1953 Los Angeles Practitioner Class

Joel S Goldsmith

27A – There Is No Law of Matter or Disease

This is Monday morning, March ninth, and we are in Los Angeles. Tonight we are going to start our Closed Class work here, but this morning some of the members of that class have met in much the same way that we have done in the past year in other cities having small groups of practitioners, teachers, workers in the message of The Infinite Way for informal talks, questions, answers, and any form of helpful activity that may unfold from the Father to us.

It may well be that there are some here this morning who have not had active work, active experience in healing work or teaching, and I’m sure that they will derive some benefit from what takes place. But the greatest benefit will be to those who already have experience in some activity of truth work and more especially some activity in the healing and teaching.

Now, the most important part of all the work so far as The Infinite Way is concerned is the healing work. And you may wonder why that is since The Infinite Way is not primarily a healing process or a method of healing sick bodies or sick people. Actually in The Infinite Way healing is just an added thing, something that takes place automatically as consciousness unfolds spiritually. But the reason that these morning sessions are devoted so much to actual healing work and meditation is that you can almost measure your spiritual understanding by the amount of healings that take place through your consciousness.

Now it may seem strange right here to say that you mustn’t judge by whether or not you are getting healed. It’s a strange thing that for a long time to come you may not get a healing yourself or some one particular error may fasten itself to you and stay by with you for a long, long time to come. And you will wonder “How is it—am I progressing? If I am progressing, why isn’t it showing itself forth in my experience?”

And the answer is this: it would be as impossible for light to be admitted to this room and not dispel the darkness as for the light of truth to enter individual consciousness and not dispel the errors of sense. In other words, there are not two processes: the admitting of light and the expelling of darkness. The admitting of light is the expulsion of the darkness. And so the admitting of truth to consciousness is automatically appearing as harmony in the outer world.

Aah, but you just said that some sin or disease or sin or lack may still stick with me. Yes, and I repeat that—it may, it may even intensify itself for a while and there is a reason for that. And the reason is this: we are all in a transitional stage. We are all making the transition from a material state of consciousness to a spiritual one which means that we are going from a state of consciousness that believes that money is supply to one that realizes that the consciousness of truth we entertain is supply, and money is the effect of it. In the same way we are making the transition from the belief that the heart, liver, lungs, brain control or govern our lives and that anything that would happen to our heart, liver, lungs, or brain would damage or destroy our lives. We’re going from that belief or state of material consciousness, physical consciousness, to the understanding that it is our life or consciousness of truth that governs the heart, liver, lungs, and brain.

Well now you can see that just having physical health is not the answer to your problem or mine; that having a state of physical health may, if anything, fool us into a sense of satisfaction with daily living that may eventually bar us from the kingdom of heaven. Why? Oh, it’s so wonderful to have health and supply and say, “All is well,” and be very happy in it not realizing that there are lots of people with no sense of God at all who have more health and more wealth then we have.

Now, we will never be satisfied until we have come into the full consciousness of God as our health, which means then that even if they throw atomic bombs at us they cannot affect our health, our body, our life, or being. Oh I know that in the religious world they would say, “Oh, even if you die, you are immortal, your soul goes on.” But I’m not speaking of that sense of immortality. I’m speaking of the sense of immortality as we understand it in spiritual wisdom, the sense of immortality that says, “Nothing can affect my life, mind, being, or body since only the consciousness of truth is the substance, law, cause, and effect of all being.

And so you see that we may, with the light of truth that we’ve gained, we may bring a great deal of benefit into our experience and much more benefit into the experience of our friends, relatives, neighbors, patients, and students and we may still walk around with a thorn in the flesh for a while. We may still walk around with some form of physical or financial discord, and we must not desire to see it go until it goes through spiritual wisdom.

Many people have said to me, “You know those eyeglasses aren’t becoming on you on the platform talking about spiritual truth. Why don’t you have the Bates Method just remove them from you?” And I say, “Then what would be the difference? I’d just be the same man without eyeglasses as I am with eyeglasses. Nothing would have been achieved except the glasses taken off.” No, and then I said, “In addition to that I’d be a liar.” So many people would be saying, “Now you see, he made the demonstration through God.” That wouldn’t be true. No, I’m going to let them stay there until through an elevation of consciousness, Spirit removes them.

So it is with any discord, any inharmony. I have been through in years past the sense of financial lack but I did not try to remedy the situation by asking people for money or telling them they ought to be grateful or ought to pay me, or borrowing it, for the simple reason that that would not have met my need. I have embarked on a spiritual path, not one of attaining material good. And I’m not ashamed of having a cold or any other physical discord. I’m not ashamed of lack or limitation if it is part of my experience.

I’m not a metaphysician who says, “You can tell how much spiritual understanding I have by how many homes or automobiles I’ve got, or I can afford a yacht.” That is not the sign of spiritual unfoldment, but with spiritual unfoldment does come economic freedom and abundantly too. And the freedom of body, abundantly too. But if we do have a discord here or there let’s not be ashamed of it. I don’t mean boast of it either! But let’s not be ashamed of it. I don’t discuss this outside of a class of this kind, but all cards are on the table here; I’m giving you everything I know for your benefit, and not merely for yours, but for the benefit of those who will touch your consciousness.