If I may illustrate it this way: we speak of Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes. Never believe for a moment that it happened. Never believe it. The Christ multiplied loaves and fishes and Jesus stood by probably with amazement and watched it take place! Moses opened the Red Sea? No he didn’t. No he didn’t. The Christ did. And Moses was the vehicle of it. Had Moses ever put the word “I” in there it would have been his undoing, or Jesus’. There is only Jesus’ complete understanding of the fact that I can of my own self do nothing; that my doctrine is not mine; that I bear witness only to the Father. Only that made him what we call the Savior, the Messiah.

Had he for a moment thought that he was endowed with spiritual power he would have been lost. And anyone today who believes that they are endowed with spiritual power will be lost. Nobody is endowed with spiritual power. God alone is Spirit and God alone is spiritual power and the best that we can do is become—through non-action, through Non-I, the not I, the instrument for Its activity.

I could illustrate that in an experience that happened recently: a man came to me on this trip for help on a physical problem. And he had a good deal of work and a good deal of experienced work. And it hadn’t yielded. And he said, “Will you during the class this week give some thought to this and help me?” And I said, “Yes.” The second night following he awakened at three o’clock in the morning and I was standing at the foot of his bed and said to him, “Now you see the nothingness of physical disease. Stop this nonsense.” And instantly the pain stopped and he was healed.

Now then, do you think that I was conscious of any of that?—speaking of Joel?—Do you think that Joel knew that took place? No, Joel probably was either fast asleep at three o’clock or was sitting meditating but he certainly was not walking around in other people’s bedrooms. He had no conscious awareness.

Yes we had this experience in Seattle: something over a year ago a young lady also experienced in this work, asked to meditate with me and we had I think three periods of meditation, and one morning she awakened at four o’clock and I was sitting on her bed talking to her. And she looked up and said, “Oh! I don’t want Joel; I want God.” And the answer came, “What is the difference?” What was the difference? There wasn’t any difference because it wasn’t Joel there consciously. Joel knew nothing about that. That was God expressing Itself in the way necessary at that moment. And heaven help Joel if he thought he could do it or try to do it for you. Do you understand that?

Never, never believe that I as an individual, and many in our work have had similar experiences to this, many for many years past have had the experiences with me of this kind. But never once have I consciously known that it was happening. Never was I, Joel, consciously responsible for it.

Then you say, “How did it happen?” It happened because of Non-I. It happened because Joel sat in meditation with God with no thought of you or where you were or what your need was. You had turned to Joel knowing that Joel had enough awareness of this thing not to think that he was a healer. And so you weren’t turning to Joel, you were really turning to the God Consciousness manifested as Joel and very fortunately Joel had sense enough to know that if the Master could do nothing of himself that Joel could do less. And so Joel’s part was meditation, a conscious union with God. A frequent sitting in communion with God, pondering the great truths of God and God’s universe and then because of your tuning in to that Consciousness, which was not Joel but God, God appeared to you in the form that you could understand, and in many cases met the need. Not Joel; God acting as the consciousness of Joel.

Now, the word “I” would wreck this work. The moment I would say, “I can do this, or you can do it.” I can’t and you can’t. The one thing we can do and this is really the secret—I’m going back now to the very beginning of all my work. And that was first the two or three experiences that I had with my mother when I knew nothing about metaphysics, never had heard the term, didn’t even know the term Christian Science then, didn’t know there was such a thing. But in her headaches I would say, “Mom, I can help you.” and in a few moments she had some freedom. It only happened a few times, it never was a cure, it never was a healing agency but there was some measure of relief, but I don’t how, nor do I know what impelled me to make such a statement.

Then, after the experience in 1928 in which I was lifted out of the material sense, from then on healings began to take place automatically whenever people asked for it but I had no process and no treatment! I knew only one thing: to sit quietly, wait until that touch came, that sense of awareness of the Presence and the healing took place. Never ask me how—I do not know any more than I know it now. No one knows how healings take place.

All I know is that as this quietness, this gentleness, this peace descends, in some way the healing takes place. Therefore my function as I learned then, and I’ve never had reason to change it, my experience is that the conscious communion with God, the touch of God in our consciousness is the healing agency. Therefore, our function is merely attaining that oneness. Attaining that consciousness of God’s presence and then letting It do the work.

Now, you might say then, “What about all of this treatment that we have whole chapters on in the writings?” That plays its part in preventing us from having a blind faith. That prevents us from going off onto emotional tangents and ignorance of the truth of being. Now in those days, my earliest days in the healing work, I had no knowledge of this truth of being and therefore I do not know how long that healing work would have continued because it was a continuous puzzle to me and a state of uncertainty because I didn’t know the nature of it.

It was only one day when the realization dawned, “Oh, error isn’t a reality!” that I caught a glimpse of how it could happen. That it wasn’t the power of God doing something to an error. It was the power of God revealing that there was no error. That gave me then the basis of the letter of truth. That gave me then an understanding of what was taking place. It wasn’t God being gracious to me and healing through me. It wasn’t God doing something through me that It wouldn’t do through anyone else; it wasn’t God doing something for one patient that It wouldn’t do for another patient. Oh! It had nothing to do with anything like that. It was the fact that as human beings we haven’t got a God. As human beings we are separate and apart from God; as human beings we are completely outside of God’s control, not under God’s law, and anything can happen: step into a bathtub and break your neck or go out on the street and get hit with an automobile or anything else and God cares nothing about it. Wars, atomic bombs, what does God care? Why? A human being isn’t in contact with God, and the law of God and the reign of God isn’t touching a human being.

Only do we come under the grace of God when we have made God contact. And then it isn’t that God is overcoming sin, disease, death, lack, and limitation or preventing accidents, it is that we are in a state of consciousness where those things cannot and do not happen—where sin, disease, death, lack, and limitation have no existence. Now there is the entire secret of spiritual living.

Unless you can give up the theological belief in a god, a god who will answer prayer; a god who will come down to meet some human need; a god who is sitting somewhere, even within you, withholding it until you arrive at the right prayer or the right practitioner—that must be given up—or until you learn the right combination of words. All of that superstitious, theological teaching about God must be given up for the truth. What truth? That your conscious communion with God lifts you into a state of consciousness where materiality does not reign, where there are no laws of matter.