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Table of Contents
Living In The 4th Dimension
San Fransisco
Seminar/Tape series 1971
By Herb Fitch
Foreword Bill Skiles 7
Class 1 There Is No Place Where God Is Not 9
Class 2 I Am Spirit 27
Class 3 Impersonalizing Four Ways 43
Class 4 Immaculate Self Conception 63
Class 5 Secret Of The Resurrection 79
Class 6 Invisible Resurrection Of Your Real Body 98
Class 7 Freeways Of The Soul 118
Class 8 Remnants Of The Seventh World 136
Class 9 Your Healing Consciousness 154
Class 10 Miracle Of The Holy Ghost 173
Class 11 Enoch 192
Class 12 Erasing Concepts 211
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Table of Contents
Living In The 4th Dimension
Continued
Class 13 Living Outside Your Body 228
Class 14 A Real And Permanent Body 246
Class 15 I Am Not A Prodigal 264
Class 16 Oil From Your Soul Center 283
Class 17 Has Goliath Fooled You 300
Class 18A Three Measures Of Leaven 323
Class 18B Cosmic Television 333
Class 19 You Are Divine Life Now 340
Class 20 Your Identity Already Walks On Water 358
Class 21 A Total Re-identification 377
Class 22 Here Is Now 396
Class 23 Divine Supply 413
Class 24 Christmas Everyday 432

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Foreword
By Bill Skiles
What is this 4th Dimension? Is there such a place? Is it a plane of existence?

Yes! And it is attained and lived right here and now. Over the centuries men have
given this 4th Dimension many names: The Kingdom of Heaven, Nirvana, Tao,
Paradise, Promised Land, New Jerusalem and Bliss, to name a few. And It is a very
real state of Consciousness.
While listening to this 4th Dimension series of talks given by Herb Fitch in
California, in 1971, I realized some of the characteristics of this dimension and also
that we can live and move and have our being in It.
Synchronicity is one such quality which begins to happen in our lives when we
have made the effort to commune with God in meditation a few times each day.
We find ourselves in the right place at the right time, without any planning on our
part. Joel states that we have to renew this contact many times throughout our day.
And further that the 4th Dimension will eventually become our permanent dwelling
place.
Another attribute is Joy. While living in this dimension and serving God by
serving his creation, we find Joy has come and dwells in our hearts. Also, Light pours
into our being in the form of a Wisdom that is from above and as pure Energy which
flows into us and aids us in our work with others.
In AA they have a big book which states that after you have a spiritual
experience you will be rocketed into a 4th Dimension of existence. And further, that
Inspiration will gradually become a working part of the mind.
I suggest you find a quiet place and read one chapter only, until something
calls to you from these pages. Then, put them aside and sit down to meditate on
what has stirred you from within. I can tell you with a certainty born of experience
that you can walk in another dimension in Consciousness, right here, and right now. It
is truly the Kingdom of Heaven, this 4th Dimension; it is your own Soul, where God
walks invisibly in your very midst.
Bill Skiles
Robbinsville, NC
04/27/21
Link : http://www.mysticalprinciples.com
(click the above link to go there.)
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Class 1
There Is No Place Where God Is Not
Herb: Well, good afternoon. We’re going to slow down a little today, but only for a
moment, so that we can all catch up to ourselves and then forge ahead again.
We've been going to a place where many of the things that we have had to face are
beyond our normal routine. We have heard and we have to some degree accepted a non-
material universe. I say to some degree because I'm very well aware that any acceptance of it
intellectually is not really an acceptance, and I'm also aware that even among us are those
who have not accepted a non-material universe even intellectually. However, all of us are
always going through stages that others have gone through before, and others coming up are
going through stages that we have gone through, so that there is really none of us who can say
I am unique. We are all that one Spirit.
Now, there are two life streams in us, and it is the merger of these two that creates the
outer appearance called man, woman, or child. The Spirit that you are [and] the concept of
that Spirit formed by a universal mind merges that concept with the actuality of your spiritual
Being, and the fusion of the two becomes the outer appearance that you are today. As the
spiritual awareness rises and the material consciousness descends, the outer form takes on a
new appearance with new harmonies. And if that rising of the spiritual consciousness is slow,
then the material consciousness holds forth and the outer form goes through many of the
problems of this world.
Now these problems, as you know, continue, and even when you are so sure that
you've done well, another problem appears. It’s good for you to know that these problems are
blessings. The hardest time to realize they are blessings is at the moment that you have them.
But once they have passed you by and you can look at a problem which is now in yesterday,
you can see that it was a blessing. It lifted you to a place where you began to look beyond
your mind for a solution. Among you are those who have said to me, "How can I, while in the
mundane world practicing my employment, how can I be conscious of the infinite invisible
when before me is a task that demands my complete attention?” And then others have said,
“I’m a housewife. My husband has no interest in this. Suppose I go ahead and pursue my
spiritual work when I should be tending to my household duties. Won't that ruin my
marriage?”
Now, you are not the first to have said these things. There was a time when the Master
had to face the fact that, among those who would come to the valleys and the mountaintops to
Herb Fitch - Living In The 4th Dimension - San Francisco 1971
hear him, there would be many who would say, “Well, what about my relationships at home?
What about the work that I must do? How can I divert my attention from this work, this
relationship? Would I be fair to my employer? Would I be fair to my mate if I have a divided
consciousness, part of it here and part of it there?” And so he gave us many parables to show
that this was a pressing problem among those of material consciousness who wondered if they
were even doing the right thing by giving a moment’s thought to Spirit while they were in a
place where they were being paid, let us say to perform a service, by an employer. Now it
may not have occurred to you, and then again I hope it may, that our fidelity is not to man
whose breath is in his nostrils.
Our fidelity is to the Spirit of God, but there is a Truth about the Spirit of God which,
when attained, enables you to be a better employee, a better wife, a better husband, a better
parent because the Spirit awakened in you releases in you the qualities of the Divine which
otherwise are dormant. And so, if you are attaining a degree of the awareness of the invisible
Spirit, you find your capabilities as an employee or an employer are changing. You are more
sensitive to the real meaning of your job. Your job, for example, might be a way in which you
earn a living. That’s your material consciousness. As your spiritual sensitivity increases, your
job is quite different. It is more than earning a living. It is a way of fulfilling the needs of
those who come to your place of employment because your place of employment is fulfilling
a public service, and you learn how to fulfill that public service in a higher, more noble way.
It is no longer your way of earning a living but your way of bestowing upon those who
come where you are, the qualities of grace that have come into your being. Your perspective
turns around. You become like some of the great merchants who learn that as they increase
their service something happened in the public response. You begin to give from a different
level of yourself and discover facets of ability you never knew existed within you, and you
begin to love in a different way those around you. Now to awaken these invisible fountains of
life within us is only a small part of the work.
Let's go to a parable in which Jesus showed that there was a feast. I think it's called the
great feast of Luke. Let's look at it for a moment. You might recognize yourself in it. This is
Luke 14, the great feast. It starts on the 16th verse of the 14th chapter of Luke. “. . . A certain
man made a great supper, and bade many: And sent his servant at supper time to say to them
that were bidden, Come; for all things are now ready.” So we have this great feast, and as you
realize, this is a symbology of the feast of spiritual awareness which is set before all of us.
Each of us has been given an opportunity to learn the nature of the spiritual universe around
us. That feast we are all invited to.
But look what happens: “And they all with one consent began to make excuse. The
first said . . ., I have bought a piece of ground, and I must needs go and see it: I pray thee
have me excused.” In other words, I'm a little too busy today. I've got a real estate sale going,
and you know Sunday is the day when you have to do your work in the real estate business.
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Class 1: There Is No Place Where God Is Not
“. . . another said, I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to prove them: I pray thee have
me excused.” This fellow has to harness the oxen and has to have something pulled along
today, and so he's got to do that, but he might find a way next week or the week after.
Meanwhile, the great feast is unrecognized for what it is. “ . . . another said, I have married a
wife, and therefore I cannot come.” We all recognize that now that we have this new
relationship, we can't in any way jeopardize the new relationship by introducing the idea of
Spirit because that would be a stranger in our home. Let's leave things as they are.
And so you see the Master was well aware that the human consciousness is going to
find all manners of excuse. “So that servant came, and shewed his lord these things. Then the
master of the house being angry said to his servant, Go out quickly into the streets and lanes
of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.” Ah,
they're going to come, you know. Why? Because they have a problem. They have a now
problem. They can't see. They can't walk. They can't hear. Those who have been stigmatized
with a problem, they’re looking for the great feast. Those who are quite satisfied in their
ways, those who think that if I just go about day by day being a good person, I can forget this
idea of having to seek the Spirit.
But those who have been hurt very badly find that they are looking for a way out, and
so they are open to the higher consciousness. They have tried the lower. It doesn't work.
Maybe twenty years ago, they, too, had taken a new wife, had bought a new oxen, had found
that they, too, were busy, too busy to come to the feast. Life was satisfactory, not exciting, just
satisfactory, and it was nice to stay with it. Ah, but then later they became the blind and the
maimed and the halt, and now suddenly they want to go to that feast. And here's the Master
saying invite those who have been hurt badly. They’re ready. They’ll come.
Complacency won't come. Success won't come. And so you see the blessing in
disguise is always this place where we are in some way removed from the normal happiness
of life. And although it hurts, because of it we are invited to the great feast. Now, what is this
great feast all about? It isn't just food on the table. There is a secret in there, isn't there? A
secret that says you may come for the food on the table, you may come for the obvious, but
there's something far deeper awaiting you.
Now we have another place where the Master says when you find a piece of land with
something wonderful hidden in it, sell everything you have and then purchase that land. And
in another place, he says when you find the pearl of great price, sell all that you have to secure
that pearl. Now what is he driving at in these parables? What is this great pearl? What is this
great feast? What is this land with something hidden in it that you should sell all that you have
to secure it? And will you miss it if you put your marriage above Spirit and your job above
Spirit?
He finally leaves you no doubt as to what his opinion is: “If any man come to me, and
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hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his
own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” There doesn't seem to be any room there for
doubting that we are to rise above every personal relationship and put something else first.
And you know, until we know that, we put everything else first instead of what must come
first.
Now that which comes first— beyond every personal relationship, beyond job, beyond
marriage, beyond the human life itself, beyond everything we know— that which must come
first— if you wish to be living in that state of consciousness which says the will of the Spirit
be done in me. And that first is the goal of all of our lifetime,—it is Christ consciousness. And
without Christ consciousness, we all make the same mistakes. We try to hold onto a condition
thinking if we can just hold on long enough, it'll change and become better, or we try to hold
onto a marriage thinking that if I can only be a little more subservient to somebody else's will
long enough, maybe they'll come around later. Well, you just can't live that way and be talking
about the spiritual life at the same time.
Christ consciousness is more than a way of life. It is the complete and utter purpose of
the New Testament to come into the realization of the Christ of yourself, is the freedom, the
solution to the very problems that we try to solve on a more human level. When you have
Christ consciousness, what job in the world is going to hold you down to a prison, what
marriage in the world is going to be a mundane day to day subservient way of life? Do you
not see that your Christ consciousness frees your employer, frees your husband, frees your
wife, frees your children because it frees you? It brings in the Light, and once the Light comes
through you, you have been merged with the Infinite, and that eight-hour task at the office
becomes easy to do in two hours. All the problems of the marriage that you couldn't solve
with the mind are solved for you. My grace is thy sufficiency in all things.
Now when we dwell in the limited consciousness that says, “But how can I do this and
not jeopardize it?” we are overlooking the fact that 2000 years before us, there was another
complete group of Hebrews who felt the same way. They were very satisfied, and even those
who were dissatisfied were frightened to live any other way. They had their God. They had
their way, and here was this upstart in their midst whom they thought was one of them. It says
in the Bible they believed on Him, and He turned right around and he said to them you don't
believe in God at all. You're just talkers. You’re not worshipping God. The God you have isn't
God at all. The God of the Hebrews is not God.
He was revealing a new God on earth, and the God he was revealing is the God that
man today still turns away from even while thinking that he’s practicing some form of
religion. Jesus was the first coming of the Christ made visible as a man. That Christ stood in
the midst of those who alleged to worship God and said you're not worshipping God at all.
