215B Chicago Private “25” 5/6

Original Iwihub.com transcript by Zane Maser

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

Now, it all boils down to: Is there mental power through belief, or is there a physical power, or is Spirit the only power? And so, you’ll find that everybody on the earth is suffering from beliefs, accepted and entertained, not consciously but merely by the fact that they’re born into the human world. So, when you begin to purge them as I purge myself in my daily work, and as you must purge yourself, and as you must teach others to purge themselves. In the beginning when you’re healing, you don’t burden them with it. You take up the burden of the work and give them some measure of freedom, but the minute they start to experience freedom, that’s when you begin to say, “Look, you’ll have to read these books and learn these principles. You will have to hear these tapes and learn these principles. Then, you will have to take them into your consciousness after you have learned them and begin to work with them. You’ll have to sit down every single day and not pray until you have made peace with your brother all over this globe. You will have to learn not to pray unless you are learning to forgive every offense, not only against you, against your nation, your church, against the peace of the world, against the integrity of the world, and so forth and so on.”

And then you will find that if I come to my platform, my desk here, and I’m not looking out at you as a male or a female. I’m not seeing you that way, and I’m not seeing you as rich or poor or having titles or no titles. I’m not seeing you for your clothing. I’m not even seeing you for your education. It doesn’t make any difference to me. If I sit here and see you as I have been trained to see how God constitutes your being, God is the life of you. Now, I sit here with no judgment, no criticism, no condemnation, no praise, no flattery. See that? You don’t know what it is, but I know what you’re feeling out there. I know it, and I know it in classes in the beginning didn’t feel that way the first, second, or third night. They did by the fourth night, when we had more mixed groups than we have now in our classes. That first night bristled in the classroom, the second night started, well, just calmed down to suspicion. The first night they were waiting for me to either condemn Mrs. Eddy or the Board of Directors, or somebody else was out there waiting for me to say something about Unity or New Thought, and they’re all sitting on the defensive, because I was just smiling inside. By the second night, they commenced to feel, “Well, he isn’t doing any of those things.” Fine. “Well, how can you tell? Well, I’m not going to judge that quick.” But by Thursday night, that’s why in those days we had to have ten nights for class. The first four nights were just spent trying to get ourselves together to be of one mind and love one another. And then after that, the teaching began, and we had six good nights. See that?

Now we don’t have that because most of our classes are made up of people who’ve read the books, and they already know there’s no antagonisms in there or no judgments and many of the students who have been through class. And, they know by now that I have pets, but my pets aren’t just the wealthy people, or the prominent people, or the titled people. The pets are always those who are devoting their life to this message. You see that? And in one way or another, they feel it. They know that they’re pets. They know that I’ll share anything, give anything. There’s no limit. It isn’t always evidenced by giving time. I remember one time when Lorraine felt left out in the cold. She made the trip all the way from Chicago to New York to see me and didn’t even get an appointment, but she was my pet, and I showed her that.

Now, you see, if I sit here really and truly with no condemnation and no praise and no flattery, then I have no idea of you as either good or evil. I don’t make it my business whether you’re robbing banks at this moment or committing adultery at this moment. That doesn’t bother me, because I’m not sitting in judgment on your humanhood. I don’t care whether you’re sick or well, rich or poor, high or low. I am sitting here completely in one way—God constitutes individual being, and my conscious union with God constitutes my oneness with your spiritual being, all spiritual being. And, that’s the only part of you I want contact with. Now, you don’t know this, but you’re not feeling any condemnation or criticism from me. You see that? And, you’re not getting any flattery, so therefore, you’re sitting there at peace. If I was sitting here flattering or condemning, you’d feel it. See that? So it is.

As you go into your practice, as you go into your student body, you have to develop that same state of consciousness in which you don’t care whether your students are right or wrong. You’re not judging them. You’re not taking part of whether they’re sick or well. If they’re sick, sometimes you can even see the things that are making them sick, but you’re not going to tell them about it, because you’d be judging, criticizing, and wouldn’t be helping, because they can’t help it. They can’t change. The only thing can change is you can change them by holding them in spiritual realization of their true identity. See that? Oh, that doesn’t mean that after they get to be serious students that you don’t here and there correct their line of either thought or their line of conduct, because you’re doing that out of the greater experience that you’ve had before; and you’re going to just save them a few steps. They would eventually find it out for themselves anyhow. I did. They would, too. But, I don’t really believe it’s necessary for every generation to make the mistakes of the generation before. They do, but they really don’t have to. It shouldn’t be necessary. The lessons of one generation should be able to go down to the others. In the human picture, they very seldom do. But, in the spiritual picture, they can if the student is sufficiently un-selfed to take it. That’s the point. I don’t dominate students, and I don’t control them, but I’m certainly going to give them the benefit of everything I’ve got, whether they can accept it and use it. That’s up to them. I’m going to give it.

Now, here is your patient then, and in this case it may be arthritis, and in the next case it may be polio, and in the next case it may be cancer, and actually you’re not holding them in bondage to that disease, because you yourself are continuously working from the standpoint of “Yes, this is just another claim of material power or mental power, belief, and, of course, I’m not accepting that.” And, therefore, you are each day bringing better sense of health to that patient until eventually they’ll be completely healed, but while you are doing this you are also going to enlighten them so that they will know how to go and sin no more. See that? Now, they don’t know now. The woman taken in adultery did. She knew he meant just don’t commit adultery anymore, but when you say to your student, whose sin wasn’t adultery, “Go and sin no more,” well, they don’t know what you’re talking about. They say, “I don’t rob banks. I don’t steal. I don’t defraud.”

Ah, that isn’t what you meant. You meant: “Now, begin to pray in secret. Give alms in secret. Pray every single day for your enemies. Search your entire mind from A to Z to be sure that you have forgiven any and every offense of the past, present, or future. Be sure that you never hold any person in condemnation for the sins of the past, present, or future. Purge yourself. Purge yourself. Purge yourself.” And, you teach them how to do it step by step with every one of these principles. Do you see that? You even remove fear from them. The secret of the 23^rd Psalm—“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He leadeth me beside still waters.” And, you bring them back into that atmosphere in which they do rest in the Lord. Do you see that?