REALIZATION OF ONENESS by Herb Fitch Chapter 11: The Good Shepherd Within
Good afternoon everybody.
We’re going to look right at chapter 10 in John.
The Master says, “Verily, verily, I say unto you,” – “I say unto you” – “He that entereth not by the door into the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber. But he that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep. To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice. And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers.”
And so, we have a very simple parable. The parable of the Good Shepherd. A parable that most people in the world are too busy to follow. No wonder that even the disciples were unable to comprehend the meaning at that time.
“The parable spoke Jesus unto them. They understood not what things they were which he spake unto them.”
Now every word in there is simple English. Most of them are mono syllables. There’s not a word in there that you’d have to look up in the dictionary and yet the Parable of the Good Shepherd remains a complete enigma to many advanced students as well as to those who have merely read it in their normal theological activities.
Now I feel that in order to understand this parable, we should go back – way, way back to John the Baptist. Here says the Master, “I am the good shepherd.” And if you recall, it was John the Baptist who pointed to the One who said, “I am the good shepherd” and said, “Follow him, not me. He must increase, I must decrease. He is the Lamb of God, the Son of God. He will baptize with the Holy Spirit.” He even said, “He will save mankind from sin.”
And so, John the Baptist pointed the way. And very importantly, John the Beloved disciple placed this at the very beginning so you would see that following the Lamb of God, the Son of God is the way.
And then as we learned that we must follow the Lamb of God, we still were unaware of the nature of the Lamb of God and of the identity of the Lamb of God. And so, that had to be clarified step by step through all the veils of the conditioned mind.
Who is this Lamb of God that we are to follow, who now announces himself to be the Good Shepherd?
John the Baptist clued us in there again. “On him I have seen the dove descend and on the One on whom the dove remains, I have been told, that is he. That is the One to follow.”
You see Spirit descend like a dove. So, we’re to follow this man who appears on the banks of the Jordan, upon whom Spirit has descended like a dove. We find him accepting Andrew as a disciple and Peter, who were leaving John the Baptist, moving out of intellect into the higher realm of Spiritual Consciousness. And we see him talking to Nicodemus saying something that would be very puzzling to the millions who have thought that because they were virtuous on earth, they were sure to go to heaven.
To Nicodemus, he said, “Marvel not that I say, unless a man be born, reborn of the truth and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of God.” Even virtuous old Nicodemus, a student of God, could not enter into the Kingdom of God unless he were reborn of the Truth and the Spirit.
So, the millions who think they’ve gone to heaven have not read their Bible and those who think their loved ones have gone to heaven are fooling themselves. Were they reborn of the Truth in the Spirit before they made this parting? If not, they have been misled and now they are probably among us again, still finding their way. Even ourselves, how many times have we been misled into thinking perhaps in some past life that we were going to heaven because we were so good. But here we are, we haven’t made it yet.
Who is this saying to Nicodemus, “You must be reborn of the Spirit and the truth.” It is the one who later says, “I am the good shepherd.”
And now we find him at the wedding in Cana and he reveals that he is not a mortal being.
“Woman, what have I to do with thee?” I am not the son of a woman. I am the Son of God.
And this revelation that he is immortal, not mortal reveals why John the Baptist had to point and say, “Follow him. he baptizes with the Holy Ghost.” He was pointing to the living Spirit of God on earth, made manifest in the flesh.
The living Spirit of God then reveals that each must be reborn of that Spirit. And to emphasize that a transformation is necessary, water is transformed into wine. This is a way of saying that we must be reborn from the water into the wine of Spirit. But still the clarity does not emerge. We’re seeing parables. We’re seeing demonstrations. We’re still not learning the principles involved.
At the well of Samaria, we are given one of the principles very strongly. Christ sitting on the well. The water must come through Christ to be living water. Christ must sit on the well of our consciousness. We must give Christ to drink.
Now there we begin to understand that unless Christ sits on the well of your consciousness, you will labor again and again and again for the same thing. Always being unable to attain the level of grace that only through Christ sitting on the well of your consciousness do you begin to redeem the thought of the world which has been out-picturing itself as your living experience in this world.
We begin to sense the nature of the human mind as inadequate for entering the kingdom of heaven. We begin to understand that humanhood can never know God. We begin to see that there is a picture emerging that this Christ who walks the earth, who will baptize with the Holy Ghost, who transforms water into wine, who speaks to the woman of Samaria and tells her about living waters, is the identity of every individual who walks the earth.
We are looking at our own Self manifest to us in the form called Jesus. The Christ that baptizes with the Holy Ghost is Identity, the living Self of you, me, him, her and when John the Baptist points and says, “Follow him” he is telling us to follow Christ within ourselves.
Finally, the idea is clear that unless we have accepted Christ as identity, we do not have Christ sitting on the well of consciousness and we are separated thereby for we learn that only Christ goes to the Father. That only through Christ does the Father express in the human sphere. That only when Christ is accepted as your own Spiritual identity do you express the qualities of God.
And once we begin to feel the implanting of that idea, it is necessary to show the nature of I the Christ that is your Self. And now the demonstrations are expanded so that we find a boy is healed. A boy who is not even present where the Master is. And we learn that I Christ which heals a boy who is not present is not revealing its absent healing but rather that I Christ is omnipresent. I Christ standing as Jesus is I Christ the invisible Self of the boy miles away. And now we learn that I Christ which is your identity is present miles away and this is a totally new understanding that comes into the horizon of human knowledge.
