Transcript proofread by Zane Maser, Iwihub.com    Artwork: Inez Marques

pdf-49px  245A Esoteric Meaning Of Easter, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday

Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter: Esoteric Meaning 2/5
1959 Maui Advanced Work
Joel S. Goldsmith
Tape 245A

Now, in that light, then, you are impersonalizing good, and, again, you’re being humble. Again, you’re saying, “I am not charitable. I am not giving away anything of mine. I am not sacrificing. I am an instrument of God, helping to meet someone else’s need—God meeting their need through me.” And you learn one of the great secrets of life and that is that “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” That is not just a scriptural statement. It is a scriptural Truth. It is a living Truth. “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.” And by the grace of God, it comes into your possession; and by the grace of God, you have the desire, the will to share, and the opportunity.

Now, as we learn to look at our holidays, or holy days, to see the significance behind them, we are enabled to adopt them into our lives as Principles, rather than just wait once a year to have a holiday from work and find ourselves the next day no better off than we were the day before, except that we may have had a day of rest. To live spiritually means actually to know what you’re doing and to know why you’re doing it, to have an understanding of how these religious laws came into being, and what their function is, what their purpose is, and why they were taught. I’m sure you know that in the original days when these events took place, which we memorialize in holidays, that the function wasn’t merely to give someone a holiday. These holy days performed a function in that they taught us lessons, principles of life, which we were expected to adopt into our life and live by. And so two of the greatest principles in spiritual living are humility and benevolence. If we do not live the life of humility, we are not living the life of God. We’re living a life of our own, limited. If we do not live the life of benevolence, we’re living an animal life.

Now, we have also the holiday this week of Good Friday. Spiritually speaking, we do not celebrate the death of Jesus, as a physical form, nor do we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, as a physical form. For then we would be limited really to basking in the reflected the glory of something that someone else did, but which we know right well we can’t do. The purpose of the lesson of the death of Jesus and his resurrection, since he is the “Wayshower,” is to show us the way to find life eternal, and that way is by means of the death of our personal sense. We, too, are supposed to die to our personal sense of life and to be resurrected from that tomb. In other words, our personal sense of life is a tomb in which we are buried. We are supposed to die to the belief that I am something, that I have a life of my own, a mind of my own, a soul of my own, a way and a will of my own. We are supposed to die to the belief that we have a possession of our own, or any virtue, or any life, any being, any harmony, or any success of our own; so that in the resurrection, we come to the realization that there is that within us that can rise out of the tomb of personal sense and walk this earth as a spiritual being—God fed, God directed, God wise, God maintained, God sustained.

In celebrating this event, these two events, our spiritual interpretation really does not permit us to celebrate them, to memorialize them. It is a day—Good Friday—in which we should contemplate, meditate upon the inner meaning. We can, of course, use the Master Christ Jesus as a symbol or as a Wayshower, go back to the four Gospels and reconstruct in our thought his life, his ministry, his death, and his resurrection, and thereby find how he brought about the death of personal sense, how he avoided having problems, even when he had the serious problem of being faced with betrayal and death. How? By not considering it a personal affliction, a personal problem, he was able to rise above it. “To this end was I born;” therefore, this is not a problem.

We witness when he seems to be in lack at the well, and the disciples are concerned with bringing him meat. We note that he says, “I have meat that ye know not of,” or to the woman, “I can give you water without using a bucket. I can give you water—water, which, if you drink, you will never thirst again.” And, as you ponder these statements, in connection with all the rest that you read in the Gospels, you come to the realization this man is saying, “I have nothing, but I have everything.” This man is saying, “I have not where to lay my head,” but he has food to feed five thousand and twelve baskets full left over. He has food to feed another multitude and baskets full left over. He has meat the world knows not of. He has water that springs up into life eternal. This man who says that if he speaks of himself, he speaks a lie; he’s a monumental figure. He really has everything. And so, as you study, you find it’s true. He has God, the Father within; and because he has God, he can share Infinity with everyone who lacks, whether it’s water, or wine, or bread, or meat, or at the final breakfast even fish. It makes no difference what it is. He has it to share.

Yet all of these reminding you, “I can of my own self do nothing. If I speak of myself, I bear witness to a lie. Why callest thou me good?” And then you see the principle of Good Friday of the crucifixion of personal selfhood, personal sense, crucifixion of the belief that we of ourselves have qualities of good or quantities of good. And then comes the resurrection in the realization, “I am nothing, but I can give you all.” Ah, why? “The Father within me, He doeth the works.”

So you see, then, that actually, instead of a holiday or holy day, what we really have is another day of contemplation of another spiritual principle of life. We have another principle to spend the day contemplating—the principle of self-renunciation, the principle of crucifixion, the principle of self-abnegation in which, when we have brought to light the nothingness of our human selfhood, we then reveal the Allness, and immortality, and eternality of our being, because “I and the Father are one, and all that the Father hath is mine.”

Now, we come, you see, to the resurrection, when after having entombed that false sense of self, our true Self comes out of that tomb of self and walks this earth free—free, and infinite, and immortal, and eternal, full of God being. So, we come also to our Easter, to our day of ascension, and we find that in our self-renunciation, like our humility, remember, we have stepped out of a tomb. We’re walking the earth now, not full of personal possessions, of personal virtues but filled with the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of the Lord God Almighty is upon me, and I am ordained. Yes, now that this selfhood has been thoroughly quenched, our real Nature, our real Being, comes to life.

Paul visioned this when he revealed to us the two men that we are. Each one of us is a dual being. We are the man of earth. That’s what we were born, the man of earth, and that’s what we remain, until the crucifixion. That’s what we remain, as long as we are in the business of glorifying self, building up self. But, Paul tells us of our other self—that man who has his being in Christ—and that is spiritual man or the divine Self. That is the man you are when you say, “I can do all things through Christ.” Ah, those are the two magic words. “I can do all things through Christ, through the spirit of God in me, through the presence of the Father within me.” Ah, this is no more the man of earth. This is no more the man who says, “I am wise. I am smart. I am holy. I am spiritual.” Oh, no, no, no, that man has been thoroughly crucified. And now, we have a man who says, “By the grace of God, I can share with you. By the grace of God, I am guided wisely in my affairs. By the grace of God, I can give. By the grace of God, I can receive. By the grace of God, I can do, I can do all things through Christ.” Or again, “I live; yet not I, Christ liveth my life.”