Soul, Mind, Body 1958 New York Closed Class Joel S. Goldsmith Tape 222A Good Evening! Now some of these [questions] are quite simple. This one has to do with the year 1953, or the year 1960, as to what important things may or may not transpire. That comes in a little different category than ours. I do think that 1953 the world considered it very important that Mr. Stalin passed on. In the light of history since then, I don t know whether that was so important. Things of importance have a way of changing in the light of different events. In this question, The Art of Meditation 56, never try to steal a human mind; and yet we must master the ability to remain in the silence without thought. That really is too big of a subject for an evening and the one following about treating for specific conditions, because that s really a part of our literature. And I would say that the books, Practicing the Presence, and The Art of Mediation, and Living the Infinite Way will give all of the instruction in meditation and how to attain the stillness of mind without making an effort to stop the mind. Study those three books, and you ll have the answer to about everything there is at this moment on the subject of meditation. Question: What is The Infinite Way s attitude towards church and memberships? Answer: It hasn t any. Hasn t any attitude, whatsoever. We are states and stages of consciousness. And, in our spiritual evolution, we go through many states and states, states and stages of consciousness. And, perhaps, my idea on these subjects would not fit in with your idea on them. I don t believe there is a right or wrong on those subjects. Everything depends upon where we are in consciousness at that moment. Now, I hear parents, all of the time, tell me that they would like their children to be in some Sunday school, regardless of which as a rule, because of the good influence that it is, or perhaps to avoid the bad influence of not being in a Sunday school. And you can t expect me to really have an answer on that, because I didn t even know what a Bible was until I was 21 and certainly don t know anything about Sunday school. And I feel that I ve done all right without it. And, my brother and my sister grew up without a Sunday school, without any religion, and while they haven t come to any of these metaphysical approaches, so far as I know, I know that they ve also reached a ripe-age in human experience without having felt any ill effects from never having known a church religion.
You might say they may have been better off. Well, maybe I would have been better off, too. But I have no way of knowing it. And, therefore, I don t believe it. On the other hand, I wouldn t take a million dollars in cold cash for the experience that I had as a member of the Christian Science Church and as a worker in that church. I wouldn t want to be without it. I don t say it s necessary for you, but I do say this that it was mighty important for me. And I m grateful for it, and I always will be. But I m not in a position to say that because of that that you need it. On the other hand, I can stop into any church. If I m walking along the avenue and there s one with open doors, and I feel the need of a little meditation, I can walk into any church of any domination and feel perfectly content to sit there in the silence. On the other hand, if I don t get near one for three, four, or five years, I don t miss it, because the hotel room serves me the same purpose, or my home, or a park. So what is true of me may not be true of you. And you have to go by your own sense of demonstration. If you feel that church membership can serve a good purpose in your experience, by all means have it. I did when it served my purpose; and I would again, if I had any inner leaning in that direction. If I were directed that way, believe me I would take it, but my leaning isn t in that direction. Now, the next question is. Oh, and I would like to call your attention also, since this question seems to come from a Christian Scientist or former Christian Scientist that Mrs. Eddy herself says in miscellaneous writings that when the material organization has served its purpose in your experience that you must feel free to leave it. Just the same as when the time comes for you to give up the use of the mental argument in treatment, you are to give it up. Now, in our work, you ve heard that often that there are two steps in our treatment work: The first step is the conscious knowing of the Truth and then the ability to be still and listen, until the Spirit of God moves, and we have the assurance that God is on the scene, and all is well. But as you advance in this work, the day does come when the first part is omitted, because it becomes a part of your consciousness. It is like knowing that 12 x 12 are 144 without actually multiplying them. You just come to a place in your mathematical development where you know it. So it is with this. Question: Now, what about testimony? Answer: In our work, the only place that testimony has is this: to illustrate a principle. Sometimes, I do mention in our work specific healings that I have witnessed. Never with any sense of just wanting to show you what good work The Infinite Way can do or what work the practitioner can do. That s all nonsense. That belongs to kindergartens. It is to illustrate the principle that was revealed in that particular case. Now, if I say to you that I have witnessed healings of cancer and let it go at that, I m really just doing a little advertising. And I don t want to be guilty of that. But if I do
