1959 Maui Advanced Work
Joel S. Goldsmith
247B – The Spiritual or Mystical Life

pdf-49px247B The Spiritual or Mystical Life

It was sometimes believed that only he had spiritual gifts and spiritual powers, but we do know that for three hundred years after the Master, great spiritual works were done by those who came under that same grace, if not to the same extent—in their measure. But spiritual works were performed on earth—spiritual healing, spiritual living, spiritual freedom, prosperity. For three hundred years the grace of God worked in and through those who themselves attained and achieved some measure of God realization.

Throughout all time, this story has been repeated. Gautama the Buddha was certainly nothing but a rich man’s son, until he received his illumination, and then he became the head of his worldwide activity, and showering spiritual blessings on so many. Paul in his missions, John…I think of another of the great light that Maimonides, the Hebrew, brought to his people at a time when they were in dire slavery to the Roman Church—persecuted, imprisoned, killed. One man, spiritually inspired with the grace of God changed the history of his people for centuries. Nanak, the great spiritual leader of the 15th century created a religion of peace, of joy, of spiritual living that for three generations thrived as a people of peace. Only when they violated his teaching, “not to accumulate money,” because wealth needs soldiers to protect it; and only when they violated that and accumulated great wealth did they have to also create armies to protect it; and then the Sikhs became the warrior race of India—they who had been brought up on the same teaching as Jesus Christ, of Resist not evil.

In this modern history, it has been my privilege and pleasure as you know to travel this world quite a few times, meeting some of the great spiritual lights, some of the mystics, some of those who are known and some of those who will never be publicly known. Always it is the same thing, having attained that grace—they are the leaders for groups that surround them.

We know today, for we have seen this now in the past seventy five years, that wherever the Spirit of God enters the consciousness of an individual, he is set free, at least to some extent, from the inequalities of this world; the lacks, the limitations, the sins, the diseases, the desires. And even a grain of God realization is sufficient to set us apart from most of the world’s miseries. What two grains would do, remains yet to be seen.

Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Do you think for a moment that this is an idle statement? Do you think that this is merely a quotation or a cliché? This is a spiritual principle; this is a principle of life: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. Where is the Spirit of the Lord? Where it’s realized. You might say truthfully that it fills all space. Indeed it does, but so did electricity before it was hooked up into electric lights and electric power and everything else. God does fill all space, but the activity of God is where God is realized, in the consciousness of those who live in the word and let the word live in them. And we have authority for that: If you do not live in this word and do not let this word live in you, you will be as a branch of the tree that is cut off and withereth. And let no man think that the human race isn’t that “branch that is cut off and withereth;” that is that part of the human race that is not living in the word, and letting the word live within them.

Only in the abiding in this spiritual realization, is one connected with the vine, and the tree. The 15th Chapter of John is the summary of the entire mystical life of man and contains the entire secret of man’s harmonious immortal and eternal life, even on earth. “If you abide in this word, if you let Me abide in you, you will bear fruit richly; for you are the branch, I am the vine, and God is the tree.” If you do not keep this word God in your forehead, on your arm and on your doorstep, You will be as a branch of the tree that is cut off and withereth.

You will live a life of chance, a life that today is called a statistic. Everybody has become a statistic. We all know where we can go and find out how much longer we’re going to live, what our chances are of an accident. We are statistics. Spiritual man is not a statistic. The man who has the word of God abiding in him is not a statistic; he is a Son of God, living under the grace of God.

Pray without ceasing, but don’t pray for food or clothing, or housing, or companionship, or money or employment—it profiteth you nothing. And don’t pray nearly as much for your friends as you do for your enemies, for it profiteth you nothing to pray for your friends. But if you pray for your enemies, you become Sons of God; pray for your enemies that ye may be the Sons of God.

The Master has laid out for us a code of life, which we can follow. It is not a code of life that is reserved only for those in the monasteries and convents; it is for those of us who walk this business world, this outside life. We can be prospered in our business, in our professions, in our arts and in our sciences by the presence of God. We can be protected, fed, maintained and sustained, by the presence of God in whatever activity we engage in as long as that activity is not a violation of the Holy Spirit. And sometimes, when that activity is in violation of God’s law, and the prayer is sincere enough, we are lifted out of that occupation into another.

I had that to meet one time when a man came to my office, and said, “I need help desperately, but I know I can’t get it. I represent a brewery, and I can’t believe that God will ever answer my prayer while I’m out selling that stuff to men, to befuddle them.” And my answer was, “The place whereon thou standeth is holy ground,” if you need help, and you really and truly are turning to God for it—your help will come. What its result on your work will be, I have no way of knowing. But I do know this: the mission of the Christ on earth was to forgive sinners, not to condemn them; he never sent them into outer darkness, he forgave them; the woman taken in adultery or the thief on the cross, “Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more.” His whole mission was one of showing forth God’s grace where you are, and letting that grace lift you out of where you are.

Peter had to learn that lesson, when he tried to remain a Hebrew, and refused to eat the meat of the pig. Which later would have kept him from going to Cornelius, the unclean, the filthy gentile; he had to learn, “Call nothing unclean, which God hath created,” and God made all that was made. And this man who did turn seriously to God, within two weeks was lifted out of his occupation, and into another one.

Oh yes! Where we are now in life, is the result of the erroneous states of consciousness that have governed us. But, if in that erroneous state we are turned to the Father’s house … oh yes, yes, we have the experience of the prodigal. Right where he was in his banquet with the swine, when he turned, he was led out and back to the Father’s house. There is no place where you can be; in heaven, in hell, in the valley of the shadow of death, where you cannot reach out to God and be reached and lifted out.