You're worshipping a concept. It doesn't make any difference that you call this Judaism or any
other “ism.” It has nothing to do with God. Your God is a murderer and a liar. Your God is the
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cause of what you call death. Your God is the cause of what you call suffering. Your God is
the cause of what you call disease. Your God is the cause of what you call a poor marriage.
Your inability to know God is the cause of every problem that you have, and they looked at
him like he was a mad man.
Who are you to say these things? What do you know about it? And he said I know this,
that if you know the Truth, the Truth will make you free. And they looked at him again and
said how can it make us free? We are free. We are very free. We've never been slaves. We’re
free men. Abraham is our father. And he said no, you're not free. You're in bondage. You’re in
prison. You’re in bondage to a God who is a murderer and a liar, and this, right in the midst of
those who considered themselves to be worshipers of the only true God.
What was he revealing to us, that there is another God? The kingdom of God is within
you. Now, how can you turn away from the Kingdom of God within you and still think you're
living as one with Divinity? How can you say to me, how can you say to yourself, “Do I have
the right, if my employer’s paying my wage, to turn away from the job at hand? Do I have the
right in my marriage to bring a spiritual something into it when someone else doesn't want
it?”
What are you saying? Think for a moment. If the kingdom of God is within you, when
you are turning away from it to do the external things of this world, how do you expect to be
fed by it? How do you expect to come into the New Testament? How do you expect to live in
the Kingdom of God if you turn away from it and the only place you can find it is within you?
And so you are being lifted above your own mind, out of your own limited mental concept by
the Master who says you're worshipping the God of this world. Your way is no different than
the ancient Hebrews of old who had not found God, only thought they had.
The God you're looking for, the God you're here to find, the very purpose of all that
you do is to find the kingdom of God within yourself, to become conscious within yourself of
God, the Spirit, the Christ, to become Christ-ed. And no man, woman, or child on this earth
has the right to stand in your way, nor have you the right to permit them to stand in your way.
And when you establish this as your first goal, you will discover that those you did not permit
to stand in your way will ultimately be grateful to you, for when the Spirit of the Lord within
yourself is realized, it will open the eyes of the blind around you. It will show them you have
found a better way. You have found the Christ way which was opened on earth by Jesus.
Christ consciousness is the pearl of great price. Without it, we are the natural man
who receiveth not the things of God, and in our timidity, our willingness to play a subservient
role to husband, wife, employer, employee rather than to seek the pearl of great price, we
have imprisoned ourselves in a separation from Life Itself. We have actually said to the world,
“I'm willing not to live in the hope that it will appease somebody.” We're pulling a
Chamberlain in the hope that the storm troopers will say, “Oh well, they're good fellows. We
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won't hurt them.” The next thing we know we have the bombs over our heads. There is no
appeasement possible for those who have felt the need to find themselves. It is to those that
the feast becomes a great invitation which is accepted.
And then we go to those ten virgins, the five who were not too aware and the five who
were. We're told that five had lamps but no oil in them, and the other five had oil in their
lamps. Now the lamps, we’ll see then, would be the consciousness, and the oil would be that
desire to atune the consciousness to the Christ, a desire so great that nothing in the world
would prevent them from staying awake, alert, living in that consciousness which awaits the
arrival of the new enlightened Self, knowing that when this is discovered within me, this
Kingdom, my consciousness enlightened, my lamp lit becomes a place where I move into
another universe. And here the great revelation is realized, that as long as we walk in the
human consciousness, we are living in a world that has no reality in God, is not created by
God, and has absolutely nothing to do with God. While we're so busy protecting what we
think is important to us, we are neglecting what is important to God.
Now the work that I do at the work bench, is it God's work? Is it my Father's business
or what I think is my business? The marriage, wasn't it meant to be a spiritual marriage or
not? Isn't the Spirit present? Cannot the Spirit present come forth because one is a majority
with God? Why this timidity, why are we afraid to exercise our spiritual rights when
everything in the Bible is telling us to do so? The narrow way, which few take, is to do so.
And when you do so as we are now doing, allowing nothing in this world to intervene, then
you are among those of whom it can be said that although many are called and few are chosen
I, who was called to the feast like the others, I disciplined myself to pursue only the Spirit
within myself in spite of all outer appearances. And that is why I was chosen. That is the
conclusion you can come to as you pursue the Spirit within.
Now, it can be done, and whoever knows that they must do it finds the way to do it.
And one excellent way that we have just come up with, which is doing a good job for those
who are using it, is this: Nowhere in all of this universe, no matter what you may see, no
matter what you may experience, no matter how sick you get, no matter how haphazard or
confused your world may be, nowhere is there a place where God is not. There is no place
where God is not. You can take that and make that a theme song, no matter what you're doing,
no matter how or whom you are doing it with, and when you hold to the truth of that
consciously, — There is no place where God is not. —you’ll discover something happening to
yourself.
It sort of does something to you in a very subtle way, and trying to find out exactly
what it does do, this can be observed. Your mind is not fully committed at all times to the
presence of God; and although you're not aware of it because you'd like it to be fully
committed, because it is not in the times when it is not fully committed to God, to the
awareness of the presence of God, it is exactly the opposite. It is in a state of separation, a
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state of separation that you’re not aware of. And so the person at the work bench, who is
doing his work and has his mind totally absorbed by that work, even though he's doing a good
job, his mind is in a state of separation from the invisible Spirit. He may be a fine workman.
He can also drop dead on the job. The world has made the mistake of doing just that.
There must be that extra dimension in which no matter what I'm doing, I must be
conscious of the presence of God, because without that I am separated from the presence of
God. And that is why great people doing wonderful things suddenly fall in their tracks.
They’re not aware of the presence of God, and that is spiritual starvation while they're earning
their physical bread. Now you must fill that gap with the knowledge that there is no place
where God is not, and that must become your theme song again and again and again and again
without ceasing until it is so completely riveted into your consciousness that it is your
consciousness.
Then no matter what you do, beneath that physical activity is the consciousness that
right here is God, and that is the oneness with God which is the Christ-ing, which blesses all
that you do. In that Christ-ing, there is no work that is given to you that is not performed by
the Christ. You are no longer left to chance. You're not the natural man who receiveth not the
things of God. You’re more than protected. You are the living Spirit Itself, and all that you do
is ordained and performed by the Spirit. Now this is being, not a foolish virgin, but a wise
virgin. We keep our lamps trimmed. We are consciously aware that God is present.
Now the analogy I use for this is a hose, a watering hose. When you're out there
watering the garden six feet away from where the faucet is, and then you go further, ten,
twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty feet away, suddenly you’ll find there's no water coming out of
your hose to water the garden, and you trek all the way back to the faucet and find that it's not
connected. Now when you connect that hose again and go back, now the water is pouring out.
Without the hose, you wouldn't water the garden, and your consciousness must play that part
between Spirit and this world. The function of your consciousness is to be connected to the
spiritual universe so that through your consciousness may flow the treasury of the Spirit,
through your enlightened consciousness into this world.
Now, if your consciousness is not aware of the presence of Spirit, it is disconnected;

and all of the work you're doing out here with your hands and all of the work you're doing in
your marriage is ultimately going to go down the drain. You won't see it now. You will see it
later. Ultimately everybody on earth sees that they have missed the mark somewhere, and the
recurring problems ultimately lead them to find that where they have missed the mark is that
they have put Christ consciousness, not first, but second, third, fourth, fifth, or they didn't
even know it existed, which is the usual case.
But putting it first, that is connecting the hose before you go out to water the garden,
there it’s clear and logical. In our human lives we do not see it that clearly, and instead, we go
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out to water the garden, but the hose isn't connected. We go out to run a good marriage or a
good job, but without Christ consciousness, we are left to our finite minds, our finite
capacities; and all we can see is a finite three-dimensional world, and all we can know is our
own limited emotional response based on our own finite experience.
And all the while there is an infinite hose present which says, “Connect into me. My
intelligence, my love, my Truth, my power will flow into you. I am God. I'm not the God of
the Hebrews. I'm not the God of the Protestants. I'm not the God of the Catholics. I'm not the
God of the Muslims. I am the Kingdom of God within you. I am the only God there is. I am
the Spirit of God, which is your substance and your Being; and unless you are conscious of
Me, all that you do will be building form without fabric, form without substance, and you will
go through lifetime after lifetime building these forms without substance. And they will
crumble because without the substance of Christ consciousness, there is no form in your life
that has divine significance, divine reality. You may get it in your hands. You may look at it
and admire it, but it will not remain. It cannot remain because it is a mental form. It does not
have the substance of God in it.” And when Jesus stood before the Hebrews, and told them
that their God was a murderer and a liar, the cause of death, he was also revealing that the
cause of death is the very absence of this Christ consciousness, that when you have Christ
consciousness you discover life.
Now then, for those who feel that you can put Christ consciousness second, that is
your privilege. It is also your mistake. It is a mistake that has been made by the billions who
have gone before us. It is a mistake that will continue to be made by the billions who come
after us, but it is not a mistake that some of us are going to make. Christ consciousness comes
first. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God” means seek you first Christ consciousness, and then
“all these things will be added unto you.” Yes, the good marriage will be added, the good job,
the rewards of the good job. All these things will be added unto you.
Now, who taught us this? The Christ taught us this, the very I which is the Christ
which said: and I say unto you, whosoever would come to the Father must come through me.
Do you see? It must be first. If you would be one with the Father, you must come through I,
Me. I is the Christ of your own being, and only through the Christ of your own being do you
come to the Father. Only through being conscious of the Christ of your own being do you
come to the Father, and that is seeking first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. And
then, all these things are added unto you. What are all these things? “Son, . . . all that I have is
thine.” All these things are all that exists, all that God is. The full, complete, total substance of
God becomes your living experience, the omnipotence, the omnipresence, the omniscience.
Would you rather settle, then, for a finite way of life, a limited concept of job, a
limited concept of marriage, a limited concept of anything, or learning from the mistakes of
the Hebrews, learning from the mistakes of all who have followed them and who have
preceded us? Learning from the mistakes of those, you can see all over this universe today
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how fortunate we are to know that the pearl of great price is the realization that the Spirit of
God is my true being. That is my Self, and unless I am conscious of that Truth without
ceasing so that it becomes the very same as my human breathing, so that I am conscious of it
without even trying to be conscious of it, I must come to that point where it is a normal thing
for me to be conscious of the Christ without having to even take conscious thought about it,
and I must work until I reach that point. That’s the discipline of a disciple, the constant eternal
inner reminder that I am the Spirit of God. There is no place where God is not. And if
something hurts me, right there God is.
Whatever that hurt is, it is my mental denial of God's presence. Whatever the problem
is in my marriage, it is my mental denial of God's presence. Whatever the problem is on the
job, it is my mental denial of God's presence. Always, the problems that beset me, no matter
what their nature or size or scope, are nothing more than my mental denial of the presence of
God where I stand. My mind, unknown to me, has not accepted that God is present
everywhere, and it has not because I have not taken the bull by the horns and have not
practiced the realization that there is no place where God is not. I have not consciously
accepted God every moment of my life, and in that absence of that conscious awareness, the
mind has accepted the absence of God. And in that absence, in that separation, my hose is not
connected to the faucet, my consciousness is not connected to the Spirit, and the fruits of the
Spirit do not flow; instead I see their opposites.
I see the problem. I see the shaky marriage. I see the shaky job. I see the condition
which is critical, all because I have failed to apprehend the great teaching that first, above all,
seek ye the Kingdom of God, seek ye the consciousness of the invisible Christ, and all things
must follow. We have been given the great divine law that if we find Christ within, our
complete outer experience is Christ-ed. And so those of us who have ears to hear are making
that effort in that direction: There is no place where God is not. It’s only eight words, but ye
shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free. Where cancer appears, God is. There is
no place where God is not. Where the finances are threadbare, God is. There is no place
where God is not. Where the catastrophe threatens, God is. There is no place where God is
not. It doesn't make any difference what the problem. There is no place where God is not.