mention the healing of anything to you, it will only be to show you what principle revealed itself to me at that time for that purpose. So you can see that the use of testimonies must be very limited. You use them only when you want to illustrate some principle, or if some friend or relative not familiar with spiritual healing does express the desire or the need for such a thing, and you wish to say that you yourself have experienced or witnessed such healings, that s all right. Only be very careful that you re not advertising or boasting. Question: Would you please enlighten on the words, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Answer: Actually, do you know what God gave? God gave Himself to the world as you. God the Father and God the Son are both the same. And you are that One. God gave Himself individually to this world, and you and I are that Son in our spiritual Identity. Our true being is Christhood, the Son of God. And since God the Father and God the Son are One and the same, God must have loved the world to put Himself in it. And He has. God has placed Himself in this world as you. And once you have overcome, or let us say in the measure that you overcome the belief in two powers, you begin to show forth your divine Sonship. Should the time come when you completely overcome within yourself the belief of two powers, you will stand revealed as the fullness of the Godhead bodily. For all there is to us as humans is this belief of two powers good and evil. Question: And this is on the subject of prayer: If, for example, we pray, bless my enemies; give them light. Isn t that an intercessory prayer? Answer: There s that old thing about language again. Isn t it? Words. Certainly, if you are going to be technical and stand for an absolute statement of Truth, not only you can t bless anyone, but you can t even forgive anyone, because in forgiving them you would be making an acknowledgment of the offense. You ve got to learn to spiritually interpret Scripture and make use of not only its absolute statements but its application to relative conditions. Now, had Jesus lived in the absolute, you don t think for a moment that he would have said, Go show John what things you have seen. The sick are healed. The dead are raised. The eyes have, the blind have their eyes opened; the ears, the deaf have their ears unstopped. Don t you know how relative that statement is? That s not absolute; it s not even truthful, from the standpoint of spiritual Truth. Because how did Jesus heal the sick and raise the dead? By knowing there weren t any such things. But he had to use language, our language to make us understand. He wasn t so absolute that he didn t recognize a hungry multitude that had to be fed. He didn t make any statement of why do we need loaves and fishes? There s nobody hungry. Error isn t real. He never said anything like that. He started with the relative appearance. There is a multitude to be fed. Now, what are we going to do about it? What have we in the house? What have we? We have a few loaves and fishes. There s nothing absolute about that either. The absolute statement is All that
God has, we have. But he didn t get an answer like that, and he didn t expect an answer like that. He was dealing with a relative situation, and he was going to apply to it an absolute spiritual Principle. And so it is with us. In the absolute, how can you forgive anyone when everyone is the spiritual offspring of God? And I have had students who have been reading the absolute come to me and say, Your teachings must be wrong, because there is no error. We are all the children of God. And, why come and tell me that then? Why I need some help. Oh no, you can t in the absolute. Go back to your absolute and find out you don t need any. All these things are nonsense. We know what the absolute is, certainly. But, if you and I were living in the absolute, would we be here in this room? Would we ever sit at the feet of the Master? Would we ever need a spiritual teacher or a spiritual teaching? Heavens no! It is because, to our sense, we are living a relative life. We have been thrown out of the Garden of Eden. Now, we re earning our living by the sweat of our brow; we re toiling and trying to find our way back to the Kingdom of Heaven. And now someone comes along and says, Oh, but you re already there. That actually in our work, we know what the absolute is, and the books are full of it. And yet, we re dealing with the relative situations that we have on earth today. And you know as well as I do that if you re in a great deal of pain and asked me for help, and I say to you, Why you know there is no pain. There is no error. You like to throw me out of a window, even if you re too respectful to say so. And I wouldn t blame you, because that isn t the answer. It isn t the answer Jesus Christ would have given you. He says that He, the Spirit of God is upon him, and he is ordained to heal the sick. And yet he knew when he was saying it that the child of God is never sick. And so he s using the language of our state of consciousness, while lifting us up to his. Probably when he was on the Mount of Transfiguration, with students who understood him, probably he said, You ll have to talk to these poor fish the same way that I did at Lazarus tomb. Not because God needs my prayer, but because these people expect a prayer, and they won t be healed without a prayer. And so it is with us. When anyone asks for help, when they ask me, you know the answer they get, because you ve gotten it: I will be with you, or I am with you this instant. I will help you. I will continue to be with you, until you realize your freedom. Now that s what I m saying with my lips. Now what am I saying inside of me? I and the Father are one. That s it. I and the Father are one. And I stand on that realization of what I have learned about our true Identity. And so it is with this. Don t, don t try to get beyond Jesus Christ, yet. And don t try to be so absolute that you overlook the fact that there are those of us who are in prison of one sort or another. And, if you find us in prison, come and comfort us. Visit us. And, if we re hungry, come and feed us. And, if we re sick, come and heal us. And then, when you ve lifted us out of our misery, start to teach us about this absolute Truth, and thereby we will be enabled to go and help others.
