1962 Maui Special Class
Joel S. Goldsmith
485A – Human Relationships Through God Realization 3/4

Eventually you will understand why spiritual healing is effective in matters of the physical body. Eventually you are going to discover not only that you are the spiritual temple of God, but your body is the temple of God, and whatever you embody in your consciousness, you manifest on your body.  And then you can’t violate your body or anybody else’s body.  Then body becomes something sacred, something precious just as much as any other part of our existence is sacred, so does the body become sacred.  All of this when you realize God is spirit, I am spiritual, my body is the temple of spirit.  And here you have oneness; God the infinite divine consciousness, God the individual consciousness, God the substance of the body—form.  And in this oneness you have the entire sacred temple of God.

Until you begin to understand yourself as the temple of God, your consciousness to be the temple of God, until you understand first of all that God is infinite, divine, spiritual consciousness, and that God manifests, expresses as your individual consciousness; therefore your individual consciousness is of the same nature, character, substance as that of God.  Therefore your consciousness is as sacred, as spiritual, as infinite as the consciousness of God.  And then when you see that you have been given a body for your use on earth, and that it is the extension of your consciousness, it is your consciousness expressed, it is your divine consciousness expressed.  Don’t expect to prove this by looking in the mirror.

In the mirror you are seeing a human distortion of this truth.  The mirror cannot show back to you the glory of your spiritual selfhood, and of your incorporeal spiritual body, which is the temple of God.  When you look in the mirror you see a finite image of your body. One that has been built partly by your ancestors, partly by your parents, partly by your environment at home, partly by your education or lack of it; because this body that we see, this is more or less the formation of our human state of consciousness.

In countries where food is scarce and where they live pretty much on rice, potatoes and a few scraps of anything else they can get, the body is very emaciated.  In countries like ours where there has been such a tremendous economic prosperity for so many years, our bodies become distorted in the other direction; and more especially since we have been subjected to these foods that have no food value so that we stuff ourselves a great deal with sawdust toned up with a little perfume to make it palatable.

Now, this body then that we see in the mirror, it is not the God-given body, it is what man has done with a God-given body—under feeding, over feeding, wrong feeding, etc.  Now, we can bring even these bodies back into a more normal, or more harmonious state, by our spiritual oneness with God, because this enables us at least to lose taste for some of those things that cause the distortion.  At the same time, as long as we are human – entirely human, – we are living by bread alone, and it is almost true that we are what we eat. You can make this body pretty much what you want it to be by the change in food and exercise.  But, once you enter the spiritual path, you will find that first of all you will give some attention to the foods that you eat, but principally you will be fed by your spiritual life; you will no longer be living by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.  And that is why you will discover that regardless of your age bracket, you can be far more youthful than those of the same age bracket, and the same circle, just because you have brought the consciousness of the spirit to the body.

Consciousness plays the most important part in all of our relationships, and in all of our activities, and therefore the consciousness of the presence of God, or the consciousness of our oneness with God, enables us all to live in harmony with each other.  But at the same time our conscious oneness with God begins to act on the body, and the body is less subject to physical laws.

On one of my trips some years ago, in order to board an airplane in India, I had to have a physical examination. And when the doctor was through he told me that I had very, very, fine health, especially considering my age.  I didn’t think I had been that old, but I was curious as to what that age was.  And then he told me that he could tell me within six months to a year my exact age.  They had their medical science, or physical science so perfected that they knew the age of a person, usually within six months, but never further away than a year. And so he told me my age, and I thanked him; I had a right to because it was just twelve years younger than my mother had told me about.  And I told him my mother probably misinformed me.  And then he made a very strange remark.  He said, “Is it possible that you are engaged in some spiritual activity?”  I said, “Yes. It is not only possible it is probable.”  “Well,” he said, “that’s different.”  He said, “When you are under the spirit, there are no laws.” And he said, “The practical working out of that is that a person living the spiritual life is less subject to material laws: the laws of matter, the laws of time, the laws of food, the laws of climate have less affect on the person.”

Well you know this to be true because you know how much less sickness there is among the metaphysical students of the world than there is outside in the world.  And it is only because in proportion,  in proportion, to your conscious realization of oneness with God do you become immune to the operation of material laws, and mental laws.  Mental laws are of the same human nature as material laws, and both are overcome in proportion to the degree of our spiritual realization. If we have a spiritual realization of any nature it immediately brings the activity of spirit to our consciousness, to our mind, and to our body.

Don’t forget that up until our first spiritual realization we are the natural man who is not under the law of God, neither indeed can be.  No human being is ever under the law of God.  That is why all of the sins and diseases and accidents and horrible deaths can happen to the human being—because there is no God power, and there is no religion and no church ever been discovered that can bring God to an individual. Only the individual can bring God to their soul, mind, and body—only the individual. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

We can have a tremendous influence upon those who come to us, but that is because you have come to us.  In other words you had something to do with it.  If you hadn’t, we couldn’t help you.  You can be a tremendous help to your children and your grandchildren.  But don’t ever get the nonsensical idea that your spirituality is going to take them into heaven because it isn’t.  You can only be a help to them in so far as they open their consciousness to you.  And the same way we can be of help to you only in so far as you open your consciousness to us.

In the same way—you can find all of this in the New Testament—the Master, those that did not hear his voice: My sheep hear my voice…O Jerusalem, O Jerusalem I would, I would take you under my wing, but ye would not.  In other words: And do you believe that I can do this thing?  See it is all you. You have to open yourself to the kingdom of God. You must seek the kingdom of God.    See it is all you. You have to open yourself to the kingdom of God. You must seek the kingdom of God.  You!  Then you will find that along the way there are helpers, practitioners, teachers, mediators, saviors—you can never tell what degree of spiritual light that will enter your life as a helper when you open your consciousness to that light and seek with all your heart and with all your soul and all with your mind, to know God aright.

We are told, of course, that you must love God, and you must love your neighbor as yourself. Well, the truth is that nobody humanly can do such a thing. You can’t induce yourself to love God, and you can’t induce yourself to love your neighbor as yourself.  And if you try hard enough, you will fail vary hard.  You can’t do that; nobody can.  And those who believe that they can are just fooling themselves, and that is always dangerous.  When you have a feeling—when you have the first instinct to want to know God aright, to really want to discover the nature of My kingdom—have you ever wondered what that is “My kingdom”?   My kingdom is not of this world….my peace I give you, not as the world  giveth.  If you ever develop a curiosity within yourself, those of you haven’t got it—what was the Master talking about when he spoke of, “My kingdom”?   What do you think he meant by, “My peace”?  What do you think he meant by, “Oh, I have meat the world knows not of”?