And if you will stand in that realization, forgetting the asthma, forgetting the
emphysema, forgetting the harshness in the throat, forgetting the pain in the back, forgetting
anything that is in your way at the moment as a problem and rest in the consciousness that
God is there because there is no place where God is not, you will find you have made a
connection. And in that connection something happens that releases your mind from its belief
that God is absent, and that gap, that separation is healed. The mind accepting that God is
present releases its belief in a condition that is not perfect, because where God is, how can
there be imperfection too? The imperfection is the mental belief that God is not there. You
don't stand up and shout, “God is not here.” But you accept the imperfection, which is the
same thing. And in the acceptance of the imperfection, you have denied the presence of God.
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But reversing this, knowing God is present, there is no place where God is not. Ah, now we
have God present.
Is God in cancer, both present in the same place? Can God be there and cancer too?
But God is there. That’s the fact. What is this cancer? If God is there, and God and cancer
cannot both be there, is the cancer there? Do you see that cancer is the result of our belief in
the absence of God? When we have reached that place where we know God is here, then the
cancer is shown not to be here. The asthma, the emphysema, the bad this, the imperfect that,
the discordant this and that, everything, every unworthy condition of God's presence must
obviously not be there. But it only appeared there because there was no consciousness of the
presence of God.
In the consciousness of the presence of God, we can look at the condition and we can
say, “God is here.” That is the fact that doesn't move. That is the truth, and therefore, that
which is not of God, that which has no power over God, that which God did not create or
place here, that discord, that pain, that suffering is not of God. And, therefore, God being here
and God being the power, the presence, the Truth, this condition is a world mirage. We cannot
do that unless we know God's presence is here. And when we face this condition with that
knowledge of the Presence, it is overcome. It is revealed as a world mirage. It does dissolve,
and that which was pronounced cancer is removed, for in the presence of Christ
consciousness, the only thing that can appear is the out-picturing of that consciousness. The
Light shines forth as the harmony of existence, as the harmony of marriage, as the harmony of
employment.
We have blocked our own Light by putting second things first. But this is the age
when first things are coming first, and you and I, practicing the knowledge that there is no
place where God is not, will find strength and courage and the ability to stand and witness not
the mirage, not the evil, not the lack, not the limitation, not the poor health. We can stand
through all of these knowing God is present, and that is all we need know. That Presence
recognized by you, accepted by you, becomes the power of infinity moving now through your
consciousness. You became conscious of the Presence, and so it can move through your
consciousness. And as it moves through your consciousness, what does it send through? Itself.
The Spirit you were conscious of becomes your spiritual consciousness, and this is what Jesus
came to reveal.
The power of your spiritual consciousness is the Kingdom of God within you, and It
releases you from this world. My Kingdom is not of this world. My Kingdom in the midst of
you is your consciousness aware of the presence of God, the presence of Spirit as the very
substance of your own being and of those who move about you. And now you're not piercing
the Christ, dividing the garment, separating yourself from reality, appeasing anyone. You’re
standing foursquare in the Truth that God's presence here is all I need to know, and I can put
up my sword. There is no power on earth over the presence of God realized in your
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consciousness.
The missing link has been the realization in the consciousness of man. We've all had
our hoses off the faucet and wondering why water didn't come through. Our consciousness
has been disconnected from the Spirit, and we have not seen the power of Spirit on earth for
that reason.
Each of us becomes a one who stands forth from the world and says, “No, God is here,
right here and right there.” And as long as I know this without ceasing, there is no power on
earth that has power over the I of my being, there is no power that can fire me from the job,
there is no power that can break up my marriage, there is no power that can make me
permanently sick or disabled, there is no power that can keep me poor.
There is no power except the power of I, the Christ, the Spirit of God within, for God
is omnipotent, and you're taking dominion over your life instead of being a prisoner. And that
is what he meant when he spoke to the Pharisees and said your god is a murderer and a liar.
You are slaves, but you don't know it. You’re not free. You’re not free men. But ye shall know
the truth, and the truth will make you free. Now, this is the Truth: There is no place where
God is not. And it has power, and it does free you. But it demands a constant awareness of
this Truth, and that is where your consciousness must open itself without ceasing while on the
job, while in the home, while on the highway, wherever you are. Nothing is more important
than you be conscious that God is there.
The great secret of Jesus was told many times but fell upon ears that could not hear.
“What is your secret?” they kept saying. “How did you do this?” “I and the Father are one."
My conscious awareness of the presence of God has been repeated so frequently, so long, so
continuously, that all that is here now is the one activity of the Spirit moving through my
consciousness of It. My consciousness of the Spirit is the meaning of I and the Father are one.
Until the moment of Christ-ing, in which that Spirit of which you are conscious announces
that “I am thee, I am you, you are the Spirit of God.” But you'll never learn it, you’ll never
experience it on a permanent basis unless you remain in the conscious awareness of my
Presence. "I am come that you may have Life. I am knocking at the door of your
consciousness. Open it up. Accept Me into your consciousness, and then let go, put up thy
sword and watch: I, the Spirit of God in the midst of you am mighty.”
And so to live in the third dimension of the world, as we are now, with the conscious
awareness of the presence of God everywhere is how we are going through this world free of
its problems, how we can live in the consciousness of the fourth dimension as the physical
form moves in the third dimension. And we will discover we have brought the power of the
fourth dimension into the third by releasing the false material laws of the third dimension.
What we've said today is not difficult. It certainly isn't beyond the comprehension of anybody,
and it demands several qualities in you. You must see that it is the Truth. You must see that
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you want it, and you must have been prepared sufficiently by your way of life to know that
unless you have this consciousness of the invisible Christ within, your days are forever
subject to the whims and the mercies of the conditions of the world.
Now, I said we were going to go back a little and slow down, and this has been the
slowing down, and then we were going to go ahead. If you will hold as a permanent
dispensation within you that the entire New Testament of Jesus the Christ was to reveal that
God is only a force in the life of man when man's consciousness is aware that God is present
everywhere, then you will find that you can become Christ-ed, and this Christ consciousness
is the new God. Christ consciousness is the new God because it is one with God. Only in
Christ consciousness does the infinite Father become your living experience. You cannot
come to the Father except through Me, Christ consciousness, and this takes you out of the
Judaic God of the Old Testament. It takes you out of the false God of religion, the God who
does not answer human prayer, the God who does not protect people from murder or theft, the
God who does none of these things because that God does not exist.
But there is a God. There is a permanent spiritual Self, which is the substance of your
being, and this is God. And this God does the job. This God is always on duty. This God
answers prayer without ceasing. This God does not permit the children of this God to go
hungry, to starve, to be sick, to die. To know this God aright is Life eternal, and we have
found this God, and this God says you are my divine image and likeness. And only when you
know it and are connected through your consciousness can I function as your perfect Self.
Then my Grace is thy sufficiency in all things. And so we're going to practice there is no place
where God is not, and I can assure you you'll discover that as you practice it, you're practicing
the words that were given in the bible, such as “. . . the place whereon thou standeth is holy
ground.”
∞∞∞∞∞ END OF SIDE ONE ∞∞∞∞∞
We are told that Esau sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, and that word, Esau,
could well be the human race because we, too, have neglected the great New Testament
teaching. Not only have we neglected it, but it has been altered to suit the minds of men.
When you have reached the conviction that Christ consciousness must be your first goal, then
you're ready to look at another phrase in a different light. And Peter, whom dost thou say I
am? Why, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” That's right, Peter, but no man told
you that. “And on this rock will I build my church.” On this rock will I build my church. Peter
became conscious of the Christ.
On this rock, Christ consciousness, will I build my church. Here was the revelation of
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the mission that the recognition of Christ in each man on earth was the new church of God on
earth, the new realization of the meaning and presence of God. This is the rock, for the only
church founded by Jesus, the rock, the Church of Christ consciousness. That’s why we have
not seen the miracles of Jesus on earth, the healings, the resurrections, the life eternal. Only
Christ consciousness can make them the experience of mankind. We have also been told to
look for the second coming, and that, too, has been changed to suit the minds of men. Always
the finite mind dwarfs the message down to its own limited self.
The first coming was the form of Jesus moving on the earth, for it was not Jesus. It
was I, the Christ. It was the outer appearance of the Christ, Christ manifest to the finite human
mind as Jesus. I say unto you I am the way, I am the life, I am the resurrection. Yes, and I will
return. And for two thousand years man has been looking for Jesus to come out of the sky.
That isn't the second coming of the Christ at all. Christ consciousness is because we first saw
the Christ made visible through Jesus, and the second is when we find the Christ of our own
being. That very same Christ within, that we saw without, is the second coming.
It became visible so that we might see the miracles it weaves when it moves through
the human consciousness Christ-ing it. This Christ consciousness which could stand before
the flood and say there is no place where God is not, this Christ consciousness that could
stand before the hungry and say, there is no place where God is not, and low and behold the
Truth of that was made manifest as food, as tranquility. Everywhere the consciousness of
Christ stood saying there is no place where God is not, that which was a condition that could
not exist in the presence of God was dissolved. It existed only because there was no
consciousness there to say, to know, to recognize – why, here God is. No cripple here, no
blind man here, no deaf person here. God is there, and lo and behold the blind see and deaf
hear, and the dead step out of their coffins. God is there. It was the revelation that in Christ
consciousness, the Christ of which you are conscious as your being, It sees Itself in all things,
and It is life. It is health. It is abundance. Self sees Self. We were given the miracle of oneness
with God.
Now you all have an idea that you must tithe your money. That's not enough. You must
tithe your time. You must tithe your thought. You must tithe your energy. You must so tithe
your time that you have time to be conscious of the invisible Christ. If you are a ten percent-
er, take ten percent of your time and give it to Christ. That gives you 2.4 hours a day. If you're
a ten percent-er, you've got to put that ten percent in Christ consciousness. You’ll only do five
and you'll discover you’ll want one hundred percent without ceasing.
Now we're going to try an experiment, something we've never done. At this second,
everyone in the world is living only in this second, everywhere. They're not living in the
second from now or the second that passed. They're living in this second, everyone in this
universe. Everyone is in this moment of time. Let us consider stepping out of this moment of
time. Will we die or will we be born again? Do you see that the only living second is this
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second, and that all disease and death and evil must exist in this second or it has no existence?
There is no other second. The next second, and then the next and the next is that same second.
Time is moving in seconds, and now it moves from this second to the next. All of us are
moving with that time. As time moves, we move. We’re a captive within it. We exist in time,
and God didn't create time.
There is no time in God. Do you see the infinite illusion of time and how, within itself,
it captures all that is not? Flesh exists in time. Earthquakes exist in time. Death and birth exist
in time. All that we call this world is in this moment of time. Let's sit this second out. Now
when you make this experiment, you will see that everything you are exists only in time, the
very beat of your heart, the cells of your body, the vision, the hearing, the senses, the mind,
the organs. Everything is timed, and it only exists at this moment in time.
Ten years ago, it was at a different time. Ten years from now, at another time, and
never was it you. Never will it be you. It is only a time illusion on a cosmic scale. And as you
stand back out of time, absent from your body in time, absent from the time body, absent from
the life in time, as you hold within to the consciousness of Christ, letting time move by but
you don't move with it, you may see what it is to be absent from the illusion of this world and
present in my Father's Kingdom. If, in one second, you manage to let all time go by, but you
remain in a consciousness that does not change with that changing time, you will have done
something that ultimately will be earth-shattering in its result. You will break the the prison of
time.
You will see time for what it is, an infinite illusion in which the changing world is
being presented to us in an imitation form. Our bodies in that time, the bodies of all those we
know, the various forms we see of all things are all the mental images in that moment of time
presented to us as the illusion of time moves forward imitating the Kingdom of God, imitating
the pure Spirit, taking that which is without time and moving over it slowly to bring into slow
motion a mere fragment of the infinite, so that we see the finite second and then the next finite
second and the next because we have no other way of seeing and embracing the infinite. But
always, the infinite is there unchanging while time moves by and presents a fraction and
another fraction, and these fractions we have accepted because we were in the illusion of that
second of time.