Question: We define Consciousness as God. And yet, cannot consciousness be both good and evil? Answer: As we have said of mind, no, no, Consciousness cannot be both good and evil, for Consciousness is God. And there is no good or evil consciousness. You may speak or write of the consciousness of error, but you re using very bad terminology. I ll tell you that. It s a bad language, because Consciousness means God, and Consciousness is a synonym for God. It s more than a synonym for God, really. It s a higher word for God than G-o-d. And Consciousness can be no more good or evil than God can be good or evil. But probably common usage permits someone to speak of a bad consciousness, and in that case, they would spell it with a small c instead of a capital C. And there again, you re back in the old trouble of language again. But Consciousness actually is God and should not be used to speak of good and evil. Question: Can you give us something with which to answer the current fears and anxieties about the radioactivity of the earth s atmosphere due to the atomic explosions? Answer: Well now, why stop with just those anxieties? Why not about the anxieties of the atomic bomb, the anxieties of Russia, the anxieties of the next flu epidemic, the anxieties of the next polio epidemic, because I d rather speak about of all of those fears, rather than one. And, indeed, I can give you something with which to answer those fears. Indeed, I can. I have been giving classes on this subject for a long, long time. The answer is this. Is temporal power temporal? Is temporal power power? Is material force power? Is mental force power? Is atomic force power? Is there any power in effect? The answer is in human sense, yes. That s why the world is in fear. The remedy, the antidote that which we bring to bear when we re called on to do healing work is: material force is not power; mental force is not power; atomic force is not power. There is only one Power, and I Am that Power or that Power is embodied in the I Am, which I Am. The Kingdom of God is within me; therefore, all Power is within me. That doesn t leave room for there to be any power in infection, in contagion, in epidemic, in hurricanes, or volcanoes. That doesn t leave any power in atomic force. That doesn t leave any power in radioactivity. In fact, it doesn t leave any power in effect. It leaves Power in cause. Now, again we go back to the relative situation. In the relative, we are faced every single day of our lives, as practitioners, with infectious diseases, contagious diseases, with epidemics. We re faced every single day with capital-labor troubles. We re faced every single day with the threat of Russia, the threat of dictatorship, the threat of communism, the threat of atomic energy. And when we go into a sick room, we have only the armor of God. We do not have the world s weapons. We cannot take a sword with us, because our teacher has told us, Put up thy sword. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword.
