From – The Master Speaks
Chapter 5
by Joel Goldsmith

THE I THAT I AM

On the Spiritual Path you will be tempted, not a hundred times, but a thousand times, to believe in a selfhood apart from the I that I am; you will be tempted to believe that you are that selfhood, or that your son or your daughter is a selfhood separate and apart from God.

Each time it will be an effort to remember: I is God; I is infinite being: I is infinite individuality. Then when you have achieved that realization you can rest—but only for a few minutes, until the next temptation comes along.

Why do people believe life is eternal, God is all, … until something happens? A person’s death proves God is not all, Life is not eternal? Does a perfect life in this body prove anything at all? Understanding eternal life and God’s allness goes a long way to bringing healing to bear and probably complete understanding and knowing guarantees healing. But mortal man has his own interpretation of what healing entails. Since life is eternal it’s not limited to this earthsuit. [Besides 60 years ago 72 was not as ‘young’ as today.] How do we know that Joel didn’t on some level want to step aside and let Herb take over? How do we know they’re not here now if God is truly All?

Joel Goldsmith
from The Master Speaks

“The secret of harmony is in understanding true identity.
I is God, not man. I is consciousness, not body.
I is life eternal. It was never born. It will never die.”

“It is the ability when looking at a human being, to perceive that which is not apparent to the human senses and in that perception see through the individual to the Christ.”

from Spiritual Interpretation of Scripture

“The Christ appeared as Jesus. The Christ appears as individual you and me. This realization begins our spiritual experience and present immortality.”

Let us not believe that the promises of Scripture are meant for human beings walking around living a purely human materialistic life. These divine promises are meant for us individually in proportion as we make our contact with God and receive those promises from within our own being. If it flashes into our mind, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” that is a divine promise, and we can rely on that. It is better than a note from the Bank of England. When we receive such an impartation from within, it will never leave us or forsake us, and it will always bring us back to the throne of God.
Once we hear in our ear, “Fear thou not, for I am with thee,” that is all we need. That is as absolute an assurance of God’s grace as was David’s. We have attained God’s grace when we have heard the “still small voice” within us. Whether we have heard it as a voice or felt it as an impulse or just achieved it as an awareness, regardless of how it comes, we have attained God’s grace. Then, we can say with confidence, “Oh well, He will lead me ‘beside the still waters,’ even if I have to cross a few rough ones to get there. ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,’ even if I walk through a few barren ones before I arrive there.”
The important point is not whether or not we have what we think of as complete happiness or peace today. As a rule, that is just some namby-pamby idea of what constitutes happiness or peace. What counts is whether or not we are preparing ourselves by study, by meditation, by companioning with those on the spiritual path for the hearing of that “still small voice,” for the actual experience of the Christ.
Once we achieve it, we are free from organization, from governmental support, and from all those bonds that the human mind wants to place on itself. Once we have achieved this contact with our inner being, with our Christhood, we are in bondage to no man, to no organization, to no government, to no form of economy. We are then free in Christ, and we can say, “Christ lives my life. It makes no difference whether we have capitalism or communism; it makes no difference whether we have depressions or booms; it makes no difference whether we have floods or droughts. The Christ lives my life.”

J. S. Goldsmith: Living by The Word. Chapter One; Be Still and Let the Word Well Up from Within; Kindle location: 340-362

Attaining the Garden-of-Eden State of Consciousness – JSG

There are many persons who do not like cats and many who do not like dogs, and some who do not like animals at all. Certainly there are many who fear reptiles and wild beasts, but on the spiritual path we cannot remain in the world and of it: we must remain in it but not of it. We do not have to go out into the wilds and face reptiles or beasts physically, but right where we are, we face the part of the world that we like and the part that we do not like, and realize, “There is more to you than the eye beholds, and until I have developed the capacity of spiritual discernment, I will not know man or animal as he is in God, nor will I know the world as it is in God, and therefore I will never know what it is to live in the Garden of Eden.”
The Garden of Eden does not exist in time; the Garden of Eden does not exist in space; and it does not even exist in the future for us. There is no place where we can find it, nor even in some spots on the face of the globe where it is claimed the Garden of Eden once was. The truth is that the Garden of Eden was never in any particular place because the Garden of Eden is a state of divine consciousness. We live in It here and now in proportion as we can discern the nature and character of man as he is in the image and likeness of God and as we can discern the mountains, valleys, trees, streams, and oceans as they are as God’s creation.
God’s creation is spiritual. As the inner faculty of discernment is developed we will begin to see spiritually, hear spiritually, and know spiritually, all of which constitutes discernment. “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Phillip?” “Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?…But whom say ye that I am?” Are we seeing Jesus as a man? Are we seeing our husband, our wife, or our child as man, woman, or child, or do we have eyes that really see? Do we have ears that really hear? Do we have a power of discernment that transcends the five physical senses?
On this point hinges the entire spiritual life, and on this point hinges spiritual healing. With the five physical senses, that is, with the human mind, we would be more than foolish if we stated that there is no sin, disease, or death in the world, or if we were to say there is no lack, limitation, or stupidity. Once spiritual discernment has been attained, even in a small measure, however, we begin to perceive God’s creation right where mortality appears to be, and this constitutes the healing consciousness. The difference between a student who is doing spiritual healing work and the rest of the world is that those doing healing work have attained enough of spiritual discernment to see through the appearance to the world, the man, and the law of God’s creating, whereas the world as a whole judges entirely by appearances.
~ Joel Solomon Goldsmith

