Attuning to Consciousness 1/4
1962
Tape 500B
By Joel S. Goldsmith

We always come to that place where, regardless of what we learn, what we are reading or studying, that we have to live the conviction, we have to live the life, that is now unfolding to us. There is a period in our experience when we may think of ourselves purely as students or initiates, and during this period, we are learning, yes, we are taking in new principles. We are discarding old religious beliefs and superstitions and theories, doctrines. We are learning not to be dependent on anything that exists in the external realm. Use everything as it comes along for good but not depend on it. We are learning that there is only one power and that it is only a universal belief in two powers that limits us. We are learning the nature of God. We are learning the nature of prayer. Oh for the longest while we are learning and learning and learning, and unlearning. Learning to let go, but then there comes a period when the thought must come to us, now what do I do with all this learning? How do I go further than just keep on learning? And that of course, is the beginning of your real experience when you start to live what you have learned.

Now, the first great lesson of the spiritual path is this. As we appear outwardly to be separate people with separate interests, and humanly we live our lives in that way, so on the spiritual path we learn that this is not true. That in the midst of us is an invisible tree. We call it the tree of life. We can call it that. There is an invisible tree right here with us, and it has invisible tentacles, vines, small vines, reaching out, and it is attached to each one of us, or rather, we are attached to this invisible vine that is attached to the tree. Therefore, the life of the tree, which is God, flows out through these vines and becomes the life of us.

Now see what this does to us. First of all, it breaks down the belief that I am just an individual over here with a life of my own because immediately I see that my life is the life of the tree flowing through me, and in that way, I lose concern about my life. I need take no thought for my life because the life of the tree is my life, and it is doing all of the taking thought. It is concerning itself for me. It knoweth my need before I do. It is its good pleasure to give me the kingdom. Always I see this invisible vine with which I am one and therefore, there really isn’t any me to take thought for because the only me there is, is the life of the tree. There is no separate me from the tree. There is no separate life from the tree. There is the one life flowing as individual me. That one life is flowing as individual me. Now this is only the first part of the vision because now I’m beginning to see that I live and move and have my being as really this life of the vine, life of the tree.

I live and move and have my being in the good that is flowing from the source. And it is in me as I am in it. This constitutes oneness. Therefore, I can say I can of my own self do nothing, but I don’t have to. The Father is doing the living of my life. The Father is my life, and I can go further and say, the Father is me because the life of the Father is my life, the mind of the Father is my mind, the soul of the Father is, there is only the Father and I, and this is one, not two, one.

I am that place where God is individually manifested. Ah, now that I see that, I look around and I see all of the other branches, vines, coming from the same tree, and I see all of the individual you and me. And I look around and I say, no wonder the Father said, call no man on earth your father. Here is your source. And then I see that here we are, and out here we call ourselves Americans, German, Dutch, English, Spanish, French. How nonsensical. We are all one. The only difference is, in the same way that an apple is different from a peach or a pear or a plumb, different in individuality, but the same in life, with the same source, the same feeding, the same protection, the same government. And then, I begin to see that as long as I am one with my source, I am one with each one of you.

We are all one with each other because the same life flow that is mine is the same life flow that is yours. I begin to perceive why the Master said, inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me. I can commence to see that if it were at all possible for me to damage any one of you, that since the life of us is one, I would be damaging myself. If I could benefit any one of you, I really would be benefiting myself because in this whole tree of life, there is only one Self flowing out through the vine as our individual being.

Now, to learn this, to read this, to hear this, is one thing. Even to have a feeling within us, yes, this must be true, is another thing. The third thing is to make it demonstrable in our experience. Now, the only way in which anything can enter your life’s experience is through your consciousness. Nothing can come into your experience except through your consciousness. In other words, if it were raining and you weren’t conscious of it, it wouldn’t be raining for you. If gold dollars were floating down from the sky, and we weren’t conscious of it, they would be of no avail to us. If we had big bank accounts, and we weren’t conscious of it, they would be no avail to us. In other words, nothing exists for us except what we become conscious of, what we become aware of. Therefore, if you would bring the grace of God into your experience, you must consciously open your consciousness to this truth that I and my Father are one.

Now, the statement alone can do more harm than good because it can give you a blind faith in a statement of truth, and that won’t help you. When you declare that I and the Father are one, you must have some concrete idea in your mind what that means. You must either visualize this tree of life and the branches and realize that you are one of those branches and therefore, it is true that I and my Father are one, or you must see the ocean and the waves and realize if I’m a wave, at least, I am really the ocean because there’s no place where an ocean ends and a wave begins. The wave is really the ocean itself in a form. Somehow or other, you must have the ability to understand how it is that I and my Father are one. And whether we use the illustration as the tree of life as Jesus did in the fifteenth chapter of John, or as the wave as one with the ocean, so I am one with God, or in any other way in which you can make it clear, I have used the example in some of our classwork of glass and a tumbler. Glass is really the substance, tumbler is the form, but how can you separate glass and tumbler? You can’t. They are inseparable because there really is no tumbler. Tumbler is only a name given to glass in a certain form. And so it is that the Infinite Way reveals that God appears on earth as man.