And, so when we go into a sick room, we cannot go in with alcohol to keep our hands clean. We cannot go in with disinfectant to keep germs out. We cannot go in with medicines and surgery. We have to go in the way David went into Goliath, with a little pebble of nothingness. We have to go in with a stone carved out of the side of a mountain without hands. Spiritual power, which means no power. No power. The recognition that there is no power in effect. There is no power in temporal powers. Don t forget this. Many metaphysicians have made themselves look foolish going around saying to human beings that disease isn t power, and accident isn t power, and war isn t power. You re not supposed to use the language of Spirit, the language of spiritual discernment to those who have no awareness of what you re talking about. Pilate asked Jesus what is truth? Don t you think Jesus knew, but he didn t answer. How can you explain to a Pilate that, I am Truth? And how do you think it s going to sound to a doctor to have you say, Oh, I don t believe in the power of disease. He d be justified in saying, let me take you down to my hospital or around to the cemetery. And you d have no answer, because, on his level of thought, he s absolutely right. You are supposed to have yourself clad in the armor of Spirit, which is the realization of Truth. Then, when you go into those things that are non-power spiritually, but are so frightening to man whose breathe is in his nostril, you just walk in there silently, not boastfully, not bragging. You walk in silently and secretly and say, Let me pray. Inwardly you re saying, I m really not going to pray at all, but prayer is the language of the people outside. And so you use that language. And when you sit there in the silence, you do pray, but your prayer would never be recognized by those around you, because your prayer is a Thank you, Father, that I Am the only Power operating in this room. I Am the only Power functioning in this individual in their soul, or mind, or body. I, the Spirit of God, is the only Presence and the only Power, and beside me there is no other Presence, and there is no other Power. And then having reminded yourself of that, you sit quietly, and you feel a transcendental Presence or Power. Now, you can t explain that to the man in the street. The man in the street probably thinks that your statements did the healing work, or something that you know with your mind, something you read in the book. You know right well that nothing that you ever learned in the book would ever heal anybody. You know better than that. You know that knowledge isn t spiritual Power. You have to sit there having assured yourself of your basic Truth, mainly one Power. And that Power the Power of cause reminding your self of the non-power of anything that exists as effect. The non-power of anything that has form. The non-power of the creature. Shall I fear the creature more than I trust the Creator? Why should I fear the creature when I know the Creator? And so you have no fear of form, even if it is claimed to be leprosy. You have no fear of form, if it s claimed to be blindness or deafness. Your faith and your reliance is in the Invisible. And then you sit, and you wait, and you feel the Spirit within you. You feel a divine Presence. You feel a transcendental Something that you can never describe, something that is indefinable. And when you
feel that the Spirit of God has moved, and then whatever it is that exists in the realm of call it error it dissolves. It disappears, and harmony is made evident. Question: This has to do with what an Infinite Way student should do if they need help on a problem that he is not meeting himself, and I realize that we could write you but suppose it needs to be a quicker contact. Answer: Well, there are those in our work capable of giving you help. Actually we do not list them. And the reason we do not list them mainly is that we do not have a system of practitioners, like they have in Christian Science, or Unity, or some of the New Thought movements that name themselves as professional practitioners, because the nature of our work is that healing should be brought about by our students, and they should be able to help those who call upon them and yet not set themselves up outside of their regular duties as practitioners. Always remember that what we are trying to do, so far succeeding very well, is avoiding all organization, all authorization. We re trying to present to the world a spiritual Principle of living and of healing and not ask that the world adopt us but that they adopt the Principle. Therefore, we do not want to set up any claims to being something separate and apart from anyone else. And that leaves you with just this: that somewhere in your community there is someone who can help you. And there is also someone whom you know who can lead you to that someone, if you cannot find them directly. There is always a way. And if there s no other way, just ask the Father within. And although it seems like a strange question, He certainly will open the way for you to find that which you are seeking. We do have all over the countries where The Infinite Way operates; we do have those who can give you help. Question: Please talk of Soul, its nature and faculties, including the fact that Soul maintains the eternality of Being. Answer: No, no, let s pass that one up, because that is something for the individual to have revealed within themselves. There you have another word, Soul. The true name of Soul is God. And that it has a shade of meaning individual to Itself is true. And that that word is perhaps one of the most important words in all mystical literature is true. But I have never known a person, a writing, I ve never read one that could reveal the nature of Soul to anyone. Always the individual must have that from within himself. Other words differ. Mind. Law. Principle. Those can be understood with the use of a dictionary but not Soul and not Spirit. Those are two words that every individual must draw from within themselves. Question: Please voice to us that there is no substance in mental images, because they are not being thought by God. Answer: Isn t that clear? Isn t that clear that if you have a mental image in your thought that the moment you open your eyes the images go on. It can have no substance. What is it that has substance? What is it that endures forever? Laws of like begetting like.
