1961 Hawaiian Village Open Class                             Photo: Inez Marques
Joel S. Goldsmith
438B – Freedom Spiritually Discerned 3/4

I’m not a pacifist. I’m not trying to get the government to give up whatever mode or means it sees fit, and the people of the country what it sees fit. I’m talking now about first individual freedom and then the freedom that we can bring to the world that it, itself, never can bring but not until we individually…just as one individual who attains some measure of freedom from the belief that disease is power or that disease has a law is enabled to be a law of freedom from disease unto others. So does anyone who attains some measure of freedom from lack and limitation become the law of freedom unto others. So in this wider sense, those who attain the realization of the spiritual nature of freedom and begin to perceive that temporal power cannot touch it, they first attain their own freedom and then help to establish that freedom for the entire world.

It will be found that knowing the truth will enable the truth to make us free. Nothing else will make us free but knowing the truth. And the truth is that freedom is spiritual, and that freedom cannot be taken from you. But please believe that first of all you must understand that freedom is something that cannot be given to you. Stop looking to somebody to give you your freedom, and be very watchful of your own thought to what extent you are holding someone else in bondage, because the bondage that you are holding another in is the extent of the bondage that is holding you.

As we learn to release God in the realization that without holding fast to God, without anxiety and concern, the sun will come up in the morning and go down in the evening. The tides will go in and they will go out.  The stars will move in their courses. The crops will grow and like will beget like. The potatoes will still produce potatoes and orchids will still produce orchids because of a law, a law that can never be broken.

And so it is that your harmony, your peace, your abundance, your safety, your security—these are assured because of a spiritual grace, a spiritual law. My peace no man taketh from me, it is said. The Master cautioned about the sword: Put up thy sword; resist not evil; Agree with thine adversary. So to accept the Christian teachings and not understand these passages means really not to accept them. You cannot accept what you do not understand, and so you must understand that the entire revelation of the Master is that God is the only power. Spiritual power is the only power, not temporal power!

It is on this point that all freedom hinges. If you are going to give power to temporal power, then this philosophical jackass who is teaching ‘rather Red than dead’ would be true. What difference would it make whether Russia enslaved you this year or Hitler last year or somebody bobs up next year or the year after? But it isn’t true that we must suffer slavery to avoid death. There is no such alternative in this world. The alternative is know the truth or be enslaved because then if it isn’t an outside slavery, it will be one of your own mentality, something within yourself, some ignorance that will be enslaving you, or a false appetite.

All forms of slavery aren’t external. There are lots of internal ones and all limitation is within our self. There is no limitation external to us. You ought to see that now, by this travel in space, that the only limitations are those that have been imposed upon us by widespread beliefs just as before 1492 it was impossible to travel the seas. Why? There were no barriers out there; but there were the limitations of human knowledge and this kept them within bounds so that no ship would go out of sight of land.

So it is that there was no telegraph, no telephone. We were limited to conversations within hearing distance or correspondence within the limitations of communication. But these limitations did not exist in time and space. They existed only in the minds of men. And the moment the mind of man could expand, we no longer had those limitations. We had round-the-world conversations and round-the-world messages and so forth and so on.

Limitation is due to ignorance. Limitation is a form of bondage, and bondage is due to ignorance. Slavery is due to ignorance, and it is the ignorance of this one point. Since freedom is spiritual, it is not at the mercy of matter. Since freedom is a God-given quality, it is not at the mercy of man. Freedom must be realized in consciousness and then freedom will be expressed in daily life. You already know that there are some people living very comfortably free of most of the diseases of the world. You already know that there are individuals who are living free of economic fears, not because of the abundance of dollars that they have, but because of their spiritual realization of the nature of abundance. The Master was free of economic limitation and yet he had no storehouses or barns.

Stop in this very hour; stop believing that someone or something can hold you in bondage. Stop believing even that there is an ideology that can somehow embrace you and enslave you. Bondage is a self-imposed limitation due to the acceptance of a universal ignorance. Freedom is attained through knowing the truth. When you demonstrate the first real experience of freedom from something or someone whom you believe has held you in bondage, you will then be on the road to helping others attain their freedom.

If there could be a formula to help us, it would be this:

I and my Father are one. Now try to hold my Father in bondage. And I and my Father are one, not two. Where I am, my Father is. Where my Father is, I am for we are one and not two. I am not mortal or material, but spiritual. I am not visible, but invisible.

Once we begin to perceive even in a measure that freedom is spiritual, it’s the gift of God, the grace of God, a quality of God that is embodied in our own consciousness and stop fearing. Stop fearing temporal power, stop fearing persons and realize that it is your relationship with God that constitutes your freedom, and you will demonstrate it. But while doing this, review in your own mind to what extent you may be holding others in bondage, and begin to set them free. For in setting them free, you are setting yourself free because inasmuch as you have done it unto one of these, the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me.

This truth maintained in our consciousness becomes a law of freedom unto all those upon whom our thought rests. In the degree that we are constantly setting free every one in this world, releasing them into God, and thereby releasing ourselves into our original relationship as children of God, one with God, in that degree we are setting those free who may be our neighbors. Sometimes near neighbors and sometimes far neighbors because there is no limitation to the extent of our consciousness.

Our consciousness is not confined to this room. It is not confined to our bodies, and it is not confined to this room. Our consciousness is not even confined to this nation. And this we prove in the degree of healing work that takes place when we are helping students and patients in Africa or India, anywhere in the Orient or Europe, and then find that the consciousness of truth that we are realizing here in this room is operating as a law of healing on continents and islands far, far away. And the reason is that this entire universe is embraced in consciousness, and since there is only one consciousness, the whole universe is embraced in your consciousness and mine. And therefore, what we set free in our consciousness is freed. And what we hold in bondage in our consciousness is not only held in bondage but is also holding us in bondage.