I know we can think thoughts about life being eternal, but they are not power. They don’t make it so. Thank heavens life was eternal in the beginning, before ever time began. Certain it is, I can sit up here and think that you are spiritual, but that won’t do you any good; you were spiritual to begin with, in the beginning before Abraham was. Oh yes, I can sit up here and know that you are children of God, and that you are sharing in God’s abundance, and that you are the very image and likeness of His being. But I’ll be very honest with you, that it hasn’t any power, can’t make you so. You were that. You were that before you came here. You were that before you came into what we call the human sense of life. As a matter of fact, in the beginning with God, the word became flesh, and you are it.

So you see that thinking these things do not make it so. Thinking it just reminds us of that which forever has been. And so in the message of The Infinite Way, our work does not really consist of changing this world, of improving it, healing it, reforming it, or enriching it. Our work is really coming into the awareness of this world as it already is, as it always has been, and always will be in reality.

Now right there a question should be coming into your mind. If this is true, why haven’t we been experiencing it? Now that’s a legitimate question. It’s a good question. Since it is true; since in all the history of this world, no man, woman, or child has ever died, or sinned, why is it that we are still plagued with this belief, this appearance world, this chaotic world. The answer is in this. In scripture it is called the experience of the prodigal leaving home. In our language it means just this. At one time or another, we were all consciously one with God.

Remember, we are still one with God, but at one time we were consciously one with God. We not only were one with God, but we knew it. And so we never took thought for what we shall eat, or what we shall drink, or wherewithal we shall be clothed. We never took thought. We never had concern or anxiety, because instead of trying to create our own world, God created it and lived it through us. It was as Paul says, I live, yet not I, Christ liveth my life. In other words, there was a spiritual presence, and a spiritual power functioning us. And at some time, and in some way, we lost that conscious unity with the Father, and we invented a new meaning for the word “I”.

Now the word I originally meant God. The word “I am” really meant God is. And so, when ever the word “I” was spoken, it was really God uttering itself. But in this experience that we call the prodigal experience, we decided to say “I Joel,” “I Bill,” “I Mary,” ‘I John,” “I Violet and Sue.” And so what happened I Joel must take thought what I shall eat, what I shall drink, wherewithal I shall be clothed, because who’s going to do it for me if I don’t? You see, I have completely lost sight of the fact that never at any time, was I responsible for creating myself, maintaining myself, or sustaining myself. That was always God’s responsibility, and had I continued to be as a little child, and just come to breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as your little children or grandchildren do, and expect it to be there, and do a little crying if it isn’t. So, had we continued to come to breakfast, lunch, and dinner expecting the Father to set the table for us, this false sense of “I” would not have gotten a hold of us, and we wouldn’t have started out in life by the sweat of the brow.

Now then, I Joel has to die daily. I Joel has to give himself up. I Joel has to surrender himself. The Master says, unless you first lose your life, you cannot find life eternal. Unless you lose your, Joel’s life, personal sense of life, the personal sense of responsibility that says I must work for it, or I must pray for it, or I must treat for it. Whereas all the time, all I must do is eat it.

Now it takes a little while, at our present stage of development, to realize that it is not necessary to live by the sweat of the brow. Work? Yes, we will always work, and the more spiritual wisdom we have, the harder we will work, but not for a living. It will be for the joy of whatever it is that is given us to do. And then, the living will come in and take care of itself. And it’ll be abundant. The very moment we stop working for a living, and I don’t mean give up our positions or our business, but enter them with a different spirit, with the idea that this is not being done for a living; this is being done for the joy of life. Then we find how the matter of supply takes care of itself more abundantly than it ever did, while we thought we were working for a living.

But all of this goes back, remember, to our basic premise: there is no power operating in this universe to keep you from your health or from your abundant supply. And if you can accept that and stop working for supply, and stop working for home, and stop working for companionship, and stop working for health, and begin to accept God’s infinity, you will find it flowing in every direction through you.
Now you can readily understand that, this is but one facet of the letter of truth. I could carry you in the next few minutes into a second one, that of law, l-a-w, law.

Do you know that any illness that anyone is suffering in this room is based on the belief that it has a law? That there is a law of infection, or a law of contagion, or a law of heredity, or a law of decomposition, or a law of falling away, or too much, or too little? There’s a law of matter, or a law of mind, a law of food, or a law of weather, or a law of climate. Behind every single physical and mental disorder, there is a claim of law.

And you know what the truth is now, don’t you? God is the law-giver, and God is the law, therefore God is infinite. But God is Spirit. Therefore Spirit is infinite. Therefore the law-giver is Spirit, and the law is Spirit. Now what becomes of any material law or mental law. They just have to fade out of the picture. The very moment you acknowledge God as the infinite law-giver of the infinite spiritual law, and that besides spiritual law, there is no other, in that very moment, every appearance or claim, resulting from material or mental law, starts to fade out.
Because you must remember this: Both the physical laws and the mental laws are only illusion. There is no more reality to a mental law than there is to a physical law.

For instance, in some of the older metaphysical teachings, it was claimed that there is a mental law for a physical condition. They believed, for instance, that if you were resentful, or envious, or jealous, that you could have rheumatism or cancer, or if you were unloving you could have something else.

Well it was all right, that was a good superstition in those days, to try to make people better than they were, but it never was true, because if the physical disease itself is an illusion, any cause would have to be just as illusionary, wouldn’t it? You can’t have a real cause for an illusion, because an illusion has no existence. Do you follow that? If there is a material disease that is illusory, its mental cause has to be illusory? It all has to be in the realm of illusion. You can’t have a reality giving birth to an illusion. So if you have an illusion, whatever caused it is illusion.

And so you’ll find as you practice this, that just as you have already proven that you can heal colds, grippe, flu, any of the contagious or infectious diseases, with your spiritual realization, you’ll find then that that is because the condition was illusory, and the so-called cause was illusory. The truth is, there is only one power; that is Spirit or God. It isn’t your mental power or mine, because that would make God’s many. If you ever had one tiny little bit of mental power, you’d unseat God, because God is the only power. The only power there is, is God, not you, and not me … not even Jesus Christ. The man says to us, I can of my own self do nothing; The Father within me, he doeth the works.