Deeds of love. The life that s renewed year by year. A tree becomes barren in winter, renewed in spring, and fulfilled in summer. The life hasn t died, just because some of its form has changed expression. The life is there to renew Itself, forever and forever. The only things that are immortal and eternal are the invisible things of Spirit, although each one of these is made tangible, evident in our experience in some form. But the form is never immortal as form. But the substance of it is always immortal. You see, what confuses is really this. I think this is what has more metaphysicians fooled than anything else. Question: Have you any special reason for never saying in class that all there is to matter is an illusion of the senses? Answer: But yes, I do have a very special reason. This isn t a fact. Matter is an indestructible substance. Matter is as indestructible as God. And that s what has confused metaphysicians. They have been taught that matter is unreal. Matter can t be unreal, because you can t destroy it. You can make it change forms, but you cannot destroy matter. If you reduce it to molecules, you ll still get it down below that into atoms. And when you get it into atoms, you break it up, and then what do you have? Energy? You haven t destroyed matter. You ve made it change form. There is no way to destroy matter, for matter is indestructible. And the substance of matter is Mind. Matter is Mind appearing. Mind made visible is matter and to believe otherwise is to believe that which never could be true. How did this belief come about that matter was an illusion? Only due to the fact, the same fact, that wrecked India. When it was discovered that the objects of sense are illusion, the Indians began to hate their bodies. They refused to save money. They refused to build businesses. What s the use? It s unreal, and when we die, it ll all disappear. Well, you see, none of it died, none of it disappeared. They did but not it. The land still is there. The waterpower still is there. The electricity still is there. The sunshine is there. Everything single thing is there that they thought death was going to dissolve. Gautama the Buddha had the original revelation that is recorded as to the illusory nature of that which we see, hear, taste, touch, and smell. And on the basis of that he did miracle healing works and so did his early disciples. Later on, his students or their students misunderstood this word maya or illusion. And they thought that the illusion was out here and that this is illusion. No, the concept we entertain of this is illusion. This isn t. This is so immortal that you can never destroy it. The water can change to steam, or it can change to ice, but it can t be destroyed. And it weighs just as much in any form. This glass, this tumbler can be reduced to splinters, can be dissolved from our human sight, but it cannot be destroyed. You take it right back to the laboratory and prove that it has existence and that the existence has weight. So it is that when metaphysics was first given to the world in the last century, the revelation was given that our senses testify erroneously. And instead of staying with that, we said, oh no, it isn t our senses. It s this that s the illusion. How can an illusion be externalized? How can you get a ghost in your mind to walk this room? How can you get
two times two is five to be externalized? How can you get sin, death and disease to externalize themselves, when they exist only in a disordered thought? And all healing is based on that. That sin, disease and death have no externalized reality. They exist only as illusory beliefs, concepts. Oh, but don t go back and make the mistake of the Hindus and say that my body is unreal. One time my Christian Science teacher sent me to New York to talk with Father Divine. Try to find out why it is that so many Christian Scientists were leaving the movement to follow Father Divine. What did he have that was doing this? And in the course of one of these talks, Father Divine said to me, I wonder if you know that by now Christian Science should be one of the only two religions left on earth and a hundred years from now it should be the only one left. Well, that s quite a recognition on your part. Yes certainly. All you have to do is change one thing in your teaching. Stop destroying your bodies. You go look at some of your people, if you want to see how they re drying up. They come in here and they say, I know the body s unreal. And he said then I say to them, why don t you jump out the window and get rid of it. Now, they don t like that. They want this unreal body, but they want the unreal body to look pretty and feel pretty. Now, you see, matter isn t unreal. Body isn t unreal. This world isn t unreal. It s beautiful. It s immortal. It s eternal. It never will dissolve. But our concepts of this world will change. Our concepts of body will change. We will outgrow our infant body and have child s bodies. We ll outgrow those and have youth s bodies, and we ll outgrow those and have mature bodies. And we will outgrow those and have a more spiritual sense of body but never will we have a more spiritual body than we ve got now. If this weren t true, spiritual healing would be an impossibility, because how do you ever expect spiritual realization to give you a good material body? You re saying, Well, then God can give us a good illusion. No, no, we entertain illusory concepts of matter and of body. God made all that was made. Don t you believe that? God made all that was made, and all that He made is good. Well, maybe He didn t make matter, but He made this body. And so instead of calling it matter, let s call it Spirit. It s still this body. A rose by any other name would be just as sweet. And this body that we have is an immortal body. It is an eternal body and the more spiritual our vision, the more spiritual our body becomes. It is just in the same way as I ve spoken here this week about prison experiences. When an ordinary minister goes into a prison, he usually finds a lot of bad men there. And his function is to reform them. And you know by the records what a poor job he s doing. But when a metaphysician goes in, he absolutely sees no bad men there. Absolutely knows that what he beholds there is what he would behold in this room. God expressing Itself in infinite individuality. But just as all around this room there are people with physical, or mental, or moral, or financial lapses, so in there we find the same thing. But that s nothing but their misconception of life that s brought them to a prison, and another misconception of life brings you to a hospital, and another misconception of life brings you to a mental institute. Another mental misconception of life brings you to lack and limitation.
