We’re told in this ninth chapter that we are to do certain things every day. He calls it a daily habit, and the first was to become consciously aware of the presence of God. Now without the presence of God, we have nothing, except our human selves. With the presence of God, we are prepared to open ourselves to Divine infinite Law; and to become conscious of the presence of God means to accept that presence as the Substance of my Being. I cannot be something apart from that Presence. No matter how important I may think I am humanly, if I am apart from the Presence, then I and the Father are not One Identity, One Substance.

Occasionally in the world we find many important people who are unaware of their unimportance, and they’re marvelous people on this human level. We read in this morning’s paper that Frank Conniff was the top man with the Hearst chain. He’s the fellow who went with Hearst and Kingsbury Smith over to Russia, and no one had been allowed behind the iron curtain to interview Khrushchev; and he was smart enough to get the assignment and the okay from Khrushchev. He did some marvelous things in the journalism field, a very handsome, charming, intelligent man, the kind that everybody loved, capable of real power in his field, but why at fifty-seven is he gone? Why, at fifty-three, did he have these massive heart attacks?

It wasn’t overwork. It was the inability to know that the Kingdom of God is within Me. It was the belief that I am this fellow you see, and somehow, somewhere there’s a God who loves me; and this is separation. And it isn’t enough to know that isn’t true. That isn’t enough. You can know it on Monday, but that won’t help you on Tuesday. It must be a continuing Consciousness, and this is the meaning of Joel’s caution that part of your daily experience must be the conscious Awareness of the presence of God as a continuing fact; and the Awareness of that Presence means here, now, where I stand.

And then because of the presence of God Here Now where I stand as my spiritual Substance, I am under spiritual law, no other. These things shall not move me that are not spiritual law. That presence of God which is my Substance needs no defense, and therefore, the only protective work you do is the knowledge of that Presence. You don’t have to look over your shoulder. The knowledge of the presence of God as the Substance of My Being, extended as the substance of all Being, as the infinite Substance, this is our daily requirement. That’s the whole point of his chapter.

He calls it preparation for spiritual living, and I want to read this paragraph: “Since God constitutes the law of my being, I am governed by spiritual Being, spiritual Law, spiritual Light, and spiritual Truth.” [The Contemplative Life, p. 159] There must be an inner acceptance, and then, because of the inner acceptance that spiritual Law is all that governs you, you cannot say, “I am under the power of lack or limitation or anything else.” You’re only under spiritual Law, and for

you, the only Law that exists is perfect spiritual Law. There are no other powers.

This is daily, daily, daily, until it’s my Consciousness: “I know God has never been paralyzed, never blind, never deaf. I know God never had indigestion. Spiritual law prevents the possibility of these afflictions. If I have them, it is because I have within me a belief that there is another power beside spiritual Law, and that belief is showing forth as my affliction. Whatever my problem is, it is the visible evidence of my belief in another power besides spiritual Law; and when I rectify the belief, when I come home to spiritual Identity, and therefore, only spiritual Law is acceptable to me, then there is no place for the world mind to express in my Consciousness, and it cannot externalize as these afflictions from which the world suffers.”

He [Joel] goes on to say this, “If we engage in this daily practice—and we must—we shall soon find that we have received in our inner being the secret of the universe, the secret of harmony, the secret of the Holy Grail. We shall find that we have the secret of life, once we know that the consciousness of the presence of God is the only reality unto us and there is no two-law universe. There is only the spiritual-law universe of God. When we have that, the discords the inharmonies will melt gradually, but certainly and completely.” He speaks from his experience. We have seen that everywhere the Spirit of Christ walked in the form called Jesus, this was true. And all of us have experienced that wherever the Consciousness of perfect spiritual Law is, the non-powers of the world are exposed in some miraculous fashion. They lose the ability to imprison us in false belief.

Now, as Spirit, conscious of the presence of God as your Spirit, you must further accept that you are completely Self-contained. That means there can be no lack in Christ of any kind, and so we bypass all physical evidence, because the physical evidence will always tell you that you are not Self-contained. And the question comes in those who have not had the experience yet: “Well, if I am self-contained, what do I do about these appearances that I’m supposed to bypass?” Even though we have lesson after lesson on that very subject, you will find your mind saying, “What do I do, then, about this thorn in the side?”

And that’s just exactly what he’s telling you to do: Rest in the knowledge that only spiritual Law is here. That which is not spiritual Law is the universal hypnotism: It isn’t here. That’s the meaning of hypnotism: It isn’t here. You don’t try to overcome what isn’t here. Even trying to overcome hypnotism is tightening the noose around your neck. It’s the recognition that it isn’t here. You can never suffer from Reality. You can only suffer from unreality. Every form of suffering is a cosmic hypnotism,—That’s the great revelation of the Infinite Way.—every form, and there is no power to cause it. It is being caused by that which is a seeming power to one who is not aware that only the power of God exists.

The non-problem is caused by the non-power, which you accept as a power, and therefore, as a problem; and this is apply named, this chapter: “Spiritual Exercises To Be Practiced.”

[Chapter 9 is now entitled “Daily Preparation for Spiritual Living”.] And the reason for the practicing of the Presence and the spiritual Power without opposite is because we are learning to accept the inexhaustible resources of our own Being. We are learning not to go outside ourselves, not to make the mistake of thinking that in my own Being something has been withheld. There is no thing, no person, no condition that you need, that is not within your own Being now. The mere thought that it’s possible for what you need to be outside of your Being is to lose that which is yours. You might as well lose it because, even though it’s there, you have no use of it.

This brings you, then, to a level of Consciousness which is more aware of who and what you are and of the limitlessness nature of your Being. We have discovered within ourselves, that every time we know the Truth of our Being, that we never have to pray for a need, but before we ask, in the mere knowing of the Truth of Being as Self-containing all that we need, that which we do need does appear as form, as condition, as thing, as person, and as place.

The miracle of spiritual Existence is that which we need, being ever-present, it always externalizes itself in the three-dimensional material world, provided we stay there in the Now and Is of spiritual Presence as the One and the Only, and let the Father do, through your transparent Consciousness, that which the Father is ever doing: being God Here, Now, and everywhere. Everywhere in this Universe, God Is Being God fulfilling God.

Now, many of us talk to people on the level of people, and I’d like you to consider a little exercise to practice with yourself. It’s very difficult, very challenging, and very rewarding. Now we know that matter has no intelligence, and yet we all talk to matter all day long. We talk to the boss. We talk to our employees. We talk to our friends. We really talk to matter as if it had intelligence. And sometimes we don’t think it’s very intelligent, and we even say so. Well, it isn’t. It has no intelligence whatsoever.

Suppose we try to see, too, that the mind, which is in that body, or in which that body is, is not the Divine Mind, and there’s no point really talking to it either, because it’s as much illusion as a material form that it externalizes. Then why talk to it? Now, here’s a test of your spiritual development. See if you can do it for one day or even for an hour. Establish consciously that you’re not going to talk to the physical form or the mind of an individual. You’re going to talk to the Divine Mind. Even though there’s a person there, you’re going to address your remarks to the Divine Mind, as if, for you, the person had no existence; and to do that, you’re going to talk from your Divine Mind, Divine Mind to Divine Mind.

And you’ve got to do this in such a way that the individual doesn’t know you’re doing it, that you’re talking from Divine Mind to the Divine Mind and looking straight at a person as if you’re talking to a person, so that the person thinks you’re talking to me, to him, to her. You try that for a while as an exercise and see what it does to you. You begin to feel some of that which was happening when Jesus spoke to his disciples. He never spoke to “them.” He was either speaking to the cosmic mind or the Divine Mind in them. Never was he speaking to an individual mind.

When he said, “Peace, be still. It is I,” do you think he was speaking to Peter? He was telling the cosmic mind, “You have no power here, friend.” When he said to Pilate, “Thou hast no power over me,” he wasn’t speaking to Pilate. He wasn’t speaking to a lump of flesh which had no intelligence. He wasn’t speaking to a human mind. He was letting us know that this cosmic mind, which is pretending to have power, has no power. He was showing us the universal mesmerism we must face, not the individual. When you conquer that universal mesmerism, you’ll find something in you saying, “Right, I have overcome the world,” not the individual. There are no individuals. There is only a world mesmerism.

And so dwelling in the Consciousness of the Presence until you can re-identify, not as a person who has found the Presence, but as the Presence. The Presence that I have discovered I am. The Truth that I was seeking I am. In your re-identification now, all that you had seemed to be, a corporeal person of a certain size and weight and density, a certain age, a certain sex, all must be re-identified. There are no corporeal beings in Heaven. There are no men or women in Heaven. There are no sizes and shapes in Heaven. There are no material conditions in Heaven. There are no backaches and heartaches. Deny thyself.

When you are consciously accepting the Presence, you are consciously rejecting thyself, the mortal self. You’re putting off the old man, and so Joel’s commandments to us have a double-edged sword. I can’t just sit here and say, “Oh, the Presence is here.” That won’t do me any good. Every-

thing that the Presence is, is here. The Presence is all, the fullness of the Presence, the infinity of the qualities of the Presence. Can I say, “The Presence is here, but I’m unemployed? The Presence is here, but I am paralyzed? The Presence is here, but I’m sick?” Then I haven’t done my homework, because only the Presence is here; and the presence is not paralyzed, not unemployed, and not sick. Only the Presence is here. This is the practicing of the Presence. Only the law of the Presence is here. All else must be hallucination. All else must be the false mind, the non-mind.

Self-contained is the acceptance of the presence of God as I and the Father, One Self, and therefore, Self-contained; and this is your preparation for the activity of Grace. When we do the chapter on Grace next week, number ten, if you haven’t read Contemplative Life lately, you may have forgotten that at the end of the chapter, there is a list of other chapters in other books, which Joel had called the “must chapters.” I know that since that was written, there were other chapters that would have been included had this book been written later. But nonetheless, there are seven or eight, or I don’t know how many chapters in other books that are listed; and it wouldn’t be possible, perhaps, for you to read them all for one class, but we’re going to have to do those in a measure, sort of double up on ourselves.

The important thing is that because God is present here, where you are, and God is in Heaven, you must be in Heaven; and you cannot violate the laws of Heaven and expect to remain in Heaven. You cannot violate the law of perfection, which is spiritual Law. As a matter of fact, it cannot be violated by anyone. You do not have the power to violate It. That is an illusion. There is no power on earth to violate the Law of Heaven.

Only the will of the Father is being functioned in Heaven now. Only the will of the Father is functioning where you are, and that will being your perfection, everything that denies it must be unreal. As you dwell in this, you will be out of the body, for there’s no physical body in Heaven. There is no physical body where the presence of God is realized. There is no physical condition where the presence of God is realized. There is only My Kingdom. And when you are out of the body, through your daily practice of the Presence of Spirit as your Presence and the ever-presence of Spiritual Law as the only Law, you will lose the illusion of a temporary life.

You will know as certainly as you know anything, that all temporary life is illusion. There is no such thing and never has been. It is part of the universal mesmerism. It simply has no existence. There is no such thing as temporary life. The temporary life that we are all so concerned about doesn’t exist. Take no thought for your temporary life. It isn’t there. The only Life you have is the perfect, forever Life; and in your absence from the body experience, dwelling in the Essence of Being, that false belief will fall away. With it will fall away the concerns about that temporary life. You will see that Life is ever Itself. All Life is ever Living, ever Being.

You have never been separated from Life anywhere in this Universe. All Life is One. I, being Life, all who I know being Life, neither this human sense of life nor death can separate us from Life, for that is our name. We must know these things so well that the complete freedom of Being Life, finding Its way through our Consciousness, releases us from the limitations of a temporary life, for those limitations are as unreal as the temporary life. The false horizons created by the cosmic mind accepted by the human mind, the false horizon of a beginning and an end, the false horizon of an absence of this or that, these are all false horizons, the false horizon where there’s a beginning of a pain, there is no such place.

We are Self-contained in Christ, and we are to live as pure spiritual Being, enjoying the fruitage of It; and this is the glimpsing, the Living, the awareness of the Soul realm, where all the horizons vanish. There are no horizons. There is the limitless Self, and all good flows in through that limitless Self and appears where the corporeal form seems to be, as the sustaining influence of that form. When you’re in your limitless Self, your infinite Being is flowing to a point called the human self. That’s the point where the infinity of Being is made visible. That’s the point of Grace, and ultimately it’s the point of release from corporeality.

We should be in that Consciousness which says, “I’m not concerned about an end of the world because I know there was never a beginning of the world.” The false horizon of the beginning of a world and an end of the world has no place in spiritual Consciousness. The Lord our God is One; and we have no other gods, no other identity, no other being, no other power, no other belief. The perfect infinite Consciousness, called God, is the perfect infinite Manifestation called God, and that Manifestation is Son of God. That manifestation is I. When we are feeling this limitless Self, the fruitage of it is quickly visible. There’s no attachment to person, place, or thing. There’s no clinging love. There’s no fear of loss. You’re in Spiritual Consciousness. You’re in your illuminated Self.

Now, if we’ve learned anything from walking on water, from stopping storms, we’ve learned that matter is a mental obstruction with no Reality in God. We have learned that the conditions of matter are purely hypothetical and are illusory. They are mental energy appearing “as.” We have learned that we are invisible Self, made of the pure Spirit of God without boundaries and that there are no margins in Heaven. This is our Living Consciousness.

We are not here to glorify a human being. We are not here to seek status. We are here to let the Will of God, which is perfect, express Itself as our living Being. We are here to let the mortal sense of self step aside and behold that Living Will of perfection, making manifest Itself in all things. We are here to hold a line against the belief that the power of imperfection is present where we dwell. We are here to be faithful witnesses of the all power, the all knowledge, and the all Presence of the spiritual Father called God.

And when you have accepted that your function is to be a faithful witness, all of the need and struggle and striving to do and be something is taken off your shoulder. The responsibility is not on you. The government is on the Spirit Itself. Your function is to witness that activity, denying your human selfhood. In setting forth our Identities, because we’re still unformed in that Identity in our Consciousness, we have all tried to claim certain things for ourselves; and now we will learn that there’s nothing we need claim because we are, and we can humbly let our Identity express to glorify the Father. If we will glorify the Father and not a human personality, we will find that all that is required of us is present in infinite measure. My Will be done. I in the midst of Thee am greater.

So Infinity is now moving in our Consciousness as our Consciousness to the degree that we have humanly seen the folly of mortality, the false horizon of birth and death, the cosmic mist which comes forth as appearances; and we are facing all claims, not as my claim, but as a universal claim, which I refuse to accept as my claim, standing in My Identity and watching spiritual Substance dissolve its suppositional opposite called material problem. Everything you do this way is under law, under Grace, under the Will of perfection. You need not press a button. You need not pull a trigger. You need not lift a sword. Stand ye still.

Next week we’ll discuss Grace. And if you will, I’d like you to do with re-identify just what you did with Identity. Now do the same thing with the word re-identify; and I’d like to hold what you’ve already done until you’ve done that so that you’re not guided to repeat yourself. Come up with a complete new feeling about it, and then you’ll see yourself within three weeks after you’ve done the first one how far you’ve developed. However, if any of you want to still take whatever you’ve done back with you, you may, of course, so I’ll leave them here.

Anyone can take the one that they want, if they want to take it. If you want to leave it, leave it. Try it now with re-identify. “R” “E” “I” and so forth. Make up your cross-word, paragraph, thought, sentence, whatever you wish, until you get this feeling of being in Heaven, in the Is, in the Now, in the law of perfection and Divine love, where no opposites can possibly occur. That’s the re-Identify. That’ll prepare us for the experience of Grace.

Thanks so much.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

We know that when Jesus walked on the water, a phenomenon occurred in this world that is not understood; and last week together, we saw that this unusual experience was a preview of an experience that all of us are inevitably going to discover for ourselves. We found that there was an event on the sea, and although not present there at that time, being somewhere else, that which was called Jesus suddenly appeared walking upon the water. And as we rested in the Consciousness of the Father, we learned that this was not a physical form walking upon water, but rather this was the Divine I made visible as a form of the Soul, a fourth-dimensional body appearing and not being obstructed by material laws such as gravity or matter; and instantly without taking thought, this occurred, and instantly as it occurred, all the laws of time and space were pushed aside.

And so you and I in our bodies of the Soul will discover that when we are not in thought, we are moved, moved in such a way that wherever we are needed, we are, and whatever we must do, we are doing, because I, the Spirit in the midst of us, is greater than any external appearing event in matter. I within us dissolves that which appears to be the discord, but only because we’re resting in the knowledge of Identity, not standing in the knowledge of a personal self in a material form, in a material world.

Now, prior to this, Jesus had demonstrated other things. The Spirit, released through the absence of a personal self had also calmed the sea at another time. And we, who are at that level of Consciousness that is capable of overcoming the belief in a material universe, are still wondering why, even though we feel the peace, even though we even feel the Presence, we find ourselves sometimes unable to throw off the material discord in the face of the Presence. In the face of the inner peace we are still confronted with discords that somehow remain to torment us, questions that remain unanswered. And I think we can, today, face that with a better understanding because of these demonstrations in the Bible, once we understand walking on water was the activity of a Soul body, not of a person with supernatural gifts.

Once we understand that stilling the storm was not the removal of material laws, was not overcoming nature, but was the revelation of the non-existence of the storm. Then we begin to see that just as a storm is not an individual experience, but a group experience, it’s not one person’s consciousness out-pictured, but the consciousness of many. And in similar fashion we discover that our problems that we call “my personal problem” is never that at all; and when we try to overcome “my personal problem” on the level of “my personal problem” and still cannot do it, it is because we have not seen the nature and the source of what we call “my personal problem.” We have not overcome the illusion of world mesmerism, the universal mesmerism.

And so I want you to see it this way. The boy has a bloody nose, or the woman has a dizzy spell, or the man has a weak heart, and so the mother says, “My son has a bloody nose.” The woman says, “I can’t walk. I have a dizzy spell,” And the man says, “I can’t get up and go to work because my heart is weak.” Each considers this a personal problem, and undoubtedly each of us has considered our problems as personal problems. And then you go into the Spirit, you touch your center, you realize the peace, and you still have the personal problem; and you say, “I thought that I was supposed to do these things, and it would dissolve. It’s the same way when a cancer is cut out. It comes back sometimes in a year. Why?

What did we cut out? Did we cut out the cause? When you have not cut out the cause of your personal problem, that same cause will manifest as a continuation of it or as another problem; and always the cause is not in you. And when you say, “This is my problem,” you are placing the cause in you; and you will discover that when you place the cause in the world mind and realize the problem is only passing through you, passing through,—not yours, not attached to you,—passing through, presented to you from the world mind at the moment you become aware of it, but it’s up to you, at that moment, to see that this is not my problem.

This is a world mind problem. This is not “my” bloody nose. This is not “my” weak heart. This is not “my” dizzy spell. This is a world problem. It doesn’t belong to me at all, and strangely enough, once you locate it as a world problem, you find a depth of inner peace you hadn’t known before. You have faced the world mind. You have located the cause of that which is trying to manifest in you; and had you accepted it as “your” problem, you would have nailed it down. And the moment you recognize it as a world problem, you find a missing dimension, a weapon, which enables you to see I am not unemployed, I do not have a false appetite.

The world has a false appetite. The world mind is unemployed. The world mind has a weak heart. The world mind has every problem; and that is where every problem is found, in the world mind, never in an individual. It is merely presented to the individual for acceptance or rejection. Your rejection is the recognition of its source. The moment you know that its source is not God, you know its source is the world mind; and in that moment, you’ve seen that the snake is not there. The recognition of it not being there is the end of the hypnotism. That’s the end of your weak heart. It’s also the end of your unemployment. It’s the end of your dizzy spell, and it’s the end of your bloody nose.

The minute you locate where it’s coming from and know that there is no world mind, you’ve located the mirage, and the mirage, which is the source of the mirage. You’ve pulled the rug out from under the problem, and I don’t care what your problem is. When you can face it and locate its source and then know that the source is not God, and therefore non-existent, you’re on your way home free. Always, the problems that irritate us the most and that seem the most persistent are those that we have accepted as “my” problem; and You have never had a problem in your Life. You have accepted world problems and made them “your” problem, and you have grappled with the shadow. Now, you will see the power of this when you do it. If you have done it, you know the power of it.

As we look at the Master, we see him faced with an unusual situation. The sea is rising. The sea is actually so high that the waves are over the ship. This isn’t the same one as when he walked upon the water and when the ship was on the land instantly. This is another one, an earlier one. And yet this earlier one was necessary for the later one to take place.

He was sleeping on the ship, but before he was sleeping, he had given us the Sermon on the Mount, which incidentally is almost word-for-word the code of the Essenes. He had given us the Sermon on the Mount. He had healed the son of the centurion. He resurrected the dead boy at Naime. And now one of the scribes came up and said, “This is marvelous. I’ll follow you over the earth. Wherever you go, I want to go.” And he looked at this eager scribe, knowing that he wanted to follow a “man.” That’s where we’re going to begin our Bible lesson. He wouldn’t let this scribe follow him as a person. He had to tell him this and all those who are so eager to follow a man, that his name was not the man, Jesus. His name is never the head of a religion. “You cannot follow the person,” he said to this scribe; and he said it in his own words, which we shall see here.

“Now when Jesus saw great multitudes about him, he gave commandment to depart unto the other side.” Always the other side has a symbolism, out of matter into Spirit, higher. “And a certain scribe came, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.” This is the material mind willing to follow the man. “Jesus saith unto him, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head,” the Son of Man, the second birth. The first birth was the son of woman. The rebirth makes him the Son of Man. He has no place where to lay his head. Why? He is not material form: “I am not form, I am Consciousness. I am infinite Consciousness. How will you follow me in the flesh?”

And so he’s telling the scribe, who could not understand: “Follow the Christ of your own Being. That’s how you follow Me, because that’s My name, infinite Christ, and I am in the midst of you, not standing out here. There’s no place to lay My head. I am not a physical creature. Those miracles you saw were not performed by a physical creature, and the miracles you are about to see will not be performed by a physical creature. No physical creature is going to raise the dead or walk upon the water or heal the cripple. The Spirit of God in you is the Messiah.”

And so he first qualifies what is about to happen by telling us, “Don’t be confused and personalize the event.” Don’t say, “Oh, what a great man Jesus was.” But realize that Jesus is your name, walking there as the invisible I. This is You. This is your Self. This is the invisible Christ made visible “as,” and every word that Jesus says is your invisible Self speaking. Every activity that you see engaged in by Jesus is your invisible Self moving in Consciousness. This is the I of your Being demonstrating Its Presence and Its perfect power. Whatever Jesus said is the Truth of your Being. Whatever Jesus did is the Truth of what your Being is always doing; and when you are in Being instead of out of Being, you will find that your Being is doing precisely what He did.

And so if he’s now going to save a ship at sea, we must see that I in the midst of Me saves that ship at sea, I in the midst of Jesus, I in the midst of John, I in the midst of Peter, I the One the Only in the midst of all am greater than he that walks the earth. I in the midst of You am the power of God. This is not the man. This is I in the midst of You about to show Peter and the others that where I am realized, the inner conflict, called storm in the outer, is no longer there. And so he sets the stage.

But here’s another, even before they can go any further. “Another of his disciples said unto him, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. But Jesus said unto him, Follow me; and let the dead bury their dead.” And so we see the word “dead” as applied to those who are dead in the material sense, dead in the belief that they live in the flesh, dead in the belief that the world is material, that bodies are material, that life is material, that birth and death is material, that possessions are material, that we live in a material universe. These are the dead who are not alive to I in the midst, dead to Christ, dead to Reality, dead because they believe that what happens between the cradle and the grave is Life, dead because they have not seen Life as a continuous, uninterrupted, perfect continuity, proceeding from God, through God, in God, and never leaving God, and so dead.

And now they’re ready, “And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him.

Behold there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with a waves: but he was asleep.” Now the “tempest in the sea” is always an out-picturing of the inner consciousness of a group of people. The whirlwind is the out pictured consciousness of that area. Always, the visible material world is the inner level of consciousness that has been attained by individuals collectively, so our material world is the level of consciousness which we collectively have been able to reach, and now it is externalizing as a storm and a wind blowing the waves.

If we were to say, “Jesus stopped the storm,” it would do us no good whatsoever, but he’s introducing now a new element. He has shown us that the dead are those who are dead in matter. Now he’s introducing a new element called motion in matter: the great, powerful storm moving, the waves rising. If matter isn’t there, how can it rise? If matter isn’t there, how can it blow? So matter in motion is a double illusion, no more real than a stone or a pebble lying in the street, no more real than a dizzy spell or a bloody nose. Matter cannot move because matter isn’t there, therefore the movement of matter, however perilous it may appear to be, is recognized as the impossible. There can be no motion to non-existence.

God is not in the whirlwind, and no matter how horrible the tempest may appear to the frantic disciples, he is asleep, completely unaware of any such occurrence. Why? Because there isn’t any. The collective consciousness is out-picturing as storm. Now, we’re being told that weather is not an act of God, are we not? The world believes it is. The world believes that all weather is a God activity, that beautiful Hawaiian weather, the beautiful sky, the beautiful mountains, the beautiful water, and the countryside lavish with flowers.

Certainly, all this is of God—and then suddenly the typhoon, the tidal wave, the ship swallowed in the sea. Is that of God? What changed it? Neither the good nor the bad were of God. Weather is a material illusion. We make our own weather collectively and individually, and the disciples have made their weather. They have made their storm in a conflict, in a turmoil, in a fear. All of the conditions of weather which are unfriendly represent the externalization of the world mind, accepted individually. And then we say, “This is the weather in San Francisco. This is the weather in Marin. This is the weather across the bay.” It isn’t.

It’s the consciousness out-pictured of those who dwell there. It is world mind fooling, with its cosmic hypnotism, those who still believe in the material world, and the disciples are among those. They are still dead in matter. They’re dead in the wind. They’re dead in the water. They’re dead in the motion of the wind, unaware that I can never leave you, unaware that I am all there is, unaware of Omnipresence, unaware of the power of divine Love, unaware that only One is present. The Lord our God is One.

And so the cosmic hypnotism, the universal mesmerism, becomes an individual experience for each one who is unaware of it, and they come to him frantic, plea for help, “Lord, save us: we perish.” They are Life eternal and they expect to perish, and so he chastises them, “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” There’s only waves a hundred feet high, and he says to them, “Why are ye fearful?” What is he saying when he says, “Why are ye fearful?” of those waves that are a hundred feet high? because they’re matter, and matter is only mortal thought and the motion of the matter is only the motion of mortal thought. You’re looking at your own thought.

You mean there aren’t any waves out there? That’s right, there are no waves out there. There’s only mortal thought appearing as waves. What about all the oceans in the world? Same thing, cosmic mind appearing as oceans, mountains, rivers, lakes, seas, grass, flowers. The material world is mortal mind externalized. That’s what he’s teaching, not just this wave on this particular sea, but all matter, all solids, all liquids, all gases, all are the denial that Spirit is All. The germ, the infection, the contagion is a denial that Spirit is All. The whirlwind is a denial that Spirit is All.

