1960 Seattle Closed Class
Joel S. Goldsmith
309B – Coming Into the Awareness of Spirit 2/5

Anybody who has learned to read and write can read the Scriptures and can read textbooks of metaphysics. But you will find that only those can heal who have received some measure of inner illumination, some measure of inner attunement. And therefore, our major work is inner attunement. Then, when we have the correct letter of truth, along with that we can do the healing works. Sometimes having the correct letter of truth, we can build and practice with it and develop an inner attunement. It works both ways: It is possible to be spiritually illumined, and then learn the correct letter of truth, or it is possible to work faithfully with the correct letter of truth, and develop one’s self spiritually.

But here, one must be careful. Everything isn’t truth that is published as truth. Too often it is said that, “Oh it’s all truth; oh it’s all the same!” This is far from true. There is a reason. It probably would take far too long to explain it completely to you, but I will tell you this, that there are two levels of consciousness, getting beyond the physical, and that is the mental and the spiritual. And in the earliest days of introspection, turning inward, there were just as many people who turned inward and touched the mental realm as those who turned inward and touched the spiritual realm. This has been true right from the beginning of time.

And it is for this reason, that we have always had those who are called the magicians, and those who are called the priests, or the white brotherhood and the black brotherhood. There have always been those who touched their inner spiritual center. There always have been those who got no farther than the mental, but because it was something greater than they had ever known they thought they had reached the kingdom of God.

That was the primal mistake of Mr. Quimby who touched and was taught the mental realm, and dolled it all up with names like Christ and Spirit and God and prayer and really is responsible for most of the mistaken teachings that are in the world. In the same way Mrs. Eddy, following Mr. Quimby, did the same thing. She took his mental teaching, and in her religious way, the same as he in his, embroidered the whole message with Christ and Spirit and God and prayer. And actually it never did get any further than a mental teaching, until many, many years later Mrs. Eddy did reach the spiritual realm, and therefore, if you were to examine her writings carefully, you would find that there is a mental teaching in her books and a spiritual teaching. You can identify them quickly, because in her mental teaching she will say things like, “Ignorance, sin, and fear is the procuring cause and foundation of all disease.” In her spiritual teaching she will say, “Neither disease itself, sin nor fear, has the power to cause disease or relapse.” In other words in one, you go right to God as cause, in the other you are finding a mental cause.

Again, you could always separate them, because in the mental realm, there are two powers, good and evil, and you can do good with your mind and thoughts, or you can do evil with your mind and thoughts; but when it comes to the spiritual side, there is neither good nor evil; there is only God, the Spirit, perfection, wholeness, completeness, harmony. Now this has been true since long before the Master, and the Master warned about it and said, “There will be false Christs come in my name.” And so it is that wherever you stop at the mental realm, and believe that you have attained the kingdom of God, you’re mistaken; you’re indulging a false Christ, because you are dealing with two powers. When you come into the spiritual realm, you don’t have even one power, for there isn’t any need of power. God alone is, and there isn’t anything to use a power on or for or against.

Now, it is for this reason that if you wish to develop your spiritual consciousness, be assured you never will do it while you are playing around with mental causes for physical diseases, or reasons for why you are sick or poor. You will have to work with a spiritual principle which is based entirely on God as Spirit. And entirely on the revelation that that which appears to us as sin, disease, and death, or even the mental causes of those, are equally illusion, equally without foundation, equally having no law of God to support.

Now if you work with such principles, you can develop your spiritual consciousness. You never can develop your spiritual consciousness while you are working with two powers. You can develop your spiritual consciousness if you work with a principle in which you learn to live and move and have your being in one—one life, one soul, one Spirit, one law, and then realize, “Thou, (this world), thou couldest have no power over me, only the power which is of God has power over me.” Then you can develop the very spiritual consciousness which brings about healing. Now to go back: Once you have a measure of this spiritual consciousness, now you can take these specific principles and work with them, because now you won’t be making a mental exercise out of them, or a formula; now you will be understanding them in their true light.

There is a question here: “Will you please speak more on the impersonal nature of error?”

And so I want to tell you that the study of any of our 1959 classes, that is the tapes, will give you these specific principles definitely presented, specifically, clearly, simply, concisely. You might say all wrapped up in a little package and tied with silk ribbon. Whether you take the Hawaiian Village Class, the San Diego, London, Manchester or New York, any of these, or any two of these, or any all of these, that 1959 work contains the specific principles that you can study and work with for the development of your consciousness, and the knowledge of treatment, and the application of these principles in treatment.

In addition to these, you not only have all of the Letters of 1959 in which these principles were embodied, but more especially, June, September, October, November 1959, and the book The Art of Spiritual Healing. Now, in these specific writings and recordings, you have as it were the principles taken out, withdrawn from all of the writings, and presented as it were, almost as a bar relief—something standing out so clearly that you cannot miss it, and you can put these into practice. And so I’m going to suggest that whatever work you do with tapes, that you be sure that you include some of that 1959 work. Of course it will also be apparent to you in the 1960 work. And that you have these 1959 Letters, and The Art of Spiritual Healing. Between these, another six, eight, nine months should really bring you far along, not only in the knowledge of these principles and how to apply them but through the practice of them, to the actual bringing forth of healing fruitage.