And the very moment that you begin to understand God in Its real nature, all of a sudden you don t find sinners, or sick people, or immoral people, or poor people, you find them responding through your spiritual vision of them. Why you haven t changed matter. All you ve done is through your spiritual vision you ve brought to light, just as Peter did in recognizing that Jesus wasn t Jesus at all. He was the Christ, the Son of the living God, and in that recognition, the Son of God is revealed to this world. And so it is that when you begin to look upon each other, not as human beings with human histories, but looking on each other as God. God the Father appearing as God the Son and un-see the physical appearances, the mental, the moral, the financial appearances. Gradually, you bring to light the hidden qualities of every individual, the transcendental qualities, the spiritual qualities, the real qualities, which are there all the time. Then, all of a sudden, their physical appearance changes. Their finances change. Their morals change. Whatever it is that needs correcting begins to change, and the spiritual identity shines forth right through the same individual where the opposite was before. And all of this is brought about how? Not by your denying them their body, not by your denying them anything, but by your recognizing the invisible Spirit to be the essence and substance of true Being. Now, let me take you a step further with this. In the first chapter of Genesis, you have an invisible God, an incorporeal God making man and the universe in His own image and likeness. And perhaps you haven t recognized the fact that that man is incorporeal and that you ve never seen him and never will with your five senses. You never have, and you never will. You will never see man with your eyes. You ll never hear him with your ears. You ll never smell him, or taste him, or touch him, for man is as invisible as God, for God and man is one. Now, what about us? We, who see, hear, taste, touch, and smell each other. What about us? Well, don t think for a minute that we re unreal. Don t think for a moment that we don t exist. And don t think for a moment that we re an illusion. We aren t. What happened is this. The second chapter of Genesis was written. That was our downfall. Not that it was written. Our downfall caused it to be written. In other words, a belief was accepted. Don t write me a letter and ask how. I have too many of those. A belief was accepted by us, a belief in two powers good and evil. And right there and then, we lost our Heaven. We lost our Eden, and a new world was created. That world has as its essence and substance mind. Mind, which was originally intended to be an avenue of awareness, now becomes a creative faculty. And mind forms its own conditions of body. Mind forms its own conditions of form. Mind forms itself, governs itself as matter. Now, here s the proof of it. My mind imbued with Truth is the Law of resurrection, renewal, regeneration, restoration to body, to form. My mind imbued with Truth is the mind of those who come to me and of those embraced in my consciousness. My mind imbued with Truth is the mind of individual Being. Mind must always form its external appearance. My mind imbued with spiritual Truth becomes the instrument through which perfect form appears.