Now when you feel another self as time goes by and you do not go with it, this will be
your timeless Self. This will be a Self which suddenly will be full of energy. You will wonder:
How did I get so energetic? The weight of time, the weight of the world illusion, will be gone
for that instant. In will flow the power of the Christ. In will flow the realization that every
moment of sickness this world has ever known exists only in that illusory moment of time. It
never was real. This is what rolls up like a scroll and is called the end of the world. It is when
you step out of the changing illusion of a time that never existed and you find you are in
timelessness, momentarily absent from the body of flesh in time, present with the Eternal.
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When you experience that moment, your horizon must change. You will discover that
you are free of many things that you had thought were permanent, inescapable, unavoidable;
and you will find a new way to look at this world. You will see it all as the motion of a
universal mind passing over the infinite, forming a concept, projecting that concept slowly
into the movement of time, and you will look at that movement of time, and you will say:
“No no, there’s no place where God is not. All of this is but the superficial veneer of
an infinite imitation mind having no reality, presenting an infinite picture ever changing about
a perfect unchanging universe of Spirit. I will stand and let time go by. I am no older this
moment than I was fifty years ago, and I will be no older fifty years from now than I am this
moment, for I am the Spirit which does not move with time.”
You’ll find you can stand there without taking thought, and the realization of your
timeless self will shuck off the emotional, intellectual reactions which have imprisoned us in
this changing second.
Many of you are not ready to do this, but there are among you those who are ready,
and every one of you will be ready. This is the time to see that time is just a skin. It’s the outer
covering which is concealing the inner reality. My Kingdom is not in time. Reality is not in
time, and when this outer covering is released by you, you will find you are no longer in the
hypnotized human mind. You will stand clear. We're really standing still. Stand ye still, and let
time go by. Stand ye still, and behold the salvation of the Lord. We just peel off the skin of
time and find there was no wound at all. It was all on the surface. It never was there. The
world was a picture.
I am the new consciousness, the new Self, relieved from the belief in the changing
pictures that occur in time, and now you find the Christ mind is beginning to reveal Itself to
you because you have been living in the consciousness of Christ, of Spirit. And It reveals to
you—that just when I in the visible form called Jesus appeared to men and showed that there
were none dead, showed that none had ever died, showed that none were sick and none were
crippled—now in your consciousness, having opened yourself to Me, having transcended that
mind which lives in time, and having come into the Christ mind which lives in timelessness, I,
the Christ in you, can demonstrate that you cannot be a cripple, you cannot be blind, you
cannot be deaf. You cannot die because I am Thee. That which takes place in time has no
reality in the Christ consciousness, and many things that the world has been helpless to
combat, you find you need not combat. You see their nothingness as they are peeled away
from your new consciousness.
So you have two experiments to try with yourself:
One is to take yourself out of time and stand ye still. If you want to make it even more
interesting, you can take yourself out of time and put yourself back in the third century if you
feel like it, and you'll discover you can have a consciousness of yourself there. You can take
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yourself out of time and put yourself anywhere, and ultimately you will find that this will
happen without your trying to do it, for I, the Spirit in you being present everywhere, am not
confined to this changing second. This second is a liar. This second tells you all that is
happening now, but it isn't happening now, for infinity is now and not this second. This
changing skin of time that comes over the true spiritual Self is the illusion that is being lifted,
and we shall see Him face to face but not in time.
Now when you do this, you'll be doing something that few people on earth have had
the privilege of doing, and for the one here and the one there who finds that they can stand
free of time, this will be a priceless revelation, and there will be many fruits and signs that
follow, many.
It, perhaps, will come in a greater degree to you if you have first practiced that there is
no place where God is not. In that sequence it came to me, and you may find that through it
you enjoy a type of freedom that is almost difficult for the finite mind to imagine, a freedom
that knows this Spirit is ever-present doing its job glorifying the Father, maintaining a perfect
universe, and there's nothing that time can do to change any of that.
Time is just a temporary cloud of the mind. It has no validity, no substance. It's like
one of those forms without substance. God is being God. Whereas time is changing, God is
always the same. Spirit is always the same. And while time changes I, Spirit, do not change.
And so, if time presents a picture to me of a change here and a change there, it is a liar. I, the
Spirit, do not change, and you're coming closer and closer to the infinite scope of your
identity. I, the Spirit, is revealed only through my constant fidelity to the consciousness that
Christ, the Spirit of God, is where I stand. And then it opens, and time is no more.
Now this couldn't be presented to this class a year ago, or two or three. We had to go
through The Infinite Way. We had to go through “New Horizon.” We had to go through “New
Jerusalem.” And we must go through the conscious awareness of the presence of the Spirit of
God everywhere before you will remove the illusion of time, and with it goes the illusion of
space, but in another way. And with these removal of the illusions comes a fuller
understanding of omnipresence, the experience of it, the livingness in your spiritual Self, in
your spiritual Kingdom. Now we're in high mysticism. I apologize to those who are not ready,
but I’d just as soon apologize to them as have to turn around to those who are ready and
apologize to them for not going into it.
And so, we've gone back a little but come ahead a little, and I'm hoping that through
this as it was given to me, we can all come to a place where we’re ready not to read words
anymore, not to make our little sacrifices and think we're doing something great, but ready for
the miracle of Life, the true joy of Life, that awareness that every moment is a spiritual event,
and I'm prepared for my new Self to constantly move into new mansions.
We must now come to that place where we're ready for a new mansion every moment,
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and so we trim our lamps. We have oil. We remain awake instead of sleeping. We’re always
coming to the feast. We're letting the Spirit of God live Itself as us, and It knows nothing of
human limitations. Now, to those of you who are ready for that kind of a life, that's what the
Christ consciousness brings. And if there be those who are not yet ready, don't despair.
Continue in your good work of recognizing always everywhere God is. And, therefore, the
situation that is unlike God is a false impression sent forth by a world mind which you must
learn to stand still and observe without reaction.
And as you do this, you will find your peace coming. You will come to the place
ultimately where the whole time segment becomes so thin and shell-like that you can see
through it and stand clear of that which is not. You will see hurricanes happen only in time.
Starvation and poverty and war happens only in time. You can almost see it like a celluloid
film, and your Spirit is not in time. And your consciousness of your Spirit brings the power of
that Spirit to dissolve the illusion that appears, even in time, and that will be called the
miracles. As you proceed in this direction, you’ll have many signs, glimpses, moments that
are breathtaking. They won't remain forever. They’ll come. They'll flip through your
consciousness and out, but they’re hints of what is to come.
All of it springs from your fidelity to your true Self, and that is why, unless you have
placed the consciousness of Christ first, these things do not appear in your life and you
wonder why. Initiation only comes to those who prepare for it. You've been really seeking to
be initiated into the realm of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, but you must be willing to
prepare for it. And your consciousness is the avenue through which you enter the Kingdom of
Heaven on earth.
If that consciousness is accepting the tempter, is having other gods before Spirit, is
listening to the will of man, then that consciousness is unprepared to live in the Heaven of
Spirit on earth, and it doesn’t. It even wonders where God is and where the power of God is.
It complains about God's absence, and so it is because God cannot enter the consciousness
that has not acclimated itself to the presence of God. All religion is changing before our eyes.
The false God of religion is being revealed as a false God, and the non-power of that God is
explained, and who's doing it? The Spirit of God is coming through into our consciousness.
We're going to have four more weeks, I think it is, of this kind of a class before
Thunder of Silence, and either this is a preparation for Thunder of Silence or it’s a post-
graduate course in what we just completed in the Infinite Way. One way or another, its
purpose is to instill in each of us certain habits, the chief one being that I will not let the
tempter enter my consciousness to persuade me that God is not present everywhere. So this is
our lesson. You’re learning to take dominion over your world by first taking dominion over
your mind, which presents pictures in time, and refusing to accept those pictures in time, but
instead, accepting the new dispensation which the world has turned away from through
ignorance that my consciousness of Christ invisible is the Way to freedom, to fullness, to
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fulfillment, to a life which is the divine image and likeness in every way.
And then through my consciousness of Christ, I am one with the Father, and I and the
Father being one, there is no weapon in all of time that can prosper against me, for Christ
consciousness is the second coming of the Christ, first in the without and now in the within.
In your Christ consciousness the second, the New Testament, is completed. And that is
how you follow Me. You follow the Christ, and you are resurrected from mortality. Just as the
child of the widow at Nain was resurrected out of a coffin, we are resurrected from the false
concept of mortality, out of time into Life, not in time but Eternal.
We’re all much closer now than we ever dreamed. But please, it demands work. Tithe
your time. It is more important than tithing your money. Tithe your energy. Tithe your
consciousness. Sow to the Spirit. On this rock will I build my church, your consciousness of
Christ within you.
[Silence]
And for this message I give thanks. Thank you very much.
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Class 2
I Am Spirit
Herb: For those of you who like to follow the Bible very carefully, I’ll just give you
the references now so we can dispense with them later. We will go through the following
passages: John 5:26, John 1:9 through 13, Matthew 23:9, John 3:6, 10:30, Genesis 1:27, Acts
2:24, John 17:3, 8:51, 14:12, 5:19 and 20, 3:3, Luke 17:21, John 8:32, and Mark 1:15. And if
you've missed any, they'll be available after class for copying down if you wish. Now it seems
like an extensive list and probably it is, but they are excerpts which complete a continuity of
purpose vital to today's message. It being the Christmas season, we thought it would be a
good idea to have a little Christmas package that we could unwrap today and in it to have
possibly the most priceless gift of all.
We know that Peter in response to Jesus said, "Thou art the Christ." How many of us
remember the next words, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God?” And there is a
message in the Son of the living God which contains the Christmas present that we shall
unveil. The Son of a living God is what you and I are to realize we are. And to the degree that
we do not reach that realization, our experience will show forth the absence of the grace of the
living God so that wherever you find some form of limitation in your life, whether it be
physically, mentally or emotionally or financially or socially, these limitations will be the
result of not having come into the understanding that I am the Son of the living God.
The Way-shower said, "I am the Truth." And he said many astounding things, one of
which was, "Whosoever shall believe in me even though he be dead, yet shall he live.” And
that's a very strange statement because, certainly, if a person who is dead shall live because he
believes on the Son of the living God, then in order to overcome deadness, everything that
would lead to deadness must be overcome; and in the overcoming of deadness, we have
automatically overcome every form of sickness known to man. All by believing on me, the
Son of the Living God,—This has been interpreted to mean that if you believe on Jesus—you
overcome death. And we see people every day dying, who believe on Jesus. And so we find
that the Son of the Living God is not Jesus at all: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living
God.” And there is the distinction which each of us must find in his own experience.
Now in our progression through the Bible we want to see the evolution of an idea that
has escaped the attention of mankind and, also, the evolution of an idea that has even escaped
those of us who have seriously dedicated our time and effort to finding the meanings behind
the ministry of Christ Jesus on earth. We want to find how I, aware of myself as the Son of the
living God, can overcome death and all the things that lead to death, and then even go beyond,
for he did say, "And greater things shall ye do."
And so you wonder what could be greater than overcoming death. And you find, when
you have realized the possibility of overcoming death, you begin to see that that is only the
beginning of life and the greater things come after the overcoming of death. They're not
greater things before you have overcome the illusion of death. They’re greater things after
death has ceased to have a meaning for you, and these greater things that ye shall do, again,
are to be done if you believe on Me. And so, believing on Me means that unless you know
what "Me" stands for, you cannot believe on Me. You cannot ask in my Name. And if you
believe that "Me" means Jesus, then you are among the millions who have been misled, for
the very purpose of the ministry was to reveal the hidden identity of Jesus as the Christ, the
living Son of God, the Son of the living God. But this, too, must have a deeper meaning for
all of us.
Now he gives us many clues. In Acts we are told that death could not hold him. He
could not be held by death. What manner of man was this who could not be held by death?
And he gives us his own clue when he says, "Call no man your father upon the earth." For
your father is a person, a flesh and a blood; and therefore that is not your father. One is your
Father which is in heaven, and this Father in heaven is not God personalized, not a supreme
being. This Father, which is your Father, is Spirit. And then he goes on to say that your Father
is Spirit, and my Father is Spirit, and I and this Father are one. I am not born of Joseph. I am
not born of Mary. I am born of Spirit, and Spirit being my Father and your Father, you are
born of Spirit.
