On the next point: the world does not accept God as omniscience, the all knowing, because the world has been taught to petition God, to ask God for things, to expect something of God, to plead with God, to bribe God, to tithe to God, to do anything to get God to let loose of His favors. But you have been taught a God of omniscience, which means all knowing, all understanding, all wisdom. And this leaves nothing for you to tell God, so that now, having learned that you can pray to God where you are, you know that you have nothing to tell God, so that your praying becomes without words and without thoughts, just a listening.

You cannot possibly tell God what you need if God is omniscience. As a matter of fact you cannot yourself know what you need since you do not know God’s plan for you, God’s will, or God’s way. Therefore in prayer, you never have anything to say to God, unless it be Speak Lord, thy servant heareth. Your prayer becomes entirely an attitude of listening. Listen for the still small voice. Be still and know that I am God. I will listen for Thy voice. All of these things—in quietness and confidence—all of these things tell us how to pray. Never speak, listen.

Also, the world has never accepted God as omnipotence. Therefore, the world is praying to God to overcome the evils of this world, but if God is omnipotence, the evils of this world have no power. Jesus did not deny that there was a crippled man in front of him, or a blind man, but he said, “What did hinder you? You’re crippled, but it hasn’t any power. Pick up thy bed and walk.” You’re blind? All right, open your eyes. He didn’t deny the appearance. He merely said it had no power. Resist not evil. Do not fight evil, and certainly don’t pray to God to fight evil, because God is too pure to behold iniquity.

So you cannot pray to God to be a great power to remove your sins and diseases and lacks and limitations, because if God could smile, God would smile at such nonsense. God is omnipotence, and therefore there are no powers for God to contend with. Then if you cannot pray to God for power, and you cannot pray to God in a petitionary way or in an advisory way, it really means you must give up thoughts and words in prayer, and let your prayer be listening for that still small voice, for when you hear it, it thunders. It goes before you and makes the crooked places straight. It dissolves the erroneous human sense, the pictures of sense that we have built through this belief in two powers.

Every erroneous appearance on earth is made up of the belief in two powers. The proof of this is that in proportion as you attain a consciousness of God as one power, the only power, you soon discover that the evils of this world have no power. For instance, any of you who have done healing work or ever experienced a spiritual healing, must know that it did not come about because of anything that was done to sin or disease, but rather because the practitioner had the spiritual awareness to know enough to know that God is omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and besides God there is none else. In other words, your metaphysical healer cannot do anything to germs to make them powerless. They either are powerless to begin with, or they are power—and if they are power, nobody by taking thought is going to take the power out of them. But the truth is that there is no destructive power in any germ; only thinking makes it so. There is no evil. There is neither good nor evil; only thinking makes it so. If you believe this is evil unto you, it becomes so. If you believe this is good unto you, it becomes so. And there are people who have been healed by believing God is good to them. That’s just an imaginary healing, because all healing is imaginary.

There is no such thing, really, as healing. How could there be healing if God is omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence? What would there be to be healed of? So all healing is in the category of human belief. Regardless of what healings you have ever witnessed, they were only in the classification of human belief. You believed you were sick, and so you believed you got well. But since you weren’t sick, you didn’t get well. What did happen is, if you or someone with an understanding consciousness made contact with this Infinite Invisible which is closer to us than breathing and then watched as It dissolved that picture.

It is very much like being on a desert and seeing an ocean there or a great big city, and then all of a sudden realizing that’s a mirage. Well the moment you realize it’s a mirage you’re healed of that ocean and of that city. But no ocean was removed and no city was removed. The illusion was dissolved where it existed, in your thinking, in your false sense of sight. So it is with a disease of sin, poverty. These are never healed, never. These are the illusions of sense. And if you make contact in your meditation with that spiritual Presence which is entombed within your own consciousness; if you succeed in opening out a way for that imprisoned Splendor to escape, it will dissolve the mirage.

That is why in all metaphysical teaching, error is called an illusion. Now it makes no difference whether it is The Infinite Way or Christian Science or Unity or New Thought, error is always termed an illusion, but did you ever know that there is no such thing as an externalized illusion? Did you know that an illusion exists nowhere except in your thought? Therefore, you cannot get rid of an illusion externally. Oh, we still have patients, students who call up and say, “Oh I’m so bothered with this illusion. Will you help me get rid of it?” Well you’ve gotten rid of it if you know it’s an illusion. What can an illusion do to you?

Your recognition of sin, disease, death, lack, and limitation as an illusion is the only treatment there is. If you go beyond that, you don’t believe it’s an illusion. Once you try to get rid of the illusion, you might as well go out to the desert and get rid of mirages. You don’t get rid of them; you recognize the picture as mirage. If you were to stand on a streetcar track or railroad track and see these tracks come together in the distance, in your present state of awareness, you wouldn’t go out before the train and push the tracks apart. No, you let the train roll merrily down the tracks, even though they come together in the distance, because you know that this is an optical illusion.

And you don’t call your practitioner and say, “Help me get rid of this illusion of the railroad tracks.” Of course not. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. And if you once come into even a measure, no one of us has fully attained, but if you come into this awareness in a measure, that God is omniscience, the all knowing, you’ll soon break the habit of turning to God for help. If you get to know God as omnipotence, you’ll soon break the habit of expecting God to do something. If you get into the awareness of God as omnipresence, you will not be seeking for a God, and then you will be enabled to abide in truth, and you’ll be able to live and move and have your being in a prayerful state of consciousness.
And a prayerful state of consciousness is one that is recognizing omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and abiding in that truth. If you are seeking God as a power, you are going to find yourself back in the illusion of two powers. Think how simple it is once you have worked with the principle of I and the Father are one and all that the Father hath is mine. Think what happens to you when that becomes ingrained in you so that you are not fearful of twoness.

Even when you are entertaining a sense of separation from God, and we all do that at times, that does not mean that we are separated from God. Usually it means that we have emptied out, emptied ourselves of yesterday’s manna so that fresh manna can fall. This is a healthy state. Those who live on yesterday’s manna are headed for trouble. God is infinite, and God is omnipresence, and therefore we must expect spiritual manna to flow, not only day by day, hour by hour, and minute by minute. A truth that served us well yesterday may do nothing for us today, and we have no right to rely on it, because we are relying on a statement, on an effect, whereas our reliance should be on our consciousness, from which new statements will come, new truths will come, fresh manna will fall.