And how does it get there? It doesn’t. It only appears to be there. All matter appears to be. He is teaching the non-existence of a material universe, and as incomprehensible as that may be to most of the world, every time that we are able, in our own small way, to experience the non-reality of matter, and consequently the non-power of matter, we are reliving this incident on the sea with him. We are learning that I in the midst of me is the living Spirit of God, and I am infinite Spirit. There is no place where I am not, and I have no opposite. Only I exist. As far as the eye can see and beyond, I am; and the roaring sea or the calm sea, neither is there: I am. Neither the good sea nor the bad sea, neither employment nor unemployment are there. Neither good health or bad health are there. I am.

The invisible Spirit is All that is Here. There are no good’s, and there are no bad’s. There is only invisible Spirit, and the out-pictured material universe ceases to have power to make us seek the good in preference to the evil, to make us choose between one or the other. Rather, we rest in the knowledge that as I find my own Substance, that I can say to the scribe within me, “There’s no way to follow me. I have no place to lay my head. I am not form, and I accept no form. I am that Spirit, which is the all. I am infinite Consciousness.” And therefore, as you stand in your true Identity of infinite Consciousness, watching the world pictures, I in the midst of You—not you—but I in the midst of You, It is I who dissolve the world pictures, It is I who adjust and bring forth the invisible harmony. I in the midst of you overcomes the world.

And so they are of little faith because they’re panicking. They’re really looking for another material power overcome this material power or some supernatural power. They’re not looking for the Spirit to present Itself as peace, tranquility, harmony, absence of discord, presence of God. They cannot stand in the center of their own Being, and so they are of little faith. Now you know that a few of us are faced with situations that are more difficult than the one he is bringing to our attention. Really, everything we face is of the same nature. It is a material condition, a material discord, a material lack, a material threat; and always the problem never exists because only God is present.

“Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm. But the men marveled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!” The winds and the sea did not obey him. He was demonstrating that the storm was a cosmic illusion, that universal mesmerism out-pictures as good weather and bad weather, good health and bad health, prosperity and depression. He was telling us: Do not seek the good things or the bad things because they will both change and they will both perish. He was inviting us to walk in Heaven on earth.

And so today is just that, walking in Heaven on earth. We’ve all made out our little charts. Some of you turned them in about Identity, and I’d like you to hear some of them. They’ll show you the level of the class. There is a definite strength among the students. We have all come to a place now, where we know Identity intellectually. I’ll show you what I mean. Now, you couldn’t write these things unless you had the intellectual awareness of Identity.

“I and my father are one.” (This student took quotations, and that was a very good choice.)

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.”

“Now are we the sons of God.”

“Take no thought for your body.”

“I am the bread of life.”

“Thou couldst have no power at all against me accept it were given thee from above.”

“Ye are the temple of the living God.”

And that spells out out “identity,” and a person could use this to remember and practice a meditation from this until it becomes Consciousness.

“I and the father are one.”

Deny it to another, you lose it yourself.

Everywhere I am.

Now is God’s power.

Total surrender.

“I can of mine own self do nothing.”

Trust.

Yesterday’s Identity marks tomorrow’s harvest.

You see, we have Substance here.

I: I, I am God. I am Life. I am love.

D: Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days, Jesus said.

E: Even if we walk through the valley of death, God is with us.

N: Never be afraid, for God is with us all the way.

T: The tree of Life has never been moved and is still there in the center of our Being.

Now a person has to feel something like that to say it: “The Tree of Life has never been moved, and is still there in the center of our Being.”

I: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

T: “The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.” Y is,

Y: Yea, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Now, these are all an experience for the persons who has done these, and there are others; and they are all very good, which was a very pleasant thing to see because it means we can go further.

Now, one thing that is noticeable among these statements about Identity is number one, that we are all claiming what we are, and this isn’t good: I am this and I am that, and I am the other thing. Rarely do you find one in here that says, “I am humble,” I am a true witness,” “I am listening.” “I am meek.” “I am waiting for the will of the Father to express.” “I am glorifying the Father.” It’s all about “I” and is still saying identity on a higher level of identity than the human sense, but it’s still very close to a higher I than this I; and it’s not the witness who’s quiet, learning how to let the infinite I do Its own work through a me.

And so Identity is a beginning, and you know, when you come to Identity as a fact that you’re going to live with, you find it necessary to do something else, and that is what may be called to re-identify, to re-identify the world around you and to re-identify yourself, because, even though you have just said I am this, that, and the other thing, you can’t throw away a half century of being something else, just because you made a declaration; and so all your old habits continue right on up.

And while you’re saying, I am this, that, and the other, you still think you’re a material form. You still think you’re going to go to work tomorrow, or not. You still think you’re going to do the same human things you’ve been doing. You’re still thinking in terms of mortality. You’re still buying insurance.

You’re still doing mortal things, and so re-identification is now this: You have come into intellectual agreement about Identity. Fine. Now we must come into spiritual agreement about Identity, and that is re-Identity. That is going within with this new Identity you have accepted intellectually and abiding there. And there are about six or seven levels that require re-identification, because they control all the rest of the levels. Now, let’s see, then, we’re re-identifying as the Identity which we say we are; and if we are what we say we are, the Son of God, the Spirit, this is Heaven. And so in your re-Identity, you are saying the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and this is It. I, Identity am moving in Heaven Here and Now. That’s part of re-Identity. Now that must be done until you can accept that Heaven is where You are.

Heaven is everywhere you’re looking, and it makes no difference what world pictures are being presented, Heaven is where you are. And until you’re in that awareness, you’ll find you’re walking in two worlds, one intellectually, claiming to be in another, and then going right out, jumping over puddles. And so Heaven is here, and in Heaven you cannot find any germs. You cannot find any discord or distress. When you do find germs, discords, disstress, evil, error, etcetera, what are you finding? You’re finding that you’re not in Heaven. You haven’t re-identified your location. You are in Heaven, and therefore, only that which happens in Heaven can happen in your Consciousness.

There’s no time in Heaven. The only time in Heaven is Now. And so Now becomes a new time for you. That’s part of your re-identification, Now. And there’s nothing in Heaven that ever becomes something. It Is. Is is the only Reality in Heaven. There is no future. Everything Is. And so, when you are in the Consciousness of Being in Heaven, you’re in the acceptance that everything Is. There’s nothing I have to seek, nothing I have to pray for, nothing I have to struggle to get. Everything Is, or else I have not accepted that I am in Heaven. Everything Is, and Now is the only time. There is no tomorrow; and because everything Is, tomorrow Is—today, tomorrow is today.

However strange that may sound, Eternity is today. Every tomorrow is already Now Here, and that’s part of being in Heaven, the knowledge that everything Is—Now, Here. That’s the acceptance of your fullness. This is part of re-identification, and then you’re in the continuing Consciousness of Is: Now, Here, Heaven, where All is perfection. Any imperfection is hallucination. And there’s only one power in Heaven, Love. Divine Love is the only power, the only law Here, and so what have you got? You’ve got a complete re-identification that Heaven is where I am Here and Now; and the fullness Is because perfection Is All that can exist in Heaven, and Divine Love is the only power, the only law. Now you’re really accepting Identity, and because of this Identity, you can be in a state of humility.

There’s nothing to seek, strive, and struggle for. Recognizing Identity as Spirit, recognizing Power and Love as spiritual Presence right here, I rest in the Word and let the Power of the Divine Love manifest its own Universe, glorify Itself. You’re in the vast peace, which has nothing to seek, nothing to strive for, nothing to remove, nothing to get rid of, nothing to correct. There are no mountains in Heaven to be removed. You rest in the Word. You have all kinds of scriptural authority for this:

“Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils.”

Cease from the form, the material form.

“My kingdom is not of this world.”

And that’s the cease ye from time and space.

“It is I; Be not afraid.”

That’s the acceptance of spiritual Identity.

“. . . the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” Is still mine.

That’s the assurance that spiritual Identity is forever, always.

“ . . . all that I have is thine.”

That’s the assurance that nothing is withheld. It is present. It is thine.

And as you go through your Bible mentally, you discover that everything in there is an authority for you to live here now in Heaven, in the Is. You have an Is, which is the perfection of God expressing, and there is only one Is, One infinite Is, One infinite Consciousness expressing. But it appears “as” because between the “Is” and the “as,” there is a cosmic mind, and as Is moves through the cosmic mind’s interpretation of It, you get the multiple expressions which appear to us “as” this, that, and the other thing.

You’re looking at the changing universe which is “as.” But always behind it is the One perfect, Divine Love expressing as the Is, and the acceptance of now Is: Now is the Father. Now is Divine Love. Now is fullness. Now is All-ness. Now is All that God Is. Everywhere God Is being God. Everywhere God’s perfection is present in all things. My Grace is thy sufficiency in all things.

We rest in the knowledge that this is Heaven Now, and there is no condition in Heaven other than the perfection of Being in all things; and when you rest there, you’re in Identity, and you will discover that your own spiritual Substance will readjust, for you, that which had appeared outwardly as the unemployment, the lack, the limitation, the overweight, the underweight, the germ, the contagion, the infection, the problem, the discord, the unhappy relationship.

Everything that it appeared to be was cosmic mind universally expressing, accepted in your most vulnerable spots, appearing as your personal problem, because you were not standing in the knowledge, the Truth of Being, not in the Universe of God. All of this is part of the re-identification, so that you walk through this world of “as” looking at everything that appears “as” this and “as” that, knowing that it isn’t that at all. Only Is Is there appearing, through cosmic mind, “as” this, that, and the other. You live in the Is, in the Now and experience the “as,” but not accept it, because Heaven has no “as.” Everything in Heaven Is, perfection Itself expressing.

Now, whenever you’ve got a problem, then, you’ve taken yourself out of Heaven and out of spiritual Identity, and you have merely read Bible verses as some people perform calisthenics, some kind of a physical exercise or some kind of memorized prayer. The points given to us by these biblical events are to free us, to purify us of material thought. The unreality of matter is one of the prime purposes of these biblical events, to teach us the unreality of matter, and even though something in us stubbornly clings to the reality of matter, that isn’t even your mind doing that.

That’s the world mind refusing to give up. Always there is the world mind telling you, “but matter is real;” and until you face that, until you see that Jesus was demonstrating matter is unreal, nonexistent: Storms are not there. There’s no water to walk upon. There’s no cripple to heal because these things do not exist in heaven, and earth is our material consciousness about Heaven. When you are out of your material consciousness about Heaven, you discover Heaven was where you always were. There is no other place.

And so because of these very nice papers that you submitted here, it’s clear that we are ready, we are ready to spend another portion of this year losing all remnants of material thought. And it leads us to a place where we can look at those who talk about projecting the Soul body through space, and we can see that we will not have to project a Soul body. Rather, we will discover that I am in My Soul body Now. I have no other, and the dropping away of that which is not My Soul body reveals that I have ever been in it. My Soul was never in a body that decays, in a body that dies. My Soul was that which is My eternal Life and Is Now, Here.

And that Soul has Its Body, and I am not going to project It. It knows what to do, where to do and how to do it, and It’s doing it All Now. And when we start to move through the Invisible, it will not be because there is a will in a human being projecting a Soul Body. It will be because we are experiencing the actual activity of the Soul, which instantly could move from a mountain top to water, to appear where a ship was drowning; and you will be moved and I will be moved in such a way that we are where we belong at the right moment always. I in the midst of us will be the projector, not a human mind.

But first, all material remnants must be purified. We must re-Identify, and we must look at everything that appears “as” and re-Identify it as “Is.” It cannot be what It appears “as” because It appears “as” matter. We must re-Identify It as invisible Spirit through cosmic mind in an individual mind appearing “as.” And then we can look at the whole world and know that everyone is seeing their own level of consciousness. But I am not bound by their level of consciousness. I am not bound by what they externalize. What they externalize is just as non-existent as the waves at sea, which threatened to bury the ship.

Always what appears “as” is the camouflage of the cosmic mist, the cosmic thought atoms, but behind them and where they are, above them, below them, and in them, where they are is always the now perfection of Spirit, of Being, which I am. This should become our daily Consciousness. It should be our daily rebirth. Every day, we should have the second birth. Every day, the son of woman should become the Son of Man. Every day we re-identify our Universe and our Identity. Every day we come to the second birth and let that be the beginning of our day, to live in the Heaven of Now and Is.

Now let’s just dwell on some of these things in a contemplative meditation for a moment, because through your contemplative meditation, you’re preparing the way for your listening meditation. You’re clearing out the density of thought. You’re letting yourself relax from the pressures of thinking, of planning, or trying to remember things. You’re willing to walk out on Truth alone, knowing It is power, It is present, It is activated by love. You don’t have to direct It. You can rest in It, and then just let go. Standing in the knowledge of infinite Substance, which spins Itself into whatever forms are needed, wherever they are needed and whenever, My Substance is My God.

My spiritual Essence is the Father within. It lives Now, Here in Heaven, in the Is, and I am never going to leave the Now. I’m never going to “become.” I’m never going to stray one second from Now, because only Now am I that Essence, never tomorrow, never yesterday, always Now. Now never had a tomorrow, never had a yesterday. Now is infinitely and eternally Now, and that is my home, never fooled into moving out into time, Now, accepting Is, God is. Only God Is. Only God’s perfection Is. I care not what appears “as.” Only God’s perfection Is. And be sure that My Soul Is where It belongs, always.

[Silence]

Now, if I were to tell you that your son’s nose is bleeding, you could quickly dismiss it, knowing only perfection Is. I am faced with a cosmic image. I will not accept it as belonging to my son. It is not a local Truth. It’s a cosmic Image presented to me, and in this state of knowing Is Now, whatever is not of God is not Now. And that’s all I have to do, stand still, rest and watch the spiritual Essence of Being adjust the outer picture and show you no nose bleed, no dizzy spell, no this, no that. Only I, I, I am present. There is no other.

“The Lord our God is one [Lord],” but you must be at this place always, and all that Is is the preparation for moving as Soul through the Universe unimpeded by material obstruction, by condition, by material concepts appearing as form—free in Self. Be thankful, then, that everything that comes at you, forces you to rise to the higher ground. It would be so easy to relax and say, “Oh well, we’ve got It, but we haven’t.” We’ll never have It until transition.

[Silence]

Suppose we rest a little and come back in about five or ten minutes and see where the Father takes us.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

The symbolism of the ship being on the shore instantly, of course, is that when you have the Christ realization, that’s the end of all inner turbulence. However, this does appear in the outer. This isn’t allegory. This is the visible expression of infinite Consciousness through the Christ Mind, appearing visibly as event. Now the very next day, he’s disappeared again. It doesn’t say that he had a ship or anything. He just isn’t there. The disciples have gone in their ship, but Jesus didn’t go with them, and he isn’t there either.

When they finally catch up with him on the other side, there’s no explanation. We must presume that he returned as he came; and now he chastises them for following him just to receive more loaves and fishes. And he tells us to labor not for the meat that perisheth. He’s giving us the clue to what he just did. Labor not for material things. That’s the meat that perisheth.

Now, I find it easier to accept the non-reality of matter when I combine the spiritual teaching that there is no matter with the scientific explanation of what matter is. Then it seems to reinforce, and they agree. We know that matter is mental, and that this mentality is not the Mind of God, but the cosmic, and we know that all matter consists of cosmic thought; and therefore, these are images in mind, and that’s the only place where they exist, and that’s the only place where they have power.

But when we insert the idea that these images in mind are atoms, then we have a clearer cut picture of why they seem to have power, because now you take that which is called the visible sea: How do you see it except through your visible eyes? And so, the visible sea and the visible eyes, both being atoms, when you see something turbulent, you’re seeing the reaction of the atoms of your eyes in their reaction to the atoms of the water. It’s atom to atom which causes the appearance of disturbance.

Every problem that you see is the activity of that which is the problem or the cause and your reaction to it, through your eyes, to that physical thing which is causing the problem. But because matter is atoms, the atoms of the thing and the atoms of your eyes are in a reaction, and the atoms of your eyes are as much in the cosmic mind as the atoms of the thing. And so, the atoms of your eyes are cosmic thought. The atoms of the thing are cosmic thought, and it’s all a self-contained lie. All of our world, from the atomic standpoint, is the reaction of the atoms of your physical self to the atoms of the world around you, and that creates the appearance of your world.

And so we have a cosmic radioactivity, and this is probably a scientific explanation of the word “mist” in Genesis. The mist that covers this earth is cosmic radioactivity, and it doesn’t bother us normally to live in radioactivity because that’s all we are. We are radioactive atoms, and the things we see are radioactive atoms; and the difference in the vibration of one against the other makes all of the things we call time and space, and motion and shape, and size and texture and density. Everything is the relationship of one set of atoms to another set. In every object that you call tin, wood, or gold is nothing more than the relation of its atoms to your atoms, your sense atoms.

Remove the atom and there’s nothing there, and the Christ Consciousness does just that. It removes the belief in the atom, and there’s nothing there. The material world is gone, because all it consists of is atoms responding to atoms. It’s a sort of relative radioactivity, cosmic relativity. But God made nothing to decay, to degenerate, to die. Spirit is Itself, and Spirit is One continuous Substance. The atoms are not only separated from each other, but separated within themselves. They’re mostly empty space.

In other words, we have electrical energy, and our reaction to electrical energy creates the appearance called matter. And when we overcome the belief in this invisible electrical energy, which appears visibly as matter, we discover that neither the matter is there,—which is our concept—nor the electrical energy is there either. It, too, is a concept of the cosmic mind; and the entire foundation of the world is that mist or thought, invisibly an atom which is empty space, nothing but a cosmic mental image, and the multiplicity of these nothings and their reaction within each other creates our radioactive universe.

When something gets out of whack, then, we really start to worry about real problems in radioactivity. Otherwise normal radioactivity passes for this world; and the myth of it, the veil of it was pierced when the Master said, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Well, they didn’t want to learn anything about atoms. They didn’t want to learn anything about the myth of matter or mortality. They wanted more bread, and so they followed him, and he said, “No, you didn’t want to learn anything. You just want more bread. That’s not my function. My function is to reveal the Kingdom of Truth, of Heaven on earth, of Reality, of the one continuous Substance in perfect law, ever maintaining Its own perfection as the only existence here.”

The conflict between the atoms of your vision, the atoms of your hearing, the atoms of your sense organs, and the atoms around you becomes an inner conflict that becomes an outer conflict; and every conflict in our outer world is a result of with this inner conflict. And we are not made of atoms. We are not cosmic thought. That’s the appearance world of us. That’s the form world of us. That’s the material appearance of us, but it isn’t our Self.

And until you step out of the concept of the world, which is that we are made of atoms, until you consciously step out of the scientific belief that this is an atomic universe, you are standing in the midst of cosmic radioactivity, and it is moving you. It takes you from birth through death, and then it brings you back again and repeats the process. It moves you through land and space and air in a false identity, in an up and down, good and evil world, which is not the invisible present Kingdom of perfection.

And only in your Identity, as you stand and face the invisible atomic world, knowing it to be a nothingness, a very clever counterfeit of your Reality and the Reality of the Kingdom, only then are you aware of the hypnosis, and that awareness of the hypnosis breaks the hypnosis. Then you’re not trying to get more loaves and fishes. You don’t follow the man for the loaves and fishes. You follow the indwelling Spirit, which is the cause and Source of all; and It is not under the law of radioactivity, of atomic relativity, of material forms, of material laws of gravity, of storm, of flood, of fire.

All this is exposed as the veil of atomic illusion by that I which can never leave us; and that I, appearing as Jesus Christ, is revealing its power in a preview of your Consciousness, which must be your Consciousness at the moment that all of the material universe is dissolved. There will be such a moment. In a dissolution of the material universe, where you will be standing in the midst of a turbulent sea, there will be gnashing of teeth, there will be frantic effort, there will be material effort with material powers to overcome apparent material powers.

And in the midst of that, we shall stand upon the still water of Identity without oars, without physical effort, without material belief in the knowledge that God is not in the atom, God is not in the windstorm, God is not in the flood, God is not in the fire. God is in no material thing, and yet only God is present, and that is my Being, and It is the invisible Being where all of the frantic effort of the world is taking place. This is a preview of the end of the world and the Consciousness that will stand in the midst of it.

That is why he couldn’t permit them to settle for just another repeat of the miracle. He was building the Consciousness of Christ on earth, the Consciousness of the invisible, perfect Universe; and these were but signs that such an invisible Universe could be brought forth in the midst of turbulence, when no human hand could do it. And instead of recognizing that he was revealing what is ever-present, they said, “You’re doing wonderful miracles,” and he kept saying, “No, no. no. I’m not doing miracles. I’m showing you Reality is here for anyone who can accept it.”

Seek ye not those things that perish. The material world and its possessions perish. Know who You are. Extend your knowledge of who You are to your Neighbor. Hold that Identity as the infinite Reality of all that is, and you are sowing to that which does not perish. You are in that non-conflict, which is the acceptance of the One; and though the world won’t see it, this externalizes in spiritual manifestation as your Being walking on the water. It experiences Itself as Oneness within and Oneness without, so that form and water are One, One harmonious activity, the same way you will walk in the sky as One harmonious activity, the same way you will walk under the ocean in One harmonious activity. It will be an interactive Consciousness expressing without obstruction. The dominion is in Identity.

Never do we try for the external event. That’s what perishes. We don’t go out on the water to walk on physical water. We don’t go out to improve or correct or heal. We walk on the inner surface of the water, in the invisible Spirit, in Identity accepted with no opposite, so that in your Consciousness, you are in the Kingdom of perfection now, regardless of what you see. Your Kingdom is perfection, infinite. Your attention is turned away from the five-sense world to the invisible Kingdom of perfection.

You’re laboring for that which does not perish; and therefore you are in Oneness with It, and that Oneness with It is the power, because now there’s no division within; and therefore, when you are seen visibly walking on the water without, there’s no division there. Yes, only One was able to show that: no division within, no separation within, always One, invisible, perfect Self everywhere. And so it’s really the same miracle repeated all over, whether it’s loaves and fishes or walking on the water or healing the cripple: One, invisible, perfect Self made visible through that knowledge.

There are four elements: water, earth, air, and fire. There used to be a belief that we have four bodies, one for each element. We have a body of water, and that symbolized the emotional state, the body of emotions. Always water symbolized the earthly body, and then the earth symbolized the physical body. There was the body of emotions, the body of physicality; and the air symbolized the body of mentality, and finally, the fire symbolized the body of Spirit.

So, you had these four bodies, and your center of focus would come from one to the other, and it would all be spasmodic. You wouldn’t linger in one, and some would overlap, and so you’d find that you were through your water body living in the element of water, through your physical body living in the element of earth, through your air body living in the element of mind, and through your spiritual body living in the element of spirit or fire, and you would be moving from each body. Each body could only interpret its world. Each one was limited to its own world.

And then two were unified in Genesis, so that the water and the earth were unified as the lower firmament, and the air and the fire unified as the upper firmament; and then it became water and fire, water standing for water and earth, and fire for air and fire. And so always, we had two births, the birth in the water, which meant through those two bodies, and then in the fire, which meant the air and the spirit. And so often you read in the Bible about the fire on the water: “There shall be no more sea. There shall be fire on the water.”

And because two births were necessary, there had to be two baptisms. That was the reason for them, the baptism first in the water, and then through the dove’s spirit, which was the birth through fire. And we should be past the point now of the first birth, coming out of it into the birth of the fire, where we are self-sustaining spiritual Entity and where all of the so-called four bodies are One, where you overcome the limitations of having a body which only knows the world of water, another which only knows the world of earth, another which knows the world of air, and one which knows the world of fire.

The integration into One appears as the man walking on the water. It is the symbol of the new age in which all separation within is resolved into the Oneness of Spirit. Everything is absorbed into the One, and that One is the spiritual reborn Christ Self in which all else is gone. Nothing else remains, and that is how the dominion comes over land, sea, and air. The fourth, the Spirit, the fire, takes dominion over the other three, and we’re in the upper firmament, the Living Waters.

Now, toward the end of this eighth chapter, I think it’s the eighth or the sixth of John, we find that he reveals what he has been doing. He’s been showing them where the fields are white for harvest. Right here, where you had seen no food, there was food all the time. Right here, where you had seen a turbulent sea, there was calm and peace. What had externalized was the human conflict. The conflict within each man’s mind externalizes as the outer conflict, sometimes on a limited, human, personal scale, sometimes on a complete community scale. But right there, the fields are white to harvest. The Kingdom was present.

Always where you are, regardless of what you’re experiencing, the fields are white to harvest. The Kingdom is right where you are in your Identity as Spirit. And he says it another way over here. I shouldn’t try to do this without having a note on it. When he says to them My Kingdom is not from hence, he is telling us that his Kingdom is present and that his Kingdom is spiritual Identity. Now, this is the place where everybody left him, except his disciples, because they just couldn’t swallow the idea that there’s only a spiritual Universe; and if they hadn’t left him, we might not be sitting here today. But they left him, and then the church formed and left him. It has not accepted a spiritual Universe. The church is part of those who said, “It’s too hard a teaching for us, too.”

And that’s why today we have veterans returning, wondering whatever they accomplished when they went out to shoot or be shot. They were going through the futility of living for the meat that perisheth. If they won, they’d gain nothing, and if they lost, they’d gain nothing, but you don’t have to go to war to discover that by winning you gain nothing. Living mortally is the same. What do you gain, living as flesh and blood, if the flesh profiteth nothing?

All you gain is a sort of a temporary parole in which you can persuade yourself that you’re doing good things for people, that you’re serving, that you’re living a normal, sensible life; and you’re playing right into the world mind, which one day puts us all on that sea, because we were fooled into laboring for that which is not forever. And we did it because we identified as a person and identified the world around us as made of people. We identified matter; and we read books in science that told us about electrons and protons, and we said, “Isn’t it marvelous that they’re getting inside the atom?”

And here before it all happened, Spirit proved to us that there’s no inside to get into. There’s no atom. Anything that perishes, anything that changes, anything that deteriorates, anything that decays and degenerates, anything that can exhibit any form of imperfection exists only as the reaction of one group of atoms to another, having no relationship to Reality. It is not of our Kingdom.

Now, if tomorrow were that moment when all matter dissolves, it would be very important today to be in the Consciousness of Truth. And because this is the kind of Consciousness you don’t build in a day, we are given sufficient time to establish it, sufficient information to make us contemplative beholders of this massive hypnosis called matter, to take the hard teaching, and not to say, “I understand it,” not to say, “I agree,” but to consciously pierce the veil every day until your agreement deepens into that conviction which says, “I have the key to the non-reality of matter, and I can prove it at will. I can step out of material belief and watch harmony take place before my eyes. I can step out of material belief and watch invisible harmony, from far off, move into the visible area with the speed of light.”