This is contrary to everything that you know as a person, and yet the Way-shower, the
Son of the living God, the Son of Spirit is saying that I have overcome death because I am the
Son of Spirit. And if you believe on Me, if you believe that Spirit is your Father, as I believe,
then you too shall overcome death, and greater works shall ye do. Therefore if you are born of
Spirit, you are Spirit, for like begets like. And the Father's Spirit begets the Son Spirit, and
Jesus has overcome the grand illusion that man on earth in the flesh is the divine image and
likeness of God. Genesis said that man was created in the divine image and likeness of the
Father, and Jesus revealed that the Father is Spirit and the divine image and likeness is Spirit.
He discovered the identity of God and of man, and so he, being Spirit, was the Son of the
living Spirit.
Now when you come to that understanding, that until you are the Son of the living
Spirit, you are mortal flesh who cannot overcome death, who cannot overcome those
fallibilities that lead to death, and cannot do the greater works that come after the overcoming
of death, then you are beginning to unveil the nature of God in yourself. Spirit is God, and the
Son of God is the Spirit of God flowing through the universe as God Itself individualizing as
your being. And although you have read it, although you have heard it, although you have
said it, unless you have quietly, firmly, rested in the Word to listen, to know, to feel, and
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Class 2 : I Am Spirit
finally to reach that momentous conclusion that you are Spirit and nothing else, you will
continue to walk, not in the footsteps of the Way-shower, not in the truth, not in the Light, not
in the peace that passeth understanding, but in the ways of mortal mind, experiencing the
good and the evil, the life and the death, the health and the bad health, the fluctuations of
human existence until there is no human existence.
Identity as Spirit is the beginning of the adventure in Spirit. And unless you come
face-to-face with this, you will continue to seek the externals thinking that what you are going
to find is going to lead you somewhere to a place called Heaven on earth. And you're going to
find that every direction in which you move will lead only to a blind alley. I am Spirit is the
revelation of Moses when he said, "I AM that I AM," I am that Spirit, and Jesus when he said,
"I and the Father, I and Spirit are one.” And his secret, the secret which enabled him to
overcome death was just that, the awareness that I am Spirit and, then, the fidelity to that
knowledge. You cannot be faithful to your spiritual identity unless you have established it as
your identity.
Many of us who have reached certain high points of consciousness have discovered
that in spite of this exalted attainment from time to time, we fall back into a human
consciousness, and then we walk out into a world over which we have no dominion. And yet
this lack of dominion is only the absence of the realization that I am not mortal man. I am
Spirit, and when you make this turn, when you spend the time to make this turn, when you
spend the time to contemplate the nature of being Spirit, you will discover that the secret of
the entire Bible is just those three words.
There is no place in the Bible, there is no place in the New Testament, regardless of
what you see or hear as the action or the deed or the word or the thought of Jesus, that is not
saying to you, I am Spirit, and these things that I do out here I've done simply because I am
Spirit, for only Spirit can do them. I of mine own self, Jesus, can do nothing. These things that
are called miracles are done because Spirit does them. The Son can only do what he sees the
Father do, and the Father is doing the works. Spirit is doing the works.
Do you see the living in grace that comes from the realization of Self as Spirit? Now
let us recall to ourselves that Spirit has no beginning and no end, that Spirit is infinite, that
Spirit is not involved in the physical world, that Spirit is not in time and in space, that Spirit is
infinite power, infinite presence, infinite mind, infinite self, infinite being, infinite harmony,
infinite truth, infinite all. Spirit is the only identity that exists, and until you touch the
consciousness of Spirit, you have not entered into the life which is the Life of God, and it
cannot flow into your experience.
We find then that the realization of Self as Spirit enabled Jesus to walk away from that
self which can die, which can be diseased, which can be lacking, and then, steadfastly
refusing to be anything but Spirit, he watched Truth unfold Itself. Now, as you walk behind
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him as Spirit knowing that only Spirit exists and you are faced with matter, what are you
being faced by if only Spirit exists? If Spirit is infinite, if you are Spirit, what is this
confrontation of matter before you? What was his answer? "I of mine own self can do
nothing. The Father within he doeth the works. Put up thy sword. Take no thought. Abide in
the Spirit. Neither by might nor by power but by my Spirit."
So as you rest in spiritual identity, the awareness of Spirit as the only life on this
earth, gradually descends into your consciousness wheresoever you may look, Spirit is. To the
left and to the right, above and below, you are in a spiritual universe. The infinity of Spirit
precludes the presence of any other substance or life. You do not go out and conquer the
spiritual universe. You touch your own identity as Spirit and rest in the effortless action of
Spirit to maintain Itself. There is no work in Spirit. There is no effort in Spirit. There is no
thought in Spirit. There is no overcoming. There is a resting with confidence. Can you rest
with confidence before you know that you are Spirit?
And so, not having this realization that I am Spirit, we live in the divided
consciousness which must always turn to meet a new intruder, always face another problem,
always seek to find a place where it can be at peace, but never finding it, because out of true
identity, we are always moving toward the Light, living in the shadows. Find your identity.
Jesus was not Jesus, but the Son of the Living God. Jesus was born of the Father, Spirit, and
there is a place in our Bible where he says, "That which is born of the Spirit, is Spirit," and
that line is one of the greatest of all. "Call no man your father," for Spirit is your Father," and
that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit, and we, born of the Spirit, born of the Father, are
Spirit.
Rest in yourself for a moment. See what it feels like to be not flesh and blood, not
mortal, not human, but that which He revealed we are, spiritual Being. Not Spirit and – just
spiritual Being, the Son of the Living God. I am that Spirit. When this falls into place in your
consciousness, you will feel a turning, a turning toward a new invisible universe, the
Kingdom of Heaven on earth. And you will realize the Christ mission on earth is to lift you
out of the belief in a limited, finite, temporary existence of good and evil into the acceptance
of the presence of a perfect unlimited Life in and as Spirit under the law of God, the law of
Spirit and that all this is a transformation in which your consciousness now drops its belief in
the finite, physical self, follows the Way-shower, believes on Me, asks in my name, Spirit.
And then opens you up to the acceptance that because you are Spirit, because Spirit is your
Father, I and the Father are never separate, never apart. There is no place in the universe
where Spirit is that is not connected to my Spirit.
I am not separate from the infinite Spirit. Wherever Spirit is, my Spirit is. This
realization of, first, my spiritual identity, and then, the infinite nature of Spirit, which prevents
a separateness from Spirit, opens us up to inner revelation to the living Word of the living
Father, to the will of God in us. Until this has been accomplished we are the prodigal, we are
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the mortal destined to live not in truth, not in reality, not in peace, not in love, but in the
shadow of a false identity. Thousands and thousands of years have gone by in this false
identity with man completely unaware that the only being on this earth is the Spirit of God,
that each of us is that Spirit. And when our consciousness is open to accept this, the law and
protection of that Spirit in us, which is called the Kingdom of God within, through grace
automatically goes before us in all things and becomes the invisible substance of our life
manifest in the visible, physical, tangible flesh.
Whenever a need comes into our experience, this invisible spiritual identity which
you have realized, which is never apart from the infinite, comes forth from the invisible to
form the fulfillment of that visible need. It is not done through your thought, through your
effort, or through your wish or will. It is the will of the Father for eternal perfection made
manifest in your experience because you are living "in My Name," because you believe on
Me, because you believe that I, the Spirit of God which walked this earth, which appeared to
men as a form called Jesus, I that Spirit, the Son of the Living God, if you believe on Me, you
will know that I am the Spirit of your Being. And as you saw Me there in the outer, you will
see Me in the inner. When you recognize Me in yourself as your Self, you will believe on Me.
You will know God aright. You will know Spirit aright. You will know Life Eternal.
To know yourself as the Spirit of God is to overcome death, disease, lack, limitation
or whatever mortal flesh is heir to. Because this is not realized on this earth, man is still
seeking God, man is still seeking divine protection, man is still seeking answers to questions
that have been mysteries for thousands of years. And the greatest mystery is why man has not
found that which was given to him by the living Spirit of God that walked the earth in the
form called Jesus, and walks the earth in the form called you.
When you realize that I am Spirit was the constant awareness of he who was called
the Christ Jesus, and that It was the miracle worker, you can look at your Bible in a different
way. You can see that the Bible is the outer representation, in words, of the activity of I am
Spirit on the earth. I am Spirit reveals Itself through the conscious awareness that I am Spirit
of Jesus. Where there is no duality but the One, the One reveals Itself in all situations, in all
conditions, in all catastrophes in spite of the impossibility of that which appears before human
eyes. There is no tempest because Spirit, being omnipresent infinity, I am Spirit and the
witness called Jesus says, "I am Spirit, I and the Father are One," and I am Spirit releases the
illusion of tempest. There is no hungry multitude because I am Spirit, and I am infinite, and I
am everywhere, and I am fulfillment.
And here is one who has died to self, so that Jesus is dead and all that stands there is
the consciousness which says I am Spirit, and I am Spirit reveals Itself as loaves and fishes. I
am Spirit reveals Itself as eyes that see and ears that hear. I am Spirit reveals Itself as God in
action on the earth at hand, in the invisible Kingdom not visible to human eyes, but present
where we stand. I am Spirit, I am the substance of your being. And wherever there is a second
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consciousness that says I am mortal, then I am Spirit cannot enter in to liberate, to reveal, to
protect, to fulfill, to glorify. But where there is the consciousness which says I am Spirit too, I
and the Spirit are one. Then the I am Spirit reveals Itself as the substance and the law and
activity of that individual and does the same works in and through that individual as it did
wherever I am Spirit was recognized by any enlightened One.
And I am Spirit being Life Itself, it is deathless and timeless. And I, in the realization
that I am Spirit, am deathless and timeless. And then I am Spirit does the greater works. And
so your Christmas package is the unveiling of God as the Spirit of your very Being, and
because there cannot be two, where the infinite One is, there must come an extended quiet
time in which you let this new awareness simmer within you until there is no human self that
is moving out to the job the next day, there is no human self that is planning how to survive
these next twenty years, or how to build a nest egg, or how to be successful or secure. There is
none of that. This is the death of the human planner, the human knower, the human who
desires. It is the birth of the Christ. I am Spirit, and I am no other.
I am the one who is the living Child of the living God, and my Father, He knoweth
my needs. Spirit lives Itself. If I am Spirit, my life becomes an effortless activity of Spirit
being Itself. And so as I move forth planning, thinking, desiring, I am denying my own
spiritual Selfhood. As I accept a problem, I am denying the perfection of Spirit. As I resist a
problem, as I seek to overcome a problem, I am accepting the presence of a problem which is
a darkness, an iniquity, and I am being false to my Self. I am Spirit and in that awareness I
can face the problem with the knowledge that it has no real existence. If I am Spirit, and Spirit
is the Father, God, where is the problem? In Spirit? What kind of a problem can exist in God,
in Spirit? And therefore the problem is saying something to me. It is saying that I am still in
divided consciousness. I am in the consciousness that says I am Spirit, but I have a problem.
And so I must tighten my understanding there. I am Spirit and, therefore, the problem
can only be a misperception of reality. I am Spirit. This is no longer conjecture. This isn’t
possibility or probability. This is simple fact. I am Spirit. This is why he introduced the New
Testament – to teach us that our name is Spirit, and this is the fact by which we measure
everything else. Because I am Spirit, I am Truth, for Spirit is Truth. Because I am Spirit, I am
harmony because Spirit is harmony. I am love. I am peace. I am supply. I am life. And
therefore every problem is a denial that I am Spirit. And as this consciousness deepens, the
presence of a problem which I recognize as a denial that I am Spirit is met by the realization
that nothing can change the fact that I am Spirit. Even if I don't know it, I am Spirit.
That which I am I ever will be, Spirit, eternal and now, and therefore, because there is
no darkness in Spirit, that which appears to me as the problem has no life. Spirit is Life, and
there is no other. Spirit is Existence, and there is no other. Spirit is Reality, and there is no
other. Spirit is Perfection, and every imperfection accepted by me is a denial of my spiritual
Self. That denial of my spiritual Self is the way I die. That is the slow death that every mortal
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goes through by denying spiritual Self at every moment.