I Christ in you is now miles away and I Christ in you, miles away can heal miles away just as I Christ can heal right where you are.
“Go thy way. Thy son liveth.” Why? Because I Christ am the life of your son there. That is why. And we discover that I Christ is not a form, is not a material body, is not a mortal being but is Essence, Life. Now the message comes loud and strong that what has been revealed to us from the beginning of John is, you must follow the Essence and not the form. You must follow the Life and not the form. You must follow the Essence of your own being and not the form.
And this Essence that you are is the underlying reality here and there. There is no separation between I Christ Jesus and I Christ the son of the nobleman who is saved. There is no separation in the Essence although there is separation in the forms. Now we begin to know that living in the sense of form, I live in a sense of separation from other individuals and from God because the mind which presents the images of form is ever separated from the Essence. The Son of man is being lifted up in us with the knowledge that I am Essence appearing to mortal mind as form.
And this re-identification as Essence comes upon you as you see the Master now multiplying loaves and fishes. Where do they come from? They come from the Essence, the omnipresent Essence, the Essence that is in the sky and in the sea, in the atmosphere around you, the Essence that is everywhere. But why does it come only for him? Because he stands there in the knowledge that his Essence is everywhere. He has accepted the Infinite Self, the One indivisible eternal Self to be his Self. That is why he baptizes with the Holy Ghost.
I am the Christ, appearing as Jesus, becomes visible as loaves and fishes feeding multitudes, becomes visible as the life of a nobleman’s son, becomes visible as the healed cripple, becomes visible as the healed blind man. Just as loaves and fishes fall out of the sky, now we must know where these loaves and fishes actually are. And we find them in the five porches where the cripple is healed, in the sense mind, the five senses, the five porches, the five shades; that which keeps out the sunlight of Christ. We find the cripple is not a cripple when the five porches are removed, when the consciousness is lifted above the sense mind. We find the hungry people are not hungry anymore when the consciousness is lifted above the sense mind.
We discover that the Essence of the Christ is not confined to that spot where Jesus stands. It can move out of the sky and now from the mountain it moves on to the water. Why? Again, the demonstration that my Essence is everywhere. In form, I am limited. In Essence, I have no boundaries.
“Follow him,” says John the Baptist. “Follow the Essence which has no boundaries and form, which is independent of form.” In fact, which has dominion over form. And so, we discover that our lack of dominion is because we live in the concept of form instead of in the identity of Essence.
Ever growing is the knowledge that like Nicodemus, each of us must come to the understanding that I am not a form. I am not a material body. I am not a mortal being. My name is Essence, Spirit of God, Christ, Son of God.
And when we re-identify as the Essence of God, it is not enough. The Essence that I am, the Essence that you are must be the same Essence that comes forth as loaves and fishes from the sky or money from the fishes’ mouth or the unhindered life of a cripple or the eyes of a blind person that can see. The Essence is never confined to where you stand. The Essence of you is the Essence of God, never fractionalized.
And now we know that the only self you can be is the Infinite Self. The Infinite Essence without beginning or end, never born and never dying, never mortal, never material. Only in that Essence do we begin to open our eyes to feel the freedom of Spirit and to make sure that we are aware of it, the Master finally tells us we are blind. Blind because we live in a physical sense of life when we are the Essence of God.
And so, when we come now to the Good Shepherd. “I am the good shepherd.” I am the Essence of God and I am your identity. The Essence of God that you are is the Good Shepherd. Nine chapters of John have given you a clue that the Essence of God which you are is capable of doing all of the miracles that appear in the Bible – and greater, if you believe on yourself to be that Essence.
And so, he now explains to his own disciples what he has been training them to do, to feel, to know. He has been giving them a life called “Living the Presence of God as your own very being.” He has taken out of the sky the concept of God and brought it down to earth. He has told those who would destroy his body that he’s not in that body at all. He has told us that he is living Essence, not a physical form and if you destroy what you call a physical form, I will raise it up in three days and the only reason I can do that is because there is no one in that form you’re going to destroy. I am Essence. But I am is your name and if anyone were to destroy your form, you must find that Consciousness which knows that I am not in that form. I am the Essence of God and I will raise this body up in three days. The same I that walks on water is Essence. The same I that is going to be crucified is Essence and therefore un-crucifiable. This Essence is revealed as the Essence of all being and there is no other.
Now we have form which is under the dominion of Essence. Essence takes dominion over form and when you live in Essence as Essence knowing yourself to be Essence, the qualities of that Essence being present are awakened and manifest, demonstrating the omnipotence of Essence over form.
The secret is coming very clearly now that there are many forms but one indivisible Essence. And that one indivisible Essence is the name of every individual who walks the earth. There is one indivisible Essence, one Being and when you are aware of it as the substance of your being, you are one with the Essence of everyone who walks the earth. When you are accepting people in their forms, unaware of that Essence which is theirs and yours, you’re under the law of humanhood. But when you are accepting that there is no second Essence, no second self, you’ll find yourself under the law of Divinity. This will become the way we follow the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd is this one indivisible Infinite Essence which is our life. “I am the good shepherd.”
Now let’s listen to his explanation to His disciples:
“Then said Jesus unto them again, Verily, verily, I say unto you, I am the door of the sheep.”