But I am not standing in two places. I’m not saying I believe it, but I’m waiting to find out if it’s really true, because that mind that’s waiting to find out if it’s really true is not living in the spiritual Universe. It is the barrier. It’s still living on the other side of the fence in the veil, and it is standing between the very activity of Spirit that we wish to behold, and therefore, must be eliminated. We must catch the mind in all of its little traps.

Every remnant of anxiety, concern, worry, doubt, fear is the trap. Every moment of unbelief is a trap; and every time you’re caught in this world of reaching out to protect physical things, without recognizing first the spiritual nature of all that is around you in this Universe, you will find you’re struggling on the sea with an oar, and the wind is really blowing, when the easy way, the only way is Grace manifest through the Consciousness, which is not a material you, not a material brain, not a material body, not a material, mortal person going about your daily life, but that invisible, living Spirit.

Now, if some of you have brought in your little charts or notes on Identity, I figure you can put your name on them and put them up here and let me look at them and return them to you next week. That’ll be wonderful, if you’d care to do that. I’ll put some comments on them. And what we’re going to do, you see, is take all of these and sort of make a collage of them and come up with the best ones; and you’ll find that you’ll end up with not one little formula called Identity that way, but you’ll have one to overcome one barrier, and you’ll have another one to overcome another barrier. You’ll find, at various levels and various barriers, a certain one about Identity will do better than another one; and you’ll find that Identity, being infinite, there are many, many wonderful things you must know about it.

“I can never leave you.” Divinity is your Substance. Every moment I am with You. Never, never are we separated. Time cannot separate us. Invisibly, I accompany you wherever you are. This day I am with You. You are my Son.” Now, that’s just one. Just think of the millions that are possible, and as you keep working with this, you’ll find you have a complete Bible. Identity is your Bible. Identity is every textbook that will ever be written, and Identity is the key that turns the lock and lets out the illusion of matter and lets the Truth seep into consciousness.

Every moment you spend working with that Identity, either in the manner I suggested or in any manner you deem suitable, you will find it sticks. It sticks, and there will be a time where you won’t be saying, “Well matter isn’t there.” Identity within you will proclaim it. Identity within you will go before you. Identity will prevent material disturbances from entering your household. You’ll discover the magic of it as it becomes living Consciousness. It has never seen a storm at sea. The Identity, called Jesus Christ, saw no storm at sea. “It is I. Be not afraid.” There was no storm to remove, you see. There was only false identity, and out of false identity can only come a false appearance, but true Identity re-establishes the Reality of harmony.

I’d like to keep those for a week, if I may, whatever you put up here; and then I’d like you all to accept this book as a token of our appreciation to you. Everyone who’s here has a book here, and thanks very much.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

Good afternoon. Before I forget it today, before you leave, pick up your gift copy of Mystical I at the desk here.

We have an interesting subject today. Although it’s about a man walking on water, it has a great deal of meaning to us, now that we have come to the place of Identity where we are ready to stand on Identity looking out at the world, regardless of what it presents and knowing that Identity is invincible, without opposite, without a need to protect Itself, ever-present, ever functioning, ever perfect, needing no help, whatsoever, to defend Itself, to improve Itself, to correct Itself, for it is All that is here.

Once we have, to a degree, made this our starting point, walking on the water becomes a very significant event. Religiously, we only say, “He walked upon the water,” and there it stops. It does no good for mankind whatsoever. Scientifically, we say, “He didn’t walk upon the water,” because it’s impossible.” And so either way, whether you happen to be religious and say he did or scientific and say he did not, you’re stuck with an event that has no significance in your life and it would be ridiculous to assume that the Way-shower would be functioning in such an abnormal event without a purpose.

Now, it is then insufficient for us to believe he did or didn’t, but rather to know why that took place. We’re given several clues, and even the Gospel of Mathew misses the major clue. While it reports the event, it does not report something significant which John caught, and so we have to compare the same event in two Gospels. We find in Mathew, it goes this way:

“And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples

to get into a ship,

and to go before him unto the other side,

while he sent the multitudes away.”

They had all just been fed, five thousand of them, with invisible loaves and fishes.

“And when he had sent the multitudes away,

he went up into a mountain apart to pray:

and when the evening was come,

he was there alone.”

Now, the significant thing here is that after this seemingly supernatural event, why did he go into a mountain to pray? You know that prayer is the activity of Consciousness in Oneness with God, and you know that in order for loaves and fishes to appear to feed the multitudes, he had to be in that kind of prayer. And therefore, having been in prayer, having produced through prayer the visible requirement of the moment, why would he now retire to a mountain to pray? Now, this is not given in Mathew. In a moment you see the ship is in the midst of the sea, tossed with the waves; and so he skips right from Jesus going to the mountain to pray to a ship tossed on a sea. And to even a very studious reader, there’s no indication here of why, after the Master feeds the multitudes with loaves and fishes, he should retire to a mountain to pray.

But we’re given this instantly in John; and because it is so different, I would like to do the John version of it. Now, in John, after they had gathered their baskets and eaten:

“Then those men,

when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said,

This is of a truth that prophet

that should come into the world.”

Now, this is where John differs from Mathew:

“When Jesus therefore perceived

that they would come and take him by force,

to make him a king,

he departed again into a mountain himself alone.”

Now, the significance there is that he had perceived that they were personalizing him. They were seeing Jesus, a man, a Messiah, one who could feed multitudes. This was the man who would free the Jews, and this was dangerous because this was not his mission. His mission was to present the universal Christ as the Substance, the Identity, the law, the activity of every person on the earth. Here, a segment of the world, seeing his miracles, was ready to crown him king, a person, a man with supernatural powers; and so he had a problem.

What was he going to do about it? How could he make known to them the Truth that he was not a man, that he was the Light, that the Light of his Being was the Light of their Being, that they were One and the same, and that all that he did they could do? So he went to a mountain to pray. Just as you and I, confronted with an insurmountable obstacle, will sit in the Silence, standing still, waiting for that inner Self to emerge and take dominion, he had reached the point where doing miracles was not enough.

He had to reveal to them the Source of every miracle, that the Source was the Infinite Self, which was the Self of All, that he was not one selected alone, that the messiah in-dwelt every individual; and he needed guidance. And it was in this moment, while he, in deep Silence waiting for the Voice, was confronted by another situation; and yet, this very situation was the answer to the guidance he sought. The ship on the sea was in trouble, and it was miles away. There was no time now to catch another ship. There was no time now to be that man which the world saw as Jesus. He had to be miles away now for his disciples who were on the ocean. They were on that lake out there, and it was an ocean to them.

They were fishermen. They were skilled in all the maneuvers on the lake. They made their livelihood there. And here, in spite of it, they were in trouble. They were rowing frantically, and the turbulence was upon them, and they needed help. And this was the answer to that which he was meditating upon. What shall he do to show the Source is not the man, but the Spirit which is the Substance of all men? And now, he had to be somewhere else now. He had to be Spirit in action, and so, they saw him walking upon the water; and they were surprised, undecided, frightened. Surely, this was a myth, some kind of a hallucination. They didn’t recognize him in the slightest. Even when he got on board, they didn’t recognize him. It doesn’t even say here that he got his feet wet. They saw this apparition walking on the water, and religion says it really happened. Period. It happened.

Now, you try to go out and cash that at the bank. You try to use that to make yourself feel better. You try to do something with the fact that it really happened, see if that will keep an atom bomb away from our country or away from this world—unless we see what happened when they saw that apparition walking on the water.

And so, we’re staying with John on this instead of Mathew, because John gives us the reason that the event took place. It was a response to an inner need for guidance to show the world that Jesus was not a miracle maker, but that the Spirit of God had answered every need before the need arose; and always where there was One in Consciousness, receptive, yielding, humble, trusting, confident, One who had stepped out of mortal identity, the answer would flow, not just as a casual suggestion, but as an activity in Consciousness. And here that activity manifested as the disciples frantically rowing on a turbulent sea, needing help; and there was no man who could give them help for such a situation, only Spirit Itself.

“The disciples had entered the ship, went over the ship toward Capernum now dark and Jesus was not come to them.”

There’s a symbol in “dark.” Day is always the spiritual journey, and night is always the material journey. For them, it was night. We know it was the fourth watch. We know that there are four watches beginning at six pm, three hours a piece. And so, this was between three and six am. Actually, it was before sunrise, and that again has a symbolism. Just as the sun falls in the west, which is death, and rises again in the east, which is Resurrection, so, they were in the darkness just before dawn; and now we’re preparing for a Resurrection, for a sun coming up, for light to take them out of darkness.

The sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. So when they had rode about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, drawing nigh into the ship; and they were afraid, but he saith unto them, “It is I. Be not afraid.” Then they willingly received him into the ship and immediately, immediately, the ship was on the land whither they went. The instant he stepped on the ship, it was no longer in the sea. It was on the shore. So, we have some fantastic things happening there in response to the inner prayer to shatter all material concepts.

Now, there are many levels to walking on the water, and if we can take an in-depth study, I believe we can come up with much that will be of advantage to us in the days of Revelation that lie ahead of all of us. For one, I think you may find that this event, coupled with all other events, in the complete demonstration by Jesus Christ, is a preview of your new Consciousness. In your Consciousness of Truth, right this instant—not tomorrow, but this instant—the fact is revealed that your spiritual Self is now walking on the water. You might catch up with your Self eventually to realize that, but it is a fact now. The Christ of each of us is walking on water, which means it has overcome the first birth.

If you go back to John the Baptist, you will see that he is a symbol of the first birth. “. . . I, he said, “must decrease.” “And he follows me whose shoe latchet I am not worthy to unloose, he must increase.” The second birth. The material man, the spiritual man.

And then John, the symbol of the first birth, is also the symbol of water, so he baptizes with water. He even baptizes Jesus with water, but it isn’t long before there’s an inner baptism of the Spirit. And then we see the meaning of baptism with water and baptism with fire. The second baptism, the baptism with fire, is the baptism of light upon the water; and we see many, many other symbols. We see water as a symbol of mortality, water as the symbol of the human birth. Each of us comes into this mortal sphere the same way. Actually, we come out of a water bag, and this is the baptism of the water; and now we must be reborn of the water and the Spirit.

Now, the early Christians were in their first birth, and so they were called little fish; and these little fish were in the water, but they were really trapped in the water. They had to learn to come out of the water; and now we find this spectacle of the man, called Jesus Christ, walking on the water, which means he had risen from the first birth of water. He was no longer trapped within the water, but he was now standing on the water. He’d come out of the little fish stage. He’d come into the rebirth, the resurrected Self to whom water is no longer an obstruction, an obstacle, something that can drown you, but rather a harmonious expression of the One Self.

And so, the symbolism of the water and standing on the water, walking on the water is mortality being dissolved into immortality. It is the symbol of the new age of rebirth. All who’ve come into the conscious awareness of the indwelling Christ are walking upon the water, dissolving mortality into the illuminated Consciousness of immortality. And this is the now fact: Never is there a physical form that walks upon the water. You will not physically walk upon the water. Jesus did not physically walk upon the water. No one anywhere at any time in the human form will walk upon the water on this earth.

Now, let’s take him for what he said. I am the Light. You’ve seen light shine upon the water. Does it drown? Does it go under? It’s right there on top. I am the Light. I am the water. I am the wine. Always, the knowledge that light is the Substance of his Being, and light is the Substance of all that we call matter and there’s light upon Light—not form of man upon physical water.

Consciousness, One’d with Itself, externalizes. Always, that which is in Consciousness is made visible. You’re not seeing a physical form walk upon physical water. You’re seeing the infinite Consciousness made visible as one harmonious activity of two different kinds of form. You’re seeing a third dimensional form, called ocean or lake or water, and a fourth dimensional form, called spiritual body. The fourth dimensional body of the Soul, made of Light, appearing where there is a three dimensional concept, called water, and they appear to be in contact, but it is the Consciousness of One being made visibly manifest, the Consciousness of the Christ.

Peter wants to do that, just as anyone would want to do that; and the mistake, of course, is that this is an external event, that there is someone doing it. And no one is doing it in the outer. The activity is all taking place within the Consciousness; and unless there is an inner activity, it cannot be made visible as form walking on water. Peter, not knowing this—thinking you can just go and do it—wants to do it, but he hasn’t had the inner activity. Peter is still a man. Jesus is the Spirit. Peter is still the mortal being. Jesus is the immortal Self. Now, for you and for me, the message of walking on the water contains within itself all that we have to know about ourselves, our Identity, what we’re doing here and why and how we are to do it.

Now, let us see, without flinching from fact, that if water is what science tells us it is, and if the physical form of Jesus was what science tells us it was, that there could have been no walking on the water. And therefore, if it happened as it is reported here, then it broke all of the material laws of science. And naturally, science would be outraged because it cannot acknowledge this as a fact because it cannot explain how he could shatter every material law. What is science going to do now? Once it acknowledges this as a fact, it cannot explain its material laws anymore. The law of gravity was broken. You didn’t pick up the morning paper and see that somebody walked on water. You don’t expect to. Science doesn’t expect to, but here somebody did and there’s no explanation scientifically. There’s no explanation religiously, except God did something supernatural.

But there is a scientific explanation, and it is shattering—but not to those who dwell in Identity. If we take science’s word that man is formed of the atom and the water is formed of the atom, then scientifically what you have is atoms walking upon atoms. But we know that there are atoms that would fall through that lake and drown. We know that when Peter tried it, he almost drowned, except that Jesus reached out to grab him. We know that the boat they were in, which is human safety or the symbol of it, was not safety for them at all.

We know that everything there is, is a symbol. These are all props to teach us something. There’s water, and there’s a ship which is a symbol of safety, and there’s a shore that they’re rowing toward; and yet, all of these things, the oars, the symbol of safety called a boat are helpless in the face of material law called wind and raising water. And yet, something comes along with no props to help it and saves them. We are being shown that the external struggle, the external belief in the power of matter to help us is a sham. There is no external help, and the help comes not from something external. It comes from the inner Consciousness of One who is sitting on a mountaintop, miles away. That’s where the help comes from, not from the boat or the oars.

And then suddenly there’s no wind. And suddenly there are still waters and gradually we begin to conceive within ourselves what really happened. What we’re learning is that the complete outer picture was first a series of mental images in the minds of the disciples who were rowing upon the lake, not hallucinations, not visions—fact as we see it today, but revealed by the Master as a cosmic hallucination, not just that storm on that day in that sea, but every storm on every day in every sea is revealed as, as much a cosmic hallucination as that one; and the same power that sent a form called Christ moving across the water, then, is here to do the same for every storm at sea today.

“If you believe on me, the works that I do, ye shall do.”

And this is the challenge, that there is a Christ form to move out and walk across every sea and every ocean into every part of the Universe where there is a storm, where there is a turbulence, where there is a wind, where there is a whirlwind, where there are men frightened by the elements. Where there is a witness of the omnipresent Spirit as the only living Presence,— and there was One who had just fed the multitudes,—and that One, without any visible support, defied the laws of space, of time and of matter, and of motion, defied everything that science has drawn around us as a fact, and without a word of explanation, demonstrated that time is not what we think, space is not what we think, matter is not what we think, material form is not what we think, and material condition is not what we think.

In fact, none of them have any power in the Presence of that Spirit, which walked out upon the sea, climbed up upon the ship, and instantly took it to the shore. What had happened to change the complete picture? The law of externalization. The unilluminated consciousness out-pictured one scene, which we have learned to call cosmic television, and the illuminated Consciousness out-pictured another scene, which we have called infinite Mind television.

That is what happened. Two different scenes: But I, if I be lifted up, take you out of the cosmic mind scene into the infinite Mind Reality of perfection. And so, demonstrated there that day on that sea was that matter is a mental image, whether it’s a calm sea or a turbulent one, that a ship is a mental image, that the conditions of a ship on a wind-swept sea are all one mental image, that all material form is a mental image, including the person.

And the hard teaching was that man is Spirit. And just as man is Spirit and not physical form, the ocean is Spirit and not hydrogen and oxygen, and wood is Spirit, not wood. But Science says it’s all made of atoms, and there was one picture of atoms changed by the Master to another picture. And so, if we accept the atomic structure of things, how could he change it? You see this, too, blasts the atomic theory, and science is left completely without any theory at all, just dumbfounded. There’s nothing it can say except, “Show us how to do it,” or “It never happened.”

Now, while science says, “It never happened,” and religion, not knowing why or how it happened, we are left without a God. We are left without spiritual power. We are left at the mercy of a cosmic mind, and consequently, in a state of cosmic hypnotism. We are left in a situation where a boy comes home from war, and whereas before he went to war, he was as his father called him, perfect. In today’s paper, the comedian Jerry Lewis: He doesn’t think war is very funny. He had a boy who was a perfect boy, a rock band leader. Everything about the boy was just the way a father wanted him to be. One thing got in the way. He was drafted. When he came back, instead of this vivacious, alert, eager, enthusiastic boy, there was someone who not only couldn’t adjust, but didn’t care. His father would say to him, “You’ve got to put your head back on your shoulders” and he’d say, “Well, why?” He’d seen something. He had seen a futility, a helplessness, a purposelessness called war in which nobody wins. This is cosmic mind.

You take away the incident of walking on water, and you’re stuck with that cosmic mind which out pictures war. You take away the incident of walking on water, and you’re stuck with this world. What’s the answer to it? Well, this comedian, Jerry Lewis has an answer to it. It’s running away. He says they won’t get another one of my sons. He says, “I’ve got one now who’s fifteen and a half. If this war is still on in two and a half years, there’s going to be a beacon’s truck pull up in front of my house, and we’re all getting in it, and we’re going straight out to the water and won’t stop.”

Now, you see, there’s a better Way. We can all get into a beacon’s truck. We only do that when we do not understand Identity. The Spirit of you walked upon the water that day. The Spirit of Jesus and the Spirit of You and the Spirit of Me are One and the same, and the Spirit said, “Be not afraid. It is I. I, the Spirit and where I am, there is no storm. You’re looking at an illusion. What were you worried about? Where was your faith in the Identity of your Being?”

The Spirit said to them, “Am I not the only power? Have I not been telling you that I in the midst of You Am mighty? Have I not been telling you that I Am the activity of God in You, and that I am not material? I am pure Light. I am the Substance of infinity. I can never leave You. Right here, out on the sea, I Am; and that sea that you’re looking at, It is I. Be not afraid. It is I. All that is here is I. I Am the sea I Am the water. I Am the ship. I Am the individuality of each One of you frantically rowing away. I Am the only. I Am the One. I Am the omnipresent Spirit and beside Me, there is no other. Of course, I walk upon the water. I always walk upon the water. I’m not walking on the water any different than I walked upon the land. It’s just that when I walked upon the land that you did not notice that I wasn’t walking like others.”

If he hadn’t walked upon water, they would not have known that he was walking the same way on the land. There is no obstacle or obstruction to I, the Spirit. I, the Spirit lives in an unobstructed Universe. I, the Spirit, walk through steel. I, the Spirit, walk through walls of concrete. Why? Because Light is like the x-ray. Doesn’t the x-ray show certain things that you cannot see with human eyes? The x-ray, itself, is but a counterfeit imitation of I, the Life, the Spirit, the Essence. And so, one standing in Identity overcomes a whole sea, a sea of illusion. Is it any different than a common cold or a backache? I walk upon the water, walk where every germ seems to be, where every ache seems to be, where every bit of suffering seems to be. It is only I. Be not afraid.

And they followed him after this. They still didn’t know, and they thought he was now surely going to free the Hebrew nation. So he had to make it still clearer, although he knew nothing would except disappearing from the tomb. He had to make it clear what he was teaching: that matter does not exist. It does not exist. There was no sea there. There was no ship there. There was only the invisible God there, only the Spirit. Where each of us stand is the Spirit. And if it’s a room instead of an ocean, nothing has changed. No appearance changes the fact of Reality.

Your chapter in Contemplative Life was “Contemplation Develops the Beholder,” and contemplation, it turns out to be, is not pondering. It’s not sitting there in deep thought. Contemplation is that capacity to behold all appearances, lakes, mountains, storms, tranquility, and, as Joel puts it, to watch them all as you would a sunrise or as you would a painting. You don’t get out your brush. You watch it. You don’t go out there and push the sun up and down. You watch it. You behold. And then in contemplation, you not only behold, but you develop the capacity to let God within, I, the Spirit, interpret My Universe to You.

As you dwell in the Silence of contemplation, beholding as you would behold a sunrise, only in that stillness of beholding are you opening the mind to let Truth emerge, interpreting Itself, free and independent of the five-sense interpretation. The five-sense kingdom of this world showed a raging sea, but the beholder, standing in the contemplation of that raging sea, letting the invisible Self interpret Itself, discovers that the sea ceases to rage, the wind ceases to storm, and even time stands still and space diminishes into nothingness; and they stand now on the shore, because in God there is no space and no time and no whirlwind, no raging sea.

If you believe on me, the works I do, ye shall do, which means that this was not an event for one, but that the Consciousness, that could behold the raging sea and the whirlwind, which can step out of time and space, is part of the property of all who were joint-heirs in Christ. You and I, as we develop the capacity to withhold judgment, not saying this is bad and this is good, but just to behold and let the inner Spirit interpret to us, discover the law of Grace is functioning.

Often, someone says, “Why shouldn’t I call something good?” Because the moment you designate it as good, you only do so because it’s better in your eye than something which you didn’t designate good; and therefore, you have fallen into the trap of something that is good and something that, by your unwillingness to designate it as good, means that you think it is bad; and so, you’ve got a duality, a double consciousness. You’ve got the belief that there’s a good and a bad.

When you magnify that, you’ll find it’s the difference between a sea that is calm and a sea that is turbulent. Always, the outer expresses the inner. Matter is not there. Matter is a mental image, therefore what’s in your mind becomes more important than what’s out there. And as the world tries to conquer matter, what is it conquering? A mental image. And so, we’re told, “Withhold your judgment. Don’t conquer the world. Don’t conquer matter. Don’t seek a victory over the things of the world. If you must seek a victory, realize that the outer world is nothing but the expression of mind; and therefore, let’s get back to mind.”

And then, if you want to go further still, the mind that out-pictures evil isn’t the mind of God. Why try to conquer it? Don’t conquer matter, and don’t conquer mind. Conquer nothing. Be still. To know that mind and matter are not of God is your victory. To look at that which mind and matter conspire to produce and to know it isn’t there, this is the beholding. This is the Contemplative Life. To look at all material things, conditions, objects, persons—with no judgment that it is good or bad—this is the contemplative way. It’s a self-denial, and many people aren’t happy unless they can spend their hours telling you about someone else who has done a foolish thing or someone else who is stupid or someone else who is wicked. Always the discussion takes the turn of the third party, who isn’t there.

Now, we all know that third party who isn’t there is either foolish or stupid or a cheat, and this becomes the way of conversation among mortal beings. Never realizing that we are judging ourselves. We are falling into the trap of a consciousness which is dual; All mental concept, whether it’s good or bad, is a trap. When you say, “Margie is good,” you’re saying someone else isn’t. Always the subtle implication that this one is better than that one is falling into the trap of materiality; and the hard teaching, the teaching that enables you to walk upon the water of Spirit, is that materiality does not exist. It can neither be good nor bad. And every time you violate it, you’ll find that the teaching of walking upon the water has eluded you.

Now, then contemplation, the withdrawal of judgment, the awareness that only Spirit is present would seem to leave you with nowhere to go. You remove all of the material world, and there’s nothing left. Seems like a stalemate, a blind corner, and where do you go from there? Unfortunately, you’ll never know until you get to that point. Those are the terms, and that’s why it’s a hard teaching. The price you pay is complete annihilation of the belief in matter, and then you don’t seek matter. You don’t strive to win or earn matter. You don’t struggle to possess matter or to hold matter. You don’t love matter. You don’t hate matter. You don’t fear matter.

You’re making your transition to where you are coming out of the birth in water as mortal being, out of the fish trapped in the tomb of a natural birth in matter; and now, you’re leaping above the water, above the material world, above mortality, above every concept of the past, above every concept of the world, into My Kingdom, which is not of this world but is here. And when you are willing to walk upon the water, which means to erase the concept of matter in your consciousness, then you are coming into your transitional experience in which the keys to the Kingdom are given to you, and that which has been invisible is opened up.

There were two steps in the work of Jesus. The first was always to bring harmony. He didn’t take them into the invisible, spiritual Universe. He brought material harmony first. In other words, he first obeyed the law of normalcy in this world. He took it out of the abnormal situation into the normal rhythm of goodness. And having brought harmony, he then was able to take it from sense to Soul. Now, all of us have sought the harmony without taking the next step from sense to Soul, and you know how many people drop out of this work when the harmony comes. But it always becomes discord later, again, because they have not been willing to erase the fullness of the belief in matter. They’ve been willing to postpone their belief in matter, just for a moment, to lose the problem; but they don’t walk upon the water.

Now, as you behold all material worlds, all material objects, all material things in your non-reactive acceptance that the invisible Spirit alone is present as my Identity, the Identity of the water, of all who are here in this quiet contemplation, you have opened the way for Truth, and the Truth is what quickens you. It quickens you out of death,—Matter and death are one and the same,—out of mortality. And that quickening breaks the law of the atom, the law of karma. That quickening puts science right back in a cage. That quickening breaks every physical law because that quickening is what changes the images.

He leadeth us to still waters. Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils. Recognize the spiritual Identity. Every disciple had forgotten that I and the Father are one, and I can never leave you. The Spirit quickeneth, and for that reason Paul could say, “In spite of all the infirmities that beseech me, I am not moved by them.” He was a contemplative. Now you know that Jesus didn’t behold this scene in one instant and become a contemplative. This is part of the discipline.

We are those disciples rowing on the turbulent sea. Each of us has his own turbulent sea. Each of us is struggling frantically to overcome it, and it isn’t there. The hypnosis is that it is there, that we are in a form and that the material world to us is a turbulent sea and each day we’re struggling to overcome part of it, to build a little place where we can call our sanctuary our peace table, to put up a little nest egg, to maintain our health. If you walk upon the water of Spirit, you’ll stop all of that.

Identity tells you, you are Spirit and only Spirit. Are you trying to maintain the health of Spirit or isn’t trying to maintain your health a denial of spiritual Identity? You’re putting up a nest egg. Is Spirit requiring a nest egg? No, that’s the human mind doing it, isn’t it? Start to think about all of the things you’re doing mentally, physically to deny your spiritual Identity, and see what is stopping you from walking upon the water of Spirit, how in one grand recognition of the spiritual nature of the Universe, we know that all matter comes under subjection; for there, walking in defiance of gravity, on water that can never hold a solid man in a wind storm, on a rising sea, all is suddenly peaceful and calm. All of the material world on one lake is brought under the dominion of one invisible recognition of spiritual Identity as the only.