But I, Spirit, am the resurrection. In the realization of Spirit as identity, we are

resurrected from the false beliefs, which we had accepted, making us feel that we were
humans under human law, matter under material law, physical beings under physical law. We
are not. So long have we thought of ourself this way that we have become totally conditioned
living in the belief of a physical world in spite of the fact that the Way-shower completely
obliterated the power of the world by his knowledge that he was the living Spirit. I am the
Light, the living Spirit, and you are the Light, the living Spirit. I go to my Father - Spirit and
your Father - Spirit. Follow Me in the realization that we are Spirit, and you, too, shall
overcome this world.
Now, when you start to practice this, that's another matter. You'll say how can I
practice it? I said that to myself, too. How shall I be Spirit? What do you do? How do you do
it? What’s the pattern of living for one who says I am Spirit? Where does he go? What does
he say? How does he move? And you find a million questions you can't answer until one
comes within you with an answer and says before you have asked, I answered. Did you think
I would set you forth as my Spirit without an answer on how to be what You are? First you
had to come to the realization that you are Spirit, and now, in the newness of that realization,
wait upon the Lord. Rest. And suddenly the whole Bible is your answer, for the Bible is what
you do when you are Spirit.
The one called Jesus, who knew ‘I was Spirit,’ then went out and did what the Bible
is. His way of doing will become our way of doing. We will face the world, but we will know
that it is not there as a world. Its evils are not there. Its physical problems are not there. It is a
spiritual universe peopled by Spirit, perfection in all things, and our consciousness will
become single-pointed so that I will wait upon the infinite Spirit to function through my
Spirit. I will not do the works; the Father will. I will wait upon the Lord because the Father is
greater than the Son. I cannot multiply loaves and fishes, but the Father can. I cannot raise
cripples, but the Father can. I cannot resurrect the dead, but the Father can, and the Father can
through my enlightened consciousness as I rest in the true identity, in My Name.
That's your starting point, and then you begin communing with your Spirit. You ask it
questions. You wait for answers, and It teaches you, It feeds you, It sustains you, It leads you
and guides you. It shows you how to live as a spiritual Being, and all this that you were doing
as spiritual Being is invisible to the eyes of man. It is done within your consciousness when
you are at rest, when you are not fighting the windmills, when you are accepting that because
two and two are four, it makes no difference if someone tells you they're five or six or ten.
That which is the Truth remains the Truth, and because you are Spirit, it makes no difference
if the world throws a brick at you because a brick cannot touch Spirit. If you think it can touch
you, then you still have to go within until you know that you are Spirit.
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Until you see that Spirit is another dimension of Being and there isn't a physical self
out here still to be hurt if you are the Spirit, the birth of that realization must lead to the death
of the false belief of a physical self. Do you see you cannot support a physical being and a
spiritual One? You cannot serve both God and mammon. You cannot live in two houses. You
cannot ride two horses. You cannot be Spirit and matter. You must cross over and then let the
false consciousness die – consciously let it die.
It is our fidelity to I am Spirit that is what is meant by salvation. Now look again at
the adulteress. She came before I am Spirit, not before Jesus, and I am Spirit looked at her and
made a few marks in the sand to show these are just images in thought; this woman here, just
a picture in the mind. Her name is I am Spirit, but she knows it not. And so I do not condemn
thee. I, Spirit, do not condemn Spirit. Go out and sin no more. No longer think that you are
flesh and blood. Know that you are Spirit. That was her only sin, not knowing I am Spirit, and
that’s the sin of the world. It’s the sin of each individual. It’s a sin of every one of us, not
knowing that I am Spirit. We have reduced the complete Bible down to these three words. Its
purpose is to teach you I am Spirit. Only that Spirit realized in you can look out and see the
spiritual universe and live in it.
As a material being, you cannot live in the Heaven on earth. As a material being, you
cannot overcome this world. But the Spirit of God in you, realized as your substance, will
look out upon your neighbors and see Itself in all. It will look through the evils, through the
lacks, through the limitations and perceive Itself, the infinite Reality of Being everywhere.
And this becomes your mystical I, your sole activity, your higher dimension of consciousness.
The Spirit realized as you looks out and sees your spiritual universe. Where the world sees
war, you see peace. Where the worlds sees lack, you see abundance. Where the world sees ill
health, you see perfect health. Why? Because Spirit is all you can know when you are Spirit. I
don't know how many thousand years it's taken to get to a point where we begin to turn, but
this is that point and this turning occurs before the physical death comes.
There are a few who are practicing this knowledge, not many, the knowledge that I
am Spirit and nothing more. You can count them, possibly on your ten fingers, who are really
practicing this awareness. It is the narrowest possible Way, and it is the only Way that Jesus
taught. So today, those who are new with us and those who are not new are all faced with one
simple Truth. Either you realize I am Spirit, or you are rejecting the complete teaching of that
which is called Jesus, the Christ, and if any of you can find something else that he taught,
other than I am Spirit, I will be very much surprised.
Now in this realization is yours. It is a rebirth. It is just like being born again. You're
no longer hands and legs and arms and a physical body. You’re something that cannot be
touched physically. You’re something that cannot be seen with human eyes. You are a new
state of consciousness, and this state of consciousness does not have boundaries like a figure,
like a form. It may only appear there as of Jesus, but it isn't there. You have transfigured, you
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have found yourself as spiritual substance without corporeality. You're not in any one place or
in any one time, and yet you're present, and yet all that is present is your Presence. You
graduate from being a person, and you become aware that Spirit is a Universe. I am a
Universe, not a person. I am Spirit. Spirit is not limited or confined. Spirit is Itself, and Itself
is infinite. It is not only the Supreme. It is all that is, and that is why God is not a supreme
being, but the only. Spirit and the Father are revealed as one.
Each of us then becomes aware that we are that One, joint heirs in that One. And now
you're a consciousness and not a form walking the earth that could be run over by an
automobile or invaded by a virus. You're the invisible consciousness of the universe, One with
the universe by virtue of being One with the Spirit of God that is your being. And this is
where omnipotence comes in. The power of the infinite Spirit moves through each of us who
become joint heirs in Christ, doing its perfect work at all times, maintaining its perfect Being,
which we are. Intellectually we can all understand this. Intellectually we can know, that even
if we don't understand the fullness of it, we can work at it to understand it. But Jesus did more
than understand it intellectually. He became It. He dropped the belief in his own personal
powers, his own personal mind, his own personal intelligence.
And this is not done through quotations, so that even the Bible Itself is but a way of
lifting you higher into the real Bible. The real Bible is not a book bound with leather, with
paragraphs and chapters. The real Bible is the Christ, the living Christ of Being is the living
Bible. And until you become the living Bible, this Bible has not done the job in you that is
required. I am the Son of the Living God, and when you become the living Bible, the living
Spirit moving through you and all those in your spiritual household is the law of harmony in
all things.
It should be clear that there is nothing in this that is beyond our capacities because we
have no capacities other than the capacity of Spirit Itself. And if you will remain vigilant
crossing out everything in your human consciousness that denies the fullness of your spiritual
being, you will discover that you have turned home, you have made a stride far greater then
most of the religions on the face of the earth. You are coming into the realization that One
means I must be that One, or else there would be two. And whatever I do that is not the
quality and the nature of that One must be a falseness that I must crucify. I learn to live as the
One in the One, activated solely by the One, looking at all forms of discord with the
knowledge that they are not of the One and are, therefore, illusory, powerless, non-existent,
requiring nothing on my part to remove them or improve them. That is fidelity to your
spiritual identity, and it is the Messiah.
Take these three words with you: I am Spirit, and besides Spirit, there is no other. And
as you dwell with them, you will feel the birth of the real Self. You will understand that this is
the message of the Bible. All of the passages I gave you before in that little list will wield a
pattern of Truth, showing that Jesus traveled through the route of spiritual realization,
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releasing human selfhood, letting Spirit reveal Itself as the omnipresent Being on earth.
Wherever forms appeared, Spirit actually was, and then said if you can let this realization
become yours, this power of Spirit which I have revealed on earth will work through you.
Either you believe on Him or you do not. And to believe on him is not to personalize the
Jesus, but to personalize nothing in the realization that the Voice that spoke through Jesus was
the Christ, the Christ which said, "I am in the midst of you. Come unto me, and I shall give
thee rest."
When I asked myself within how shall I live as Spirit, how shall I live in that which
is, instead of that which is not? I received an unusual answer. I was told the 12 stones, the 12
foundation stones. And so I immediately went to Revelation where they are, and this will be
the subject after our brief intermission...
This is a letter of an 85-year-old man at 3 am, [who] was well up on the Mount of
Transfiguration:
“If I do not accept and take my Sonship, the invisible, incorporeal, spiritual
Consciousness, the firstborn, the Christ of God, then the trip to the mount has been lost and
useless, and I will remain a mere non-existent human. Therefore I am the Son, the living
Christ of God, and then Oneness came and the fullness. God is all. All of what? The universe
and all that dwells therein. God is my Mind, Life, Soul, Being. God is living as Me writing
this letter, revealing Himself on this Mount of Consciousness. Then is not an individual in or
on this universe? No, there is not an individual in or on this universe. There is only God,
whether it is a butterfly, hummingbird, or a bullfrog. All there is, is the sacredness of God.”
He goes on.
How many people at 85 are thinking this way? It's fairly legible too. I can read it very
easily, and he ends and says, “ The distance vision is fair.” I think he can see better than I can.
“The distance vision is fair.” Now, this man was 85 a month ago. You may have seen him in
this class some months back, and he's in a peace, but he's in more than a peace. He’s in a
growing peace. He’s not afraid. He’s not living as most people do his age in a sort of a semi-
retreat escaping from things. He's probably living in a greater newness than many people we
know because he has caught the living Spirit.
The 12 stones are the living Spirit. We learned that they are quite similar to the
Beatitudes when Jesus reveals blessed is the peacemaker, the pure at heart, he who hungers
and thirsts after righteousness. We find he's really giving us what later becomes the 12 stones,
but there's a pattern in the 12 stones that we have to look at. Speaking of them, we're in the
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new Jerusalem, in the new city, the new consciousness, and these 12 stones are revealed as the
qualities which are Christ consciousness in action. When you are in Christ consciousness,
these are your qualities, and when these are your qualities, you’re in Christ consciousness.
Now, although it isn't said here, the very first beginning before these 12 stones can
form the foundation of your consciousness, you must have accepted your spiritual Self as
your only Self. Then the foundation walls are formed; and the foundation of the wall of the
city, the foundations of the wall were garnished with all manner of precious stones. The first
foundation was jasper. The second, sapphire. He goes on and names the 12 stones. Now we'll
start with the Jasper. The stones are used because Light comes through them, and so you must
be like the stones, letting Light come through you. Light only comes through Light, so you
must be accepting yourself to be the Light before these foundations can be built.
And so I am the Spirit of God, and now the first foundation can happen, and that is
called the Jasper stone, and you will find that it means the pure at heart. It means that you
have opened yourself to the will of God. You have accepted that you want to be a
transparency for that will and that will alone, not your will, not mother's will, not father’s will,
not husband's will, not wife’s will, nobody's will but the will of the Father in you. And this is
the jasper stone, the first foundation of spiritual Life that I accept myself to be the Spirit and
only the will of Spirit in me. The will of the Kingdom of God in me is the only will to which I
can hearken, and now this is the first foundation.
And as that will is accepted, you come to the second foundation which is another
stone, and this stone is the Sapphire. The sapphire represents the wisdom that begins to flow
through you as living revelation. Now that you are accepting the will, you have opened your
Soul to the Spirit within, and because of it, living revelation flows through you as wisdom.
And this sapphire stone is the second foundation of living Truth, righteousness. The will
expressing in you as divine revelation is your second foundation stone in spiritual living, the
treasures of the Kingdom flowing into your awareness from the invisible, and you see this is
but the second stone.