Explaining his own parable. “I am the door of the sheep.” Now sheep has two meanings here, not one. You’ll find that sheep refers to the Divine qualities of the Essence of God. Sheep will refer to the Divine thoughts. Sheep are not just human beings following Christ. You’ll see why in a moment.
“I am the door.”
Now then, a door opens from one place into another. This Door opens from the world we live in into Heaven but because the world we live in is not the creation of God, it opens from unreality into Reality. Actually, this Door takes us out of mortality into Immortality now. The Door out of mortality, out of a dying body is the Essence of God, I am. That Essence is my Doorway out of mortality into Immortality, into life without end.
But I don’t open that Door and walk through it. The Door is our way of life, the way we live every day, living as the Essence of God, the living Christ of God, the Spirit of God, not living as a form, not living under the law of form or the belief in the conditions of form but living in the knowledge that the Essence of God contains the qualities of God. And therefore, I being that Essence find all those qualities to be present where I am. And you being that Essence, I find all those qualities present where you are. And everyone being that Essence, I find all those qualities present everywhere so that we are de-centralized. We’re not thinking in terms of me over here but of the Essence that I am everywhere and this is the acceptance of the Door.
The Door is your Essence everywhere and only when you are willing to live in the everywhere-ness of your Spirit, denying it to no one, are you living in the Door. I am the Door. I am the Door of the sheep.
Now when you’re living in that Essence, which is your conscious realization of its Presence, you will feel the quickening of it and the quickening of the Essence in your consciousness releases the activity of that Essence expressing the Divine qualities. Those qualities that express within the Essence moving through you, these are called the sheep. The Shepherd is the Spirit of God, the sheep are the qualities of that Spirit. They will only follow the Shepherd. They can only be activated when you’re in that consciousness that the Spirit of God is your name and then the Divine qualities follow the Shepherd which is your Spirit.
All the qualities of the Father, that omnipresence which can show forth as the loaves and fishes can only show forth where there is one accepting that Spirit to be not only here but over there. If I think the Spirit of God is confined to my body, how can loaves and fishes come out of the sky? I have to know that the Spirit of God being everywhere, my Spirit is everywhere and I have to be living in that consciousness and no second consciousness.
And so, “I am the Door to the sheep. All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers. But the sheep did not hear them.” And this is the statement that there is no Divine activity on this earth. All that came before Me were thieves and robbers. Who came before the Spirit of God? Illusions, people, men, women, teachers, men of flesh, thieves and robbers. What could they offer? Nothing, because I am the Door. The Spirit of God in you is all that can enter the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.
The last ten or fifteen years of drugs were a complete ignorance of this simple rule. I am the Door. You can’t get in with mescaline, LSD, speed. There’s no entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. You can change from one state of mentality to another but it’s not the Door to Reality. It’s the Door from one form of unreality to another. However pleasurable or edifying the experience may be, it is not the Door and the statement that I am the Door is made by the Spirit of God which gives us the truth. I am the Door, not drugs. All who enter by any other Door are thieves and robbers.
And so, you take all of the ollogies. If the Spirit of God is the only Door, then what good is theology if it’s not dealing with the Spirit of God? Or how do you read the stars and come to the Kingdom of God? Or how do you study biology or physiology or psychology or any ology, if the only way to the Heaven on earth is through the Spirit of God?
And so, we’re being told that the human mind is the thief and the robber. The human mind does not enter the Kingdom of God because it’s not the Door and all mental effort, all physical effort, all armies, all missiles, all technology, all science is not the Door. The only Door is you, the living Spirit of God. And that is the only Door which releases the Divine qualities of God into your experience. That’s why “I am the good shepherd.” The Spirit of God that you are is the Shepherd that releases the Divine qualities which are the sheep into your living daily experience converting the appearance called earth into heaven.
“All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.”
The sheep, the Divine qualities could not respond to men. No matter how exalted their motives, no human words or hopes or ambitions can release the Divine qualities. They cannot express in human beings. They can only express in the Essence, the Door, the Shepherd, the Spiritual Self.
“I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and shall find pasture.” “He shall go in and out and find pasture.”
Now again, there are many esoteric codes in here, going in and out. This Door goes in to something and out of something but when you’re in the Door, you can go in. When you’re in the Essence, you go in to a new body and you go out of the old body. And that new body goes out of the old universe into a new universe and it finds pasture. It finds Grace. It is fed and sustained by the Infinite.
When we have accepted Spiritual identity, we go in to the body of the soul and we move out of mortality. We move out of corporeality and we can move out and even return into corporeality. We can go in and out of this world. Some have done just that. Some have attained and returned on a mission. They have gone in and out. They can move silently through the universe because they are not in a physical confined form.
Spirit is not limited to time or space. Did he not step on a ship and it was on the shore instantly? The next day, without a ship, did he not disappear? Did they not try to lay hands on him but could not touch him? Why? Because he could go in and out. But he was the Spirit of God. You are the Spirit of God. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” You can go in and out. Liberty from physical confinement, from material law. Did he not walk on a sea? Why? Because he was able to go in and out. Did he not stop the storm? Why? Because Essence has dominion over form. But you are Essence and therefore in the Essence of you is the capacity to stop the storm. In the Essence of you is the capacity to remove poverty, to abolish famine, to overcome the illusion of death, to reveal the non-reality of sickness. The Essence has total dominion over form. I am the Door. I am the Way.
When you walk in your Essence, the divine qualities of omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence are released and Grace functions without a barrier. When you discover that this is true even in a measure, you’re on your way to demonstrating a higher degree of it.