The access to God is through spiritual discernment, and spiritual discernment is a faculty of the Soul, the spirit, which is within you. Therefore, since access to God must be through the Soul, it can only be through silence, stillness, quietness. Then, “In the moment that ye think not, the bridegroom cometh.” In the moment when you are not thinking, the spirit of God, the voice of God, the action of God can take place within you. We read the books with the mind and we hear the tapes with the mind, but only in order that the message itself may quiet and still the mind and convince you of the need for that quietness.
Remember that behind the mind, there stands you. Take that with the word “I.” Behind the mind stands me. I am behind the mind and I can think thoughts through the mind, or I can still the mind. Then, in the stillness, the Soul faculty is in action. It comes awake in you, it comes alive in you, and then through the power of discernment you can know that which is unknowable, see that which is unseeable, hear that which is inaudible. It is a state of grace attained through stillness. “Be still, and know that I am God.” Then be still and listen for the still small voice, the voice of God.
When you have thought about and pondered this daily for quite some time, you will understand what I believe is the greatest principle revealed in the message of The Infinite Way: “My conscious oneness with God constitutes my oneness with all spiritual being and idea.” We call this the practice of meditation, or contemplation. Contemplation is a step before meditation. In contemplation you agree that the mind must be still so that you can listen and receive impartations through your Soul faculties. In order to receive these impartations you must be one with the spirit of God in you, the consciousness of God in you, and you attain this oneness through stillness.
In the beginning it is possible that you can hold this stillness for only five to ten seconds but, as you continue the practice, you will find you can hold it for a minute and that is really enough. Later you will be able to hold it as long as you wish or as long as there is a need, but only a minute accomplishes your purpose which is conscious oneness or conscious union with God. The moment I attain that stillness I am receptive, and my inner ear is open. And the moment I make that contact I know it because of a deep breath or because of some other manifestation. The moment I am one with it, I am one with everyone on the spiritual path and I am one with all spiritual grace, spiritual law and spiritual life that is in the entire world. It is for this reason that you need “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on.” It is for this reason that you need take no thought for the human aspect of your life.
When you go into this meditation, clear out all thought of how you shall be healed, enriched, or how you shall be at peace with your neighbors. Drop all of this, for it is as foolish to take thought for these things as it is foolish afterward to give thanks for the new health or the new supply or the new business or the new friends. There is only one thing to be grateful for–that you have received the spirit of God. The palaces and the yachts can disappear as quickly as they came. By taking no thought for things and by centering your whole attention on this oneness with your source, what happens to the world of things makes no difference because even the lost years of the locust will be restored.

J. S. Goldsmith: Consciousness Transformed. Silence; Stillness; Quietness!; Kindle location: 5617-5644

“We are all students merely functioning at different levels. Every day we must re-establish ourselves in the Christ Consciousness and then go further to the realization that whatever problems we meet this day are appearing as mesmeric suggestions based on the universal belief in two powers. We must constantly and consciously abide in the realization that whatever we are being presented with is a picture — a picture sometimes good and sometimes evil – and we must not be attached to any picture. At the very moment they appear we recognize them as the “arm of flesh” and dismiss them as such. We must not gloat over the good ones, and we must not fear the evil ones :We must realize the unreal nature and impersonal nature of both. The master gave us these Words: ”We can of our own selves do nothing”. He knew and was convinced of the Presence in our center that does the work, it functions and is responsible for our lives and its demonstration and we trust that Presence, trust it and rest on it. JSG (The Contemplative Life)

