1955 Kailua Study Group

Joel S. Goldsmith

tape 110A – One Power 2/4

You have uses like that being made today by the whiskey industry. People do not realize how they are dominated by whiskey advertising today. And I’m sure that whiskey drinkers would be shocked if they thought that they were obeying an impulse not their own, that didn’t come from within themselves, but that they were responding to ‘being a gentleman’ or some other form of pure food whiskey.

Now, this power of the mind, which was originally used for the healing of mind and body, and effectively, finally began to wear off. Very few understood why it was that after receiving benefits from mental healing for one or two or three years, sometimes having miraculous cures, that all of a sudden they didn’t receive those cures anymore. It didn’t seem to work anymore. Or the healings were slower, more protracted, more drawn out. And the secret was this. The human mind builds an immunity to being worked on by the human mind, and for that reason all of these forms of mental force, even that of propaganda, and so-called advertising, all of these eventually lose their power. It is just like the miracle drugs that, when you start with them, you take a grain and when you end with it you take a million grains, because the body is building an immunity to them. So it is with mental power.

If you could have in front of you a virgin mind, I mean by that the mind of a human being who had never received mental treatments; you’d find them very easy to heal. They respond very quickly and beautifully. But after they have been receiving these treatments for about a year, you’ll find that your powers taper off and they no longer respond. And of course the practitioner then has to, instead of giving twenty-minute treatments, has to give forty-minute treatments and hour treatments. And one practitioner of these sciences finally advised his students not to take more than five patients at any one time, so that he could give ten to fifteen treatments a day to each patient and heal them. And he said since you can only have so few patients, charge them enough so that you can earn your livelihood, but be faithful and stick to the work until you give them their healing. They were very successful for a while. They built a following in the world of, they claim, about 100,000 people. Today I doubt you could find two or three thousand the whole world over. For the same reason, it’s a very difficult thing for a mental practitioner to sit hours and hours and hours, knowing the truth. There develops a pain in back of the head. And it doesn’t work.

Now then, what are we to do? First we had medicines to do our healing for us and they weren’t entirely satisfactory. Then we had the power of the mind, that wasn’t entirely satisfactory, not for long. And then it was believed that God, God, Spirit, could do the work. If only we could, in some way, reach God or be reached by God, our problems would be overcome, because God, being this great big power, had power to destroy all the other powers of earth. In other words, the power of God was greater than the power of the devil. The difficulty was that the devil had easy access to us but God was difficult of achievement. And so the devil had his way with us for a long, long time while we’ve tried to find some way of reaching God. It was a strange thing. We didn’t have to reach the devil; he had a way of reaching us. But God didn’t. We had to reach God.

Now, as long as an individual turns to God for the overcoming of material or mental problems they will fail. As long as an individual has hope in God to destroy the sins of the flesh or the diseases of the body they will fail. As long as an individual hopes that God will bring peace on earth and good will to men they will fail. I wouldn’t know how many centuries people have been going to church to pray God for peace. I only know that in my short span we had World War I, II and the beginning of III, and countless days were spent in churches, not only by individuals but by whole nations praying to God to bring peace on earth and God’s been a little bit slow about it.

God is very slow about it because God has no power to bring peace on earth. That is something that can be done only by the individuals on earth. God cannot come into this room to establish peace among us. We can establish peace among ourselves. We do not have to war with each other. We do not have to sue each other. We do not have to have any form of argument or disagreement. Oh yes, we can have natural disagreements as to whether you like orchids better than roses. I wasn’t thinking of that. We can disagree as to whether we like berry pie better than lemon pie. I wasn’t thinking of that. I’m thinking of the fact that in this human world, we are actually disagreeing in forceful ways, disagreeing on subjects of economy, politics, religion, race, creed, and at times even willing to commit murder in the name of Christ. Oh yes, if you don’t join my religion let’s arm our brother and go out and slay you, one way or another.

Now, there’s no use praying to God about that. God’s been prayed to for so many centuries, or what the world calls ‘God’ has been prayed to, with no answer. There’s more strife on earth than ever before, because there are more people on earth and more races, more nations, more religions, more creeds. But we can overcome war, disagreement and it is to that end that we are here studying, bringing to light the spiritual laws that will make peace on earth possible for us, first as individuals, and then for the world at large.

Now I’m returning to this subject of power. We find that the application of matter over matter, the power of matter over the power of matter, leads to an ultimate where you reach the utmost destructive power that matter has, and then find it equalizes itself by all having access to that same power. You come to mental power and you find yourself for a while able to overcome, able to destroy, able to achieve, and then all of a sudden find that an immunity has been built against these mental powers. And when you turn to God or Spirit to overcome human problems, you find it doesn’t work at all, not even from the beginning.

To all of this there must be an answer because, if there weren’t a possibility of Heaven on earth, we never would have had men like Lao Tzu, Buddha, Shankara, Bodhisattva, Jesus, Paul, John, Plato, Socrates, Plotinius, and then later the mystics of Europe of the 12th to 17th centuries, and now the mystical teachings of the 20th century. None of these would have come into our experience had there not been the possibility of an actual heaven on earth. Just as much of a heaven as we can have here in this atmosphere, in this room, on these grounds, in these islands. It’s possible. The question is: How?

The secret that has been given to the world many times, and lost each time, is this—God is infinite. And beside God, there is no power.

Now as you start to live with this in mind, you change the entire complexion of your experience. Why? Because out here there appears to be persons detrimental or destructive to oneself or one’s interests. Or there seems to be conditions or climates. In other words there are persons or places or things of a destructive nature, destructive to our health or destructive to our peace, destructive to the harmony of our affairs. And the spiritually illumined of all ages have learned that none of these is actually a power except insofar as you make them a power, accept them as a power, and then learn to fear them and fight them.

The Master Christ Jesus made this clear in his teaching of agreeing with thine adversary, not fighting the devil. He made it clear in his statement to the disciples when they boasted of their power over evil in his name. Oh no. No, no, no. You have no power over evil. Just rejoice your names are writ in heaven. In other words, you have been admitted to the great revelation, the heavenly revelation—the spiritual revelation that there is but one power—God.

You have been admitted into the secret of God; therefore, there is no evil subject unto you, not even by My name.

Why? What did the Master say to Pilate when Pilate threatened, “I have power to crucify you or set you free.”? “Thou couldst have no power over me unless that power came from the Father in heaven.” Now here’s the secret that is not known in the physical world. This is the secret that is not known in the mental world. This is the secret not known in the church world. This secret is only known in the mystical world. God is infinite power and beside God there is no other power.