That is why any other door is unsatisfactory. Any other door has no power to take dominion over form, to take dominion over weather, to take dominion over sickness and disease, to take dominion over death, to take dominion over war and hatred and violence. There is only one Door to dominion and that is the Door of Essence which is the only power there is.
Before Essence, every so-called material power is dissolved. And Essence is the only name that is true of all of us.
I’ve tried to release the Divine qualities of my being by resting in Essence and whenever the quickening comes, you realize why that is the Door. This shifting of the belief in form to Essence, which is actually Christ, removes certain pictures in the mind. In the mind, you can think of yourself with shoulders and arms, a certain kind of build, a certain weight, a certain feeling of movement but when you start to think of Essence there are no pictures in the mind, there are no images. The conditioning dissolves. The sense of weight dissolves. And you’ll find that in the knowledge of Essence, there is a feeling of not being in a specific spot but rather there is a sort of everywhere feeling.
And then the mind has instinctively removed itself as a barrier. And the images in the mind are no longer there as a stone. And something else flows. So imperceptibly and yet so quickly that one minute you can feel tired, uninspired, fumbling around, the next minute, there’s a clarity, there’s a sense of purpose. There’s a feeling of being guided. And of course, all of that is the flesh being quickened. Right out of flesh into Spiritual cognition. And then you find you’re tuned. You’re receiving and now although you can’t put it into words, you’re really no longer separated. You’re part of the Infinite activity of the universe and it shows right where you are. The Infinite functioning, expressing through the Good Shepherd which is your Spirit and those sheep are now obedient to your Spirit expressing all of that which is necessary at the moment.
The picture of Grace is being presented here to us, the missing link which removes all sense of evil, error and imperfection from your consciousness. You can look at disease one day with human eyes and the next day from the Essence of your own being and you can see why disease never really existed except in the false state of consciousness.
For the moment, hold the knowledge that you are the Essence of God. And hold that active mind which would deny it in a state of suspension. You are opening yourself to the Door, the Door which goeth to the Father. The Door which transforms. It does the work. It needs no help.
“By me if any man enter in, he should be saved.” That saving means specifically, that he shall find life instead of death. For the Spirit quickeneth unto life.
He’s pushing us into that level which will not stay in the stagnancy of mortality. He’s making us progress into new mansions of Consciousness. He’s forcing us to move out of this earth into Heaven. He’s making us see that being better humans is not the way. He’s making us, as parents, realize that to say to our children, “We want you to be better children” is not the way. That we’re not to make them into better human beings and be satisfied. We must behold them as the Spirit of God for that is the Door. That is the Door to the realization of their immortal Self. We cannot behold them as mortal children for we are not accepting the Door. I can’t say I am the Spirit but that child is not. That’s a mortal child, that’s my child, that’s my son, that’s my daughter. I’m being told here, that’s not my son and my daughter. That’s the Essence of God. I’m being told, “To open my consciousness to the knowledge that my child is the Essence of God and I am the child of that God too.” That my parent is the Essence of God. That my parent’s parent is the Essence of God. This Door must be Infinite. I cannot close it to one and open it to another. My consciousness must expand to accept that the Essence of God is the only Self there is.
I must be taken out of the sense of separated forms called children and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. We must leave them for My sake which is the invisible Essence. We must take our Self out of the law of form which is the law of good and evil into the law of perfection which is the law of one indivisible perfect Spirit. That is the Door.
I have no right to bind anyone into mortality by my ignorance when I am being specifically told that Spirit, Christ, is the name of that individual. All else is a thief and a robber. I am robbing that individual of their Immortality by not recognizing it and losing my own.
So, we begin to look at our children a different way. We look at our parents a different way. We realize that the Spirit of God which is the Spirit of my parent and the Spirit of God which is the Spirit of me are one and the same. Physically, we are all manifestations of the world mind. Spiritually we are all the One Invisible Self.
Choose ye; the Door or continue as a thief and a robber in the false consciousness that knows not its own true Being.
—– End of Side One —-
Up to now, the world has been a thief and a robber. And the thief has been the mind of every man, unwilling to know, to accept that the Spirit of God is not confined to some who are good and withheld from some who are bad. Not confined to those who wear robes in a church but withheld from those who lay bricks on a pavement. Not withheld from the criminal, from the adulterer, from the corrupt. Withheld from no one.
And so wherever you look, no judgement. The only righteous judgement is there is my Spirit invisible. And in this acceptance, this yielding to the Truth, you’ve opened the Door. You have followed him, the Christ, the Dove of Spirit, the Lamb of God by accepting that Dove of Spirit to be your name, your Infinite name, your name without reservation, without limitation. You are accepting that Spirit is whole and you are accepting the fullness of your Spiritual identity. The fullness of your Spiritual identity accepted is the Door. Anything less is a thief and a robber.
“All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers: but the sheep did not hear them.”
And so, if in our lives, we find that we have not been able to experience Divine qualities, it is clear that the reason is because we have not accepted Infinite Spiritual identity. Now that must be remembered and the oversight must be corrected.
“I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.”
