Original Iwihub.com Transcript. Transcriber: Hilda Soon, Proofread by Zane Maser. Photography: Inez Marques

pdf-49px   417A When the Spirit is upon you

When Spirit is Upon You 5/5
1961 London Open Class
Joel S. Goldsmith
Tape 417A

In other words, abide always in this truth of Omnipresence. God fills all space. Therefore, regardless of what appearance you see out here with your eyes, you are to spiritually discern that this is but an appearance. And, therefore, you are to do nothing about it but recognize this. Now, this is called having spiritual discernment, that is, the ability not to believe what your eyes see, the ability not to judge after appearances.

All spiritual healing work is based on this one point. If a practitioner receiving a call for help were to sit down and try to cure somebody, they would not be a practitioner, not very long. Why? Because the practitioner in the spiritual work knows nothing about what is called “healing,” doesn’t know what’s wrong, doesn’t know what to do about it. All that constitutes a spiritual healer is an individual who has inwardly discerned God in individual life, your life. The spirit of God has given you your life. Therefore, your life is immortal, eternal, indestructible, and the spiritual discernment consists of not judging after appearances.

You always have an example to go back to when you think of the Master, clad in his robes of a Hebrew rabbi, talking to the disciples and asking them, “Who do men say that I am?” They answer, “Well, men say that you are probably a resurrected Hebrew prophet.” “But who do ye, my disciples, who do ye say that I am?” And then Peter, after a moment, said, “Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” Think what he was looking at was a Hebrew rabbi wearing a Hebrew rabbi’s robe, and yet with his discernment, he looks right through it and says, “No, you are the Christ, the son of the living God.” When you stop to think of that, you’ll know what I mean by not judging after appearances, not reacting to outward appearances.

Again, let me call your attention to the Master when he is addressing a crippled man, and the crippled man has pleaded for healing. And the Master replies, “What did hinder you? Pick up thy bed and walk.” Now, can you visualize that? A crippled man asking for help, and the Master saying, “What did hinder you?” Well, don’t you know with his eyesight he knew what was hindering the man. With his eyesight he knew there was a crippled man there. But with his inner spiritual discernment, which did not react to appearances, he says, “What did hinder you? There’s no power but God, so get up from there.” And because of that spiritual discernment, the man was healed, and got to his feet, and danced.

Now, if you are going to judge by appearances, you are always going to behold sin, disease, death, lack, limitation, wars, restrictions, all kinds of appearances, and you’ll be bound by them, because you will be suffering from your own belief that which you are beholding. When the spirit of the Lord God is upon you, you are given the discernment that enables you to say, “I must not judge after appearances. I must not believe what my eyes see. I must not believe what my ears hear.” Then, when you are called upon for any kind of help, you are able to sit in meditation, contemplation, treatment, prayer, whatever you want to call it, and realize, “Father, it is Thy spirit that quickeneth, Thy spirit that reveals truth, right where the picture of error is. Let me hear Thy word.” And then you receive some kind of inner assurance.

And today, in a particular instance, that was the assurance that was given to me. “Do not react to appearances,” and that was enough. That was enough. That satisfied me. The treatment was done. Do not react to appearances. You see the most difficult part on this path is coming to the place where you understand that we are not healers, that we are not employers or employment agencies. That we don’t act to do human things on the human level. That our work is purely on the spiritual level, the level of discernment in which, because the spirit of God is upon us, we know that the crippled man can’t be crippled, because God didn’t cripple him, and God is the only power there is. We know the blind man can’t be blind, because God didn’t blind him, and there’s no other power but God. There can’t be a sin. There can’t be a disease, because God didn’t create it, and God is the only Creator.

But you don’t know this with your mind. “The flesh profiteth you nothing.” You can’t know these things with your mind. You can’t even believe them. You can’t believe them. That is why those who are not of spiritual mind so often ridicule us. They say, “Oh, you say disease isn’t real but let me show you my cousin down the street. Oh, you say that death isn’t real but let me take you down to a cemetery.” And all they’re trying to tell us is that they are living by the judgment of their eyes. They are living by their human faculties, but they have not yet been spiritually ordained. For when they are spiritually ordained, when the spirit of the Lord God is upon you, it is possible for you to see that nobody is a human being. Everybody is Divine. Everyone has this spark of the divine Life in them. Everyone is the child of God, and then you look at the appearances. You look through them. You do not react to them, and then they respond by saying, “I feel better. I am better. Things are better.” Why? Because of your spiritual discernment, because that which you could never do as a human being—heal, improve, employ, change—the spirit of God can do through you.

So it is, you will devote many, many months, years really, to the attainment of this realization of the Spirit. Not that it will take years for the Spirit to be upon you. But remember that when it is, it will be only the babe, and you will have to nurse it. You will have to nurture it. You will have to take it down to Egypt and hide it for a couple of years. You will have to dwell secretly and sacredly with it within yourself, until, by its fruits, others begin to notice that there is something more to you than flesh, something more than flesh. And what is that something more? The spirit of God that dwelleth in you.

And there’s a question here: “We all have an appearance at least of different or individual personalities that is the intangible ‘something’ or Soul, which makes us different from each other in character. Does Oneness mean sameness, or is there an infinite variety in the true self of each of us?”

Answer: And that latter, of course, is the answer. Oneness is not sameness. No, no, no. There are no two of us alike. There are no two people in the world alike, since God is Infinite. God must be Infinite in form and expression, and each one of us represents that Infinity in one way or another. It is for this reason that we are not all to be healers. We are not all to be spiritual teachers or lecturers. We are not all to be in one phase of the spiritual ministry. Ah, no. God, in infinite Being, must have Infinite modes of expression, and, therefore, we can express God where we are—in business, art, literature, government, music. We can express and God can express divine qualities through us in any form and in every form.

The main thing is for us to remember that the flesh profiteth nothing. We, as human beings, are nothing. We are creatures not under the law of God, neither indeed can be; but the moment that the spirit of God dwelleth in me, then, I’m alive. Then, I’m alive in God with God’s capacities, God’s abilities, God’s graces. Then, I’m able to live according to the will of God, the way of God, but only when the spirit of the Lord God is upon me. And one of the first fruits of attaining the spirit of God is this ability not to judge by appearances, not to accept what you see, hear, taste, touch, or smell at face value; but always able to look through it and realize, even in spite of your Hebrew robe, I know that Thou art the Christ, the son of the living God. In spite of your crippledness, I know that there is no power to keep you from leaping and walking. In spite of your sickness, I know that the health of God is your health, and I know it through the spirit of God, which is upon me.

Thank you, until we meet next month.