This Body Is Not Me
We are earthbound and we are landlocked until we break out by going upward. Only as our vision goes upward out of this body, out of this world of force, do we get up into a free strata, a free realm, where we’re no longer body locked, landlocked, earthbound, but where we are free souls. You know that all of this world, except the mystics or those on the mystical path, are locked up in their bodies. Their body is the most real thing to them. They’re fastened into it and can’t escape from it, and that’s where their misery comes—being landlocked inside of the body, being earthbound inside of the body and having no freedom.
The very first freedom that an individual attains is when they can look in the mirror and say that this body is not Me. This body is not Me. I am Me. I, I am Me. I am Joel. Not this body, this body isn’t Joel. I am Joel, and if the doctors searched from head to foot they couldn’t find Joel inside of this body for I am not here.
And that was the great mystical statement: “He is not here. He is risen”. That’s the symbology of the Resurrection. We are not entombed in this body. In our Resurrection we rise out of the tomb of this body and realize I am Joel. I am not body. I am Joel and I am not in a body. They could not search this body from top to bottom and find me for I am not here. I do not live in a body. I live in Consciousness. I live in God. I live and move and have my being in God therefore I fill all space. I am here and I am there and I am everywhere. I am where God is and God is where I am for we are one, and that one is not limited to time or to space or to place. And that’s why the materialist fears death because they think that with the end of the body, there comes an end of me. How foolish! I’m not in the body. I never was in the body. I won’t live in the body and I won’t die out of the body for I will never be in the body. And therefore, there is no need to fear death because death is just checking the body at a weigh station while we keep going on.
From – Tape 344 Side 2
1960 Lausanne Class
“Prayer – The Upward Dimension: Earthbound – Landlocked
by Joel Goldsmith