Now this means then that transition can only occur for one who is in Infinite Spiritual identity. The opposite of transition is death. Death is the normal. We’re all familiar with that. But here, we suddenly discover we’re not helpless victims. We don’t have to move through the normal death. We can go in and out and find pasture and be sustained by the Infinite, by the acceptance of Infinite Spiritual Selfhood. Living Essence never disconnected from the living Essence that is my neighbor or the living Essence that is a tree or the living Essence that is the sky or the water. Living Essence everywhere. Never disconnected, never separated, always one Infinite Essence. To this we must be true.
And then the forms which show the Grace of that Essence. You’re going backstage behind the forms to the Essence which mortal mind is counterfeiting into forms. You’re putting your consciousness at the root of being, resting there, abiding in the Essence that is Infinitely everywhere expressing the perfection of the Father.
“The thief cometh not but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy.”
Who is that thief? We know by now it’s the human mind. The human mind comes to steal, to kill, to destroy. Not consciously; unconsciously. How does it do it? It makes us believe in that which is not real. It counterfeits the Essence of our own being and presents this counterfeit as our form, as the reality of things around us when they’re only counterfeits. And as we believe on these things which the mind presents, we are deceived for we find they are perishable. Nothing created by the human mind is imperishable. Nothing created by the human mind is of the Essence of God.
And so we build a complete world, a mental world which to us is very real. But it crumbles. Every form created by the mind follows the same path of deterioration and death, whether it’s person or thing.
The thief can only steal, kill, destroy because it is creating false images. We are seeing that what is presented to us by the human mind is never the truth.
“But I, I am come that they might have life, that they might have it more abundantly.”
And so, the Essence says, “Now I’m taking you out of mortal mind. I’m revealing to you the illusions that the world has accepted by living in the mind, the thief that destroys. The same mind that you have cherished as your own is the mind that brings you to the belief in war, to the belief in sickness and disease and suffering and pain, to the belief in famine and poverty. Who created them? God? No, that very mind itself.
And now we’re going to learn the nature of that mind from the very Spirit of our own being. The mind does not come to give us life, it comes to give us the counterfeit of life which ends in death because it is not life. That mind here is called a hireling.
Now says the Voice, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”
Now again, the sheep begins to take another meaning. The Good Shepherd gives his life. The Spirit of God in you is Life and that Life is your life and that life is eternal Life. That Life maintains its eternality by the perfection of its qualities because that is the Good Shepherd.
“But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep or not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.”
Now the hireling is revealed here to be the mind of man. But it’s a hireling because it’s a captive mind, it’s a controlled mind. Man, thinks his mind is free but here the Spirit of God is saying the mind is not free. It’s an hireling. Who hired it? And you know that the world mind individualizes as the human mind. And so, the human mind which is a thief is employed by the world mind. It cannot act of its own self. It must say to its employer, “What do you want me to do?”
World mind governs the mind of man. That’s the meaning of this mind is a hireling. It’s a controlled, captive mind and it doesn’t know it. It thinks it’s free to make decisions and the only decisions it can make are those decisions which are not true because it is not the Door. It is living in a world which is not the Spirit.
And everything we do with the human mind then is controlled by another mind called the world mind and this is the revelation then here, that the human mind is under a state of hypnosis. It can do nothing of its own. It must obey the world mind. That’s the reason it flees when the going gets rough. That’s the reason it cannot maintain that which it creates. That’s the reason the wolf scatters it.
This is revealing the nature of the human mind as inadequate, a state of hypnosis which knows not the Father. It is a hireling. It is “Not the shepherd whose own the sheep are not.” The reason it doesn’t own the sheep is that whatever the human mind sees and thinks and feels is a counterfeit forced upon it by the world mind. It doesn’t create the qualities that it expresses. The world mind qualities come through the individual mind. If there’s hate in the world, it rubs off through the human mind. If there’s violence in the world, it rubs off through the human mind. If there’s sickness in the world, it rubs off through the human mind. Its sheep are not its own. It is a completely controlled state of hypnosis. Every human mind is revealed here as that state of hypnosis which has absolutely no control over its own creations although it thinks is has which is exactly why the word hypnosis is so perfect. The Adam dream state of the human mind, of the hireling is what Spirit is pointing out to us here.
“It fleeth and the wolf catcheth them.”
When the wolf comes, it leaves. The wolf are the false concepts of the intellect. And so, the mind is frightened by its own creations. The human mind is frightened by itself. It doesn’t even know it is creating the sense of evil and the sense of evil which is created through it, frightens even it so that we’re all frightened of the same things because we’re all in that hireling mind which runs when the wolf comes. And then we are caught in our own thinking and that’s the only place we’re ever caught. In our own thought are all the problems that we face and we are the creators of that thought and yet that thought is forced upon us.
And then you’ve heard before now that this is a world mind functioning you and your human mind is responding, you’re in a state of cosmic television, this is what the Spirit is telling us here. Of course, the answer is to be in the knowledge of Spiritual identity, the Door, out of the hypnosis of the human mind.
“The hireling fleeth because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.”
Everything functioning through the human mind is mechanical. It’s not true creation. You find that it has no real power because it has no real love. It’s counterfeit love and its counterfeit power. This human mind cannot sustain its own creation. It has to flee. It is a counterfeit itself and it cannot sustain the counterfeit that flows out of it and so the body is left to disease. The body is left to pain. The body is left to lack and limitation because the father of that body is the counterfeit hireling mind and the real body of Spirit is unknown to that counterfeit mind.
“I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.”
Back we come to Spiritual identity accepted but always Infinite Spiritual Identity, never the mistake of a little spiritual me. I can’t accept me without accepting you in the same place as that one Infinite Spirit.