Every heartbeat, every backache, every pain, every lack, every limitation is taken care of in that one second of spiritual Identity as mine and yours, as a universal fact. Nothing left to do. The hypnosis is broken, and we discover that atoms, which allegedly are the substance of matter which can be fashioned into a bomb, atoms are not there. Atoms are images in the mind, just as matter, itself, is an image in the mind. We never drop a bomb. We drop images. Those same atoms, which in matter cause what we call decay, degeneration, they’re not present in the presence of I, the Spirit.

All of the power of matter is built upon the existence of matter; and here the Spirit proves the non-existence of matter, and thereby the non-power of the matter which has no existence. Matter is built upon the atom, and the Spirit proves that there are no atoms. The power of matter, matter built upon the atom, all are nothingness in the illuminated Consciousness of the Christ. There is no atomic world, no material world, no material power in the world. There is only My Spirit, and that covers every ache and pain and lack and limitation in the world.

And then, when religion said it happened, but has no meaning for it, and science says it didn’t happen, we are deprived of one of the greatest demonstrations of enlightenment, which explains the passage in Genesis, that man was given dominion. Spiritual man was given dominion, and your dominion lies, then, over land and over sea and over air, because there is no land, and there is no sea, and there is no air; and your dominion over them is because they are non-existent. Only I, the invisible Spirit, exists, and that is the difficulty of that teaching.

Walking on water, they proved the non-existence of the water, of the material world, and of the conditions in the material world; and we, who are trying to live in Identity, discover that this is true. Whenever there is an inner awakening, when the Identity speaks, when in the stillness the Voice utters Itself, the sea of the world is melted, the earth is melted, the problem is melted. There is something that bubbles up and bursts within, and in that quickening, in My peace, we are literally walking on the water.

You don’t see Christ walking on the water, but the Infinite is walking throughout Itself on the waters of Spirit, revealing the perfect Presence that is ever here. In Identity, you never waver between doubt and faith. You don’t pray and doubt at the same time. In Identity, perfection is the law of Being. Any imperfection is rejected because it denies Identity, and Identity never changes. Identity is always Identity. Spiritual Selfhood is always spiritual Selfhood, and everything that declares something is wrong is telling you, you’re not spiritual Selfhood. And so, you’re not trying to make anything better. You’re trying to recognize the hypnotism of what isn’t there, the hypnotism of the rising sea.

Now, it may seem difficult to the rest of the world to try to understand that a sea isn’t there, a boat isn’t there, or a person isn’t there. Only God is. Only Spirit is. Only Identity is. But ten thousand healings by Jesus and twenty thousand by Buddha and ten thousand by Joel and five or ten by you and me is enough to tell us.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

Let’s look at some of the statements of Jesus from the standpoint of correct identification. Jesus, of course, represents to us an individual who has accepted Divine Life, and therefore is Christ-ed and becomes the Christ, having died to a personal sense of self, having died to a sense of a personal form, so that a Christ-ed Self no longer can be crucified. It isn’t in a physical form. It cannot be entombed because there’s no physical form to keep in a tomb. There is only the pure Divine Life of God.

Now, as the Way shower, then, who is showing us that we have to come to the acceptance of ourselves to be the Divine Life without corporeality, he walks through the earth appearing to us through our concept of that invisible Self as Jesus, a man. But he’s consistently telling us, “I’m not a man. I am Light. I am Life, and if you believe on Me, meaning if you will know that the Life that I am, which is doing these things, is the Life that is You, well then the Life that is You will do these things where You are.” And so, we’re looking now at One who has done what we are learning to do, even in a small measure, who is assuring us that we can learn to do what he has done.

And now, at the tomb of Lazarus, he says this to Martha, “I am the resurrection, and the life.” “I am . . . the life.” I’m not Jesus Christ, a man. I am the Life. I am the Life of the Father. I am Divine Life right here right now, but I’m not only the Divine Life in Jesus standing here, I am the Divine Life which is the One Divine Life. I must be the Divine Life, which is the Life of him whom you call your brother Lazarus down in that tomb. I am the Life of all because there is only One Life, and that is I. That Life can walk out of a tomb because there’s no tomb for that Life. In other words, that Life in You walks out of the tomb of death in You. That Life in You walks out of the tomb of a cripple, out of the tomb of a financial problem, out of every tomb. The Life that Jesus is showing—is here and is the Life of all—walks out of the tomb of every human problem, and there is no place where It does not walk. There’s no closed door to that Life.

It’s walking this earth now. It’s the only Life there is. I am the Life, and I am the Life that is the Life of You; and when you accept the Life that I am as the Life of You, You can have no other Life; and that Life will show You that It is what we have called the miracle worker. It is the Savior. It is the Messiah. It is the only Life. It has no end and no beginning in time or in space. In that Life, there is only the perfection of that Life, the harmony of that Life, and only the Life of that Life. It has no terminal point. And so the acceptance of this Life that Jesus is showing forth as your Life, you are doing what he called knowing God aright, because God is that Life, and to know that Life is to know Life eternal.

The moment you have re-established Identity as the Life which Jesus was witnessing at the tomb of Lazarus and in his complete three year mission, and which is the Life that he’s living this moment, that Life is your Life, and you have found the Life that never ends. And the more aware you become of that Life, the more It will reveal to You the multiplicity of Its benedictions. As your Consciousness opens to greater acceptance of this Life as your Life, It reveals more of its fullness.

Always, in this Bible, we have been given the knowledge that the Life of God revealing Itself as the Life of Jesus and as the Life of those who are called victims, who had come to Jesus for healing, that that Life is always perfect, no matter what concept the mortal mind may overshadow. And wherever there is an acceptance of the Life, even through One, that shadow is lifted and the eternal, timeless ever-present perfect Life, again, is revealed to be there functioning in all its perfection. It never has gone anywhere. It is never less. It will not be more. It will always be perfect Life at every point of Itself, and It is your Life. And then we’re told anything you shall ask in my name shall be given to you, and my name is your Life. Whenever you have accepted your name to be that Life, everything that you might ask for is already accomplished. All you need to do is sit down and watch what your acceptance will do.

Now, again and again and again, Jesus made the claim, “I am the Life.” He was showing you the miracle worker, and “Ye are the Life.” And so, the miracle worker is the Life of God, and that is your Kingdom. Your function is to be the king of the Kingdom by the acceptance of the Life as your Life; and your world is to be redeemed, all of it, by the recognition that you never had a world. You had a world of images. The only world there is, is the pure, perfect life Divine. It is the only One that is present. That is where we are and who we are. The Identity of each of us is that Universe of the Divine Life. Now, whom shall you fear? What circumstance shall you fear? Or what problem can you possibly anticipate, and still accept that the One Divine Life is all there is throughout what we call time and beyond, and throughout what we call space and beyond? That is all that will be here tomorrow. That is all that has ever been here.

Your acceptance of the One Divine Life, then, is the crucifixion of every yesterday that was not the Divine Life. It couldn’t have happened because only the Divine Life was happening and is happening. Every yesterday in mortality is just a lingering concept. The next birthday is a concept. Your calendar is a concept. Your wristwatch is a concept. There is only Divine Life, and in it there is no time. There is no space. There is no material progression. There is no aging. There is no recovery from pain. There is no heartbeat. There is only Divine Being.

Can you stand there in the knowledge that I am the Life and realize that Life in your Consciousness, so that it wells up inside you as a fact, not a statement? And that is the purpose of the meditations we are to do this week. I’d like you to each take this assignment: Take the word “Identity.” Just bring it down, vertical, “I” “d” “e” “n.” And with the I, make a word up; with the D, make a word up, like “I am” or “Infinity,” but something that’s true about your Identity, so that you might end up with something like “I am” as the I, and then D would be “Divine,” and then E would be “Everyone else is.” I don’t care if it’s four or six words but start it with a letter so that each letter of Identity is the beginning of a word or a sentence about your Identity. And when you get through, you’ll have eight words or sentences or paragraphs, as much as you want to write, but begin it with the “I” and then do it in such a way that you remember that “I,” for me, stands for “Infinite.” “D,” for me, stands for “Deny it and you lose it.” “E,” for me, stands for “Everyone is the same infinite Identity,” and so on until you have some kind of an inner remembrance that the word, “Identity,” for you, means these things.

And then, in your meditations, practice those meanings of Identity for you in a contemplative way. Be still and let them take root until you are able to be in the Silence accepting Identity as Life Divine, not life human, not life with a birth and a death, not life with an up and a down, not life with an aging process, not life with an end somewhere, not life with a Medicare program, just Life Divine as Identity.

And after you’ve had enough meditations on Life Divine as Identity, continue having a few more meditations on the life that you are not. I am not life in form. I am not life that comes and goes. I am not changing life. I am not life becoming better life. I am not physical life—until you know who you are, until you can stand in front of any tomb, in front of any person, in front of any circumstance, knowing the Life that I am is Divine, and that is All there is as far as the eye can see and beyond; and for me, there’s nothing beyond that to do, for It doeth Its own work. It revealeth Itself. It will blossom forth and make the desert as a rose. There is no human me to do it. It doeth Its own work.

We have been told in many ways that as we sow to the flesh, meaning to the mortal life, we reap corruption. As we sow to the Spirit, meaning Divine Life, we reap Life everlasting. For us, there is no ending. For us, there is no beginning. For us, there is no improvement. You begin at the level of Divine perfection. You cannot improve. You accept Divine perfection. You do not start at the bottom and work your way up to it. Humanhood never becomes Divine, and Divinity never becomes human.

Now, if that isn’t clear, let’s go over it again. Spell out the word “Identity” vertically. Make up a word, sentence, or a paragraph, or whatever you wish in which the first letter begins a statement about your Identity with the letter” I.” “I am” or “Identity is” and then another with the letter “D,” and then the letter “E,” until you have finished it and have something that you can even later consolidate to a point where, for the next twenty years, you can remember what Identity means to you, so that wherever you are, you can contemplate that word meaningfully. And the reason you should do this is that there is no situation on this earth that cannot be faced successfully with the knowledge of Identity.

If three wolf hounds come up to nibble at you, Identity must include their Identity and yours, and right now, as the One invisible Divine Self, period. Always only One Life is present, and that One Life must always include every form that you see, whether it’s the tree or the bird or the dog or the insect or the bill collector. There is only One invisible Life everywhere, and as long as you are accepting It, you are sowing to the Spirit, and you will reap Life everlasting, the conscious awareness that the Life of God I am living now; and nothing can ever separate me from It. This life and I are One and the same.

We have been going outside of ourselves to get things, but there is no outside of ourselves. Going outside to get things is the ignorance that our Life is the One infinite Divine Life. There’s no outside. My own life has to yield itself in my experience. There’s nothing outside it to get. It is self-contained in all perfection, and that’s the meaning of being a contemplative. You’re accepting that your Divine Life is self-contained. It is everywhere, and it will pour forth its fruit to a place that is called your human selfhood in the middle somewhere. This will be the fruit on the tree, but only because you’re not living as that human selfhood. Everything will seem to come from this circumference into this center here, but there is no center and there is no circumference. It is One.

The only Life in this Universe, then, is identified as your Life. When you meditate with that and It declares Itself within You, instead of you declaring it, you will know you have reached the point where you have accepted It. You may think you’ve accepted It, but until It within You declares Itself, until It lifts you into a new order where your mind is no longer saying anything, but rather receiving from the Infinite—the assurance that It is so—then you will know that you have overturned and overturned, and He has come whose right It is to sit upon the throne. There is an infinite acceptance. You have reached the realm of the fourth dimension of Consciousness where the Spirit within you says, “Yes, I am come.”

This is out of your hands now. You’re not in human government, and don’t try to retrogress and go back into human government to defend against things. Don’t try to get things. The government of God, the government of Spirit is infinitely perfect and infallible. It doeth the works. It performeth. It perfecteth. Just know, know You are the Life. Rest in It. Accept It in confidence, and Its peace will envelop You, and Its peace will give You that peace which the world cannot give, the peace of Grace and fulfillment.

You will find your Self looking out at the relationships of yesterday, and they will change before your very eyes. The very Substance of them will feel different. All animosities quickly fade. The usual things that pressure us become the sting of the serpent that no longer has power. When they caught us in the low focus of a human selfhood and we met them all on their own level, we were seeing two powers. We were witnessing good powers, material powers, mental powers, powers that overcome other powers, but in our new elevation of Consciousness, we’re in the One Self that has no need to overcome anything, for all that is on this earth is an imitation of that One Self that you have discovered. You never have to use a power over the imitations. You never have to use a power, period, because the One Self is ever maintaining Its glorious perfection where you stand and in all that concerneth you.

Now this little pour of a class, learning of its own Divinity, is being prepared to walk forth within the Consciousness of the world where two powers are accepted, knowing that there is no power on this earth other than perfection in all things. We walk with our hands behind our back. We do not worry about faltering businesses. We do not worry about any condition. We look through the form, through the appearance, through the shape, through the size, through the density, through the condition; and we accept that One, perfect Life is the only Presence, and It is I. It is the Life of the horse. It is the Life of the dog. It is the Life of the bird. It is the Life of the cat, and I have no need to assist that Life. I merely must recognize It, and Its perfection will manifest where I stand.

The Life, recognized, becomes Identity Infinite recognized, and that becomes Grace manifest, not just in sixty, seventy, eighty years, but unto eternity. That is why the dice of God are loaded. There is no power on this earth that can alter the Presence, the perfection in all things of Reality. Every individual that you are willing to see in this Light, with this Consciousness, you are lifting up, redeeming, improving, to lift them out of their mortal sense of self, not with words, not with arguments, but with the recognition of One Life. You never proselyte with words. You never become a great missionary, but secretly and sacredly, you are lifting the consciousness of the world.

Now take those two lacks, those two problems, those two disturbing people, and after you’ve completed this Identity chart for your Self, apply it. Apply it to everything you consider wrong in your life, and if you do it correctly, you will see that there is nothing wrong in your Life, absolutely nothing wrong in your Life, not one thing. You simply had the wrong life. You hadn’t accepted Divine Life as the only Life; and living in the false sense of life, you even inherit things that are wrong in the false sense of life. Then, you look out and crucify that false sense of life, and watch your garden grow.

Next week we’ll do chapter eight in Contemplative Life, but always, as we walk into another chapter, we must remember that the book, The Contemplative Life, as all of the writings of Joel are, are about your Life, are about the Christ of your Being, about the Christ of Jesus Christ; and always, the Bible becomes a very central source of refreshment for us. Yes, we want to read the books, but that Bible must never be forgotten, because you can take any inspired statement out of the Bible and go all the way with it.

The Bible must still be an important part of your weekly reading, and if you’ve been neglecting it, it isn’t necessary to read chapters. A phrase, a word, a situation, anything that emanates from an inspired Consciousness like Jesus Christ has to be important. And really, a week gone by without something from him is an opportunity wasted, even if it’s just a sentence. If you only took “I and my Father are one” and brought it into this chart of identity and worked with it for a day or two, think of the priceless opportunity to work with “I and my Father are one,” about your own Identity, knowing that these words were spoken from the Source, were spoken by your Identity. Is there a better teacher, a more dependable one?

So, bring that Bible back into your weekly work, even though you read next week’s chapter eight. Now work out your assignment. Look at the people around you with the knowledge that their Identity never was any different than yours. Look at the birds and the trees and see that their Identity is never any different than yours. All is your One Life. It is All You. There’s nothing in this Universe that is not You. Don’t You see? You are the Life of the Universe, and the Life of the Universe is You. There’s no place where you stop and someone new begins. It’s all your Self, and only when you recognize your Self everywhere will your Self everywhere come and pour its abundance where you stand.

This infinite Self recognition takes you out of persons and personalities. You’re looking at your Self everywhere, and this must become a ringing Reality, Identity. That’s the story today, and it will be as long as we walk this earth. “Thou shall have no other gods before me,” no other Life before Me. I am the Lord, thy God. I am Life, and beside Me, there is no other one, no other life.

We have all been slaves to form, when we have freedom in Life. The slavery is the slavery to the mental idea of form, to the material idea of form, to the material things. We are slaves to forms that have no existence, when our freedom lies in I and the Father are One Life. You and the Father are One Life. Everyone and the Father are One Life, and there is no other life than I. I am the only Life on earth. Whom shall I fear? What condition should worry me? I am the only Life on earth.

Do you see how you pyramid yourself up? You step up the ladder step by step until you can come to that place: I am the only Life on earth. I am the only Life in all the Universes that exist. There is only One Life; and every time you’re fearing or doubting or wondering, trying to improve, you are saying, “I am not the only Life.” And you’re having other gods before me.

Now, you can’t just make this statement, “I am the only Life in the Universe.” It will be very hollow, but build your ladder and climb it slowly and carefully up your eight steps of Identity. Do it yourself; and next week, bring it with you, or whenever we get together again. I’ll try it, and I’ll bring mine with me. We’ll see what we have come up with, what we can put together and all agree on, One Identity that we can all understand. That will be our strength.

I’m sure that when Jesus stood upon this earth and looked out, that Spirit which stood where we saw form, that infinite Consciousness knew It was the only Life. It was Life knowing Itself, everywhere. There was no other life it had to worry about. There was no other being but It, and It is You and Me. I am the only Life everywhere. That includes my client and my employer, my brother and my sister. These are the masks of forms. The Life is I, everywhere.

Wherever you go, you are. When you try to jump into that realization without building your ladder, you can’t hold it, but as you build step by step, you’ll find you can hold it for a little while; and you have to go back again and hold it again and again, until one day it takes root and you don’t have to go back to the first rung of your ladder. You’re on the second as a permanent dispensation. Maybe someday, you’ll reach the third rung. You never have to go back this far, and you wake up with the knowledge there’s no other Life on this earth than I am. Practicing that Reality is practicing the Presence; and Grace does flow in the measure that you attain the pure Consciousness that the One Life is your Name.

Thank you very much.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

Today’s chapter in Contemplative Life is “The Dice of God Are Loaded” meaning that the perfect creation is ever going to be a perfect creation and that, regardless of what we do, whether we stumble or not, Identity will never change; Life will never die.

Now, in spite of the fact that God is all and God is perfect, in spite of the fact that we are all in an agreement that God is all and God is perfect, there is a universal hypnosis which compels us in one way or another to deny that fact with our actions, with our deeds, with our daily activities, in spite of the desire to honor the Father in all our ways. And then that frustration sets in, which says, “Here I am, doing my best, even understanding the Truth, but I’m all snarled up in a lot of words and memories and quotations, in spite of the fact that I’ve studied so many years. How much longer must I go on striving, self-doubting, wondering what’s wrong with me or with the message.”

Now, this has come to me quite a number of times: In spite of the fact that every week, somebody will say, “Oh this was a wonderful class. Just marvelous. It lifted me right outside of myself,” I get those statements from people, just as well as I get the frustrated statements of why am I not getting where I belong? Today, we want to establish the prime reason that we are unable to attain and maintain the Consciousness of the Father within. It only begins where the world actually leaves off. The world leaves off by looking for God “up there,” and we begin by accepting God as the very Substance of My Being right here.

Now, that is only a beginning. Once you have accepted your Self to be the Child of God, it is incorrect to assume that, from that moment on, everything you do is blessed and under Grace, because that acceptance of being the Child of God usually gets no further than the larynx. We have stated, “I am the Child of God,” and now we’re waiting for a halo. I still call my father, “my father.” I still call my child “my child.” I still call my sister, “my sister.” I still call my aunt “my aunt.” I still have human relations and fail to see that having human relations is the denial that I am the Child of God. I have not left my mother, brother, father, sister. I am still calling a man on earth “my father.” I am still born of woman. I have made the statement that I am the Child of God, but I still have a human mother and a human father.

And so, you go on living this paradox, this contradiction, and suddenly, you hit your head against the wall. The acceptance isn’t quite that easy. The acceptance requires the acceptance of all of the contingencies of that Truth, of all of the responsibilities of that Truth, so that having accepted my Self to be the Divine Child of God, I cannot be the human child of a human parent; I cannot be living a human life; I cannot be sowing to the flesh.

You’re in an airplane. Everything is smooth, and suddenly there’s a jar, a jolt. You know something is wrong. You look out through the right window. There’s a fire in one of the motors. The plane is just rocking around crazily. Down she goes. You’re plummeting down, down, down, and now you’re a thousand feet from the ground. It seems inevitable that you’re going to hit the ground. You’re down to nine hundred and eight hundred and seven hundred, and there’s nothing can stop it, nothing.

And when you’re almost one hundred feet away from the ground, that’s when we want to stop right there and reconsider who we are. One hundred feet away is death unless I know who I am. There’s going to be a wreckage. There are going to be forms that never move again. Am I going to be a form or am I going to be life? Which am I? When that plane does hit, when those forms do not move again, where will I be? Will I be life, living, or will I be form, dead? We have to reach the conclusion about that.

We say, “ God is all.” Well, then God can’t be a dead form. We have been told to lose our life to gain it, and we finally learn that it means lose your concept of form to accept your Self as the Life, the Life of God. And finally, when that plane does crash, I am Life, God, not mammon, not corporeality. I am Life, and I am living just as much as before the crash of the plane.

You can actually go through that inner experience of knowing I am the Life and not the form; and you can see the division that is necessary in consciousness, where you are prying apart the belief that Life and form are one and the same. You can see form dead to outer senses, but you can see Life moving invisibly, eternal; and when you are unable to accept that you are the Life and not the form, you are denying that I and the Father are One. You are accepting separation. You are accepting mortality. You are rejecting that “Now are we the sons of God.” Now are we the Life of God. Now are I and the Father One and the same Life.

The same thing happens with the crash of a bomb. The world thinks of shattered forms, but the Divine Self, the Life of you is never going to be in a bomb raid. The Life of you is never going to fall from the sky. The Life of you will never be in an accident. The Life of you will never hear about a malignancy. The Life of you is always going to be perfect as your Father.

Now, it is important to remove the belief that beside the Life of you, there is something else, and to see that form is but the concept we entertain about our Life. Life is our name. Form is the concept with which we clothe ourselves mentally. They can have the form, but Pilate, you can have no power over My Life. This is the Life of God we’re speaking about. Thou seest me, thou seest the Father, the Life of the Father. And finally, you reach the conclusion that you cannot serve God as human form. You can only serve God as Divine Life, and you identify as Life.

“I live; yet not I . . .”, said Paul: Christ liveth My Life. What a strange remark. Did he mean Jesus was living his Life? How could Jesus live the life of Paul? But Christ liveth My Life; The Spirit of God liveth My Life. Why? Because Christ and Divine Life are One and the same. Divine Life is My Life, he was declaring. You see Paul, but this is Divine Life, and this Divine Life can support seven churches. This Divine Life can spread the message over the world of Truth. Paul identified as Divine Life. I live in form only by appearance. Divine Life is what is living Itself as Me. This was his statement, and the Master said lay down your sense of form, lay down your life.—That’s your sense of form.—to gain your Life, to know who you are, Divine Life.

And again, when the death of the form comes, even naturally, without an accident from the sky or a bomb or anything of that sort, what’s going to die? A concept. What’s going to live? That which is ever living. Your Life is going to live. Now then, why should we wait for the bomb? Why we should we wait for the plane to fall down from the sky? Why should we wait for the coroner, when all we’re going to learn, when it happens, is that I am Life and My Life continues to be Life? Isn’t this the time to be aware of it? Should we wait until we’re on the other side of the veil to suddenly awaken? And once you, then, accept that the great teaching of the Master was that you are the Life that I am, and I am the Divine Life, you are the Divine Life. Identify as that Divine Life. Live as that Divine Life. Reject what is not that Divine Life and see, see the difference.

And so, suppose at the moment each of us were to take and list within our mind two things we lack, human things, mortal things, two things that you lack. Just list them in your mind. You might have a dozen. List the two big ones. And then in your mind list two persons, two persons who, to you, are some kind of a disturbance: personal adversary, employer, government, whatever, and then list beside the two lacks, the two persons who disturb you the most, and also list two of what you consider your major problems. I’ve got two lacks, two disturbing persons, and two major problems. Now, ask yourself this: Aren’t those lacks, aren’t those disturbing persons, aren’t those problems your denial that you are Divine Self, that you are Divine Life?

You quickly see that, in the absence of the identification as Divine Life, you have no center; and being out of center, everything else must be off center. Your complete focus has to be wrong. Now there begins the pyramid of errors from that. The incorrect identification of your Self makes it impossible for you to identify anything as It is, because you’re the one who’s now identifying. How can illusion identify Reality? And so, the entire life is lived in a compounding of the original problem, incorrect identification.

Now, take the two lacks. Whatever they may be, they are your denial that your Life is the Life of God, because the Father says to the Life of God that is You, “Son, . . . all that I have is Thine.” Now where are your two lacks? Your two lacks are not in being that Son. You have accepted the form of you, instead of the Life of You. The form of you lacks those two things, yes, but the Life of you does not lack those two things. All that the Father hath is in the Life of You.

These two disturbing persons: Christ wasn’t disturbed by Pilate, wasn’t disturbed by Crucifixion. You’re disturbed because, not having identified your Self as Divine Life, these two persons to you are forms, not Divine Life; and so the form of you is disturbed by the form of them. Proper identification would say, “There goes Divine Life. Here is Divine Life,” and you would find the invisible power of Divine Life making Itself manifest because I in the midst of Thee am greater than these forms.

Your two problems, whether they’re physical, social, economic, they are based upon a form as your Identity. Always, you’ll discover that all of our lacks, limitations, problems, disturbances are really different names for the same one problem. We have one problem, one sin, and no more: incorrect identification, the rejection of our Divine Selfhood as the invisible Life of God. We refuse to say, “I am the Life,” as Jesus did. We refuse to say, “I and the Father are One Life,” as Jesus did. We refuse to say, “Christ liveth My Life,” as Paul said. We do not consciously refuse. We refuse without realizing we have refused. We honor the error. We honor the evil. We honor the problem. We honor the lack. We acknowledge everything but My Divine Self, and in the absence of My Divine Self, chaos reigns. We go up and we go down.

Therefore, the first step in living a Life that is immune to the ills of this world, the problems of this world, the vacillations of this world, the antagonisms and the inhumanities is to go deep within until you can know that I have been instructed by God, that My Life is His Life, that the only Life I have is Divine, and if I fell in a plane crash today as a form, I would still be Divine Life. Neither life nor death, neither mortality nor the end of mortality can separate me from the love of God; and therefore, I must be living after what is called the death of the form. The only way I can do that is to be Life.

God is Life and God is All, and therefore, Life is all, and that must be My Name. Life has no death. There is no such thing as death in Divine Life, and all that is not Divine Life is non-existent. God being All, only Divine Life is, and that must be the only Life I am. But when I accept My Self to be Divine Life, I cannot also accept My Self to be human form. I cannot be divided. I cannot be Divine and not divine. Wherever you have encountered a difficulty of accepting and then standing in Identity as Divine Life, you will discover you were suffering and only for that reason. Ye are the Life. Ye are the Christ, and the Christ is the invisible Divine Life of every individual who walks this earth.

