Original Iwihub.com transcript, proofread by Zane Maser

1960 New York “25” Practitioner Class
1960 New York Private Class for “25”
Joel S. Goldsmith
Tape 362A

  362A 1960 New York _25_ Practitioner Class

The only way I can illustrate that is to tell you, and some of you also have the experience, of calls that come. “I have a house for sale. Will you do some work for me?” Or, “I have some furniture for sale. Will you do some?” Or, “I need a new home. Will you do some work for me?” And you know our answer that “We are not in the real estate business, or the furniture business, or house-renting business, and the only thing we can promise you is if you have any interest at all in realizing God that we will help you to attain it.” And, in many cases, we don’t get any more answers to that letter. Occasionally, it wakes up the student and makes them realize that it’s actually true that we are not a form of materia medica. We are not marriage counselors, nor real estate agents, nor anything of that kind in our spiritual capacity. Our function is to bring to an individual the realization of God, the grace of God, the activity of God, the omnipresence of God, the omnipotence of God, and then whatever unfolds is the added thing.

And so it is that as we undertake this work, we are very, very careful in all marital cases, or business disputes, or human relationship problems that under no circumstances do we give advice—but under no circumstances. We never lay ourselves open to the suspicion that we are advisors, counselors, business agents. Our sole function is through prayer to reveal the activity of the Christ in individual experience and then let that appear as form. And so it is with healing. It is perfectly all right for a patient with the first visit or the first letter to tell you what’s wrong with them, not because it’s of any benefit to you, but it is of benefit to them in getting it off their mind. To you it can be no benefit whatsoever.

Firstly, because if you know anything at all about diagnosis, you will know that even the best, professional diagnosis can only be about fifty percent correct. Therefore, it’s hardly worth your while to believe any diagnosis that’s given to you. Secondly, if you could believe it and did believe it, what would you do about it? You know nothing about physiology, biology, chemistry. You know nothing about anatomy. So what will you possibly do, even if it turns out to be true that your patient had a heart disease, or cancer, or consumption? What would you do about it? And judging by my experience, I can tell you I wouldn’t know what to do about it. It has never made any difference to me what the patient thought was wrong with them, I could never do anything about it and wouldn’t know how. My function is to go within. And, when I realize the Presence, that ends my treatment; because whatever has to be performed, whether it’s surgery, or healing of any other nature has to be performed by the Spirit, and actually what the Spirit does is dissolve the belief in two powers and reveals the presence of “spiritual man.”

You’ll never go wrong while you remember that our function is not to make a sick person well. Our function is not to make a sinful person pure. Our function is not to make an unemployed person employed. Our function is not to make a lacking person rich. Our function is to take the “middle path” in which we have no interest in the good human or the bad human, the sick human or the well human, because our realization is of the Christ Self, which always is Omnipresent but which cannot be known to the human senses. It can only be experienced by our developed, spiritual capacity. And that is why we cannot all heal at the same level. We are not all developed to the same degree of spiritual discernment. There are those who may be as high as Jesus Christ, and there may be others who are as low as Judas Iscariot, but each will do some measure of healing work in accord with the measure of their developed, spiritual consciousness. And that is why we cannot heal by the letter of truth. The only purpose of the letter of truth with us is to enable us to reach a state of transcendental consciousness. What do we mean exactly by “transcendental consciousness?” This. When we thoroughly realize that God is not a power to be used, when we thoroughly realize that disease is not something to be healed or overcome or destroyed, when we completely realize the nature, the illusory nature of all pictures presented by the carnal mind, this is a developed state of Christ consciousness, spiritual consciousness.

Now, in the beginning forms of spiritual consciousness, the student realizes the unreal nature of the evil appearance. And that is, of course, as far as the metaphysical world goes. That is the entire function of the metaphysical world to realize the unreal nature of the evil appearances of the world. In The Infinite Way, we have taken another step, which to me is much more important than that or equally important. Yes, equally important is better. And that is to realize the unreal nature of the good appearance. As long as you are on the level of merely changing the evil appearance to a good appearance, you are still on the human level. You are not revealing the Christhood of an individual, nor are you bringing their spiritual health or spiritual supply into expression. Even if you made a demonstration for them today of a thousand dollars or ten thousand dollars, it’s only a month or a year until they’d be back in that same position, and it would have to be done all over again. Whereas, if in your realization, you brought through neither poor nor rich, neither with nor without but Christhood is the reality, then unless your patient or student went back to their old way of living, they would have attained their permanent supply, or their permanent health, or their permanent youth. With us, always, it is essential that you do not fear the evil condition and that you do not approve of the harmonious condition, but that you set yourself on the middle path between them where you have no interest in either the evil appearance or the good appearance, that your interest is in realizing Christhood, spiritual identity.

Now, it is for this purpose that the correct letter is so essential because only through it can we develop spiritual consciousness. Even where a teacher might have the benefit of the personal presence of their patient, of their student for several years, they still could not completely bring through the spiritual consciousness of that student without some use of the correct letter of truth. It is one of the sad situations in life that quite a few people have, by virtue of spiritual teachers, had an unfoldment, had some measure of spiritual awakening, and yet never have been able to free themselves either from disease or from lack. We even have had the experience of some very illumined spiritual teachers who just do not seem to know a day of health or harmony. And the reason is that they cannot take that step that is revealed through the letter, which is, of course, this nature of the carnal mind and its appearances in both the evil and the good aspect, so that they go neither here to fear evil, nor here to love good but go down the middle path to realize spiritual identity, Christhood, or the true nature of man’s being.