“The Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.”
Now this is the life then, the Spiritual life and it is sustained by the Father. When you’re living in the acceptance of the Spiritual life, it is sustained. It doesn’t run. There’s no wolf to scatter it. It isn’t tempted into the belief in material or mortality. It is your Immortal life accepted here and now. And this is sustained by the Good Shepherd because the Good Shepherd and the Father are one.
Now do you see how this is underlying that there is only the Infinite Invisible Spirit and that is your name? And because there is only the Infinite Invisible Spirit that is all there is. There’s not the Infinite Invisible Spirit and. Not Infinite Invisible Spirit and a physical form and a human life and a boy and a girl and a man. No. There’s only Infinite Invisible Spirit. And when you begin to give it names, mother, father, sister, brother, you’re making an and where there isn’t any. Falling into the trap of the mind.
“Other sheep I have which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my name; and there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”
You know we have a heaven and an earth and earth is our concept of heaven. We look at heaven through a glass darkly and we call it earth. Actually, the invisible Spiritual kingdom is heaven. It’s present. And then you might say that this earth then is our outer concept of the inner Spiritual kingdom.
Now he has other sheep in the fold, says the Christ. You find that when you’re in your Spiritual kingdom realized, that becomes the new earth. But there’s still a heaven. That’s where the other sheep in the fold are.
The Spiritual kingdom is only the fifth world. And it is the outer concept that you will entertain of the sixth world which is the celestial kingdom. And there are saints there and angels there. They’re all part of the fold. In fact, the entire seven levels of consciousness or the seven heavens contain the fullness of the fold.
And we’ll have a new heaven when we step out of the Spiritual kingdom into the celestial, all on our way to the One Infinite Consciousness realized. Again, the Spirit is pointing out that there is one Fold, one Self, one Kingdom, one Being and until we are that One Being, we’re rejecting the very Spirit Itself which says, “I am the One,” and you must be the One because that is the Doorway to Reality.
“Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again. No man taketh it from me but I lay it down myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received from my Father.”
Now this Voice speaking which says I can lay it down and take it up again is your own Spiritual Self advising you that when you have accepted Spiritual identity, you move through every sphere. You can lay down a concept in one level and pick it up in another. You can even come back to this world if you feel like it. But you’re taken out of confinement in time and space and matter and form. This is the nature of true Being and all before this was a thief and a robber.
Now many of these concepts are unknown to the human mind because it has never been felt by us that we could really overcome death. It has never been felt by us that we really could not be sick or in pain. We were trying to overcome these things but we were using a hypnotized human mind which thinks these things exist and the very Spirit of God here called the Good Shepherd is saying. “You’ve been following a thief which has been robbing you of your identity and that thief is your human mind.”
In your identity, you too will see that I have been showing you one thing on this earth. One thing and here it is. You’ll find it in 7:21 of John, a beautiful statement which we did not discuss, which very rarely has been discussed:
“Jesus answered,” when they were all clamoring about his works, “He said unto them, I have done one work and ye all marvel.” Now we thought he was doing many things. But he says “I have done one work and ye all marvel.”
What is the one work? He is revealing constantly that God is running a perfect universe no matter where you look, no matter what you see, that is not the Truth.
I have not only one work, I am revealing that there is a perfect universe right where you are looking and seeing an imperfect one. The one work is to reveal that I, Spirit, am the only inhabitant of this earth and I am your Self. I am the Spirit of God where you stand. I am the Spirit of God where your child stands. I am the Spirit of God where everyone stands on this earth. That is the only work that Jesus Christ was doing, revealing the Spirit of God is everywhere now. Everywhere now. And that indivisible Spirit is the name of everyone now. Such an incredible work that the human mind to this very day is staggered by even the concept of it.
And then just to make sure that we don’t turn away, Joel comes along and says the very same thing. I think we’ll find it during the intermission in this chapter “No And!.” And now we’ll be prepared to look at “No And!” because it is telling us the very story of the Good Shepherd in a different way.
Who is the Good Shepherd? Your answer must be, “My Spirit.” Where is the Good Shepherd? Here, there and everywhere now. Who experiences the activity of the Good Shepherd? The one who accepts that identity for until you are the Good Shepherd, you have none. The Spirit of God where you dwell is the Good Shepherd. Whoever tries to enter the sheepfold, meaning the Kingdom of God in any other way, is doomed to fail.
Now perhaps on that day, the disciples heard something from the Christ, along the lines we have discussed. They were being prepared to witness the crucifixion and ultimately to go through a crucifixion themselves. We are being prepared to go through the painless crucifixion of the false self by the renewal of that mind which knows that I am the living Spirit by the willingness to follow the dove of Spirit as identity and to let that Spirit baptize us with the Holy Ghost which expresses the will of the Father. In your acceptance of pure identity, the purity of the Father’s activity in you, as the Holy Ghost, is made manifest.
Silence, (pause) …
The deeper your Spiritual awareness becomes, the more you will know God is running a perfect universe and no other exists.
I’m going to read a few quotes from “No And!” They’re scattered but they make a picture.
“First of all, we must know this. We cannot cure disease – there is none. We cannot overcome poverty – there is none. We cannot overcome death – there is none. The only thing we can do is to recognize that we’re not dealing with those appearances or suggestions as such. We are dealing with hypnotism.”
