215B Chicago Private 25 3/6

Original Iwihub.com transcript by Zane Maser

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

Don’t think for a minute that I have anything to offer you, except the hours that I spend in my inner meditation, so that when I come here I come not with words but with conviction, with demonstrated consciousness. And, those of you who have been around me have seen how many hours I give to that. That’s why I don’t go out for meals when we’re in class work. That’s why, even in our home, we never have guests in our home. Never, never, and we are never guests of anybody. There are only two couples in all Hawaii that are received in our home as guests. They’re both couples of students. One of them comes in once a year, and the other couple may come in two or three times in a month for a breakfast on Sunday or a Saturday night supper or something. But, they’re students, and that’s our entire social activity in Hawaii; and we never visit anybody but those same two couples, and one of those couples we visit once a year, and one of those couples we visit maybe once a month. And, you can be assured that the conversation is at all times strictly Infinite Way. And, that is why we can be in our home and be in this consciousness morning, noon, and night.

Now, there are a few local students there that drop in sometimes every day. We have a meditation, or we have a lesson. Sometimes, two or three or four come in at one time, and we’ll have a meditation, or we’ll have a lesson. There are always people coming over from the mainland, probably every week. There’s one or two, and they will come in for half hour, three quarters of an hour sometimes and have a lesson with me or a meditation and leave, even though they’ve come all the way from the United States. We don’t entertain them, and we don’t permit them to entertain us, because if I am out in the world, I’m not inside in the Spirit, and I have nothing to give you.

So with you. You have nothing to offer your world, your practice, your students. If you think for a minute they’re interested in your bodies, you’re soon going to wake up and find out that they aren’t; and if they were, it would be so very temporary that you’d be very sad about it. Nor are they interested in your mind or what education you had. Nor are they interested in the furnishings of your home. Those are all momentary things. They are interested in your developed, spiritual capacity, and that’s all. How did you get a developed, spiritual capacity? Well, since we’re Christians or rather have taken the Christian Master as our wayshower, we have developed our spiritual consciousness by following his teaching.

Now, what is his teaching? That we pray for our enemies. That we learn how to forgive seventy times seven and maybe start all over again then seventy times seven again. That we take no thought for our own lives. That we serve God by serving man, whether we visit them in prison, whether we heal them, whether we feed them, whether we comfort them, whether we do it materially or whether we do it spiritually. We have to do a little of each. By praying in secret. By doing our alms in secret. In other words, by negating the self. Every time we pray in public, we’re glorifying the self. Every time we give alms in public, we’re glorifying ourselves. Every time we sit around just knowing the truth about our friends, we’re just glorifying ourselves. It is in those silent hours when we’re praying that the mind of the enemy be opened to God. But actually, we realize there is no enemy, because the mind of man isn’t power, only the mind of God. That’s praying for them when we know that the mind of man isn’t power. It’s the mind of God. That is man-whose-breath-is-in-his-nostril mind.

Now, when you follow out those programs, when you sit in the silence and you say to yourself, “I have naught against any man. I realize God to be the life of individual being. I realize God to be the soul, the presence, the spirit of individual man, woman, child, every color, race, creed. There is no such thing.” Let’s see this for a minute. Ask yourself this question now. “Is there a God?” Well, where is God located? In the white race, the black race, the yellow race. And, that makes it ridiculous. Is God on the American continent, African continent, any other continent? That’s ridiculous. If there is a God at all, all you can say is God IS. But, that must be just as true when you’re on the Zambezi as when you’re on the Hudson. If that’s true, you understand what the Master meant when he said, “Call no man on earth your father.” There’s only one creative Principle. What’s the use of fooling ourselves, and when you know that inwardly, you’re purging yourself of hate, envy, jealousy, malice, bigotry, bias; and you are purifying yourself. Now you can say, “I have naught against any man.” Now, you can say, “I have made peace with my brother. I can look all over this globe, and I can’t find a single person I’m in disagreement with. I can feel that my conscious union with God constitutes my oneness with all spiritual being and idea, and now I can pray, and my prayers will break through at the very center of my being, because there’s nothing interfering with them.”

Now, as I live in that consciousness, I wonder if you think that rheumatism or arthritis can take hold of that consciousness. Is there any rheumatism going out of my consciousness? No, there’s life, proof, and love. Now, nobody got the rheumatism or arthritis outside their own being. They got it from accepting the world’s way of life. One person got rheumatism, another one got cancer, another one got consumption, and another one got polio. How? Accepting the world’s estimate, and having a specialized God over here, and having certain brothers and sisters over here, and entertaining their world animosities, their world beliefs, or individual or collective. By having a selfhood apart from God, having a God apart from God, having love apart from God.

Now, it isn’t this lady’s fault that she has rheumatism. But, if she’s ever brought to Truth and continues with it, it’s her fault, because she can get rid of it. All she has to do is sit down every. To begin with, you can get rid of it for her. If you are living this life, you are such a clear transparency that with a little patience, no matter how severe the case is it’ll be healed. But, that won’t constitute any favor to her, because next year she’ll come up with a cancer. The year after, she’ll come up with old age. The year after with something else, because she’s going back to her sins. “I forgive you but sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon you.” Don’t go back to the same state of material consciousness.

Now, the material state of consciousness brought on the disease—the belief in infection, the belief in contagion, the belief in weather, the belief in climate. That’s the material state of consciousness. That brought it on, so even if you get rid of it for her, it won’t prevent it bringing on something else tomorrow or next year. So, if she wants to be healed and remain free of disease, that’s when she has to open out a way for the imprisoned splendor to escape. And, she has to sit down every single day and start to pray in secret, start to do some alms in secret, start to forgive her enemies, start to pray for those who despitefully use her, start to forgive the Germans and the Japanese and the Hindus, and so forth and so on. She has to purge herself of her prejudices against her mother-in-law or father-in-law, daughter-in-law. She has to come to a place where she is no longer hating, fearing, or loving ever. She has to come to that place when she is in conformity to the principles taught by Jesus Christ. She has to learn to forgive seventy times seven. She has to come eventually to a place where she can say, “I wouldn’t care if you struck me dead. I couldn’t get mad at you. I’d still say, ‘Father, forgive you, you know not what you do.’” She’d have to bring herself to the place where all the people who talk scandal about her that she can just look at them, and smile, and say, “Neither do I condemn thee. I forgive you, and I’m going to pray God forgive you double.”