Now, watch this in your experience. When you are called upon to heal, you have an instrument, which is your mind. But before you come into metaphysics, your mind is not imbued with spiritual Truth. Your mind is ignorant of spiritual Truth. It is an unillumined mind. It may be an educated one but spiritually it s an un-illumined one. Therefore, if someone says to you, I have a headache, the best you can do is offer him a pill. But the moment that you are instructed in metaphysical Truth, your mind imbued with this Truth becomes a Law of healing to that person s headache, and later on, when you go far enough, right to their cancers and consumptions. Mind imbued with Truth. My mind imbued with Truth becomes a Law of health to your body, or to your business, or to your home, or to your relationships. Your mind imbued with Truth becomes the Law of harmonious form to your family, to your patients. Your mind ignorant of Truth results in diseased and discordant bodies. Your mind ignorant of Truth results in poverty, in sin, in false appetites. And you can t do anything about it either. Nothing you can do to help yourself. You have to find some medical help of one form or another, because your mind has nothing in it of any benefit on this realm of restoration or resurrection. But when you come to Truth, when you come to any of the Truth teachings, and your mind becomes imbued with Truth, you are a mental healer. And your mind imbued with Truth becomes the substance of the health of your patient, or your student, or your friend, or your relative. Now, you are functioning in the second chapter of Genesis a mind-created world but not a mind that made a material world. There can t be such a thing. The only world the mind can make is a mental world. And therefore, that which we call your physical body, while in truth it s a spiritual one, to our sense is a mental one, because we have formed the concept of body with mind. Our mind fashioned this body, and this body was fashioned of mind. Therefore, its substance is mind, and it is mind. And that s why you have the statement, thoughts are things. Now, you can understand that what you hold in your mind as conviction later shows forth in body. Why? Because mind is the substance of body. Mind is the substance of the form that we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. And the way we re seeing it is an illusory picture, because that isn t the way it is at all. That s only the way we, in our limited sense, see it. But it in Itself is perfection. Matter is only matter in the material state of consciousness. Once one rises to a mental state, it is seen that matter isn t matter at all. It is now mind, and a process of mind changes the product matter. Well, of course, you know that s a PhD subject. And I won t be a bit surprised, if you don t understand it. But to understand it, you must understand the first chapter of Genesis and the second chapter of Genesis. And you must understand that in the first chapter, we re talking about an incorporeal, spiritual God and His incorporeal, spiritual image and likeness man. And when we talk of the second chapter of Genesis, we are talking about the mind of man, which instead of continuing to be what it was intended to be an avenue of awareness man started to create. And he created a nice world that we re destroying just as rapidly as we can. And, if we just can destroy it a little bit more, we may be compelled to retire into our true, spiritual Being again.
Do you not see that there is nothing illusory about this world, the sun, the moon, the stars, the time, the tides, nature, they were all governed by Law and not any law that man governs. Don t you see that there s no such thing as a mental activity in this world. It s only when you decide you want a Cadillac automobile that you start to make the old mind go around and make one for you. It s only when you decide that you want to create with your mind that you sometimes do and then have it bite you the very thing you ve created. But, if you look out onto this world, can t you see that man doesn t pray to have the sun come up in the morning or go down at night? Can t you see that man doesn t have to do mental work to bring the tides in or have them go out? Don t you see that man doesn t have to do any mental work to put fish in the ocean or birds in the air? That there is a Spiritual activity going on that does all this without any help from the mind of man. And it s only when man starts to personalize that he starts to use this mind, starting it gyrating to make something happen for him. He doesn t have to. He does it because of the second chapter of Genesis, and he has to create his world. But the moment that you, in your spiritual, in your mystical teaching, the minute you leave that world and decide, I wonder, can God run this universe without my help? I just wonder. Could God take care of me without me staying up all night and doing some mentalizing or imaginationing? I just wonder if the sun would come up in the morning, if I didn t visualize it. Don t you see that? There s a mental universe. It s that second chapter of Genesis, and you can play around with it, and you can make things in it. We ve even made the God of Santa Clause at Christmas time. We ve made lots of things with this mind. We ve made a God out of money with this mind. We ve made a God out of crops. They were all given to us for our use, but now we ve turned and made Gods out of them, as if they could bless or hate, bless or curse. Now look, there is a Spirit in man, and God planted it there in the beginning. It is our Savior. It is the very thing that the Hebrews predicted for centuries and centuries the coming or the realization of Messiah. The mistake was made in believing that it was going to be a man, instead of the Spirit of God in man. The Christians went the Hebrew mistake one better. They let the Messiah come and then got rid of him. And so, the Hebrews have no Messiah, because they don t believe he s come yet. The Christians have no Messiah, because they believe he was crucified. They re waiting for him to come back. And so, the world is trying to get along without a Messiah, when the whole of religious history teaches there is a Messiah and Its Kingdom is within you. That s the Son of God in you. And the moment you learn to relax and rest in that Word, you will find that the armies of the aliens fight among themselves, kill each other off and disappear, and you just go out and collect the loot. That s the way it happened in Scripture. Just the way it happened. You do not earn your living by the sweat of your brow. That s the punishment for believing that mind is power and that you can create something with your mind, instead of letting your mind be a beautiful instrument through which your Soul can express itself.