Original Iwihub.com transcript by Zane Maser

1958 Chicago Private “25” Continued
1958 Chicago Private Class for “25”
Joel S. Goldsmith
Tape 215B

 pdf-49px215B Chicago Private _25_

Good morning.

You know, this is a good class we’re having here this week, and it’s good in two ways. It’s good in three ways. The most important one is a very high consciousness, so that anything that comes out from that high consciousness is with power. Otherwise, words may come out with no power, but in high consciousness it comes out with power. Secondly, because the class has developed into the subject of mysticism, it really takes some of the mystery out of that word and out of the subject, and it makes it clear to us that actually living the spiritual life means living the mystical life. Living the mystical life really means living the spiritual life. And what do these mean? What does this mean?

It means actually that we have come to a place in our consciousness where we have seen clearly the entire issue of life. In other words, is there a material, physical, mental power or powers or is really Spirit the only power? Now, here is, if you want to call it that, the whole battleground. Is material force power? Is mental force power? And, it’s on that point that you leave humanhood to enter your Christ identity. As long as you use Spirit to combat material conditions, you’ve no theology, whether you have a God and devil, or whether you have the good and evil of philosophy, or whether you have immortal mind and mortal mind of metaphysics, you’re still in humanhood. It is only when you come to a specific place in consciousness where the issue is sharply drawn, where you actually see that what you’re dealing with in your consciousness is merely: Is mind or matter power, or is Spirit the only power?

Then you rest, because now that if you’ve come to that place and there’s no longer any question in your mind, and you know that Spirit is the only power, but you haven’t yet grasped it to the point of facing the issue with every claim. One person comes with a physical claim, one with a mental claim, one with a moral claim, one with a financial claim, and when you reach this point that this class is at this week, and more especially I’m speaking of those members of the class that have been with us long enough to know, then the issue is clearly defined within you. You’re no longer in doubt about what is Truth. Such a question now must be nonsensical to you. I know what Truth is. It is that there is no material force or power. There is no mental force or power that is really power. They’re only powers as long as we can be made to accept them. Spirit is the only power.

Now, I’ve brought this up many times. You see the proof of this in the fact that all of these black magic outfits—the hexes of Pennsylvania, or the black dark, the evil Kahunas of Hawaii, or the Aborigines of Australia—none of them can operate unless they can make their people believe in the power of witchcraft. Otherwise, witchcraft just doesn’t operate.

Now then, it is in the same way that laws of matter and laws of mind, mental laws, can operate in the consciousness of those who can be made to believe them. If you can drill into the public mind hard enough the stupidities of psychology and psychiatry, you can have them accepted, and then they become the laws unto the people. Anything that you can convince somebody of, even that there’s a ghost in a cemetery or that they can get healed by going to some bones that are in a graveyard, if you can just make them believe it hard enough, you can have an effect in the human world.

Now, we at this stage of our spiritual unfoldment have come to where the issue is clearly drawn. What am I to do when somebody comes to me with a physical claim, a mental claim, a moral claim, a financial claim? Outwardly, I say, “I’m with you.” Inwardly, I smile. Is there more than one power? Do you see that? Is there a material force? Well, no, no. I am the only power, Spirit, which is the I of my being, but it’s the I of your being. That’s why I can go away and not have to sit home waiting for you to telephone me, because it isn’t only the I of Joel that’s God, it’s the I of you, wherever you are. So when I say, “I will be with you,” I am with you every time you say or think I, and therefore, I just don’t have to sit in one city waiting for the mail to come in or the telephone calls that come in, for wherever I am, you are. Wherever you are, I am. There’s only one I, so I’m not bound down then waiting for the call of human beings to tell me they’re sick. They’ll reach me wherever I am. But so will my realization of Spirit alone reach them wherever they are, for there’s only one Consciousness, and I am that Consciousness.

Now, just see how simple this makes spiritual living and spiritual healing. It is true that occasionally you have to use contemplative meditation, that is, you have to sit down and if you like to call it that reason things out with yourself, go over some Bible passage, or some principle of The Infinite Way, ponder it, until you come up to the point of conviction; because after all, the only power is after you’ve reached the point of conviction, not when you’re just declaring this with your mind. So that we do have to sometimes lift ourselves by our bootstraps. We do sometimes come down and believe appearances.

I was caught in that last week. A letter came in from a student having marital difficulties, and it was quite a story about his wife’s conduct; and, of course, I was very spiritual and very absolute. And, I realized quickly that none of that was, had anything to do with the subject at all if we were dealing with a spiritual universe and so forth; but the next day I had a letter from her. Of course, her story was entirely different, and I got caught because for a moment I thought, “Uh-oh, it isn’t that way at all.” But, you see, I wasn’t quick enough to say, “It isn’t either way at all,” and so from, I will say for six hours, I was caught until all of a sudden it banged into me. “What is this? One of these people right and the other one is wrong?”