Once we have made our acceptance that Divine Life is My Life, we are beginning to come under the Grace of that Divine Life, but even though you have done that, you are still not protected by Divine Law. You can still be caught in all kinds of human problems, even though you believe you are Divine Life. You’ve got to give me the same privilege. You’ve got to give your enemy the same privilege. You’ve got to know everyone in your world as Divine Life, and that means you’re taking them out of form in your Consciousness. You’re not sowing to the form, to the flesh. You’re sowing to the Spirit. You’re accepting Divine Life as the Identity of your father, of your mother, of your children, of your sister and your brother.

When you have accepted their Life as Divine and your Life as Divine, you are going to see Divine Law functioning in your Being. Why? Because when you have accepted Divine Life, you have found your spiritual center. When you have accepted Divine Life as theirs, you have found their spiritual center, and because there is only one Divine Life, your spiritual center and their spiritual center are One spiritual center; and everywhere in this Universe, then, is your spiritual center. You have included the least of these, my brethren. And as you do it unto others, so shall it be done unto you.

The judgment you are now meting out is being measured back to you. You are judging all to be the Divine Life of the Father. You have accepted the infinity of God, the infinity of Divine Life. There is no place where Divine Life is not; and only then have you accepted your Identity, because your Identity is never Divine Life sitting in a chair. Your Identity is infinite Divine Life, and that is the Identity of your mother, father, brother, sister. That is the Identity of everyone you know, whether they know it or not.

And when you have accepted your Life to be infinite Divine Life and know My Life to be infinite Divine Life, we are in spiritual brotherhood, for we are One and the same Divine Life. I cannot judge you, nor you me, because I’d be judging My Self. And then the law of Divine Life flows, because you are not the Son of God until you are the infinite Divine Life, and then: “Son . . . all that I have is thine.” Two steps, then, in your reconciliation to God: One, I am Divine Life. Two, I am infinite Divine Life. The form will move in the harmonies of that infinite Divine Life without taking thought. You’ll know when to get a glass of water. You’ll know when to get the cab or the bus. You’ll know what to do and when, because I, infinite Divine Life knoweth your needs. I am the Kingdom of God within You.

Let’s find that Kingdom of God this way. The Kingdom of God is your Divine Life. It is within you, meaning it is your Self, and when you have found this Divine Life to be your Self and have extended the Truth of that to everyone you know, that infinite Divine Life is the Kingdom of God. It begins only in your conscious awareness that It is your Divine Self. It ends with your conscious awareness that It is the Self of All, and you have found the invisible Kingdom of God. Your spiritual center is connected throughout the Universe. The power of God must function in the Divine Life of God that you’re accepting as your own. Now, I and the Father are One infinite Divine Life everywhere. Now you can understand, “Son, thou art ever with me . . .” because we’re One and the same infinite Divine Life. Don’t forget that “infinite” Divine Life.

Now, let’s see what happens when we accept. We were told to forgive, forgive our enemies, forgive those who despitefully use us. Why? Originally, it seemed like we were being lifted out of a kind of humanhood that would hold grudges. But you see forgiveness, now, as the Identity of God, recognized as the invisible Life of that individual you’re forgiving. You’re not forgiving him. You’re recognizing God as the invisible Life of that person. That’s what forgiveness means, then, and as you recognize the invisible Life of God as his Life, it is because you have accepted that invisible Divine Life as your Life: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” We are erasing the belief in humanhood, in mortality there. In mortality here, we are truly accepting infinite Divine Life as the only Life in the Universe as My Life, as Your Life, as His Life.

Now, how do you fall out of the sky? How does a germ enter infinite Divine Life? By what manner does a germ kill infinite Divine Life? How do human problems enter infinite Divine Life? How do evils and errors and mistakes and miscalculations, how does lack and limitation enter infinite Divine Life? These things only enter the absence of the acceptance of God’s Word that you are My Son now.

And so, in order to accept I am Divine Life, I am infinite Divine Life, and so are you, you must reject all that denies it, because we have been living in a mortal sense which, by denying individual Divine Life and infinite Divine Life, has brought us into instant karma, instant. The moment you deny that I am Divine Life, you are in instant karma and vice versa. The moment we violate the Truth that the Spirit of God is the only Substance, we are in the karma of separation from It through a consciousness that is unaware of It; and we look in vain for that Grace which allegedly is our sufficiency in All things.

But when we accept infinite Life as Divine and there is no opposite, and we deny all that says there is an opposite; when we refuse to accept in consciousness the lacks, the limitations, the pains, the problems; when we can face them with the knowledge that they do not belong to me, even a bad heart cannot belong to me because if I have a bad heart, I am accepting that I am not Divine Life. If I have bad lung, I’m accepting that I am not Divine Life, and I’m merely perpetuating the experience of pain and suffering.

I’m facing my true trial which is saying to me, “Come on out here and be mortal. Give up that Divine Life idea and suffer a little.” And I’m saying, “Willingly will I suffer.” I’m accepting and acknowledging the heart with its problem, instead of the Divine Life. I still believe that I have a human heart, a human liver, a human pair of lungs. Why? Because I do not believe that I am Divine Life. And so, we still say, “I accept. I accept.” But go all the way. If the Life of God is All and It is Divine, and It is Your Life and My Life and His Life and Her Life, why are You afraid of an atom bomb? Who’s dropping it, if there’s no other Life to drop it? You still have the belief that it is there. Why are you afraid of a heart attack? You still have the belief that a heart is there, and it can be attacked.

If Divine Life is all, where are you going to find Divine Life in a human form? Is it possible to pour Divine Life into a human form? Do you not see that Divine Life is telling you there is no human form, that the universal hypnosis is that there is a human form where only Divine Life is? You can’t have both. Both cannot exist. You cannot be Divine Life and human form, and the universal hypnosis is that you are human form; and therefore, we sort of try to reach out and claim Divine Life while believing we are a human form. We all do it, and we all suffer for it; and this is the rise and fall of civilizations.

We’re stepping out. The early fumblings and stumblings in the acceptance of Divine Life grow into a certainty, an assurance, a confidence. You’d rather stumble in Divine Life than to be positive in a human form, and finally we get our stabilizer. The moment we have accepted Divine Life, we have accepted our Christhood. We’re where Paul was. “I live yet not I.” This Divine Life is Omnipotent. It doesn’t need somebody to protect it. It doesn’t need protection against the germ. It doesn’t need a doctor’s prescription. It doesn’t need any human health.

All that would, in any way, endanger you is part of the hypnosis of living in a human form, and the stronger your confidence in Divine Life as your Self, the stronger you will see your capacity to reject the need for anything to improve, correct, or repair you, because there’s nothing in you that needs repair. If you need repair, your consciousness has fallen below the level of the acceptance that the Life of God is the Life of You.

Now then, we want to face the need for repair with that understanding: I am in incorrect Self-Identification. That’s my error, and that’s my problem, and a doctor’s prescription is not going to change that problem. It may change the name of it. I will still have the problem of incorrect Identification, no matter what human help I receive. And if a wealthy relative leaves me a fortune at the moment of death, I will still be in incorrect Identification; and that Divine Life, which I have not accepted up to the moment of death, I will not be able to accept after the moment of death. I will reincarnate into the flesh because, unless I am living in the acceptance of Divine Life before, there is no transition. Transition is only in one who has accepted, who has lived in Divine Selfhood prior to the moment that is called death.

Every time you accept a condition on this earth that is a denial of your Divine Selfhood, you are rejecting the priceless gift of God. Now that should be made clear, then, that the way to the crown is through the rejection of every human condition as an impossibility in my Divine Life. Divine Life is Omnipresent. Divine Life is Omnipotent. Divine Intelligence is everywhere. Divine Intelligence is here now, but only for Divine Life.

And so, when Jesus looked at Peter and said, “Who do men say am I?” And then he said to Peter. “And who do you say I am?” In that moment that Jesus could be seen by Peter as the Christ, Peter had seen for a second, “You are Divine Life.” And doesn’t that explain every miracle? Is there a single miracle that was not accomplished simply by the recognition that this cripple is not a cripple? This is Divine Life. It was a total re-Identification of everything. Divine Life, standing as Jesus Christ, looks at a cripple and says, “You’re not human life. You’re Divine Life.” And then, what happens? The spiritual center of One being the spiritual center of the other, the Omnipotence of Divine Life reveals Itself.

How in the world could silver be found in a fish’s mouth, except as a revelation that Divine Life, accepted, becomes the visible, needed form through Grace? The Life of the fish is Divine. The Life of I and you and him and her is Divine, and the resting in that knowledge becomes the law of Grace made visible. How could ravens feed a man, except that the Life of the raven and the Life of Elijah are One invisible Life Divine. There was no form called raven. There was no form called Elijah. There was the One invisible Life appearing to human sense as two forms, One fulfilling the other. The forms are never there. Only the invisible Life is there; and when there is recognition of it, it appears as the necessary forms in whatever quantities or qualities are needed.

All of the healings, then, in the Bible represent correct Identification. The One who stands in the knowledge of Divine Self, who lives in the knowledge of Divine Self and looks out and recognizes nothing but Divine Self does nothing more than stand still and behold the revelation of Divine Self fulfilling Itself as perfection. And therefore, he could not accept credit. “Why callest thou me good?” Divine Self doeth Its own works. The Father within, “he doeth the works.”

Now, this is for us to see that the works that Divine Self did, the works that I do, ye shall do, because the same Divine Self will do those works and greater works. Whoever will stand in the knowledge that only Divine Self exists will not accept the forms as life, but will know the difference between invisible Divine Life and visible form and know that all form is a concept we entertain about invisible Divine Life. And then, forgiveness is easy. There’s nobody to forgive.

If a man is insane, the state doesn’t call him a murderer. If a man is under the influence of alcohol, it is realized that he had no responsibility for what he did. What if a man isn’t there? Who are you condemning? A form? A concept? When all that is there is Divine Life, and therefore the condemnation, the unforgiveness, the jealousy, the hate, the greed, everything directed at that form is your denial of the Life that is there, who pays the price? You do. Your denial of Divine Life as being the Infinite and Only is the violation which plunges you back into the good and evil of the world.

And so, the dice of God are loaded. They’re loaded for perfection. Behind every door is I knocking, knocking, knocking, knocking. I stand at the door of every human consciousness, knocking; and the mortal there, not knowing I stand there, goes right on denying Divine Selfhood, living in a sense of mortal selfhood, opening himself up to every mortal belief, while freedom stands knocking at the door.

Your Divine Selfhood is knocking at the door of your Consciousness. Your Divine Life is saying, “Accept Me, for I have come that you may have Life more abundantly.” And therefore, knocking at the door of your Consciousness is more than just an acceptance of Divine Life. Those two lacks that you had, the fulfillment of them is knocking at the door of your Consciousness saying, “If you accept Me as your Divine Selfhood, all that I have is thine.” You are seeking to get rid of the lack, and here It is knocking at your door.

You’re seeking to get rid of the bad health, and here is perfection knocking at your door. Everything we have lacked and needed and wanted has been knocking at our door. It is our Identity as Divine Self. The very things I have been seeking, I am, but I do not know. And all of my fears are based upon this false identity, which has not accepted true Identity and, therefore, has to go looking for the things that true Identity is knocking on my door to give me. Behind every human consciousness is the Self of God saying, “Open up and let Me in.”

And if you fail, you come back and do it again. No matter how many times you do it again, ultimately there must come a time where you open the door, even a crevice. Just because we get tired of being hit on the head so often, we get curious enough to want to look and see what’s behind the veil of mortal thought, and then we find the inundation of Truth. Always, nothing can prevent the ultimate establishment of God’s Identity in You as You. The delaying action in time changes nothing. “Before Abraham, I am,” and that is the Truth of your Being. “The dice of God are loaded” because perfection is all that exists; and in Divine Selfhood accepted, then Divine perfection becomes the acceptance in your Consciousness. Whatever is imperfect is not Divine; and therefore, in your Consciousness, whatever is imperfect has no Reality.

If there’s no dust on the stoop, it’s silly to go out with a broom. If there’s no Reality in imperfection, why go out to chase it away? You stand in Reality. You stand in the Light and let the Light take care of removing that which had appeared to be a shadow or darkness. And therefore, in answer to the questions I’ve been receiving: Why do I not succeed, even though I try and am faithful, and I’m honest and am sincere? You cannot say, “I am Divine Self here.” And turn around and say, “but you are not.” You can’t go to the storekeeper and think he’s just a menial man waiting on you. You can’t think of him as overcharging or over-weighing or holding the best cuts of meat from you. You’ve got to see that Divine Self takes care of Itself and that there is no second self; and if you’re sowing to the physical things of the world, you must accept the physical laws of the world and suffer from them.

The whole orientation, then, is to live in the conscious awareness of Divine Self everywhere. The realization of Oneness is not just where I stand. The realization of Oneness must be infinite. It’s almost impossible to do this without noticing quickly that everything changes. The moment you say, “I am the infinite Christ,” instead of “I am the Christ,” you feel a broader base. You feel beyond a lifespan. You’re not thinking of measuring in terms of twenty, thirty, forty years. “I am the infinite Christ.” This doesn’t begin or end at a certain place. This is the infinite Christ. Forget the Master’s form; and, now, witness your own Selfhood.

All of the cluttering, disturbing fragments of thought, all of the little trepidations of the heart, all of the fears slowly dissolve because I, infinite Christ lives only under the law of infinite Divinity; and even if you only attain twenty or thirty or forty percent of that, it’s five million times what you had as a human being, because we know you can’t attain one hundred percent of that as long as the world is still in its universal hypnotism, but we can go up the ladder. We can actually climb the ladder of Truth so that we start with Identification that’s Christ, the Divine Self. We extend It to the next rung, which is Identification of Christ as the very Substance and nature of all who walk the earth.

You can look at the bird. You can look at the chicken, and you can see the form isn’t what’s there. The form perishes. The form is transient. Don’t get stuck on the form. Sow to the Life that is there. In other words, recognize the Life, which is there, is not even the life that apparently goes out of the form when it’s dead. The Life is never in that form. The Life is One Life. It never enters into form. The Life is simply Life being Itself,—and you are making that form. The world mind and you are collaborating to create a form, where only Life is,— And get to sow to the Life, the Life, the Life, independent of the form. Marvel that the Life can show forth a beautiful bird or flower, but don’t think that the Life of God is in that bird or in that flower because, when the heel of somebody crushes that flower, it’s not going to crush the Life of God. It’s going to crush only the form that we have created in our mind.

Get to see that the Life is independent of the form. It does not live in the form but It creates, for us through our consciousness, the appearance called form through processes too numerous for you and I to sit down and detail out. But as you are sowing to the Life, you are bringing into play the power of that Life through your Consciousness; and that Life, through your Consciousness, becomes the law of the form, the law of your heart, the law of your lungs, the law of your body through your conscious awareness of the invisible Life of all Being; and then you, too, are saying, “Pilate, you could have no power over me, because I have the Life and I recognize only the invisible Life of you, and the Life of you and I are One Life.” How can that One life have any power over Itself? It needs no power. It is the only power, and you can rest right there.

Now the work gets more exciting. As you do this and do this and do this, you find you’re becoming independent of form. You’re not trapped by it. You’re not acknowledging form as a power because you’re not acknowledging form as the Presence. The form can make all kinds of claims. It won’t bother you one bit, because the life that is there where the form appears is your own Life, and it’s very friendly to you. You don’t have to go running away from a ghost anymore.

Everything you want to do is already done in your Life, and if you will just be still and know Life is perfect and is finished, it will flow through in the very forms that are needed, whatever they may be. There are no limitations to Life because it is infinite, and I come quickly. The question is, are you putting up a barrier by being a human being, while claiming to be the Divine Life? Because the Divine Life can never flow into a human being. It will only flow within Itself, and if you are still on the hang-up of form as a Reality, as a living Presence, then the message of Jesus Christ, for you, is a dead issue. You have crucified it in your consciousness, and there can be no Resurrection until you remove that Crucifixion, and in turn, turn around and crucify the false sense of self and let the Resurrection into Christ, realized, become the law of your Being.

We have been given a world of images to walk in; and behind it is the invisible Life of God ever-perfect, ever-present, ever functioning, independent of everything that we do in these images. Occasionally one slips behind the veil of the images in Consciousness; and lo and behold, we think he’s done a miracle, and he tells us, “No, I haven’t done a miracle at all. You can do the same. Follow me. Do what I have done in Consciousness. Accept the invisible as the Divine and the only, and take no thought for your visible form life. You will discover the power of the Invisible meets every need, but be true to It everywhere in the least of these, my brethren; and you will find “the dice of God are always loaded in your favor.” Perfection must manifest where God is accepted as the Only.

As Ezekiel puts it, there’s an overturning and an overturning and an overturning; and that’s the overturning in consciousness as we get rid of the concepts of matter, the concepts of form, until we come to that place where we can say, “There is only One Life in the entire Universe, and that Life I am, he is, she is. We are all that One Life, joint heirs in the One Life: “There is no other life than the Life that I am.” It is the Life of God. It needs no protection. It needs no planning. It needs no repairs, and there is no other Me. Then you drag out of the form every concept. You’re all in One piece now. You’re not clinging to a Christ concept on one side and a human concept on the other. You’re not divided. You’re not a split personality.

You know you don’t live in a form, and you know the form is but a cosmic image. They will never trap you in that form; and because of it, even that form in which you are not living will walk through this world untouched, because there will be a You there, an invisible Divine Being which will be the law, even unto that manifest, physically appearing form. “The world is new to everyone when Christ has entered in;” and the world, that this atomic era has called the world, ceases to have power over that Consciousness which is living, moving, having Its Being in the realization that the Divine Self, I am.

Now, you might find it interesting to do something. You can go through the experience of death, not actually of course, but you can imagine this plane crashing. You’ll find a tremendous relief and release to feel your Self as Life, independent of every human tragedy; and somehow, when you do that, you’re anticipating a day when just that thing will happen, when the realization of Life as your Self lifts you out of the earthbound mortal who’s struggling along under karma, trying to figure out how to break the karma, how to erase the karma, how to nullify the karma, how to turn each little event into his advantage.

You don’t turn events into your advantage anymore. You are the Infinite. You simply behold your Infinite Self revealing Itself as a better business, a better marriage, a better mother-father relationship, a better child relationship, a better human relationship. Everything that is in the Infinite reveals Itself as the new harmony of this human existence, simply by standing in the knowledge that I am this Life which is independent of form.

Often you invent these little experiences within your Self just to go through them vicariously, to release your Self from the pre-concepts of the world, and then they’re not as strange to you later, as they come along. We should reach a place where the whole concept of death is revealed as nothing more than the termination of a false image called form. It’s even possible to reach the place where you can see death as a very beautiful release into your uncluttered Self.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

Suppose you imagine that you are tuned in to a cosmic mind and that you are sort of a television set, and now it broadcasts to you, broadcasts to someone else, and everyone tuned into it receives the same information. If it were a radio or TV transmitter and you tuned into it, you would have an image on your screen; and any other individual would have another image, so that there might be fifty, sixty, seventy million images on screens, but all about one program. All the images would be pretty much the same, but all about the same one.

Now, as the cosmic mind broadcasts, using your mind as its TV set, the thing that it broadcasts is you. You become the image of the cosmic mind. We know it isn’t a Divine Image. Now we walk around in this cosmic mind image, each of us tuned to it, supported by it, fed by it, sustained by it, each assuming this personal sense of me. This image, not realizing that it has merely been televised to us by the cosmic mind, and then it continues that program. While each of us is tuned to it, because we know no other way, it now televises a flood; and all those in a certain area, looking at the same cosmic mind, experience the flood. In another area it televises a hurricane, and all those in that area tuned to the cosmic mind, they experienced the hurricane. Always, to them, it seems external to themselves, and they seem external to each other, but they are all images in the one cosmic mind.

You will discover that when you look at another individual, you’re looking at a cosmic mind image. When they look at you, they are looking at a cosmic mind image. But then something even stranger takes place. The image that you are is the cosmic mind image passing through your consciousness, changed by your consciousness to the level of your receptivity; and so your consciousness of the cosmic mind brings forth an image called you. And so when I look at you, I am looking at your consciousness of the cosmic mind made visible as your image. And then I do a strange thing, I make another image about your image in my mind. And so I see my mental concept of your image; and someone else comes and looks at you, and they look at the same image that I looked at, and they make a mental image about you.

I think I’m looking at you, and they think they’re looking at you, but neither of us are. We are both looking at our own mental images about you. In my mind is an image about you, and that’s all I can see of you; and whoever looks at you can see nothing more than the mental image that they make of you. And if fifty million people look at you, they are seeing fifty million different mental images about you, and it’s important to know this for several reasons. You may think you’re sick, and fifty million people looking at you will say, “She’s sick.” or “He’s sick.” But one of those fifty million might be Jesus Christ, and he would not look at his mental image of you, as the rest would.

He would look through your mental image of your self, instead of accepting it and making a mental image of it him Self, and he would see through the cosmic mind image, which you are showing forth, to the Divine. And because he would see the Divine, because the I of him had been lifted up to see the Divine, he would change the image of you in him Self, and that image of You in him Self, which was changed, would be the I of him lifting you up. And that being the higher Consciousness, it would change your image. And then everyone looking at you would see another image, and then they would make a mental image of that image because if Ibe lifted up, I will lift all men unto Me.

And the way it is done is that the image which each of us sees another in is always the same until there is one who sees from a spiritual point of view, and then sees not the cripple, but the perfect whole Being and makes an image of that which is not a cripple. And that Being the higher Image, the higher Consciousness, the I lifted up, It transforms the image of the cripple within Itself, lifting up the image of the cripple to Its own wholeness.

Now everywhere you are looking, no matter whom you are looking at, that individual you’re seeing is your own mental image, not theirs. They are not external to you at all. They appear to be because we’re all tuned to the one cosmic mind. We’re all watching the same TV program and all receiving the same program from it; and seeing it on the cosmic mind, we all think we’re seeing it outside of ourselves. Now these mental images that we have in ourselves about other people never get outside of our own minds.

I have never seen you. I have only seen my mental image about you. But the Christ mind does not accept that mental image about you, but knows you as you are; and that is what is meant by the transformation. And that is why we are told to die to self. We’re not dying to Self at all. We’re dying to the cosmic mind image we have accepted as self, which is not Self.

The cosmic mind image is the one that grows, that changes, that becomes sick and well, stout and thin, young and then old. That cosmic mind image is not the Divine Image of us. It is not our Being. God is My Being. And you see, when you’re not practicing the One Self, You are tuned to the cosmic mind, which broadcasts individual images to each of us, which we all form concepts about and make visible as ourselves; and then we walk around as image seeing image that isn’t there, except in mind. And before you know it, we have that world which is not our Father’s Kingdom, in which the Law is not the Law of God, but is the law of the cosmic mind or the carnal mind and is karmic law.

Now that is the way one billion God worshipping Christians are living today, and that is the way the world is living today, regardless of the religion in which they are exposing themselves. All are tuned to the one world mind. It is broadcasting, and this world that you see is nothing more than that cosmic television program, made visible through the images that we entertain about it. All of it is one illusion, not many, many within the one; and we are breaking out of it by standing still, learning that when I see an external someone, I’m seeing a lie, because the only One there is My One Being.

When I see an external condition, I’m seeing a lie; I’m looking at a television program, and if the weather changes that is just a change in programs. No matter what happens in the outer, it is not happening in the outer. It is only seemingly happening outer. It is happening in the cosmic mind and nowhere else, and the cosmic mind is broadcasting it through images who call themselves people, but behind those images, I am.

Behind the cosmic mind, I am. Where the cosmic mind and its images appear God Is, and God is My Identity. And therefore, we learn that everything we’re seeing is a picture put forth by a mind which is not the mind of God, but which is there for a purpose, that purpose being to make us make the choice between God Being or human being, to make us reach inside and accept on faith the invisible activity of God, to enable us to walk through the cosmic mind pictures—free of them—and thus develop the Christ Consciousness by this process.

As a child would depend on the parent, we learn to depend upon the Invisible, even in spite of the tidal wave and the hurricane, in spite of the pestilence and the flood, in spite of every image that comes at us, we learn to depend on the invisible Self of Being; and this is how you develop the faculty of the fourth dimension. All of this is necessary that I may be lifted up in you, so that after a while you become aware of the trials and tribulations in the outer are merely those which are pressing us forward to the test of I in the midst of me. Until that moment when I can release myself to I and know that I in the midst of me is greater than every condition in the cosmic world of television, and then to stand in the midst of the images of the world, defenseless, knowing the nothingness of all world images, the non-Reality, the non-Power, the non-Substance. This is how you find your Self.

Now we have two passages that stress it from two different directions. In “I am the vine . . .” in John, we see it from the standpoint of how it must be for us to stand still. Let’s look at that first. “Abide in me,”—And this is a stress in John, the abiding.—“and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.” Now this abiding in Me, then, is abiding in One Being, in a knowledge of One infinite Self. There is no other way to stand and face the cosmic mind except in the knowledge of One Being, which I am.

You cannot meet it as an individual person. It’s important to see that you’re facing a cosmic mind, and you must meet it as an infinite Being, for that is the only place where I am greater than the cosmic mind. So you’re abiding in the infinite nature of Self, and this is the meaning of “Abide in Me,” I in You. “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.” When you’re not in the One Self, this cosmic television is automatically taking place twenty-four hours a day. It doesn’t matter what you are doing. If you’re not in the One Self, it is functioning your life.

You can be the President of the United States or the head of a bank. You can be doing all fine things in your estimation, but cosmic mind is running you; and ultimately that will be revealed. You’ll be discovered to be stripped of your power. Senility comes in. The great man becomes a doddering nobody, needing people to just sign his name for him. Why? It was cosmic mind all the time. It wasn’t a president. It wasn’t a chairman of the board. It wasn’t an executive. It was cosmic mind appearing as.

It was an image in the mind of the world, and each one thought he was looking at this one, but each was looking at his own mental image about this one, and this one was a mental image of the cosmic mind. That is the reason for the abiding in the knowledge of the One Self as your Self. You cannot meet cosmic mind from an individual, personal level. You might as well be a pebble on the beach trying to hold back the Atlantic Ocean.

Now on the other side, we see Paul taking it from the carnal mind in Romans. In Romans 8: “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” Now the flesh, then, is the mental image we entertain about Self in the carnal mind, thinking that this me walking here is something, when this me walking here is nothing more than a cosmic image made visible; and in between this visible me and the cosmic mind is a consciousness called me, which is interpreting the cosmic into the local appearance. That consciousness is the key.

When that consciousness is pure spiritual Consciousness, the cosmic mind comes to It and makes no impression. It comes, then, to a spiritual Consciousness, which is the Christ Mind. And the Christ Mind does not accept the anti-Christ, which is the cosmic mind; and karmic law is broken. The continuity of the cosmic telecast no longer puts forth the false image. There is a change of current, a switch over to the infinite Mind, and you are fed by the Infinite instead of the cosmic.