Now I think we come to the Chalcedony, and this is the stone of love. Now in you,
love builds a foundation. Whereas before it might have been a personal selfish love, now
Divine love flowing through the Soul, which is open to the will and the wisdom, forms
another foundation, and this divine love flowing in and through you establishes the kingdom
of love as the consciousness of your being. And you remember Paul said, “Love is the
fulfilling of the law,” and so this foundation of Divine love in you makes possible the next,
the Emerald stone, which is the fourth dimension.
It is the fourth stone and the fourth dimension. The emerald stands for not the full
achievement of the fourth dimension. It is the beginning of a recall about the fourth
dimension, and in this recall, as glimpses of the fourth dimension become part of your
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memory recall, your faith is deepened and strengthened, and out of this comes a confidence, a
confidence in the invisible perfection of Spirit. The emerald, then, signifies here your
awareness of invisible perfection in all things and your confidence and ability to stand on it
with an unswerving faith. You started out by opening yourself to the inner will, releasing
human self, human will, receiving wisdom, then love, and now, faith is crystallized, the
confidence that Spirit being present and all, perfection is present. And at the same time you
see you are not reacting to the appearances of evil. These are your foundations.
Now the Sardonyx, and then the Sardius. With this newfound faith the sardonyx stone
stands for your ability to redeem the appearances and to perceive through them the reality that
is there. You see the Father within is really doing the works. You are an instrument for the
Divine, and no matter what forms may come to your attention, no matter what distortions may
appear, always this newfound level of consciousness called, in this case, the sardonyx is just
another stage of your developing Christ consciousness which now enables you to look
through the appearances. Now your work is more effortless than it was and deepens into the
sardius stone, and this is the realization of the infinite glory all around you. You have
transcended the appearances. You’re in the sixth stone of realization. You know that you walk
in the invisible Heaven on earth.
Now in that consciousness, the seventh stone is the beginning of the manifestation of
your new consciousness into the visible. Now that you have opened to the omniscience, the
love, the power, the wisdom, have deepened in faith, this Chrysolite, which is the gold stone,
begins to show forth the fruits of your new consciousness, and this is called the New Earth. It
comes from the appearance of a stone – it’s a sort of an apple green – and this is the New
Earth being made manifest through the new consciousness. The transformation is becoming
visible. The Word is manifesting as the flesh of experience. You begin to feel now the fruits of
your work as health, as prosperity, as a sense of peace, as a sense of life progressing and
fulfilling itself. The inner Spirit is being made manifest in the seventh stone.
The eighth, which is the Beryl, stands for tenacity. It is that quality in you now, which
having tasted the fruits of the Spirit, is dissatisfied until, until you are able to make the Word
flesh in every case. This is called the written Word, the beryl, and that means that you're not
satisfied with opinions. You’re not satisfied with conjecture or hypotheses. You want definite,
demonstrable proof, and so you are in that pertinacious stage that wrestles with the adversary
until the Truth that you know within is made manifest in the without. And that's the eighth
stage of this particular consciousness, identified here as the beryl stone, leading to the Topaz.
And now the within becomes the without; the topaz signifies the inner realization of harmony
made visible as harmony in your life.
You see the sequence, then, of these stages is that as you have opened to the
awareness of Self as Spirit, the will moving through you brings with it the infinite varieties of
Divine Spirit activity just like the sap through a tree and you become the living tree of life. All
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of the Light is coming through these new stones of your consciousness, and in the topaz
you're reaching that place where the new Heaven on earth is bursting all around you. You’re
walking in the visible Kingdom of God. Others may not see this, but you do, and this
continues to deepen.
This next stone is like the chrysolite, but now it's a love that you are able to share with
others. You are now able to bless the world around you. This love that flowed through you is
loving your neighbor, and this is that invisible love made visible as you’re blessing your
neighbors and lifting them spiritually. This is the Chrysoprasus stone. You are now blessing
those around you for the Light of your own being is shining forth.
And then we come to that stone which is called not the hyacinth, but the Jacinth; and
you'll discover that one, though it is a flower and the other a stone, they are sisters. They
come from the same derivative, the hyacinth and the jacinth, and this is where the red blood
of Spirit is your spiritual consciousness, the wine, the Ruby. All that you are now is living
spiritual Consciousness.
And that brings you up to the twelfth stage, the Amethyst, which is the peace that
passeth understanding. All of the stages of consciousness have weld into one, the amethyst
stage, or the peace that passeth understanding, the deep purple. And now you are in the secret
place of the Most High, and that secret place of the Most High is the knowledge that I am the
Son of the living God. I am Spirit, and beside me there is no other. I am the life, I am the
Truth, I am the law. These 12 stones are the progression each of us goes through from
humanhood to spiritual consciousness, to that ability to rest in the peace of Being, for now
fear is impossible. Now death is impossible. Now problems are impossible. They are merely
appearances that are dispelled by the Light of your own Being without effort.
If you go back to the loaves and fishes, you'll remember that when the loaves and
fishes were multiplied and all had been fed, there were 12 baskets full, and now you can see
for the first time the meaning of those 12 baskets full. The 12 baskets signify the spiritual
Consciousness, the Christ Consciousness that made possible the multiplication of a few
loaves and fishes. And 12 signifies 12 thousand or 12 million or 12 billion. Twelve signifies
infinite.
There were 12 tribes of Israel. There were 12 times 12,000 waiting in the wings to
come forth upon the earth to lift mortals into Divinity – 144,000 – all implying the same
thing: The infinite nature of Spirit is the nature of your Being. And when you come to the
twelfth, or the amethyst stage, this is infinity realized, for I am Spirit means I am Infinity
Itself, and that is the discovery that Jesus made when he discovered that man, as he stands, is
not the Divine Image. The Divine Image must be Infinity Itself, and because the Divine Image
is the Son of God, until you get down to the very first step of the foundation, this progression
in consciousness does not occur. And then without the Divine wisdom flowing, there is no
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Omniscience there at work to recognize Itself for you, and we are held back into a finite state
of life with a finite beginning and a finite ending.
When these 12 stones are completed, a very beautiful thing happens: “And he shewed
me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of
the Lamb.” This is the permanent Christ Consciousness, which is the fulfillment of the
Father's statement: “Be ye perfect as your Father,” which is in heaven. This is you and I at the
level of our real Self.
Now let's get down to mundane things and see that all that we have read in these 12
stones is already established as the Truth of our Being now. We're not going to attain that.
We’re going to drop the belief that we are not that and discover that we are, because the
Father says, “Be ye perfect,” and the Father is all power, no power has prevented that
perfection, and you, therefore, are perfect. All of these stones already are the established
Consciousness of your Self, and as you drop the false self, the reality of your Self expresses
without the hindrance of a second consciousness which is finite, dense, unable to perceive and
comprehend that which is quicker than its own level of vibration.
And so we die. We die with a great joy to this false consciousness, for we are being
born into Reality. There is a very beautiful statement you may never have heard, that you may
never even notice in the Bible, and I've got to read it to you. I made a note here of it. This is
John 5:26, and I don't believe it's ever been explained, but it fell into place through this. “As
the Father hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself.”
Now, that doesn't have any meaning at first: “As the Father hath life in himself; so
hath he given to the Son to have life in himself." But as you dwell on that, it's telling us that
we are Self-existent and that, translated, means that your life is Self-existent and did not
depend on the life of your mother or your father, that you are Life Itself. It is revealing that
Spirit, which is your Being, is Life, and your spiritual Self did not descend from a mother and
a father. And of course, we know by now that that is what Jesus was teaching, that He was not
laboriously constructed in the womb. He was Self-existent Life, and the form which appeared
was the illusion misperceived by finite consciousness.
We are each that Self-existent life, which the Father has bequeathed to the Son. That
means we have ever been this life. We have ever been Christ conscious, and the glass darkly
that is now being removed is the false conditioning of humanhood through the years, through
the centuries, that has made us separate in our belief from our very own Self, divided. The
way back are those three words.
Now, you remember that last week we worked with, “There is no place where God is
not.” And one woman said to me, “It really works. People will say things that I don't agree
with, and people will say this and people will do that, and I'll keep saying to myself, ‘There's
no place where God is not.’” And then there are others who have found that in their normal
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human consciousness, they may look out on a situation that is quite unbearable and they may
feel its Reality. Whereas before they may have had a statement like, “The place whereon I
stand is holy ground.” What about that place over there where the problem is?
And now they have a different statement which is the same thing: “There is no place
where God is not.” And now you can't wriggle out of it. Right over there where the problem
is, there is no place where God is not. So right over there, God is; and if God is there, you
know the problem really isn't there. What about this ambulance over here? But there's no
place where God is not. And God must be right where there seems to be a need for an
ambulance, but where's the witness to know that there's no place where God is not? And right
here in my chest, the doctor says malignancy, but there's no place where God is not. Now
who’s right? Is God there or is the doctor right?
And as you stand with that Truth, there's no place where God is not, you find the
power of it, because it is the Truth, and when it's accepted in consciousness, it becomes a
release. You can look at any condition, any problem, and realize that there is no place where
God is not, and God and the malignancy do not co-exist. They cannot be in the same place at
the same time. God and the earthquake cannot coexist, God and the flood, God and the fire –
wherever God is realized to be, for there's no place where God is not – then the opposite of
God cannot be there.
Now, after you've worked with that, you come now to I am Spirit. There is no place
where Spirit is not. Well, Spirit is God, and, therefore, right here Spirit is, and, therefore, I am
Spirit. And finally, I am Spirit here, but what about over there? Is that a different Spirit, or is it
the one continuous, uninterrupted, invisible Spirit? And then you have the secret of Infinity
functioning as your Being invisibly. I am Spirit, and there is no other Spirit in this Universe,
for My Spirit is universal. It is the one, infinite Spirit. This is where the power lies, and this is
the Infinity realized in the twelfth stage of that Consciousness, called the Christ
Consciousness.
Now, when you practice with “There is no place where God is not” and/or “I am
Spirit”, you’ll discover a turning, and you will begin this progression of the 12 stones in the
twenty-first chapter of Revelation. You'll discover they are very similar to the Beatitudes,
somewhat similar to what Moses taught, even similar to some of the beginning of the book of
Genesis. But they are the way you stay on the path. If you're wondering, “What do I do and
how do I do it?” – that's how you do it. And then in your fidelity to each step along the way,
letting the Will express Itself in you, It will make the other steps for you. You will simply be a
witness to Christ living Itself as You.
Now, these are all of the beginning things that we have to come to if we're going to
live in the fourth dimension of Consciousness while walking in the third, and so next week
when “I am Spirit” sits in these chairs, the Consciousness that you bring and I bring will
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enable us to receive a higher and deeper degree of Truth than we could at this very instant.
Always this will be a deepening process, made possible by our fidelity to the will of the
Father in us. We are overcoming death so that we can go on to the greater things.
Maybe we haven't yet taken the ribbon off the package, but that's the beginning of our
Christmas present from Spirit, and I'm sure by the time Christmas rolls around, our package
will be open and revealed. So I thank all of you for being here today and hope to see you
soon.
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Class 3
Impersonalizing Four Ways
Herb: We are discussing the third dimension of life, which is humanhood, and how to
live in it while you are functioning out of the fourth dimension. If we look at the lesson of the
Bible, not as an isolated chapter here and an isolated chapter there, not even as an Old
Testament or a New Testament but rather as a living lesson about a living God, you may find
that you actually are Adam and that you actually are the Christ that came to Jesus. And the
period from Adam, the first man, to Christ Jesus, that first man coming into the realization of
Self, represents the same period that you must go through in order to fulfill yourself.
You come into a world, and to all visible eyes, to all visible knowledge, you bring
nothing into this world, and yet that is one of the first truths we learn, that we bring something
into this world. We do not come in empty-handed at all. We find much evidence of that in
such Lights as Chopin, for example, who at the age of two––or Mozart was it?––at the age of
two had this tremendous musical talent. And we learn that you do not come in starting as a
beginner. You come in with your consciousness, the consciousness that you had before this
particular experience you had; and now you come back with a higher consciousness or,
perhaps a lower one if you have walked in the wrong direction.
