1956 Barbizon Plaza Private Class for “25”
Joel S. Goldsmith
154B – Contemplative Meditation 1/4
All right, continuing on the “Wisdoms,” there’s a very short sentence: “Is alone overcomes the world.” Now the Master said, “I have overcome the world.” The question arises, how did he overcome it? Because if he overcame it, he gave it to us to do. How did he overcome it? And the answer we’ve seen must be through that “is”, because he gave no power to anything for good: Why callest thou me good? He gave no power to anything for evil: What did hinder you? Pick up your bed and walk. So he gave neither power of good nor power of evil to anything. So he too must have seen the word is, or am. Moses used the word am, and he used the word am. I am. So I am overcomes the world, or is. I am, he is, it is…is.
And here is one that is very important. “If you could discover some form of prayer, meditation, or thought that heals, enriches, or blesses, you would have in effect, become God.” Impossible. Only God is God. Now you see the importance of that, because is there anyone who doesn’t at some time or other say, “Oh, if I could just get the right thought. Oh, can’t you give me a thought?” Or don’t you have patients and students who say to you, “Will you give me a thought on how to find an apartment?” or “Will you give me a thought on how to get employment?” or “Will you give me a thought on this condition?”
And the answer is if you could give them a thought that would do the work, that thought would be God. Then you’d want to use the same thought when the next case came up the same way, and there is where you would be fooled. An effect can never become God, and a thought is an effect. Yesterday’s manna doesn’t feed anybody. Yesterday’s treatments do not heal anybody. Yesterday’s truth doesn’t save anybody. All of these things are guides. When you are up against the real thing, you will find out that there isn’t a thought anywhere that will save you, and there isn’t a thing anywhere.
You will have to get God itself, if there is one. If there isn’t, you’ll have to find out so that you can use substitutes. But I can say to you that you will find in your practice, when you hit up against some cases that are desperate in one way or another, that all the thoughts you can think won’t help, and all the truth you’ve read in books won’t help. And the reason is that only God can help, and you have got to bring God to the scene, and if you can’t, there is going to be no help. Now God …
We can have helps toward bringing God. Just reading a passage like these will put our thought in the right direction. It will stop our going off in a wrong direction and in that way it’ll be a help. But if it gives us a faith in the sentence, or statement, or thought, it is throwing us off the track, and it is preventing us from actually realizing God. If we were out on the ocean in a rubber boat, there are no books written that would help. There are no thoughts that man could think. There are loads of thoughts that would comfort him while he was dying, but it wouldn’t stop his dying.
One thing alone would save the situation out there; if you could bring God or the Christ to that scene. Then you’d need have no fear. Everything would be taken care of, so that sooner or later, you must come to the position of being able to sit like this and wait for God. When It announces Itself, then you can say, “God’s on the field. I’ve experienced Immanuel, or God-with-us. I’m not taking care of this case now—Christ is.” Now you can go about your business and do what you have to, because now God is on the scene, not a statement about God; not a thought about God. It’s God Itself, and God is a living reality.
God is as available to us as it was to Moses, to Elijah, to Jesus, John, or Paul. God is as available…do you know something? One Sunday morning, one of the ushers in the Mother Church, while getting dressed for duty collapsed, and they found him in the bathroom in a stroke. And they got him to bed, they called a practitioner and a nurse, and evidently they quickly realized that he was going, that it was far too late to save him. And I was called in. And the first thing I did was to send the nurse off the job for one that I had trained.
I never used any nurses but three, and I trained all three of those. And the reason was that I wanted no fear of malpractice around, or fear of Catholics, or Jews, or Orientals. And I wanted nobody malpracticing me or them. And I wanted nobody in fear. And so I trained these three nurses in the realization of One, and we had some nice work together. Well, I got one of these nurses on the case, and all that night and the next day we worked without any sign of success. And then at 12 o’clock that night the nurse phoned me, “You’d better come over.” I had an apartment on the church property then. “You’d better come over. He’s slipping out on us.”
So I went out, and it was very apparent the man was unconscious, and it was very apparent he was slipping out on us. And I sat there a few minutes, and the thought came to me, “Well, there’s nothing I can do sitting here watching this scene, making it more real. I think I’ll go out and take a walk, and go back to my apartment.” And so I said to her, “Look, I’m going to walk around for five or ten minutes and then go to my apartment. If you want me later, call me.” And his apartment was right at the corner of where the Administration building is, and across the street from that is the Mother Church, and across the street from that are the apartments, also owned by the church. Oh, and the Publishing House, the new Publishing House.
Now remember, all this is seven, eight million dollars worth of real estate, nine million dollars worth of real estate. So as I was walking past the Mother Church, I looked at it and the thought came to me, “How can a woman in the 1890s raise up a thing like this? How could a woman, when women weren’t supposed to be in business, and weren’t supposed to be in the Christian ministry, and women weren’t supposed to be … how could? … ” And the thought came, “You know, if I knew the mystery of how she did this, I could raise up this man. Because this is a miracle. A woman, a woman working alone, raising up eight, nine, ten million dollars worth of properties, and churches that circumnavigate the whole globe, and get acceptance all over. This is a miracle. What miracle did you use to raise this up? What was it?”
And right back came the word Christ. Christ is the miracle. Well, the Christ was available to you to do this, the Christ should be available to raise up this man. So the same Christ that raised up these edifices has got to raise up this man. And I went back to my room and slept. And about an hour later, the nurse called and said, “I think life is stirring.” And in the morning life was stirring, and I saw that man four weeks later, walking on the street. See that?
Now so it is that we have got to remember that it isn’t a form of prayer; it isn’t a truth that you know; it is the same spirit that has to become active in consciousness, and if it is, it’ll raise up edifices. And if it is, it’ll raise up dead bodies. If you destroy this body, in three days “I”, this Christ, will raise it up again. So the lesson to our students must be:
Read, read, fill yourselves with this reading, but only for one purpose; not for a dependence on the word, but for the Spirit that it may develop in you, and will develop, and can. Because if you can stick to a literature that holds single-pointedly to God and the Christ, you’re bound to have your consciousness so spiritualized that Christ will be there to do the works, even if you can’t remember the words.