciousness and can demonstrate it, it leaves nothing but an intellectual philosophy.

        A teacher must not only know the letter of truth, but have the consciousness of it so as to demonstrate it.  That is why a practitioner . . . I would never authorize a practitioner, in the sense of saying, “You can have a certificate.”  No, the only time I recommend anyone to anyone as a practitioner is when they have indicated their healing ability.  The fact that they have studied ten years means nothing to me, absolutely nothing.  As far as I’m concerned, I’m satisfied if they’ve studied with me one day, if they can go out and heal; as far as I’m concerned, they’re a practitioner.  If they can’t heal, they never will be a practitioner if they study with me for 20 years.

        So it is with teaching, there are very few in our work to whom we have given the name “teacher,” and the reason is that there are very few who have accomplished both parts of the message . . . 

 

End Part 5