1959 New York Closed Class
Joel S. Goldsmith
289A – The Infinite Way Principles of God – The Fabric of Being – 1/4
Impersonalization & Nothingization

Good evening and welcome. Beautiful to see so many of our old, old, old, timers. You know we’re nearly fourteen years old ourselves and some of you here are fourteen years old with us and thirteen and twelve, and it’s a joy to welcome you, and it’s a joy also to see so many new students, starting in this work. The new students have an advantage over the older students, because the experience gained in these years, both of teaching and of watching the healing work, has brought to light…oh, a deeper consciousness of healing; but a little more than that, perhaps a way of presenting the principles, so that they are more clearly understood.

And that was the reason for the cancellation of our work last year, when we were told by that still small voice to go home and to do no public work, but to wait for the message that would be given. And when it came, the voice said again: “Infinite Way students do not understand the principles of The Infinite Way.” It was as definite and as specific as that. And I couldn’t disagree with it, because in my mail it was so evident that students who were reading and reading and reading, and still when they wanted healing, or to do healing—something misfire.

And so, gradually, message after message came, pointing out the way for this year, and all of it indicating that there would be a presentation of specific principles to be studied, practiced…And I was told that it would be for about nine months before the students would be ready to take the next step. Of course the next step is the one that I’ve been hoping for for years—that one of healing without mental argument, healing without treatment. And each year I have felt that it was coming next year, and then next year it was postponed until next year. And now we have every reason to hope that we can take up such subjects next year.

Certain it is, that if the ten tapes which I have suggested that our students read, if those ten tapes are assimilated together with the monthly Letters of June, September, October, and November of this year, and perhaps with a little reading in this new book, The Art of Spiritual Healing; but even without that, those Letters of June, September, October, and November, together with what is on the tapes—if practiced, will definitely change the consciousness of an individual, and bring forth a healing consciousness, and we’re going to take that up in more detail tonight.

First I would like to read you just a brief message that came to me and that I wrote down as an introduction to our work this week:

Now we come to the serious work of class instruction. Here we leave the playground for work. We leave believing for understanding. Here we must expect to lose our Gods—all those things and thoughts, upon which we have relied, all in which we have trusted. Had they been real and good, we would not be here; or had we understood the real that has been offered us, we would now be on more solid ground. If we acknowledge that right in this classroom, right here in our midst, there remains some discords and inharmonies, it means that we have not fully demonstrated our principles. Those of us, who are young in years of study, must first learn the principles of The Infinite Way before we can demonstrate and live them.

The world has been seeking a God or Christ, a power or super power, to destroy the evils of this world, and has even prayed to God to destroy the enemies, of the world. The Infinite Way reveals that there are no such gods; no such gods to which we can pray for health or wealth or peace, or safety or security. It points to the experience of the people of all ages, who have so prayed and been disappointed—to the Hebrews, who were always praying, and yet always coming under the heel of tyrants, from Pharaoh to Hitler; to the early Christians who were first persecuted by Caesar, and then swallowed up by Constantine; to the middle century mystics who were wiped out by imprisonment and death at the hands of the church or the governments. Whole civilizations have been swallowed up, entire populations destroyed by church, by governments, by submarines under the water, and bombs dropped from the air. It points to the decades of hunger, poverty, disease in India, China, and other Asiatic lands. What has praying to God done for all of these people, in all these lands, in all these centuries?

A way has been revealed—a way out of this wheel of human existence. It is not some new way of getting God to perform His function; it is not some new way of making God do for us what God hasn’t done in the past; it is not some new way of waking God up to his duty or obligation. It is the way of removing the barrier, which separates this earth from heaven; and thereby experiencing heaven on earth.

The responsibility for harmony is not in God, but on us—individually. Only we can remove first from our own experience, then from that of others, the barrier which hides Gods grace. It is first of all the degree of our understanding of specific principles, and then the measure of our devotion to the study and practice of these principles until we have attained actual realization.

There are specific principles revealed in The Infinite Way; many of them never before taught in the world, which now enables us to live on earth in the same harmony, safety, peace as we will live in heaven. The Infinite Way does not leave God out of our lives, but rather gives God the honor, glory, and dominion, which is Its right. It does not leave God out and say that we don’t need God. There would be no world without a God; there’d be no being; there would be no individual you and me; there would be no universe.

God is, and fortunately, we’re in the twentieth century when we do not have to start out and prove there is a God. In the nineteenth century it was a little more difficult, there were many more atheists and agnostics then, or those who believed that they were such. But that seems to have evaporated since these two or three world wars; and we hear less about atheism and less about agnosticism than ever before. God is, but now we learn that because God is, harmony is, and where God is, harmony is. That raises a question: where God is…why everyone knows that God is everywhere, fills all space equally.

It is a wonder that in the face of such statements as: God is everywhere equally present, and God is omnipresent, or there is no place where God is not; it is surprising that in the face of all of those statements, more people haven’t asked the question then, “How come all of this evil on earth in God’s presence?” And as a matter of fact, that is the question most frequently asked in all of my lecture work. Rarely do I go anyplace in any country, where the question is not presented, “How can you say that God is and that God is a great power, and God is all power, and God is good and God is love—in the face of these things that are taking place on earth today, and have been taking place for five six or seven thousand years of recorded history?” That question was raised only today.

A couple of years ago, a magazine, a national magazine in this country raised the same question and they asked, a very prominent Minister and a Rabbi and a Priest to answer that question, and they evidently picked the wrong people. They picked three who didn’t know any of the answers, because all three were in agreement that we don’t know the answer. We just know that God in His infinite goodness has decreed these things. Fine God huh? I know you’d love him around your children—Eager to meet him?—Not in this world or the next! No, there’s no truth in that;  God is of too pure eyes to behold inequity. If God were aware of one single tiny little bit of a simple cold, he’d be up all night taking care of it. So does God love his creation. No, there is an answer, and the answer is this: God is where God is realized. The fact that God is, does not prevent all of these iniquities on earth. The Master never said that truth would make you free. He said, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Ye shall know the truth!