What is the hypnotism? The human mind itself is a state of hypnotism. What is the Truth? Spirit is all that is here and the human mind will not present to me the Truth about Spirit. It will always present to me the truth about its own false creation and call it disease, poverty, famine but it isn’t. There is no such thing. All there is, is hypnotism. Now, the Truth is that all there is, is Infinite God and its creation. And here’s the mind with disease, lack, death, pain, what not and all there is, is Infinite God and its creation.
Now where do you fit into the picture if all there is, is Infinite God and its creation? If God is Spirit and its creation is Spirit, where are you? You must be that Spirit and the hypnotism is the belief that you’re not and the belief that you’re not then pyramids into the belief that the you that isn’t Spirit is sick or this, that or the other thing and there is no such you. Spirit is the Door. I, Spirit, Christ, am the Good Shepherd. I am the Door. I am the Identity. I am the Self. Your Self is the Door. The acceptance of your Spiritual Self is the Door.
“To understand Reality we must understand that Spirit alone is real, since Spirit is Infinite. All that exists, then, must exist at the standpoint of Spirit and be under Spiritual law.”
“So, we’re never dealing with the physical effects of mental causes. We’re dealing only with God manifesting itself, expressing its Infinite harmonies and with the appearance, suggestion or claim of the universal belief in a selfhood apart from God, of a universe apart from God, of a selfhood and a universe subject to material mental laws.” There simply isn’t any.
You know Joel wrote this expressing the Spiritual Voice within just a few months before his own transition. Fortunately, we were able to have this from him before that transition. There is nothing but a Spiritual universe and what isn’t Spirit simply does not exist except as a state of hypnotism of the human mind which itself is a state of hypnotism and has no real existence.
“Now then, can you believe that there’s a God and sickness, too? Where would God be while someone is suffering?” See how simple it is when you’re alerted to be in the right awareness. Where is God while our children are dying or suffering? Where? Absent, in hiding, indifferent? Obviously not. Then where is God? Right there. Why isn’t God doing something about these sufferings of our children? Because we’re hypnotized and God isn’t. All that is there is His Spirit perfect as the Father and we, not being in our Spiritual identity, do not recognize the Spiritual identity of the child and we bind them to their suffering.
“If we can be made to believe that there is a mortal, material universe, we, too, are a part of the hypnotism.”
Can’t be anymore absolute than that.
Another statement:
“Sin is really the acceptance of a material universe.”
Now, we are perplexed no doubt because we have tried to overcome the material universe and it hasn’t worked. It overcomes us. And the reason we’ve been unable to overcome it is not only because we’re unaware of the state of hypnotism which makes it appear real, but we try to overcome it on our own power, on our own intelligence, on our own strength and you don’t have to do that because that’s the part of the first six verses of the Good Shepherd that need another explanation right now.
“He that entereth in by the door is the shepherd of the sheep.”
He that entereth in by the Door is the one who accepts himself to be Spiritual identity. Now Spiritual identity is the Shepherd of the Divine qualities. Spiritual identity leads and releases those Divine qualities so it’s the Shepherd of the sheep. You don’t do it. Your Spiritual identity automatically leads the sheep.
The moment you have accepted Spiritual identity, you’re in the Divine will. The Divine will expresses those qualities. You do not do it as a human being with a human mind. It doesn’t depend on your creative capacity. You don’t mentally figure out how to be omnipotent or how to be two hundred miles away. The Spirit of you is omnipotent and is two hundred miles away and when you rest in your Spiritual awareness of Self, the omnipotence of your Spirit is released into expression two hundred miles away. You don’t do it. You build the invisible oneness of Spirit by recognition of it and then the Father within doeth the works.
If we depended on our own selves to do anything, we’d be limited to what we could do with our hands, and our minds and our technological instruments. But the Infinite Spirit doeth the works the moment you have accepted it to be your name. Then the Shepherd is the Master of the sheep. You see we’re being told that Grace functions in your identity. It isn’t limited to what you can even understand. It’s automatically perfect as the Father.
“To him the porter openeth.”
The porter is your consciousness, it begins to open.
“And the sheep hear his voice.”
The moment you’re conscious of Spiritual identity, the qualities of Spirit hear the Voice of Spiritual identity.
“And he calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth them.”
“Leadeth them out.” I Christ in the midst of you send forth those qualities necessary to your demonstration on this plane. I Christ am the Good Shepherd. And I Christ, when I puteth them forth, when he puteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them and the sheep follow him for they know his voice.
When I Christ in you releases Divine qualities, I Christ in you goes before those qualities. I Christ in you sustains those qualities. They do not run when the wolf comes. Your identity is all you can trust in this whole universe. Nothing else.
“There’s no difference between the hell called poverty and that called war, disease or sin. One of them is no worse than another. They’re all forms of one thing and that one thing is hypnotism. Take away the hypnotism and none of these things would be there. There is only one error and that is hypnotism.”
Now that’s Joel making it so clear.
Now if we’ve got that out of today, that Spirit is all, there’s only Spirit, not Spirit and mother, daughter, father sister. Not Spirit and sickness. Not Spirit and person. Not Spirit and mortality. Not Spirit and human life. Not Spirit and things. These are the appearances to the human mind.
There is Spirit and Spiritual awareness that there is Spirit, is the Door. There is Spirit only and you can therefore look at that which comes to your attention with the knowledge that only Spirit is there and right there is the Spirit of God running its perfect universe no matter what I see. All else on this earth is hypnotism.