You are One with the Infinite. You come under a completely new set of laws, all of which are perfect. And transformation is underway. The physical form, which was a cosmic image, is now changed over. We are released from dependence upon it. We are released from its infirmities, from its limitations; and the body of the Soul of the infinite Mind is now taking place. We are changing form, changing bodies, and in the process, changing universes, changing identity from an image to Being, Itself. This cosmic television is the nature of the carnal mind, which Paul had discovered too.

“They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death.” You see, it’s really death all the way, not just at the moment of death. It seems to be life it’s the imitation of Life. It’s the image, thinking it is alive, and when we learn there is no Life in that image and can stand still, we are absent from the image and present with the infinite Mind. Paul’s chapter 8 [Romans] is about cosmic television. John’s chapter 15 is about infinite television. And we, living in the knowledge of One Self, break the law of karma for those, including ourselves, who have reached that place in Consciousness which demands transformation.

It’s almost unbelievable to a human mind, but everything you see in this world is a mental image, whether it’s a mountain or a river, a planet or a hemisphere, even the sun in the sky. All of it is a cosmic telecast, and the switch of Consciousness is the way you switch it off; and lo and behold, here’s my Father’s Kingdom present all the time. I was simply in the wrong channel of thought.

Behold One Being makes all things new. The I of your Being lifted up in Consciousness daily, consciously through meditation, through communion, leading to the I within you expressing Itself, making its own inner statements of Truth to you, voicing its own Truth, coming forth through you as a living Soul of your own Being, It is not under cosmic law. It is not subject to hallucination. It is not powerless before that which has no Reality. It has no disease. It has no age. It has no processes. It is the infinite Self Being Itself always, and It is I.

Now we must know, then, that when we are not consciously living as One Being, we are nothing but an image in cosmic television, and all we can witness is other images. We are of the world that is not the Kingdom of our Father. And who is that “we” who is of the world? It is just an image that we are throwing forth from our invisible consciousness, and that consciousness is a false consciousness. We are living in a polarized sense of self which has no Reality.

Death is not death. Death is the end of the illusion, but he who takes part in the first Resurrection is not even touched by the end of that illusion. For now we swallow up that death in breaking the continuity of this cosmic telecast, in seeing that because I am Being, and Being is the One Mind, there is no mind here to behold that which is unreal, no mind here to behold that which is subject to pain, to suffering, to evil; and therefore, every time I behold evil or pain or suffering, what am I looking with? I’m looking with a mind that has no existence. I’m looking with the cosmic mind in me. It is looking through me and beholding the pain it put there. I’m a victim of a mind that I do not have.

You never have seen evil. Never have you seen evil. The cosmic mind coming through you as the anti-Christ mind looks out and sees the evil. But when you are in Mind, Divine Mind, Divine Consciousness, that anti-Christ mind cannot come through to see evil, because all the evil it sees is within its own mind, a mind that has been posing as yours and mine. Everything on our television set that we see in these images is in the one transmitter. We see it in our living room but it comes from another source. We see our world around us in our mind, but it comes from another source, and that source is not God. That source is the cosmic mind. And therefore, there’s one thing I’ve got to clear up in Joel’s book. It disturbs me. It’s this, on page 103 [105] in the sixth chapter. Joel is making a point, and unless you understand it, you can be caught in a trap.

Now Joel says, “God is doing all these things without our advice or petitions . . .”, tells us to trust Him. Now “If God knows enough to continue to put the fish in the sea and the birds in the air” and so forth, “if God knows enough to keep the tides in their places, ebbing and flowing . . .” Now I want you to see that what is happening here is not God doing these things, and the reason that I’m pointing it out is that it’s like God being the Substance of all form. If you mistake God as the Substance of this form, and you mistake God as a Substance of the tides and of the moon and of the river, you have not caught his meaning. God is the spiritual Substance. What God is doing is invisible. God isn’t turning these tides visibly. God isn’t putting fish in the sea, visibly. That’s our concept of what Spirit is doing.

And from what we have just talked about, the cosmic telecast, it works this way: God is being God, and That is You. And the cosmic mind is forming an impression of God being God, which translates into the visible as fishes in the sea, tides turning. But that isn’t God doing it. That’s cosmic mind doing it in its interpretation of God, and it’s you receiving this picture from cosmic mind in your mind. And you know it’s not God doing it because a storm comes up at sea, and you know God isn’t bringing up a storm at sea. What is it? It’s cosmic mind.

And when the Master says to the storm, “Be still. It is I,” what is it? That’s you standing still in the face of a cosmic image, knowing that’s all it is, is a cosmic image, and you’re as frightened of it as you would be of a storm on your television set. This world, for you, becomes a cosmic image broken up into lots of pieces; and no piece of it is more real than any other, neither the good nor the bad. We’re learning to walk through these images, knowing where they come from is nowhere. They’re all the mirage over the desert.

God is being God, and that is our Name. And we stand in our Name to face the cosmic images, knowing the power of God has never gone away. The power of God is present, and that power is functioning now without opposite, until the cosmic images to you are nothing but smoke. You can stop a storm at sea because there never will be one. There will only be an image there in the cosmic mind, and you’ll find that’s the same thing with tidal waves and hurricanes. You’ll find it’s the same thing with every disease on the earth. All is an image in mind put there by the cosmic mind, and it isn’t God doing any of it.

But God is present and only God; and the cosmic mind, itself, is naught but the illusion we entertain in the absence of our realization that God alone is present. The minute you step out of the fullness of God, you create a cosmic mind. It has no existence when you are in the fullness of God. In Christ Jesus, the cosmic mind ceases to exist. There’s no shadow unless you’re not in Reality. And so we have God being Self, You, cosmic mind and its images; and one of those images is you, another is your friend, another is your mother, father, sister, brother. We leave the images, we recognize mother, father, brother, sister as an image, which is My invisible Self all the time.

Everything is accepted as my invisible Self, and I call no man my father because God is my Being and God has no father. Everyone you see is God invisible. There is no other. There is no other Self, and every time you accept another self than God anywhere, you have denied your Identity. That’s a rather fine place to come to, where all you can accept on this earth is the invisible presence of God, and yet that is what is requested of us if we would follow the path of Truth: I and My Father are One Identity, and there can be no other Identity accepted on the earth. All is One Identity, and that’s the only way you’ll ever be about your Father’s business.

Now I know this is difficult, the living of it,—The saying of it is easy.—the living of it, the conscious awareness of it, the practice of it. But the presence that you’re to practice is your Self. You’re practicing the Presence of your Self as the Presence, of your neighbor as the Presence; and you’re losing the identity of the image as your neighbor, of the image as you until there is no two of anything in the world. There is only the one infinite Presence, and that is where you’re living, moving, and having your Being in order to experience My Kingdom, which is not of this world. “The Dice of God Are Loaded” is the chapter next week, the seventh.

By the time The Mystical I is released, I’m quite sure we’ll find that it is our own Consciousness that we’re looking at in that book. By the way don’t any of you buy the book. Immortality House is giving each of you a gift of The Mystical I, and they ought to be here within a week or two, maybe even next week. I don’t know, but if you’re not here, it’ll be mailed to you. Don’t worry. We’re very happy this thought came, and the opportunity to do this because it’s Joel’s final work, I believe. And it means a great deal to us to see his work in the hands of those who are following the greatest teaching that the world has seen in the last two thousand years.

Well, Happy Mother’s Day. Thank you.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

In the “Contemplative Meditation” chapter six of Contemplative Life, we have a statement that is very important to all of us. It usually doesn’t come out just this way except when there’s a meditation; and in this particular meditation, not having any restrictions—the Father speaking within—this is what the Father within said through Joel: “God is really my Identity.” And as you read this, “God is really my Identity,” you’re reading about your Identity. Now that is our starting point: “God is really my Identity.” And then as you begin a day in any other identity, you can expect to find a conflict, because you cannot move in another identity to your true Self and expect the rhythm of God to be functioning in you, as you, through, you, doing the Father’s work on earth.

And so the first step is to release yourself to Identity, and in this you are releasing yourself to the Will of God, which is your Identity. I release my Self, then, to the Will of the Father, knowing the Identity of the Father is my own Identity and there can only be, then, One Will expressing. There cannot be a second will, a human will. There can only be One Power expressing. There cannot be a second power, a mortal or material power. There can only be One

Mind expressing. There cannot be a second human mind.

We release ourselves to the infinite Will of the Father, but never overlooking the Truth that I and the Father are One Identity. And we reach the point where there is no twoness. We reach the point of Oneness within ourselves, the point of Oneness which is the moment of infinite Grace. Now that is where we’re resting: Thy will be done. There is no other will here, no other self here, no other identity here than that Identity which is God.

And in this you discover the awareness of the power of God flowing. This established, you will also discover that the world will almost instantly challenge you upon this. And so you’re prepared now, having established Identity, to look around at the world and say, “The identity I have discovered, that is My Identity here, is the infinite Father, who is there. And therefore, everywhere I look I’m looking at My invisible Identity. There is no place where My Identity is not.” We are not looking out at a world of divisions and separations and individuals. We are looking out only at Our own Identity everywhere. We are accepting God is My Identity and God is infinite, therefore I am infinite Being, and the Will of the Infinite is functioning within Itself.

Now there was a time when the disciple said to there Master, “What is the kingdom of heaven like?” And he gave them this interesting phrase, “The kingdom of heaven is like [unto] leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened,” “three measures of meal.” Now let us take those three measures and do something with our meditation. We know he referred to mind, Soul, and body, which all must become One. But now let us take the three measures and apply them to other things. Let us take the Will of the Father, and the first measure would be, “Thy will be done . . .”, but let us not stop there. Let us have two more measures, and the second measure is Thy Will is being done, and the third measure is whatever is not Thy Will cannot be done.

And so now we’re applying the leaven to the Will of the Father in our consciousness, “Thy will be done . . .” Thy will is now being done everywhere, and whatever is not Thy will cannot be done and cannot be there. We are coming into a Oneness of Will on an infinite level and the rejection of all that is happening as an appearance, which is not the will of the Father, in the knowledge that it cannot be happening if it is not the Father’s will, three measures of leaven. Let us take power: God is power. The second measure is God is power now, and that power is functioning; and the third measure, whatever is not that power can’t function because the power of God is all there is.

Always your three measures: the Truth, the fullness of the Truth, and the rejection of the opposite of the Truth as an impossibility, until you can reach the inner conviction that the power of God is now flowing where you are. The power of God is never turned off. It is always flowing where you are. It, being the only power, any other suggestion of power that appears in your experience, which is not the power of God, is not there, but can only seem to be. And if you are accepting Identity, then that which is not the power of God cannot be accepted at the same time.

Now apply it to your back. You broke your back last winter. You have a broken back, and you’re recovering, and the recovery is slow. Today we’re accepting Identity. Yesterday we had a broken back. Today God is My Identity realized. What was My identity yesterday? The same. God yesterday is the same as God today. That which is true of me today is true of me yesterday. If today in God Identity there can be no broken back, could there be one in God Identity yesterday?

And so you must come to that conclusion that in God Identity, there is no broken back yesterday, today, or tomorrow. It never had happened, except in false identity. The false identity never was the true Identity. Where did it happen? And now we’re seeing the three measures of leaven apply to the past as well as the present, and as well as the future. Can it happen in Identity? Is there anything but Identity? Is God all? Yes, God is all. Then where can a broken back occur? Only in one who is not in Identity. And therefore, where shall you remain in order to benefit by the laws of Spirit? In your Identity. Where you are now is the full power of God and always will be there.

Never will there be less than there full capacity of God. You cannot accept Identity without accepting that the full wisdom of the Father is flowing through you. All safety, all protection, all harmony is flowing through the Father, and I and the Father being One Identity, all is flowing through me; and nothing but that which is of the Father can be flowing through me. That which comes which is not of the Father is not here, its an appearance, a cosmic hypnotism. It does not belong to me. It has no Substance. It has no power.

Now your three measures of leaven, then, will apply to omnipresence, omnipotence, and omniscience. Always the knowledge of the Truth is followed by the fullness of that knowledge, and finally, by the rejection of all that is proposing to it as non-real. The power of the Father, then, should be flowing, so much so that you can now sit back in the knowledge that only One Mind being present, there is no second mind to know of anything except the spiritual Universe. You rest in the Father. All that the Father hath is mine. Nothing is excluded.

And now your meditation takes a very deep turn. As I accept God Identity, there is no personal me, there is no personal him, there is no personal her, there is no personal it. There is only God Identity. There is no one else but God Identity. That means your Universe has One Identity. There are no pieces. There are no divisions. There is only One Identity, and It is God; and now you’re establishing a God to God relationship with everyone you will meet. The Identity I claim for Myself is the Identity of You, Him, Her, and it; and therefore, there is no person to person. There is only God to God. There is only One Mind, One Substance, One law, One infinite perfection.

And instead, now, of looking out from a human sense of things at a world of many parts, you’re accepting the One Universe as the One Being. You’re not living in a personal sense of me. You’re living as the One Universe, as the One Being, as the One Spirit. Spirit is all that is here. Spirit is all that is there. Then matter cannot be here, and matter cannot be there. All is Spirit. Material person cannot be there, for all is Spirit. Then what is material person? Material person is a mental image, and that mental image had a broken back. That mental image was sick. Are you going to improve that which is not there, or will you just change the mental image?

Now we have One, and only in this One will this power of Spirit become manifest. The power can never function except within its own spiritual Self. And when you have permitted yourself to yield to the infinite Will, to accept the Identity of the Infinite as your own, then the power, which is ever-present, ever-maintaining its perfect Self, becomes manifest as the power of your Being, as the law unto you, as the Mind which gives you the Kingdom, as the Mind which withholds no thing, as the Mind which appears manifest as everything that is right at the moment that it is necessary.

All needed forms must appear in the outer as this power of the One is accepted. And now the full leaven is transforming. As transformation continues, body, mind, and Soul all acknowledge the One, and so we move, we live and move, have our Being, another three steps in the leaven, in and as the One. When this is established, your day is a different day. It is a day in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. And all that flows in and through you and as you is expressing the Divine Will, without any opposition and without the need for you to take thought, for before you ask I in you shall answer, “It is My pleasure in You to give You the Kingdom.” “In My Presence is fullness of joy.”

All those things that you had done in the outer world under your own will, all the hopes and plans and dreams and expectations were your own preconceived notion of what you thought God’s will ought to be; but we do not bend God’s will, nor do we try to interpret what God’s Will is. We do not say, “Well, certainly God wants me to be healthy.” No, it is a complete, total surrender to the Will, in which I have no will of my own whatsoever. For the moment I have a will of my own, I am taking my Self out of the One infinite Identity, and I am separating my Self from the ever-present power of Grace.

Now, there is nothing you can do to earn this Power, nothing you can do to stop It. No sin on earth can move It away. It is always present, and as we dwell, as we abide, as we rest in Identity, we’re in the vine. We can accept that present Power, though it be unseen. We can live by that invisible power.

There are three quarters of a, well, there’s about a billion people who have accepted Christianity on this earth, and about three quarters of the population of the whole world has accepted a Supreme Being of some sort. In spite of that the world does not enjoy the power of God. There is still, in spite of a billion Christians, in spite of three billion who in some way worship God, we have a progressive corrosion throughout civilization on every fiber, on every level; and it is all because the belief in God is not the acceptance of the Substance of God as Identity.

Religion believes in every Bible miracle, but it cannot go forth and do likewise. It believes in Jesus Christ but forgets that he said, “If you believe on me, the works I do, ye shall do;” and religion is not doing the works. The belief is surface. The belief is an intellectual belief. It is not an acceptance of, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” It is not the acceptance of the Spirit of God as the Spirit of My Being; and without that acceptance, a billion Christians lose the power of Christ, and three quarters of the world loses the power of the God they worship, because the universal Christ is the Substance of Being, and you cannot accept unless you accept It as your Substance.

The Light, the Christ, the Substance of God is where the Power is. “I am the vine.” “ . . . I stand at the door and knock.” When you open your consciousness to the acceptance of the present power of God as the only power that is functioning, as the only Mind that is here, as the only law, as the only activity. You will find it possible to rest in trust, in freedom, in the liberty, in the fullness of joy, in the peace, for “I and my Father are one,” in spite of what the naked eye may see, in spite of what the touch may feel; and this becomes the fact of life. Every good thing must flow and will, if you will remain in the state of acceptance, not emerging once more into a will of your own.

We’re told to rest in this form of contemplative meditation until a communion begins, until, instead of a you out there declaring, something inside is doing the declaring, until that something inside lifts you into a place where the I of your Being, which is declaring, and you are One and the same, and there is no additional sense of self. There is that point of meeting, that point of contact; and this is the Divine contact which changes our lives. That point where the outer me ceases to really exist, where the Infinite meets the Inner, and the One stands revealed as the very Source of Being, the Fountainhead, with no need for any external power or thing.

All is flowing abundantly. Even if there weren’t loaves, you know they would blossom forth. Unanticipated sources appear. Everything is touched with the magic of the Inner Self released, lived in. We’re not in a mind here. We’re not in the mind that has a plan. Somehow that’s far away. We’re not in a selfhood that is apart from another self. All disappears, even the personal sense of Identity. There is no you there to identify another you somewhere else.

There is only a One. And in your realized One, you’re standing in the invisible at the Source of all things. Joel calls it the manufacturing plant, the infinite storehouse, and even that isn’t enough. It is your Life without beginning or end. When you are in the One, you are in eternality, and there is no place where you are not. Whether it be space or time, you are there. Wherever God is, thou art because God is never separated from God. The only presence that exists is The Presence.

Now this should be the way we move out into this world every day, and only in this method of release to the Will, will you find that in some way you are synchronized into an invisible rhythm. Things might even happen in this state of Being that to a normal person might seem undesirable. They won’t to you because only God can happen. Only the Power can express, and rather than rushing in quickly to challenge something that happens, you patiently watch as the Infinite unfolds, knowing that all is always well, all is always functioning under the One Infinite Mind. Nothing can ever be wrong. Wrong is an impossibility. Right is the law, and there is no opposite.

And as the full leaven of Consciousness is completed, our transition of Consciousness takes place, and we are no longer in a three dimensional world. For us, it is obsolescent. We do not live in it. We do not move in it. We do not have our Being in it. It only appears that way to others. We live in Reality, and we are not living our lives. We are in that Identity which lives Itself. We are in that Identity which knows no beginning and no ending.

We are in that Mind which looks at a world of images without any reaction. We are in the Christ Mind. There is no darkness. There are no tears. There are no material forms. There are no material laws. There are no material identities. All is the invisible expression of God. Neither the good nor the bad in the visible make an impression. You have found another Universe behind the visible one, and you are content to let It unfold and to witness It as the Father’s Will.

Now go back several thousand years and find your Spirit there, for that Spirit, which is You this moment, is the Spirit of Being two thousand years ago. There is no separation and no change. Move out into this entire physical world, and wherever it appears to be, you are there throughout all time. Let all of this be your realization, and it will feed you. It will sustain you. It will move this image in accordance with invisible law. Your dominion is in the realization of Oneness, for that One never knows a second one, that One never meets a second being, that One is always going within Itself everywhere; and that One is free.

Now in the Christ Mind, there is no other One. There is no place where you have to multiply loaves and fishes. They’re already there as the invisible Substance. There is no place where you have to heal. There is nothing to heal. There is no place where there is a problem. There is no place to be improved, reformed, or corrected. You are in the Christ Mind of Reality above the opposites, above the need to take out a first aid kit and make a repair job somewhere. Now this is the Consciousness we want to move with in preparation for transition.

We have left behind us the need or desire or the innocence that would permit us to fall into the trap of wanting to improve our world or our world relationships in the outer. We do not paste peaches on trees. We do not clip apples to apple trees. Everything we do in the Christ Mind is to grow from within, and let the added things take care of themselves. We are in the transforming Light. There will come your moment of Transfiguration when, without taking thought, without effort, you will find your Self no longer a human consciousness, no longer living from this physical focus, the sense focus; but rather, you will feel the absence of physical form, even while you appear in one.

You will feel the Transfiguration of Light in which you are dissolved into all that is around you. You will know your Self to be pure Consciousness. You will know that everywhere you are, but you cannot be touched by a human hand. You cannot be seen by a human eye. You cannot be measured by human standards, for you have found Identity, and you live as that Identity. In our next expression of Life, beyond this present incarnation, when we have passed the point of return, we will be living in the Will of the Father completely; and there, there is no choice of a second will. Here the choice remains, but here the dissolution of that second will is the preparation for living in that Kingdom, where only the Will of the Father is possible.

And there is no entrance into that Kingdom until we have mastered the art of living consciously in the One Will, sacrificing all human will in ways that are very strange, but in ways that—by eliminating our normal human sense of things, our normal sense of various disturbances, our normal resentments and animosities, our normal pride and vanity,—these gradually disappear to the point where we are willing to sacrifice them in order to reach the higher ground, where we can say, “Father, normally I might react this way, but I would rather forgo the pleasure of telling this one off or that one off and take on the garment of humility,” that wonderful quality which really means the absence of me, that selflessness which is All Self. And truly no one who has made the effort to banish self within Self and to look out upon others who are not separate Selves, no one, who has not done this, can know the power that flows.

Suppose you accept this Universe, then as One Being. Step out of the coat of skin, accepting your Self as that One Being, and rest in the confidence that the One Being, Being All, there’s nothing to ask for, nothing to need, nothing to want, only to let Infinity unfold Itself. It takes a few measures of leaven, a few days and weeks of being willing to live this selflessly in order to invite I, through your sincerity and dedication, to lift you still higher where all things become possible in the name of I. You are erasing the parenthesis of mortality. You are erasing the memories that have accrued through the years. You are erasing the emotional scars, the crystallized intellectual beliefs, all of the accrued ideas that had nothing to do with the One Being, coming into the purity of Consciousness in which your Light shines.

We should be able soon to walk in the Invisible, consciously knowing where we are, what we’re doing, and how to do it. We should be able to walk through the material world consciously, invisible, consciously letting the Father live as our Being, so that we are expressing the Father’s business on earth. We should be able to walk consciously invisible through every material circumstance, never separated from Source, always recognizing ourselves to be that Source, recognizing that God has never separated from God, that Identity can never be less than the Infinite One, that all that I see I am.

When you were told that “The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof;” you were also told that “I and the Father are one,” and therefore, the earth being the Lord’s, the earth is mine. And really, we’re being told that the earth is invisible Spirit. That invisible Spirit, which is the Earth seen through the eyes of man, becomes the material earth, but It is the spiritual Earth that is the Lord’s. It is the only Earth; It is the Father, and because I and the Father are One, I am the spiritual Earth, the spiritual Earth I am. That is all that is here.

The spiritual sky, I am. The spiritual stars, I am. All that is here is Spirit, and It is I am. Where sky is, is your Identity. Where ocean is, is your Identity. Where anything is, only your Identity is. All is your Being, and there is nothing else there. And when you walk as your Being, with nothing else there, then you are in the Kingdom of miracles, for then Omnipresence and Omniscience and Omnipotence are the Law of Being in action.

They’re not something you think about, not something you even have to know about. They are. Grace is. Power is. Love is. Harmony is. And all these things: grace, love, peace, harmony, I am. There is only One activity, and all of the things, which in the outer we see in a small measure, are all limited manifestations of the One perfect infinite Activity, which is your Being. That is why we are told to stand fast, to take no thought for our lives, because the only Life there is, is our One Divine Life; and thought for any other life is separation from your own Identity.

Now you’ll find the day when all of this, for you, is simply the way you are without any effort. It all falls into place. You wake up to it, and you know you are a different being than the one who went to sleep. It isn’t you going to God anymore. It isn’t you trying to find the Truth. It isn’t you reaching out to discover things. It’s just You being You, without corporeality, without boundaries, without a parenthesis around You, just Being You, knowing all there is, is You everywhere, no matter what might appear. And then the outer forms that you see become merely evidence to you of your unseen Self; and as the evidence changes to show forth more harmony, you can quietly know that is because I have been steadfast to the One. As you can sit in the quiet complete, total trust of your One Being as the perfect, present power everywhere, for you It will become manifest.

It will actually show forth as the Life of a friend, as the improved health of another friend. It will show forth as that which you know It to be, perfect, if you can dwell in the realization of It as a permanent dispensation. It will become the bloodstream of a child. It will become the breathing of a loved one. It will take every required form,—as you dwell in the One Being, knowing that the child isn’t there; the One Being is. The loved one isn’t there; the One Being is—always translating everything into the invisible One perfect Being.

Now you can’t do this twenty-four hours a day with your eyes open, but neither do you go to the gasoline station and ask for gas twenty-four hours a day. You get your fill of it and then you’re on your way. This method of regeneration can be the first fruits, and it will take care of the rest. Every three minutes of this takes care of the other fifty-seven; and days repeated and repeated and repeated in the One Being are equivalent to thousands of years of human evolution.

Then you will discover that whereas Christian babies can be deformed or retarded or Mongoloid or blue, Christian boys can go out on the battlefield and pour away their blood, Christian adults can go through divorces and abortions, Hindus can have heart attacks, Buddhists can have brain tumors, Moslems [now called Muslims] can gave migraine or multiple sclerosis. It makes no difference what the religion. Until there is the conscious awareness of One Being, you are not immune to the famines, the pestilences, the poverty, the diseases and disasters of the world. But the instant One Being is your Consciousness, for you all disaster is over. There can be no lack or limitation. There can be no karmic law.

Your pleasures are different. It’s true. They are he pleasures of the Spirit, but there you are in an ever widening, ever expanding, ever new experience. The miracle of tomorrow, for you, is different than the routine, repetitious days of the world; and the knowledge that there is no end in this infinite, limitless expansion is not something that you have to study or rehearse. It simply becomes your Consciousness. You know your eternal Self, and you know you’re ready, ready to move into the sixth world, to the expression of Christ living as the perfect Son of God in the world of no opposites, learning completely how to move into the seventh Heaven.

Now the Reality of You lives in all of the seven heavens right now. All levels you are living in, and all levels cone to function right where you stand in the One Being. All progression is the progression of the consciousness learning of its own Identity. Your infinite Self is always infinite. Now the reason for this, today, is that we have had so much Truth to remember and Truth to study, but we have to come to the place where I, the Truth of My Being, is expressing Itself. It doesn’t have to study. It doesn’t have to remember. It doesn’t go outside of Itself to find something. It pushes Itself forth as expression. We are coming to the place of Being the perfect Truth Itself, letting It Be Itself, not trying to pin words upon It or limitations upon It.

We’re trying to really live the Infinite Way. All of the questions that come up in a human mind disappear in the acceptance of One Being. God has no questions to ask of God. Spirit has no unfinished business. Spirit has no place where It is needful, and in the expression of need, limitation, question, plan, hope, we are denying ourselves to be the One Being. Every lack, limitation, need, and problem is a denial of Identity; and in the denial of Identity, even if your questions are answered, they’re of no value. In Identity just that Self, Itself, is the answer to all questions.

