1957 Kailua Advanced Class
Joel S. Goldsmith
180A – Individual Identity and Responsibility 3/5
pdf-49pxJG 1957 – 180A Individual Identity and Responsibility

You see when you went to Jesus, you had a healing, and this was because the mind that was in Christ Jesus was the mind of God. Is there any way of taking that mind of God and putting it in one individual or separating it from itself, or dividing it up into pieces. The answer must be that God is indivisible: indivisible Mind, indivisible Soul, indivisible Spirit and therefore it must be the Mind and the Soul and the Spirit of you and of me.

Why hasn’t it functioned that way? The Master says, Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. And so first of all until you know this truth it cannot function. And then secondly he says, you must not pray for yourselves or it cannot function and the whole world is violating that by praying for themselves.

They pray for their daily bread. They pray for supply. They pray for happiness. They pray for marriage. They pray for divorce. They pray to have children. They pray not to have children. Every form of selfish and personal prayer is indulged in, in spite of the Master’s statement that ye must not pray for what you shall eat, or what you shall drink or where with all you shall be clothed for your Heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things and it is His good pleasure to give you the kingdom. And where is this Heavenly Father? The Father is within you!

The Father isn’t your life blood or your brain or your heart. The Father is your consciousness, your awareness, your soul, your being. And as our poet has said, “closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet.” God is individual being. Now watch this: God is individual mind — your mind and mine.

But when you or I, or the world, when we fill ourselves with ignorance and superstition and selfishness, that mind produces its own image and likeness which is the sins and diseases of the world. When that mind is purified so that it becomes an instrument for the pure Soul, then the mind produces its own image and likeness which is the pattern shown thee on the mount or spiritual perfection.

In other words, in every case it was the mind of Jesus Christ that appeared outwardly as health and harmony and an infinity of loaves and fishes. So anyone who has done any healing work knows that it is their own mind, their own soul, their own consciousness, that appears outwardly as the harmony of their patients and students. It isn’t something out here; it isn’t something up there. It is the very mind of the practitioner or teacher you turn to. But it isn’t the mind of that individual when they were just out seeking for themselves or when they were living a life of animality, greed, lust and hate, envy, jealousy and malice. It is their mind after they opened it to the activity of the Christ and thereby lost their own sense of self and no longer live for themselves or even for their families but lived only that this light of Christ might find outlet into the world — that you might let the imprisoned Splendor escape.

Now, if you will understand this you will make progress. First of all in bringing into your own experience a purified sense of life. There is no guarantee in the message of The Infinite Way that overnight you will find yourself without problems, or that you’ll instantaneously be the healthiest person in town or wealthiest. For The Infinite Way isn’t based on any premise of guaranteeing anything of a material or a mortal nature to anyone. Its assurance is that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And if you will permit yourself to entertain the Spirit of the Lord within your own consciousness you will find your freedom from the inharmonies and discords of this world as fast as you can open yourself to it.

But more than that; long before you have achieved your complete freedom, you will bestow a measure of freedom on all those within range of your consciousness. Why? Because God is your individual consciousness and everyone who enters your household, your spiritual household, partakes of the nature of your consciousness which is God, or Christliness.

Now, here we are: Mind forms its own conditions of matter, body, form. Mind forms and governs itself as matter — as your very body. Mind free of theories, superstitions, beliefs, and false concepts governs matter, material form, harmoniously and eternally. “No man will ever see Me and die,” so says Scripture. No man will ever realize truth and die.

Therefore mind free of theories, superstitions, beliefs and false concepts governs matter, material form, harmoniously and eternally.

Mind is the essence of matter and governs all its forms. Forms change to fit mind’s functions. And you’d find that if there were any occasion for you to live under water you would develop the capacity to live under water by developing gills. And if it becomes necessary for us to live twenty-five thousand miles in the air we will develop a condition of the lungs which will enable us to imbibe the atmosphere that is there. For mind does change the forms and the functions to suit the situation. Just as it forms black skins in dark climates to protect itself from the sun.

Clouded by theory, superstition, false concepts, matter or form appears distorted, painful, ugly. When the mind receives the light of knowledge, the appearances conform more nearly to mind’s pure form. As Soul governs its spiritual activity and form, so mind, clear of hypnotism, the belief in good and evil, receives the full light of Soul. Mind then becomes a pure instrument of Soul, and the body, matter, form expresses the harmonies of mind and Soul, or rather the harmonies of Soul through mind.

My mind, yours, imbued with truth is the law of resurrection, renewal, regeneration and restoration. My mind, yours, imbued with truth is the mind of those who come to me and to those embraced in my consciousness. My mind, imbued with truth, is the mind of individual being.

Now witness this: That there is a Soul which is the basic substance of life, that which in the first chapter of Genesis created a spiritual universe in its own image and likeness. Created the crops before the seeds were in the ground. Created man before there was any human conception or birth.

Soul is the original and basic creative principle and substance of life. But mind is the instrument through which that activity takes place. Mind is an instrument of the Soul. Therefore when the mind is open to receive the divine impulses out comes harmonious forms, healthy forms, wealthy forms, perfect forms, infinite forms, eternal forms.

But mark this, in the second chapter of Genesis this mind of Adam accepted a belief of good and evil, and from that moment on mind began forming itself in forms of good and evil. It is almost as if mind were a … one of those things you stick in the oven with muffins, whatever shape it is, that is the shape the muffins come out. So it is with us.

The mind produces its own image and likeness, and if you, who stand behind the mind, let your mind be filled with superstition, ignorance, fear, and all of this belief of good and evil, that is what your mind produces in your experience. And that’s the cosmic law taught in Scripture, as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. As ye sow so shall ye reap.

And so you must remember this — and this is what I give you this morning.

There is something called I. I. That I is me. It constitutes me. And that is my God-being. The part of me which is in, and of, and from, and through God. God constitutes it. God forms it. God is its essence, its life. And I am that. I and my Father are one. I am infinite and eternal and immortal. I am about my Father’s business. All that the Father hath is mine. The place whereon I stand is holy ground because I, in my true identity, am God itself in individual form and manifestation.

As my mind is permeated with that truth, so does my life appear outwardly harmonious, joyous, peaceful, free — service and serving.