Then I have found my Door. Then I know why he said to Nicodemus, “Unless you’re reborn of the Spirit, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of God.”
Unless Christ sits on the well of your consciousness, you will not have living waters. And because Christ sits on the well of my consciousness, he said “I can walk upon the water and I can say to the waves, Be still,” because God is running a perfect universe right there, only Spirit is there and the rising of the waves is a form of hypnotism.
As you dwell consistently in this knowledge you’ll find you’re losing the human sense mind. You’re becoming a living Christ mind which knows only the Father and no and.
And this is how we come in to the Spiritual Kingdom on earth. Where we’re not victims of material laws, where we don’t live out past karma, where we don’t defend and protect against any force on the earth, where we don’t fear and doubt and worry about tomorrow but rather, we know that as Spirit, we are moving through mansion after mansion under total guidance that the Good Shepherd is our own true Spiritual Being ever leading us further and further and further to the seventh heaven of eternal Reality which is ever present awaiting those who wish to make the inner journey, to go in and out, and find pasture.
And maybe we were blind once but we’re certainly having our eyes opened. We are being awakened. It’s taken all of seven or eight years of this class to come just to this point.
You’ll notice that in the “Across the Desk” section of this chapter that Joel says, “We spent March in California, San Francisco.” That was the March he was here at the Masonic temple. It was the first March that I know or first year that he was here in maybe ten years and that was his last. Just two months after this letter was written, “No And!” And that’s part of the great inheritance we have received from him, through him. No and. Just God, Spirit and include yourself. Include everyone you know.
Give birth to everyone Spiritually in your consciousness and the great message of “No And!” will be completed in your own awareness. That is the Door. “No And!” That means there’s only One and if you can find a second self anywhere in the universe, you’ve stepped out of Essence into form. There is no second self. There is only the Spiritual Self and there is no second self and we have no right to turn away from the Christ Self and to see a second self where none exists.
Follow the One Self was the message of John the Baptist and “I am that Self, I am that Christ,” said the Christ to the woman of Samaria. “I’ve only done one work on earth,” said that Christ, “and it is to teach that there is no other self.” And whoever knows there is no other self and accepts that Self has found the Door to the Kingdom of Heaven on earth that Christ Jesus revealed was ever present. No and. No other self.
In your contemplation’s this week, simply take out of “No And!” the chapter in this book, a phrase of Joel’s, knowing that he’s telling you there’s no other self, that the Good Shepherd is your Spiritual Self and there’s no other Door and you rest in it. In your contemplation, you know this to be the Truth. The more you rest in it, you’ll see why later the Spirit says, “I am the Door. I am the way. I am the wine. I am the life. I am the resurrection.”
The Spirit of you resurrects you out of the belief in a self that can ever die so that you can release all of your loved ones, all of your friends, all of your neighbors and know that none of them exist in a self that can ever die. Your Door is an Infinite Door and that Door leads out of the false sense of selves into the one perfect ever present Infinite Self.
Once you go through that Door, you don’t turn back. And you don’t depend on your human resources because that Door is the Doorway to Grace, to the Infinite automation of the Spirit doing its own work. The one Infinite Invisible Selfhood does its own work and you simply abide in the knowledge that it is present doing its work and therefore the problems you see are not there. You have stepped out of the false sense of mortality. The Door that led out of mortality leads to the realization of Immortality now in Spirit.
Pick some of the passages toward the end of this chapter. Dwell with them until they speak to you in your inner Self. And remember, whatever they reveal to you that is spiritual Truth is a forever Truth, a trustworthy Truth that you can depend upon. You’ll find yourself resting in Oneness which is ever the work of the Christ to reveal, “I and the Father are one.”
That will be your preparation for a day in which the Spirit of God lives itself as you and this cumulative preparation leads to that day when for you all that is of this earth that is perishable has nothing to do with your being. It falls away.
“Labor not for the meat that perisheth.” Spirit does not perish.
And so, next time we’re going to continue these last pages of “No And!” and go again into the next chapter now which is “Resting in Oneness” which you’ll be doing in preparation for the very chapter. We’ll also take a peek at number 11 of John. And maybe some sections of the latter part of number 10.
Your function is not to pass by John 10 without making an adjustment in consciousness, a daily adjustment, until you can come to that chapter and look at it and say, “I understand it and I’m doing it. This is the living way. I, the Spirit of my being is the Good Shepherd and it releases the Divine thoughts, the Divine qualities, the sheep into expression, by Grace, so that what I had called personal problems can only exist if I have not entered the Door of Spirit because when I do, all personal problems are dissolved in the Grace, the activity of the sheep which are following the Good Shepherd. You have no limitation in your Spiritual Self.
I haven’t mentioned Mother’s Day because you can see that the answer is the entire class itself. If God is all, you have your answer. If Spirit is all, there can be no division, no separation. You must know by now that the identity of your own mother has to be Christ. Anything less is untrue.
If you have not realized this before, it is time to sit down with the Truth and know it so well that never again will you ever think of mother as less than Christ itself. For there is no and, there is only the Spirit of God. And then you see, you know who you are.
Silence, (pause) …
These are steps to consciously take without turning back.
Thanks very much.
Mystical Principles 
And here is the Audio Link for this Talk:
https://ftp.mysticalprinciples.com/?dir=Herb_Fitch_1972_Realization_of_Oneness
Blessings,
Bill