And so we might be coming close to the point where each of us is living at the core of his Being and the circumference and all between. When we can meet in the knowledge that we are the One Self, perfect as our Father, fed by the Father, living not in the mask of humanhood and requiring nothing of anyone. As we do this we have set up that Consciousness which need not fear what tomorrow may bring. And that Consciousness,—which need not anticipate by an hour or a day or a year, the future, because that Consciousness is the future,—It is everything that the future will be; and It, being perfect, the future being the outer, will completely show forth that Consciousness we have attained in the Inner. We have built our future in this Consciousness.

The joy of this Way of Life is to know that whatever comes to take me out of this Consciousness is the anti-Christ; and as I am alert, I can behold the pure, perfect, spiritual activity of the Father as I stand against the anti-Christ. This is the joy, watching the anti-Christ dissolve, watching the appearances reveal the absence of power that they seem to have had, watching the miracles of each day unfold in ways that could never be anticipated by a human mind. This is the joy, being able to say, “Thank you, Father, for that incredible action, the incredible experience. Thank you for opening new doors, new ways, new experiences, all on a level unseen by the human mind. Thank You for the peace. Thank You for the confidence, and most of all, thank You for being You.”

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

I think we ought to go over this once lightly in the Scripture itself and look at the important spiritual points as they come up. This is 1 Samuel chapter 17.

“Now the Philistines gathered together their armies to battle,

. . . and there went out a champion out of the camp of the Philistines,

named Goliath, of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span.”

And as we read this, let’s see that we’re talking, now, about something within ourselves which is bothering us, this problem which is so big that it’s six cubits and a span, and as we think about our problem, it gets bigger.

“And he had an helmet of brass upon his head,

and he was armed with a coat of mail;

and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of brass.”

There’s just no way to get through this problem. It’s really an impregnable problem.

“ And he had greaves of brass upon its legs,

and a target of brass between his shoulders.”

No matter where you go to wiggle out of the problem, it stands and faces you. It’s a complete problem. Your human mind has no capacity to figure out how to meet this total problem.

“And the staff of his spear was like a weaver’s beam;

and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron:

and one bearing a shield went before him.

And he stood and cried . . .”

And now your problem is beginning to talk to you. You’ve just been fearing it up to now. Now it’s really going to get you. It’s in the second stage. It’s working on your emotions.

“And he stood and cried unto the armies of Israel, and said unto them,

“Why are ye come out to set your battle in array?

am not I a Philistine, and ye servants to Saul?

choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me.”

And so the problem is forcing you to meet it. The problem says, “Come on, do some-thing.” And you are trying to find out, What am I going to use to meet this problem with?

“If he be able to fight with me, and to kill me,

then will we be your servants:

but if I prevail against him, and kill him,

then shall ye be our servants, and serve us.”

In other words, you know that if you lose, your life is going to change in the wrong directions. This problem is saying that it has the power to change your life for the worst. You’re becoming totally involved now in the belief that this thing that’s happening is happening; and unless you have got the knowledge of the presence of God, the Reality of God, the only-ness of God without opposite, this thing begins gnawing, gnawing, gnawing deeper, deeper, deeper; and there’s nothing in you that can stop it. It runs a hole right through you until you’re a wreck; and finally, it just tramples all over you.

You’re not meeting it with Truth. You’re meeting it with argument, with fear, with worry, with the mind darting hither and there, trying to figure out how you’re going to escape or overcome. And all this time, all that is needed is the little stone of Truth. God is here, friend. Now you go ahead and let God, if you want to fight, and that God, which is here, is my Spirit.

Now in all of Israel, there’s nobody to declare this. There’s only Saul, the king; and Saul represents, not the power of physical force, but the power of physical mind. And he’s trying to figure out, What are we going to do about this Goliath? He’s using his mental ingenuity to try to cope with a situation, and that’s what you’re doing within yourself. You’re calling on Saul to meet Goliath, and Saul doesn’t having any answers. And you have had many such encounters in which you called upon Saul, and he didn’t have any answers then either. And here is the same problem again, but there is one who is now coming through, a little shepherd boy.

When Saul had and all Israel had heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed. They were greatly afraid. And Saul, then, is the inner mind, which is really a two-headed mind because it is presenting the problem, and it’s afraid of the problem that it’s presenting. It’s that old double-headed snake in the garden of Eden. It fears its own problem. It’s like the head turns around, looks at the tail, and they both get frightened; and they’re one and the same. There has to be some order in this chaos: little David.

“Now David was the son of that Ephrathite of Bethlehem-judah,

[whose name was Jesse; and he had eight sons:

and the man went among men for an old man in the days of Saul.”]

And we have a clue here right away. He came out of Bethlehem. Bethlehem means the house of bread, the house of Substance. And so we are introduced, now, to the thing called bread or Substance. There’s another to come out of Bethlehem later, too. And this house of Substance is the only way you’re going to meet Goliath. You must have Substance. You can’t do it with the intellect, the reason, the logic. You can’t do it with human planning, because the very mind which is presenting the problem is going to try to do the human planning. You’re falling into the trap of using he who is presenting the problem to meet the problem; and that’s why we fail in our problems.

We need Substance. We have to go to Bethlehem. And so David comes out of Bethlehem, the house of bread, divine bread. His “name was Jesse. And he had eight sons: and the man went among men for an old man in the days of Saul.” So Jesse, the father of the eight sons out of Bethlehem: You’ll find later that Luke goes out of his way to prove that Jesus came out of the stock of Jesse, while at the same time he’s trying to prove that Jesus was the Son of God, not born of Joseph. He’s proving that he came out of Jesse. And that was Luke’s problem. He was trying to do it both ways, materially and spiritually, trying to please everyone.

[“And the three eldest sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the battle:

and the names of his three sons that went to battle were

Eliab, the firstborn and, and next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.”]

The three other sons of Jesse went and followed Saul to the battle, and David was the youngest. And the three eldest followed Saul, “but David went and returned from Saul to feed his father’s sheep at Bethlehem.” Now, instead of sending out your three eldest sons to fight, you’re being told to tend your father’s sheep. All of this is before the fight, isn’t it? This is your preparation. And so the feeding of the sheep is the clue that this little David is being filled with Substance within a Vision, with a knowledge of the Light of Being, that Spirit is all that is here. He’s being strengthened with spiritual Vision, while all of the rest of the camp are figuring out ways and means to overcome Goliath.

And the Philistine drew near morning and evening and presented himself forty days. Now, the forty days of the Philistine are also the forty days in which you, the David in you, is feeding the sheep. And the forty days means, then, staying in the Consciousness of Truth until it is crystallized, until the bread is leavened, until that Substance is your Consciousness, until you are spiritual Consciousness. Then you can go out to meet this fellow, and not the way other people do. Then, this adversary, this Goliath, is going to meet somebody who knows what to do about him. Then you’re not defenseless and helpless in the face of a problem, which seems so unlikely to yield to any form of persuasion.

And while you’re doing this, you’re learning as you are living in the Spirit, you’re learning that the problem is not what you had originally thought it to be. The problem was the absence of this very Substance. The Substance you didn’t have in consciousness was the reason you had the problem. It’s a seesaw. The Substance is your inner Substance, your Light, and the absence of your awareness of your Light teeters your seesaw, so that you see the darkness. And now Christ is rising in you, and this is the significance of David in the forty days. While a Philistine is roaring, threatening, and intimidating with his problem, in you is coming that inner Light, which will so shine that darkness will be impossible.

“And Jesse said unto David his son,

Take now for thy brethren an ephah of this parched corn,

and these ten loves, and run to the camp to thy brethren;”

And now there’s more spiritual food, you see, the corn, the loaves. All this is an indication that he’s being fed from within with more Light, more Light. He’s being built up. And this is you, as you dwell within, you do receive more Light. If you’re putting yourself out in the five senses out there, facing the problem, you’re not in the Light, and you can’t be fed this corn, these new loaves.

You must abide in me, and so you’re not facing the problem. You’re facing the within, being fed from the Kingdom within, quietly, silently, to an inner enlightenment which is going to arm you from within, so that you won’t need outer armor, an outer spear. You’re really a spiritual underground because when you come into this inner Light, the inner Light of your Being is going to be revealed as the inner Light of the Being called Goliath. You’ll have him trapped from within himself, just by being in Truth.

So we feel, now, that the Light of our own Being is revealing the non-reality of that which is called a problem. Goliath is shrinking before our very eyes because Light on the problem shows us God is present. Where God is, the power of God is functioning, and though Goliath still appears, the power of God wasn’t shoved aside. It’s there. It’s functioning. In your new Vision you accept that power, and Goliath becomes a dwarf. David in you is going through this. David symbolizes your new awareness that Light is the name of all Being, and you are accepting that Light as you Being.

“And David rose up early in the morning,

and left the sheep with a keeper,

and took, and went, as Jesse had commanded him;

and came to the trench,

as the host was going forth to the fight,

and shouted for the battle . . .

And all the men of Israel,

when they saw the man, [Goliath],

fled from him, and were sore afraid.”

Now then, there’s just this one point in your consciousness, which is your hope. Everything else in you is fleeing, succumbing, letting the problem have sway as a reality. It isn’t there, and only this little Light of Truth, called David in you, is aware that it isn’t there.

“And the men of Israel said,

Have ye seen this man that is come up?

surely to defy Israel is he come up:

and it shall be, that the man who killeth him,

the king will enrich him with great riches,

and will give him his daughter,

and make his father’s house free in Israel.”

What is the reward for killing Goliath? Kingship. But even that finds none who are ready or able or willing in your consciousness, except little David.

“And David spake to the men that stood by him, saying,

What shall be done to the man that killeth this Philistine,

and taketh away the reproach from Israel?

for who is this uncircumcised Philistine,

that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

He calls him an “uncircumcised Philistine,” and that tells us that circumcision was a symbol of Oneness, and the uncircumcised was a symbol of those who were separated from God, unenlightened, divided. The unenlightened, by David, are called “the uncircumcised”. And this unenlightened, separated from God man is defying the armies of the living God? The little shepherd boy is saying that. All his brothers have run away. All of the armies of Israel are turning tail, and this little something in you is saying, “Wait a minute. Did God make that fellow? Did God make this problem? What am I running for? I’m hypnotized by a mind that says, ‘There’s a problem here.’ And I know God didn’t make it.”

Is there a problem in Spirit, this glimpse of Truth? Can Spirit have a problem? What’s the difference how big it appears? Is there a problem in Spirit? Can a problem outnumber or outfight the Lord of God? And now you’re beginning to balance the seesaw. Spiritual vision—not logic, not reason—spiritual reason, spiritual logic is beginning to establish a place where you can come to a point of equilibrium.

“And the people answered him

after this manner, saying,

So shall it be done to the man that killeth him.”

They had no answer. They didn’t know what to say. And then something else happens.

“And Eliab his eldest brother heard

when he spake unto the men;

and Eliab’s anger was kindled against David,

and he said, Why camest thou down hither?

and with whom hast thou left

those few sheep in the wilderness?

I know thy pride,

and the naughtiness of thine heart;

for thou art come down

that thou mightest see the battle.”

And so the elder brother chides the younger brother, and something in you will do just that. As this glimpse of Light comes, the very opposite will come quickly and say, “Don’t be fooled. Don’t be fooled now. Don’t soft pedal this thing. It’s a giant problem.” And so reason and logic, the elder brother’s, those qualities in the mind that have been there longer than the younger brother, the memories of your inadequacies of the past begin to say to you, “Well, wait a minute now. Don’t get overconfident,” or “Don’t even get your hopes up.” The elder brother: “Your past experience chides you, this little fledgling who thinks that there’s no problem.”

“And David said, What have I now done?

Is there not a cause?”

“I didn’t come down to here” in other words, “because I just want to out of curiosity. There’s a cause. There’s a physical lie out here, and I am spiritual vision, and I’m simply appearing to show that it isn’t there.”

“And he turned from him toward another,

and spake after the same manner:

and the people answered him again after the former manner:

. . . And when the words were heard which David spake,

they rehearsed them before Saul [the king of Israel]:

And he sent for him. [David].”

Now your mind and your will, well knowing that they have failed in similar situations, begins to turn to this fledgling in you. This little ray of Truth calls for it.

“And David said to Saul,

Let no man’s heart fail because of him [Goliath];

thy servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”

Here’s your old veteran mind, all your experience in this little upstart inside you says, “I’ll take care of the situation.” Saul, the king of your will, the king of your mind is listening to the ray of spiritual vision, called David:

“And Saul said to David,

Thou art not able to go against this Philistine

to fight with him: for thou art but a youth,

and he a man of war from his youth.

And David said unto Saul, Thy servant kept his father’s sheep,

and there came a lion, and a bear, and it took a lamb out of the flock:

And I went out after him,

and smote him, and delivered it out of his mouth:

and when he arose against me,

I caught him by his beard, and smote him, and slew him.

Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear:

And this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them,

seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God.”

Now, David says he’s slew a lion, and a bear. Nobody knew that. Do you see, he did that while he was feeding the sheep? The lion and the bear represent qualities within himself that he had overcome. He’d overcome the power of the lion and the power of the bear. He’d overcome the belief in physical might and mental might. He’d overcome materiality. The David in you, aware of the non-reality, the non-power of mental might and physical might, has overcome the lion and the bear, the normal human impulses to go out and defend. “Oh,” said Saul, “You did that. Well, that’s a different story.”

“David said moreover,

The Lord that delivered me out of the paw of the lion,

and out of the paw of the bear,

he will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.

And Saul said unto David, Go, and the Lord be with thee.”

Something reaches your mind and it says, “Okay, maybe you’ve got new weapons I never heard of, but go ahead.” That vision becomes strong enough to convince your mind to let loose, let little David go forth.

Now, not by might, not by power, but by the Spirit of the Lord, you’re willing to face this problem. And the old impulses are right there, of course, so David starts to put on the armor. The mind says, “Now, it’s raining outside; wear your rubbers and take your umbrella.” The mind says, “There’s a giant out there. Put on this armor.” That’s the habit of the mind, and before you know it, little David’s starting to do that.

“And Saul armed David with his armor,

and he put an helmet of brass upon his head;

also he armed him with a coat of mail.

And David girded this sword upon his armor,

and he assayed to go;”

That was just old habit. But then spiritual vision gets the upper hand, and says:

“And David said unto Saul,

I cannot go with these;

for I have not proved them.

And David put them off him.”

He’s going to prove spiritual vision is power and needs no armor. David is not going to depend on material aid. Spiritual vision does not go outside and depend on the externals. Spiritual vision says, “I am self-sufficient. I have an invisible friend called the Holy Ghost. He does all my work. I need no physical power. I need no mental might. I need nothing. Oh yes, there is something I need, a little sting shot.”

“And he took his staff in his hand,

and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook,

and put them in the shepherd’s bag

which he had, even in the scrip;

and his sling was in his hand:

and he drew near to the Philistine.”

Five smooth stones, not rough ones, not coarse ones, not the five physical senses, but smooth stones, the five inner senses of the Soul, the knowledge of Truth; not eyes to look with and see Goliath, ears to hear him, not those senses, but five smooth senses. Inner vision was all he could use that would be of any value, and he didn’t even use those five smooth stones, when it came down to the crucial moment. Why? The Philistine came out and drew near David. Oh, he went into hails of laughter. “Look at this little fellow out there with a sling shot.” He just couldn’t believe it. This represented all of Israel.

And the Philistine said unto David

Am I a dog that thou cometh to me with staves?

And the Philistine cursed David by his gods,

And the Philistine said to David, Come to me,

and I will give thy flesh unto the fowls of the air,

and to the beasts of the field.”

This poor little boy, David, this spiritual vision that you go out with, it seems, “Oh, am I making a mistake?” And what had seemed like an enormous thing before looks like it can crush this little bud within your heart. It gives you every kind of threat, every form of intimidation. It tells you how useless and small you are, how impotent you are. It tells you it’s going to dismember you. And yet that little bud of Truth within you learns to stand there and look at it and smile, and not even hate it, and not fear it, and not want to tear it to pieces, not even want to go out and fight it. You don’t do battle with the giant. That’s your secret. You don’t do battle. You know the Truth. You do what David did. You reach for one stone.

The Philistine is still ranting and raving:

“This day will the Lord deliver thee into mine hand;

and I will smite thee,

and take thine head from thee;

and I will give the carcasses

of the host of the Philistines this day

unto the fowls of the air,

and to the wild beasts of the earth;

that all the earth may know

that there is a God in Israel.”

You’ve heard it all before inside yourself. You’ve heard Goliath’s threats. It comes in the form of other people, other agencies, other institutions, all talking through your mind to you, telling you what’s going to happen.

“And all this assembly shall know

that the Lord saveth

not with sword and spear:”

David looks up. He hasn’t the slightest bit of fear. He looks at this giant who is threatening him, and he knows the giant hasn’t got a chance. He has now reached the point of absolute Truth within himself. At this point David is aware that there is no giant, that the problem was a myth, a total fantasy of the mind. It has completely disappeared as a force, whereas before it was all of this power. The knowledge of the omnipotence of God is the growing strength of this inner Vision. It takes complete control of your Consciousness, and you know who you are; and then David in you can say,

“ . . . for the battle is the Lord’s,

and he will give you unto our hands.”

There was a time after the forty days of David, when he was ready to go out, that he went out and said, “I am now ready to meet Him for the Lord of Hosts.” And we see that the personal individual sense of self, called Goliath, is always thinking of what it will do, but David represents not your faith in yourself, in your own individual power, but your faith in the omnipotence of the Spirit, your knowledge that the power of God is what will express where you are, and not the power of the mind of man. David takes it out of a fight between two powers into the knowledge that only the power of God is present.

“And it came to pass, when the Philistine arose,

and came and drew nigh to meet David,

that David hasted,

and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.”

Now, from this point on, everything in the outer is merely the externalized appearance that comes from the newborn Consciousness you have attained. It’s all automatic. From now on, it’s Grace. You don’t make a conscious decision—just the knowledge of who you are, the living Spirit of God—and from that moment, the Spirit of God does the work. You don’t. It will appear as you. It will appear as David. He will do things, but he’s not doing them. He’s merely the outer visible activity of the inner Consciousness of God.

So David puts his hand in his bag, and he takes a stone, a stone. He had five. Which one did he pick? The five had become one. The five inner senses have become the one stone of Truth. Spiritual Consciousness is the stone, the knowledge that there is one Self, only one Being, perfect, pure, here, now, God, and no other; no problem, no one to have a problem.

David is aware of himself as the Light of God. You become aware of your Self through this David Consciousness that you are the Light of God. And that knowledge becomes the stone which makes contact with the forehead of the giant, and he

“slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead,

that the stone sunk into his forehead;

and he fell upon his face to the earth.”

The moment you know One Self, everything else evaporates which had been such a braggart, such a threat, such an intimidation, such a peril; and all of the consequences of it fade with it—the knowledge of One Self, one stone. The five inner senses become the One vision, the One Omniscient Self; and beside Me, there is no other. And so we have most of this story. There’s a little more though.

“So David prevailed over the Philistine

with a sling and with a stone,

and smote the Philistine, and slew him;

but there was no sword in the hand of David.”

And so we’re being told we don’t fight a sword with a sword. We don’t fight on the level of the problem that’s coming into us. We find our five inner stones. We consciously turn away from what the five outer senses are telling us. That’s the meaning of the five stones. We turn away from what the five senses are telling us, and we rest within, in our Kingdom of God within, which is the five inner smooth stones, until we feel the knowledge of One Self, One pure, perfect immaculate Being. We have, now, no other gods, but the One, no other powers but the One: no powers to resist, to defend against. And so David had no sword. All he had was the inner knowledge, represented in the outer by five smooth stones. And that’s all we need, and that is the meaning of no power. That is all we need.

Furthermore, if we need anything else, we are not in the knowledge of no power, and we will not be released from that Goliath, which is our tormentor. It is only when we can accept the All-ness of God, in spite of the apparent tormentor, that we’re in the knowledge of no power needed.

“Therefore David ran,

and stood upon the Philistine,

and took his sword,

and drew it out of the sheath thereof,

Because David had none, he took the Philistine’s sword. So he “drew it out of the sheath thereof:

and slew him,

And that’s the end of your problem;

and cut off his head therewith.

And now your problem can’t talk back anymore.

And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead,

they fled.”

Now what’s the significance of David slaying him with his own sword? The subtle significance is this, that the power of evil which was so great has now been transmuted, and you find it’s a power of good.

That evil forced you to come to the state of knowledge that you need no power to overcome evil. That evil was good. To you, it wasn’t. It will only be good to you when you realize what it’s done for you. Otherwise you would never reach this high level where you can stand in no power, immune to all karmic law. And there’ll be more and more and more so-called evil until you reach that place. Then you can do what he did. “David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem; and he put his armor in his tent.” Finally, that has become your Consciousness, a level, a new firmament.

Now I think we can clearly see that Samuel was telling us that there’s a place called the secret place of the Most High, where you can be still as the Father within speaks; and that Father within will come to you as either David or Jesus or one of the prophets, but always as an inner impulse to lift you to the place where you can stand confidently. And as we look around the world, it’s very true, we cannot just toss away our national weapons, because this is not yet the national consciousness; and so we’re not going around to recommend to Washington that they reread David and Goliath. They’re not going to get this in ten minutes or ten days or ten months.

We’ve got all we can do to build that Consciousness ourselves, and we cannot teach it until we have it. The other day a mother said, “How can I teach this to my child?” about something; and I knew very well that she didn’t understand it, so I said, “Well, I would suggest that you learn it, and then you will find you automatically can teach it. But before you have learned it, what’s the point of asking how to teach it?” You have nothing to teach until you learn it.” Until we are in the Consciousness of no power, there’s nobody to teach it. You can’t teach it to your child. You can’t teach it to your brother or sister or mother or father until you are It. When you are in the Consciousness of no power, you’ll find you’re automatically teaching it because that’s what you will demonstrate. Everything you do will be a teaching.

There will be less Goliaths in your life, and people will say, “Well, how come you’re not worried about such and such a condition?” “Well, I didn’t feel that God made such a condition, and so I’m not worried about it.” “Well, there’s an epidemic coming. Aren’t you aware of that?” “Well no, I’m aware of something quite different. I’m aware that no epidemic is coming. I’m aware that there’s a mental hysteria about an epidemic, but God isn’t sending an epidemic. How can it come here if God isn’t sending it here? Is there another power?” You’re still wrestling with Goliath, aren’t you?

And so, soon, you’re demonstrating the Consciousness of no power needed, but you’re not really an ostrich with your head in the sand, pretending it’s not there.—That’s for the one who is affirming and denying. And says it says so in the book, so it must be true.—You have made it your living Consciousness, and so for you it’s the practical way. For you, David and Goliath is not preposterous. For you, any condition on this earth is just another David and Goliath condition. And then, of course, you know that Goliath wasn’t just a physical thing. It’s a symbol of all the other contingencies in the material world, the sum total of material consciousness, summed up by the name Goliath.

Always the healings in the Bible demonstrate the power of Spirit as infallible, as indestructible in the face of every material power, but always there was the Consciousness of the Truth that matter is non-power over Spirit, and that where Spirit is recognized, realized, understood, and lived in daily, where personal self in a physical form is died to daily, where the knowledge of spiritual Identity is accepted daily, where Goliath is crucified daily, and David is resurrected daily in Consciousness, that is the pathway to Kingship.

The question comes up some time: Wouldn’t it help me if I knew how Goliath gets there? What puts him there? Why does Goliath even appear? And you know, originally, I thought we were going to do some of that today, but I can see that it’s going to be a very special lesson. It’s really something that I have hesitated to do for a long time because it takes us into a completely different place than the kind of lesson we’ve had today. We are going to call it “Cosmic Television,” the method in which Goliath appears, problems appear, other forms of error appear. Now, although it’s rather strange, I want to discuss it with you because I think we will be able to shed many of the attempts of the mind to try to understand this fellow Goliath.

I believe you can never really reach that state of non-power until you have really convinced your mind of the illusory nature of all material form. That will be the purpose, then, of our little talk on “Cosmic Television.” I don’t know if it ties up with Chapter 6, but I assure you by the time our talk is finished next week, it will. And so chapter six in Contemplative Life; and as you read it, bear in mind that we’re trying to learn, through this inner contemplative meditation, how to be able to know that Goliath is an illusion, that every form of problem is a form of a cosmic illusion, locally accepted. And we want to know how these illusions get here. Who puts them here? What’s the substance of them? What’s the background behind them?

And, maybe, when we know this, this mind of ours will be still and be willing to rely on little David, who by now is grown up to be the King within us, who will come forth as I, Christ. So finally, we find here that Saul, the king, says to little David, when they bring him to him, after he has slain the Philistine:

“Whose son art thou,

thou young man?

And David answered,

I am the son of thy servant Jesse the Bethlehemite.”

I come from Substance, the house of bread. And the whole slaying of this non-existent Philistine was by that knowledge of Truth, which reveals the absence of the lie, that knowledge, which is spiritual awareness is the Kingdom of God within you realized and lived in; and every illusion in the world, every imperfection, which is an illusion, through the the Substance of your Being—when you know that you have come from Bethlehem—is revealed as non-existence.

Then we, too, can say to Saul, to the mind, “I’ve been born of Bethlehem.” I come from Jesse in Bethlehem, and Jesse is I am. Everything that I am is from the root of I Am. For that I Am I am. And finally, the Christ comes forth: I and the Father are One. The Substance is established as your Being. There is no other. And instead of being in Cosmic Television, watching images of light and shadows, you’re an infinite Being without opposite. Your Substance, there’s Its Life.

Now, you know the four procedures, then, the four steps: Impersonalizing means there’s nothing, no one there. There’s no dog there. There’s no person there. The nothingizing is: there can be no condition there if there’s no person or a dog or whatever there; and both of these are done by knowing that only Spirit is. Number three: Spirit is My Name, My Identity. Spirit is everywhere Omnipresent. The Omnipresence of Spirit is My Name. Therefore, My Spirit is everywhere. Everywhere I am. No conditions, no persons, no people, no dogs, no cats, no anything, except pure Spirit everywhere, the Kingdom of God; and It is where I am, and It is everywhere. I am in this Omnipresence with all the powers of that Omnipresence.

And now rest in the peace of that, and you are at the point of equilibrium. The world can turn upside down, and to you it will hardly be noticeable. My peace I give unto you at this point, not as the world gives. This peace is beyond the understanding of this world, but it is not beyond the understanding of your Self, for it is your Self that gives this peace; and this is the peace that no power is needed. The realization becomes your Self.

Every time you find you want to fight something or meet it in some way, it is because you haven’t practiced the realization of no power. You can lose it in a flash, and I know that. You’re going to lose it in an hour or two. You’re going to wake up without it tomorrow morning, but that’s where you must be; and so, therefore, you must establish ways and means for you to recoup this Consciousness, until you lose it less and come into it higher, until the opposites fade away.