Our progress Spiritward is in proportion to the illumination which enables us to behold more and more of Reality. Because the human scene is entirely a misconception through misperception, any thought of helping, healing, correcting, or changing the material picture must be relinquished in order that we may SEE the Ever-Present Reality.
~Joel S. Goldsmith

From – The Mystical I
By Joel Goldsmith
P. 136 The Purpose of The Infinite Way

Once again let me remind you that the function of The Infinite Way is not merely the healing of disease or the overcoming of sin or of lack. It is rising out of the three-dimensional consciousness, out of the consciousness of good and of evil, into the Fourth Dimension, the illumined consciousness which is aware of the things of God. In this fourth-dimensional realm, you are in an area of consciousness where you not only know the things of God, but you receive the things of God, and you live under the law of God. This is Grace.
The Master, who of all persons was best known for his realized state of Christ-consciousness, used as his principle “resist not evil” and “put up…thy sword,” which is a recognition that there is no power out in the world, nothing to fight. He understood the non-power of the world of effect.
You, too must lay the ax to the root, and the root of all evil is the universal belief in two powers, what Paul called “the carnal mind,” the mind of good and evil. Once you understand the principle that all evil is impersonal and that it does not have its rise in any individual, you will begin to have the secret of healing work and the secret of world work, because you will not attach the sin, the disease, the struggle for power, the wrong thinking, or any other thing to an individual.
That which is anti-Christ, or so-called evil, is the carnal mind, the universal belief in two powers, which constitutes a universal hypnotism. When you have thus impersonalized and recognized the nothingness of this universal belief, you have lifted your consciousness closer to the Christ-consciousness, and then you will discover why you do not have to resist evil. God is not in the whirlwind. Power is not in the evil condition. Power, God, is in the “still small voice.” Do you want God? Do you want God-power? Do you want God’s grace? Then be still! And when the still small voice speaks, you have it. What happens when you are in the inner stillness is that the presence of God is realized, and it does the work, whatever the nature of that work is.
The importance of this principle is far greater than you can imagine. The realization of God is not so that you or anyone else should find health, abundance, or happiness. Be assured that God has no interest in that at all. If, in The Infinite Way, there were ten thousand or a hundred thousand of us who really attained health, wealth, and happiness, it would still not be too great an accomplishment, since there are millions and millions of people on earth and more being born every day. So our individual regeneration would be practically meaningless.
It is only insofar as the light coming to you and to me is permitted to be shown forth in the world that we serve any purpose on earth. We were not sent here just to become happy human beings. We were sent here on earth to glorify God, that God’s laws should be made manifest through us and that through us the world might witness the laws of God in operation, the laws that make men free.
There is a mental inertia that operates universally in this human world, preventing even those who have been taught how to prepare themselves spiritually for the day from doing so. This mental inertia makes them forget to realize God’s presence; it makes them forget to realize that mesmerism or malpractice is not spiritually ordained, and therefore is not operative in the individual consciousness that has realized the Presence. For the person, however, who does engage in daily spiritual preparation, the realization of the presence of God and the nonpower of mesmerism or malpractice nullifies the effects of universal hypnotism, and in some degree these effects are also nullified for the entire world.

IW Morsel – No Interest
God has no interest in your goodness and will not reward it, and God has no interest in your sins and will not punish them.
Beyond Words and Thoughts
By Joel Goldsmith
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From – Realization Of Oneness
By Joel Goldsmith
Excerpt-Chapter 1 / Pure Being Page 18

If you have not learned from the message of The Infinite Way that the only good you are ever going to receive is from within your own consciousness, then you have failed to perceive the nature of its message and mission, which is that God constitutes your consciousness and that through meditation you must draw forth from within your own consciousness the allness and the fulfillment of life.

Infinity and immortality are made manifest as the consciousness of the individual, and the name of this divine Consciousness, which is our individual consciousness, is I. You must understand that you are not to direct this I, enlighten It, plead with It, or try to be a master of It, but that you are to submit and yield yourself servant to the I of your own being, so that your prayer is that I fulfill Itself as your individual experience, that I be the Grace which is your sufficiency, and then let this I which is your true Selfhood govern your life in Its own way.

When you then go into prayer and meditation, there must be no preconceived idea as to what you want or how you wish your prayer to answered. There must be a complete yielding as you daily realize, “Not my will, but thine, be done.” Do not go to God with your thoughts and do not try to have God fulfill your way, because you will fail. You must go to God, the divine Consciousness of your own being, the very I which you are, with this prayer: “Reveal to me Thy way, Thy will, Thy thought, and this, then, will be my way, my will, and my thought.”