Get that little card. Write on it, “Only God is present,” or anything that came out of this talk for you. Brief it; make it yours. Over a period of time, you’ll have ten cards, twenty cards. You’ll find just a quick flash through one by one, they quickly establish levels within yourself. They begin to work their silent leavening. They prepare you, and you’ll find Goliath never comes to you when you are prepared, only when you are not.

Thanks again. See you next week perhaps: The sixth chapter of Contemplative Life.

Thank you very much.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized

The story today is the fifth chapter of The Contemplative Life and whatever it brings out in us, and I think next week we’ll go right ahead into the sixth chapter of Contemplative Life. I’m really anxious to get through it so we can move into Joel’s next book, The Mystical I, all prepared for it.

When we have finished this book, we will have what may be called the foundation of the transcendental Consciousness. We should be at a place where we can, without flinching an eyelid, be aware of the nothingness of all error without taking thought about it. This book should be for us a preparation for that Consciousness which needs take no thought about the problems of the world and of the body, without having to sit down and intellectualize about it. There is such a Consciousness. At times you find you’re in it. At other times you have to rise up from the valley.

A friend of mine said the other day sometimes he feels that he’s walking up the down escalator. And we all know, that unless we are continuously moving up, up, up, the moment we stop the consciousness of the world takes us right down, back where we started, and sometimes even further back. But there is a top. It’s the landing, the momentary mountain top; and on that top, there’s Goliath out there, but he doesn’t stand a chance. It’s an unfair fight; poor Goliath could never win because you stand in a different Consciousness in which Goliath, to you, is actually nothing: not a giant, not a bully, not an insurmountable thing in front of you, taunting you, telling you you can’t get by. But your Goliath has been conquered, and you’re ready for new things.

Now, according to the morning paper, Mr. William Randolph Hearst Junior has provided us with a little sidelight to today’s lesson. He is expressing the fear that Russia is getting there quicker in the arms race than we are. He is seeing his Goliath, and he is pointing out to us that we must fear and outrace that Goliath; and if anyone were to say to Mr. Hearst or those who share his opinion that they have no faith in the Bible, they would throw up their arms and say, “What are you talking about? We’re God-fearing men.” “But what about what God says in the Bible? Do you accept it?” “Oh, yes.” “Well, what about David and Goliath, and what about your story this morning?”

Let’s look at the story, and then let’s look at David and Goliath and see the difference in the mind of man, typified by the Hearst Story, and the Mind of Spirit, typified by the words speaking through Samuel to us about a man who’s in a vision [that] enables him to walk through an insurmountable object without taking arms. Mr. Hearst says, “Today, the US bomber force is less than 600. Our sub launched missiles have numbered 650 for four years, and our land based missiles have totaled 1,054 for four years. And during the same time, the Soviet bomber force has remained about constant, but their sub missile force has grown to almost 400 launchers and is expected to overtake ours in two or three years. And meanwhile, a Soviet land-based Inter-Continental force has risen to over 1440 operational launches.” More on the way. And so while the Soviets are gaining and will soon exceed us in missile weaponry at sea, we have already fallen distinctly behind on land.

Now, that’s a very imposing series of statistics, and I’m sure it’ll make the Pentagon do something very quickly. But of course, you realize that the Pentagon reads the Bible, too, and believes in it. And therefore, we must see that people can read this Bible and believe in it, while their actions are completely opposed to what they believe.

According to this, the David and Goliath story should have been written another way, perhaps. David should have looked out and said, “Oh, look at that giant, and look at that armor, and look at the weapons. Now let’s see, how can I go out and fight him? What we need to do is get together and build better weapons. We have to out-power him, or perhaps, out- smart him, or we need a great general to out-flank him. We must do something physically or mentally.” That would be the Bible version if it meant us to out-power Russia or out-power other nations.

But the Bible version says, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit . . .” And really the greatest observation you will ever find on the David and Goliath story is in the fifth chapter of Contemplative Life, because without a lot of fanfare, without a lot of psychology, Joel has given us not only the secret of David and Goliath, but the secret of the transcendental Consciousness that we can live in. We’re going to trace that, because in order to understand his secret and the secret of Samuel and the secret of David and the secret of Christ Jesus, it isn’t enough to see that a little fellow went out with a sling shot, and that we can do the same. We must see what went [on] inside the Consciousness of David. What is the inner David doing while the outer David is overcoming this insurmountable object?

And very nicely, once we start to look at what the inner David is doing, the scripture tells us precisely that. Practically every line tells you what’s going on in David’s Consciousness, and it’s a perfect blueprint for us of the path to what David eventually becomes. He becomes a king. Goliath is just one stepping stone on the way. As you move past Goliath, there are going to be other Goliaths. Let’s not pretend that the moment he got past Goliath, everything was roses. He got through four or five wives, too. He got through many things on the way, all part of his spiritual path. He lost one whom he loved very dearly. He lost Jonathan, and you will notice that he even lost his own followers. But always, this invisible path of Spirit gives us the outer signs; and if we’re looking, we recognize them and we make them part of our continuing developing awareness of Truth.

We find right out that David was tending the sheep. We know that Christ Jesus later said, “I am the good shepherd. My sheep hear my voice.” We know that he said to Peter, “If you love me, feed my sheep.” David was feeding the sheep, tending the sheep. Now, this is a sign, then, a symbol to us that he is in the preparatory stage of initiation. He is one of eight sons. He’s the eighth, and he is the youngest. He is in a far country. He’s not in his own kingdom at the moment.

The king of this country is Saul, the king of Israel, and now we have Israel pitted against the Philistines, and shall we say, then, that mind and body are having a little war? But Saul looks with some degree of favor upon David, and so something is happening that will make David the champion on the side of Israel, on the side of mind coming into a higher sense called Soul; and on the other side, their champion, the champion of physical force of the body of man, of the base nature of man is the incarnate evil, called Goliath—two champions, one representing body, one representing that emergent awareness of Soul, coming above the level of mind.

Now, before we go any further, you’re able to see that Goliath represents the old man of yesterday. David represents the new. Actually, there are many facets to Goliath, and they change as you change. At one point Goliath will represent to you the accumulated karma of your entire life, all standing out in front of you, saying, “ You can’t go any further.” At another stage, Goliath will only represent a momentary problem, but one thing that Goliath does represent, always, is this: Goliath is not an external obstacle. Goliath is not an external condition blocking your path. Goliath represents the complete fullness of your own false sense of self.

This Goliath, that we encounter in Scripture, is your second self. David is your emergent real Self becoming Self-aware, lifting you out of the false belief in a second self; and every problem, every pain, every ache, every evil, every form of darkness, lack and limitation, every belief in anything finite is included in this Goliath, this present sense of self. And when you look out at a problem, we learn you’re not looking out at a problem, you’re looking at the Goliath of the false sense of self which says, “Here’s the problem, and here’s what it’s going to do to you if you don’t watch out.”

The problem is never external to your being. It is always the Goliath of your false sense of self standing in front of you, looking down at you, saying, “Here is what we have to face today.” Goliath is not your enemy out there. Goliath is mortal mind in you, making this vast image of an impregnable armor which says, “You cannot defeat me.” You may be recovering from an accident, and your mind can’t figure out how in the world this condition, which has settled into a seemingly permanent condition, can ever be overcome; and so you study spiritually and you study and you study. You’re walking up that down escalator and getting nowhere.

Sometimes it seems, “I’ve got it.” Other times, you’re back at the bottom looking up. Goliath still says, “But it did happen. The bone’s set this way. You can’t do anything about that now. It’s done. It’s finished.” And your Goliath, there, is the belief that it happened, because if it happened, when it happened God wasn’t there; and that situation has never happened. In other words, Goliath is your hypnosis in the material events of the past as an accepted reality. Yes, there is a way to overcome the hypnosis of the past, as well as the present and the future; and all of that is Goliath, the braggart standing over us putting fear into our hearts and telling our minds, “You can’t figure out this one.”

All of this is said when we are told about the size, the stature, the scowl, the armor, the loud, ominous voice; and all of this is contrasted by a quiet little fellow who was feeding the sheep, just a young fellow with a ruddy countenance, a child, you might say, but somehow he doesn’t hear the braggart as others do, because living in the inner self, feeding the sheep, resting in the Consciousness of God’s presence, he develops the capacity to see with the eyes of God: to see no evil, to hear no evil, to speak no evil. Goliath, it’s almost hard to focus upon this fellow, Goliath. Did God make such a creature? Did God make anything destructive? Did God create a problem? Goliath, who can this be? A nothingness, not created by the Father.

But who is David? Is David a nothingness, too? Yes, he is a nothingness. He’s as much a nothingness as Goliath. There’s no David there. There’s no Goliath there. And only David is aware of that. “I am the Light,” said the Master Jesus. And now David is realizing him Self to be the Light of God, because having fed the sheep, the Consciousness has developed to the point where Light, Spirit, Substance, Essence is the Identity of David and the Identity of Goliath. All that is present in the pure Consciousness is the true Identity of Spirit.

There are not two forms, and nothing more. There are two body images standing in the One Invisible Light, and who is the majority but the One who knows this? Now David, being an initiate of Truth, and Goliath, representing that force in him which stands in his way to the kingship or Christ-hood, is really waging an inner conflict, which has nothing to do with other people or other events. This is the change of consciousness within David, made visible. This is spiritual Consciousness manifesting outwardly as outer events, but you’re going to discover, as we go along a little further, that the language of the Soul is what we’re looking at.

We’re looking at these symbols, appearing as body images and body conditions and world conditions, that are put forth by consciousness as it is accepted or rejected; and all that we are witnessing now is the acceptance within David that the Kingdom of God is within him Self, that his Spirit is Omnipresent Spirit, that his Omnipresent Spirit stands where Goliath appears to be. He cannot deny Omnipresence and accept the intimidation of Goliath at the same time. Once he has accepted Goliath as a reality, a force of destruction, he is saying, “Omnipresence is a lie. Spirit is a lie. Spirit is not here. The power of Spirit is not here.”

And as a human being, this is precisely what he would do, but having been tending the sheep, having had that spiritual beginning within him Self and that rising knowledge of the inner Christ, all the strength, all the power of the Kingdom in his Consciousness must manifest in some way as the non-power of Goliath; and the great vision, that came through Joel about this, is the secret of your work. It is something that is not explained by any of the religions of the world because, until no power is accepted, you cannot explain David and Goliath, except in the usual clichés.

No power here means just this: God, being the only Presence anywhere, only the perfect power of God is functioning. And when you are trying with the mind to cope with that thought, you find you’re unable to support it for a long time. You can memorize it, and you can try to jot it on a card so that tomorrow you remember it. You can try to hammer it into yourself with a recitation, but it isn’t enough. Non-power has to be a state of Consciousness, attainable, in which you are able to know that because God is everywhere, there is no power needed in any circumstance on this earth.

Now that may manifest as a boy with a sling shot, casting a stone on the forehead of a giant, and you’ll say, “Well, he did something. He didn’t exert no power. He did something.” Yes, only because if he did absolutely nothing, it would not be as it is in actual human living. You would have no way of understanding what was happening. In human living, you would be putting on the armor and going out to face this giant. In human living, you would face your adversary, and you would usually use the identical tactics of your adversary. You’d want to match him, brain for brain, brawn for brawn, strategy for strategy. That’s not the spiritual Way. The spiritual Way is, first, within yourself; and within himself, David knew no power was needed to overcome this adversary—no power needed, no armor, no sword.

The sling shot and the five stones become symbols to teach us. In fact, if he had gone out with his sword and armor, you wouldn’t have heard this story again. He’d have been annihilated if he met his adversary with the tactics of the adversary. If you meet the liar with a lie, a cheat with a cheat, the force with a force, you’re just locking horns. You’re recognizing it as a reality; and here this vast, monumental figure, compared to the little boy, is shown to be nothing but a mirage, an externalized belief, the sum total of all human fear externalized into one mammoth figure with no substance, no content, no power—unless he has an adversary who believes he has power.

And when you translate this to every problem in your life, you find you are really saying that every problem in your life is without substance, without power, is nothing but your externalized belief made visible as condition, thing, person, adversary, who needs to be faced only by the little David in you with his slingshot, meaning, inner vision, for that which finally makes the giant succumb is the stone of Truth, one little stone of Truth; and the giant is slain. This is the eternal warfare between all of the material grotesque problems of the world and your one little stone of spiritual Truth. And what is that spiritual Truth which makes it possible for you to stand in the Consciousness of no power? Only Spirit exists. There is only Spirit.

I am the Light. You are the Light. These forms of a world mind are not Substance. These are shadows in the Light. And the Consciousness of Light as your Name, your Substance, your Being, the Awareness of the Omnipresence of the Light, worked with, and that’s feeding your sheep, living with It. And every time a thought runs out of line, you bring that thought back into the fold with your rod of Truth, so that every little sheep,—Every little thought that moves outside into fear, hate, rejection, resentment, material thinking is a lost sheep.—and you gently bring it back into the fold. You are feeding the sheep of your mind until all that is in there is the Truth that Spirit is, Spirit is, Spirit IS.

Does Spirit have pain? No. Does Spirit have any problem? No. Does Spirit suffer? Does Spirit have a heart attack? Is Spirit blind? Is Spirit deaf? Does Spirit die? Does Spirit have anything that we encounter in the world as a problem? Is Spirit all? And every little sheep, that says, “There’s something besides Spirit.” has to be brought back into the fold, in your Consciousness until all your sheep are in the fold, until Spirit is your Consciousness.

Now, where is Goliath? Just one of the little sheep. Just one of the little sheep who got too big because he wasn’t watched. And now we look at Goliath. He’s not quite as big anymore. He has shrunken some. Spirit is, and he’s been telling you how powerful he is. He’s been denying that Spirit is the only power. He’s been telling you what he’s going to do to you, if you ever dare to come out on the battlefield with him. But Spirit is all that is here.

Spiritual Identity is yours, and that spiritual Identity is Omnipresent. There are no opposites in Spirit. There are no Goliaths’ in Spirit. There are no Russia’s in Spirit, but you’ll never know this until you know there’s no David in Spirit either. As long as there’s a David, there’s a Goliath. As long as there’s a personal me, there’s a Goliath, but when I am Spirit, Goliath was just shot, murdered, killed, annihilated. He never existed. The absence of personal sense in me is the end of Goliath, because that’s who Goliath was. My personal sense is Goliath, but I know I am Spirit. The slingshot has found its mark. Truth has conquered Goliath. All the problems were in Goliath.

When I know I am Spirit, the problems contingent upon the existence of a personal self are no longer there. You cannot find a problem in Spirit, and when you have accepted Spirit as the All, as the Self, as the Self without beginning or end in time or space, as the Self everywhere now, you’re in the Consciousness that needs no power. We have to illustrate that for you. The dog bites the boy. The mother is worried. The shot is given to the boy for rabies. There’s a day, a fourteen day period before you really know. So you wait.

Goliath says, “The boy can have rabies.” Mother says, “We have to watch out, the boy can have rabies.” Medicine says, “The boy can have rabies.” There’s a power called “rabies” where there is no awareness that Spirit is All. Now then, this comes to your attention, and you are aware that Spirit is All. Goliath is standing before you. Maybe to you it’s not much of a Goliath anymore, but it is to that mother; and behind it all is rabies, the threat, the possibility. Why, even the other day, a boy in the paper passed on from rabies, and so she’s worried.

Now, none of us should have that worry, because if you are feeding your sheep, if you are living in the Consciousness of Truth that Spirit is All, you will be in the Consciousness which can say, really can say and know without any great effort, but instinctively and automatically, “There is no dog. There is no boy. There is only Spirit. There can be no rabies.” And in that Consciousness, you have fulfilled the first two points of your healing Consciousness, the knowledge of, the non-reality of the Goliath called matter, the non-reality of the Goliath called condition in matter. That is impersonalizing and nothingizing, just by being in the Consciousness that Spirit is All. You automatically do not go into a long wind up, a long harangue, and a long series of quotations.

It comes to you and you simply know Spirit being All, there is no material selfhood and no material condition, and there’s nothing to figure out. There’s nothing to argue about. There’s nothing to affirm or deny beyond that. It’s simply a knowing because you have been living in the Consciousness that Spirit is All, and sometimes you don’t have to go any further. It’s better to [take] the third step, and that third step now is something I want you to take because you’ve done it enough so that it can become routine, a great joy, but something that you don’t have to fumble to find: There is no dog; There is no boy.

If you can’t face that quickly, easily, effortlessly, you’ve got work to do; but it can be faced that way, and then, you see, you have nothing to fight against anymore. You don’t have to fight Goliath anymore. As far as you’re concerned, Goliath doesn’t have to die. He never existed. You don’t have to cure the rabies. I mean, now, this must be that Consciousness right then and there; and it takes daily living with it to be right then and there in that Consciousness. If there’s the slightest fumbling and trying to un-talk yourself from the problem, you’ve lost it right there.

Now then, if you can look at your financial problem the same way, a physical problem, your human relationships, anything in your life as an impossibility because Spirit is All there is, and stay with that for days until something in you accepts it, something in you refuses to accept another substance in this world than Spirit, when you reach that conclusion that Spirit is,—and that’s what Jesus was teaching,—that Spirit is All there is. And that’s why Spirit is invincible. That’s why Spirit needs no power to overcome matter. That’s why Spirit is never needing another power to overcome any material condition.

Spirit is, and the accident out there, the problem out there hitting your Consciousness doesn’t make a dent. It doesn’t cause a reaction. It isn’t that you steel yourself and your great will power, but rather you simply know. It just hits you, and that’s the end of it. It doesn’t make a dent. Now you’re in a non-reactive stage, which automatically is called impersonalizing and nothingizing. You haven’t done anything except you know. And we know that Spirit being All, I need no power.

Now, if we can get that far, your down escalator is going to cease to have power to bring you down. Let’s stand there for a minute in the knowledge that Spirit is the Substance of God, that God is Spirit, and God is All, and Spirit is the only Substance. And we’re working behind the visible scenes in the One Substance, which is Spirit, which is the power of perfection and love; and It is always present. It is always Self-maintaining, Self-supporting. And then the Bible says whatever you ask in my name shall be given.

Accept your Self to be that Spirit, and we’re in the third step. That Spirit, which is all, is My Name, My Substance; and because that Spirit is Omnipresent, and I am that Spirit, My Substance is Omnipresent: I am Omnipresent. My Substance is everywhere. The power of My Substance must be where My Substance is. We’re accepting Omnipresence of God everywhere; and therefore, the Omnipotence of God must be where His Substance is. Everywhere is God’s Spirit. Everywhere is God’s power.

Now, these are the facts. We’re not concerned about appearances. We’re in the third step of the healing Consciousness. The power and the presence of God is everywhere, and that Substance, which is the presence and power of God, is my Substance everywhere.

The fourth step puts the whole thing together. It’s total freedom. The fourth step is that Substance is here now. You take it here now in your Consciousness, and that’s all you do. Here now is that Substance, that Power, that Presence, that Spirit, which is God; and because it’s there, I don’t have to do anything about it. It’s here, and if I touch it here, I’m touching it everywhere in this Universe right now. All the Goliaths in the world can just waste their time. They aren’t there.

The Substance that I’m touching here is the only Substance that is there. The Spirit that is here is the only Spirit that is there, and because Spirit is All and has no material opposite, only Spirit is there. Only Spirit is everywhere, but I must touch It here in the Kingdom of God within me. Here I know, accept Spirit as Identity; and the Power, the Presence of that Spirit, which is here, being everywhere, becomes the law unto me. That’s the secret of no power, isn’t it? What power need I have over an adversary if Spirit is All there is? And I have seen no one in this world give us that understanding of David and Goliath, except Joel—no power.

Just standing in the knowledge Spirit is everywhere as Itself, and that Self is My Self here, that heals rabies, I can tell you right now. It removes the belief in rabies right here, and that absence of belief right here becomes the absence of belief wherever necessary, wherever there has been a contact to this awareness that rabies is non-existent, that only Spirit is. No power is needed to overcome it, none. No power is needed to overcome a problem on this earth. Though real, it is only real to the one who still has not accepted the All-ness of Spirit, the Identity of Spirit, the Omnipresence of Spirit.

And so in review, the one, two, three, four of it is this: You’re doing two jobs in one. You’re impersonalizing and nothingizing when you come to the place where you can know that only Spirit is. It takes some people five years to come to that: Only Spirit is. There is no material form and no material condition because of the fact that only Spirit is. You can take Jesus and see how simple it was for him, having reached the conclusion that only Spirit is, to stand looking out at every material claim and yawning, so that he only needs spittle to restore the awareness of vision. Only Spirit is. Where did vision go? Where did hearing go?

Where did all of the good things go if only Spirit is? They were lost in false belief, Goliath accepted, because the human mind is the very Goliath presenting all of the false beliefs. And so everywhere, is this condition in Spirit? Is there a cripple in Spirit? Is there lack and limitation in Spirit? Is Spirit hungry? Is Spirit poor? Is Spirit needful of something? Is Spirit suffering or dying? Is Spirit going to live just a certain number of years? Is Spirit getting older? Does Spirit need protection? And you find none of these things are true. Spirit needs none of this, and Spirit lacks nothing. And you’re strong. You’re at the Consciousness which knows this, so you’re up to the third step. You’re in that non-reactive Consciousness, which can smile and say, “But only Spirit is.” And you’re in the third step of “And it is I. I am Spirit.”

Where is Spirit? Everywhere, everywhere. Spirit is Omnipresent, therefore that Omnipresent Spirit is My Self. I’m no longer this finite material self. I am that Omnipresent Spirit, which is I and which is the fourth step: here, now. And that here now is the trigger, which unites you to Omnipresent Spirit everywhere, standing in the need for no power, letting the Spirit do Its own revelation of harmony and Truth and perfection. You’re in the Sabbath. Rest. Stand ye still. Wait upon the Lord. Let the Lord of Hosts show forth that the braggart, named Goliath, is just a huge bag of wind; and that personal sense of self, which is a source of every other Goliath you’re going to face, being dead, why, the source is gone. The personal sense is crucified.

You have really gone through the Crucifixion and the Resurrection with the slaying of Goliath. Personal sense slain, you’re resurrected unto Reality. You hold it a while, and in your Sabbath, you ascend over the material appearance. Every time you face another so-called problem with the Truth, you go through Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension, so that your Crucifixion is to crucify the false beliefs by knowledge of Spirit as the All. Your Resurrection is when you stand in the Truth of Being that I am that Spirit, and your Ascension is when you’re standing in the Lord in the Self. In the no power of pure Spirit, you ascend above the appearance. When you keep doing this again and again and again, you find you have the weapon to meet anything with no power; and then David and Goliath becomes a very valuable teaching for those on the path to Kingship or Christ-ing.

Now, I think the healing Consciousness should be quite clear by now. We should have solid ground to stand on. The importance of It is that when we have attained this measure of freedom, we don’t waste valuable energy and thought and time pushing things away and fighting adversaries. We can devote that time and that energy to dwelling in the Spirit, to living in the Truth, to walk with God; and thereby, you find you’re automatically living in cause, instead of fighting off the effects of a mortal mind. When you’re living in cause, you’re sowing to the Spirit, you’re building with Substance, you’re making a real transition in Consciousness; and the physical form is going to lose its effect. It’s going to become just another Goliath, as you become aware of that other Body of Light, which has no outer obstructions to face, which isn’t looking at the calendar, which knows nothing of the evils of the world.

Now this is the place we’re all at in varying degrees, but nonetheless, this is the focus from which we’re all working. Now, let’s assume we had all reached the point where every Goliath in the world would meet the Consciousness of no resistance in the knowledge that only Spirit is. At that moment, you are in, what may be called, a point of equilibrium between the finite and the infinite, between the unreal and the real, between the Spirit and the material. That point of equilibrium is the secret place of the Most High where you walk undisturbed, and having attained it in a measure, holding it in a measure, we learn we’re to live there at the point of equilibrium, which is a secret place of the Most High; and you’ll find that is where My Peace is.

I give you My Peace at that point of equilibrium, where there is nothing which is responding to the material world’s complaints, which is sowing to the Spirit, which has built a confident assurance of spiritual Identity under spiritual law everywhere, which has accepted that God is conscious, always present, always power, always love, always harmony, always perfection, always and everywhere. The miracle of Life begins at that point. That is where we walk on a new firmament, and we discover the old earth was really a symbol of our old body. The new earth is our new Body of Spirit, which is infinite, and we are that infinite spiritual Body called the New Earth.

We’re on a different scale of things. There’s no personal self now to be concerned about, as we were before. There’s no personal self to be made into a success or to protect. That’s yesterday’s Goliath. You’ll find that David put his armor in the tent, after he knew he would never need that armor to wear. The new Consciousness was formed. The armor was within, in the tent. The knowledge of Self places you on the new Firmament. To walk in the Spirit is to walk in the acceptance that I live in the cause of Reality; and cause and effect are one.

Cause, being Spirit and being perfect, effect must be one with that cause and always perfect; and therefore, I am not concerned. I live in obedience to the impulse of Spirit. Goliath may eventually show forth again in another form and then another, but the ultimate death of Goliath is assured the moment you have reached this level, which says, Spirit can never be less than its own present, perfect Self in All things.

Then I would suggest that you make a little card. Get yourself a handful of index cards, and every time you come to a major Truth, something you know is a landmark for you, something you’ve got to be able to wake up to tomorrow and be part of your Self without any effort, such as “Only Spirit is present,” when you have the realization of that, a knowledge of it, the working understanding of it, put it on your index card, “Only Spirit is present,” in nice big, bold letters.

Put that card in your pocket. Put it in your purse. Keep it on your person, wherever you are. Occasionally, just pull it out and look at it, “Only Spirit is present,”until this is your knowledge within, until it’s carded inside yourself, until you know “Only Spirit is present,” so that you can quickly look at any situation, without having to intellectualize about it, and stand ye still in the knowledge that “Only Spirit is present.” And then wait inside, and this is where that glorious feeling becomes the revelation of Divine Power.

Because “Only Spirit is present,” you find something within you seems to move to wherever the predicament is; and right there, where the predicament seems to be, even though it may be miles away from where you are, within your Self it seems such a short distance, just a foot away. And from where the predicament seems to be in the outer, within yourself that predicament seems to disappear; and something right there says, “Only Spirit ishere.” You have that feeling: “It is done.” The inner realization here, and just a little further here, “Only Spirit is here,” and that, miles in the outer, is just in that little space within your Self; and when you feel it is done, it is done.

All of this took place in David before Goliath fell, before he picked up the sling shot, before he let go, before it made contact. It all took place in that one little brief span of Consciousness within him Self; and then, like a little microfilm, shone forth on a huge screen as a moving picture, it became an outer visible thing, but the complete enactment of it was all within his inner Consciousness knowing Spirit is here, Spirit is there, the law of Spirit is perfection, and that is all that can be here. I need not make it so.

• Healing
• Meditation
• Mystical
• Spiritual
• Uncategorized