And then when we look at Jesus, we see that this man who walked the earth blessing
the world around him had at an early age a capacity far beyond his elders, and we see there
that neither did he come into this world then for the first time. Actually I had been wondering
about this: What were the incarnations of Jesus before he appeared as that which was called
the Son of God? I had a little light on it if any, but a book came across my attention, and it
was the Edgar Cayce book on the incarnations of Jesus. And we find, according to Cayce, that
Jesus actually was Joseph in Egypt. Jesus was Enoch. Jesus was Zend, the father of Zoroaster.
Jesus was Joshua, and according to Cayce, Jesus was Melchizedek who came to Abraham and
revealed the power of one who had never been born or died.
Now whether you give credence to these or not, the fact is that that Consciousness
which walked the earth as Jesus was not born one day and suddenly appeared, any more than
the leaf on a tree suddenly appears without having been born within that tree first. And so it
was, going back before Abraham. “I Am,” he said, and this was Melchizedek, the Christ made
manifest as man. Coming through the famines of Egypt it was Joseph, the enlightened One,
who was able to bring them food. Always you’re seeing the symbolism that he who is in the
Christ consciousness is without lack or limitation.
And so Adam, the first man, unknowing of his true self, goes through the various
experiences in the Bible and passes out of the picture. But now he returns, and he returns
again and again and again, in a new face, a new body. Ultimately, his name is Jesus. But now
there is something new. This Jesus has discovered the mysteries of life. He has walked
through the divided consciousness which every man walks through, and now he emerges as
the One Consciousness. And this One Consciousness walks the earth free of the divisions
which we all face.
But man doesn't understand Jesus, and so man worships Jesus, the man. Man worships
the very man who says, "Why do you call me good? Don't call me Lord, Lord. Don’t love me
and worship me, but do what I say.” The multitudes followed him because they wanted
healings. They said there's been no greater on earth than he. Let me touch him. But did they
want his message? Repeatedly they came back for another healing, but his words, his
meanings, what he symbolized, what he was teaching was lost.
We're not losing that today. His teaching is crystal clear. There are two
consciousnesses on this earth. One is the true of you, and one is the false of you. And
although you may feel that you would like a nice, comfortable way to find God, Jesus left it
very clear to us that there is no easy, comfortable way to find God unless you want an abstract
God to whom you can pray and say, "Dear God, I need help,” and then wait for that help
whether it comes or not.
He said, "If you want a God who is a living God, not an abstraction, there's only one
way.” He said, “You must make my flesh your flesh and my blood your blood.” And this
meant a total reliance upon the true consciousness, not the false. When you simmer the
message down to a few words, Jesus was teaching us to get out of this body before it's buried.
He was teaching us that this body in which we walk is a blend of the false and the true, and
although it's a very difficult teaching at this point, we must learn to look out at the world and
see something quite different than what our eyes usually see.
We see people. We see forms. We see friends. We see enemies. He said, "I'm sorry. If
you want the Kingdom of Heaven, you must have a completely new way of looking out at this
world. You must look out with a single eye, and the single eye does not see as you have been
seeing.” And many of the examples that he demonstrated were to show you the difference
between the divided consciousness and the single eye.
Take the withered arm. Now he's in the temple. A man comes in. His arm is withered.
The Pharisees are there. Oh, and this is great for them. They're going to witness Jesus possibly
breaking the law. They couldn't like anything better because it happens to be the Sabbath. This
man with the withered arm is supposed to have been a stone mason, and in an accident this
occurred. He never could get rid of this withered arm. And now on a Sabbath he comes to the
temple, and he says to Jesus, “Heal me.” And one of the great institutions of Hebrew law was
you don't work on the Sabbath. So they're waiting gleefully. What’s he going to do?
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Class 3 : Impersonalizing Four Ways
And this is where you and I must see that what he did was a major teaching. He
recognized no human Sabbath. This was a man-made law, even though Moses had handed
down this law. In fact, Moses had stood idly by while one was stoned who broke this law, and
now this institution which was reverenced throughout the Hebrew kingdom, he, the great
Teacher, was about to break. And the reason he did it is simple. They thought it was illegal,
against the Hebrew law, against the law of God, to heal on the Sabbath; and he taught a higher
law. It is against the law of God to witness a withered arm. There is no such thing.
The reason he could witness that there is no withered arm is because he had within
himself eliminated the second consciousness. There was no two consciousnesses there. There
was not a divided consciousness. And I think it's important that you see the meaning of a
divided consciousness. It will also show you a different person than the one you usually see.
Take yourself. We are all a divided consciousness, every one of us. There is in us only
divinity, and yet in spite of it, this divinity is obscured by the imitation of divinity, the
imitation divine image, the human image.
This human image is composed of two forces. Your divine spiritual Self and the
passage of the world mind, with its impression of your divine Self over this divine Self makes
the two consciousnesses. You are composed now of Divine Consciousness, which is your
Self, and of the universal consciousness, which is the world imitation of yourself. The fusion
of these two makes the form. And when you look out, although you see a form, you're seeing
the fusion of the Divine Consciousness and the universal belief about that Divine
Consciousness, and that's the form you're looking at. It’s your form, your neighbor’s form,
your child's form, your parents’ form, your husband’s and your wife's form.
You’re looking at a level of consciousness which appears as form, and just for
mathematics’ sake, we'll say that one degree of Divine Consciousness is coming through and
99 degrees of world belief is coming through, and that's the form in front of you. And
someone may be a little higher and have two percent of Divine Consciousness coming
through and 98 percent of world belief. But everywhere you're looking, you’re not seeing
what is there. You’re seeing this fusion. And it's important to learn to look at every form with
the realization that what is there is not what is appearing.
What is appearing is mostly world belief in form. But that individual is here to do
exactly what the first Adam was here to do and eventually did, and that is to come into the
realization that the Tree of Life, which is Divine Consciousness, and the tree of good and evil,
which is world belief, have merged to create the appearance of man called Adam, and Adam
doesn't know it. And each of us is that one who doesn't know it.
And so we are here to lift the degree of divinity that comes through and to decrease
the degree of universal belief that comes through so that ultimately you'll be 10 percent divine
and 90 percent universal belief, then 20 and 80, and 70 and 30, and so forth until you reach
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that point where Christ is born, a place where you become aware that the Divine Self is My
Being. And now I must erase, through integrity to Self, that degree of world belief which
shows forth as me.
You're recognizing that the universal forms we see are nothing but universal thought
out-pictured, and yet when divinity is understood and sown to within as we build an Inner
Consciousness, not in the sense mind, but an Inner Consciousness, this slowly releases the
degree of world belief that is showing forth as our form and puts substance into our
experience. Now Jesus had accomplished all this, and so by the time the man came forth with
a withered arm, he was looking at a form as the world sees it in divided consciousness, an
imperfect form, a form composed of largely world belief appearing as a man with a withered
arm, and the degree of Divine Consciousness that was present in the man was minimized. And
all around him, those who would say you cannot work on the Sabbath were perfectly content
to accept the reality of this evil.
But he was teaching that my Father worketh hitherto right here where these Pharisees
see a withered arm. Where the world consciousness accepts the withered arm, there is also the
Christ Consciousness, the single eye, which does not accept the possibility that there is
darkness where God is. Now we have the Christ Consciousness looking at the withered arm.
It says,” I'm not going to give you another arm. I'm not going to trade arms with you. I’m not
going to discuss logic with you. I'm not going to teach you anything. I'm not going to have a
discussion with you. I'm not going to go through all the Mosaic Law and teach you about the
Spirit, but rather I will sow directly to the Spirit of you, recognizing, as we all must come to
recognize, that the withered arm is not there. It is world belief formed. “Stretch forth thine
arm.”
Now you will say, “Why, if all he said was ‘Stretch forth thine arm’ did the man
stretch forth his arm then, and why couldn't he have done it before?” And so, let us take a
telephone conversation as an example. Now you are speaking on the telephone here to your
friend in Chicago. Now there's nothing that friend in Chicago can hear except what you say
from this side of the phone here. If you speak loudly, he will hear it loudly. If you say,
“Hello,” he will hear “Hello.” Everything that you do here will come out there, but nothing
can come out there unless you do it here.
And you have that same privilege in spiritual Consciousness. Whatever was in the
consciousness that looked at that withered arm had to come out in the individual who had the
withered arm. Now see the invisible connection between Jesus as if he were on the telephone,
but his thoughts are on the telephone, not his words. His Consciousness is on the telephone,
not his words, and he is knowing the Truth, and the Truth that he knows goes over that
telephone and appears in Chicago, just as his voice would. The Truth that you know goes
through your Consciousness into the Consciousness of the one who has come to you, and that
Truth in your Consciousness becomes the Truth in the Consciousness of the other individual.
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And because the Truth is that there is no withered arm, the withered arm disappears.
It's just like a telephone connection. It’s One Consciousness––not communicating with the
other consciousness––it’s the Consciousness here appearing there as that same Consciousness
because there is only one invisible Consciousness, God Consciousness. Now, this was
mystifying. How could a withered arm disappear? This was some kind of chicanery, but the
teaching was that God is not abstract. You don't pray to God in heaven. You recognize God as
present everywhere, perfect now.
And finally it would take us another 5,000 years perhaps, individually if we worked
without the inner revelation of Spirit Itself to learn that he was teaching right then and there
that the fourth dimension of Consciousness is always present wherever you are. If you're a
Pharisee and cannot see it because you are in divided consciousness, you will call it a miracle
or witchcraft. But if you have the single eye, which knows the fourth dimension of
Consciousness is here now, you will also know something else.
We have been trying from the fourth to live in the fourth while in the third, and now
you must come to the place where you see there is no third dimension of consciousness. It
simply doesn't exist. It is a false consciousness. It is the illusory consciousness. The third
dimension of consciousness cannot exist. All that you see in the third dimension of
consciousness has no reality. The world that you see is the third dimension of consciousness,
but the fourth dimension of Consciousness, which is Christ invisible, is the only
Consciousness that is present here today.
We may bring the illusion of a third dimension of consciousness. We may bring a

withered arm. We may bring a defective ear. We may bring a defective eye. We may bring a
defective back. But these are from the divided consciousness, the two that are in the field, and
one must go. There cannot be two masters serving in your consciousness. Now to do this, you
cannot live the life you're accustomed to. The change is significant and quite revolutionary.
The change requires the knowledge that you cannot ever honor the third dimension of
consciousness without separating yourself from Reality. In you are the two levels of
consciousness, the one true and the imitation of the true; and now your only responsibility on
this earth is to eliminate the second consciousness that is within you, called the human, the
mortal, the limited, the one that moves in time and space.
When you were taught to impersonalize, up to this moment our impersonalization’s

have been incomplete. We have not really learned how to impersonalize, but we're reaching
the point now where, however difficult, many of us are prepared to accept a hard truth. Now
you will find that if you can accept that you are comprised of only Divinity, there is no other
self than your divine Self, you must know, therefore, that whatever appears as imperfect in
your life must be a lie. And that lie comes about because your divine Self is crossed by world
belief, and this out-pictures as the imperfection or the lie, which up to now we more or less
have accepted even though we had learned it wasn't there.
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Now you must impersonalize four ways, and I’d like you to remember these four
ways, for the power in them is very great. The world around you isn't happening. It seems to
be. This may not mean much to you at the moment, but there will come a time when the non-
happening of that around you will suddenly steal into your consciousness in a very unique
way, and that moment of truth will be hastened if you will follow these four steps. When you
impersonalize—Well, let's take a specific case—let's take that withered arm. Let’s take a
withered arm that is confronting us right now as a case at hand.
We will impersonalize first, time. There is no time in Spirit. There is no time when the
withered arm could have happened. There is no time in which it can exist; therefore, there is
no time in which a person can be suffering from a withered arm. You're beginning to see that
time is part of the false consciousness, so you remove time from your belief.
Now you'll remove place. You impersonalize place. There's no place where a withered
arm can be. There is no place in Spirit. Place is finite. Place has boundaries. There are no
boundaries in Spirit. We remove the belief in time. We remove the belief in space. We are
impersonalizing time and now space.
And now we are impersonalizing person. This that appears before me as withered arm
is but the fusion of the Divine with its overshadowing of the world belief. The Divine is not
matter. The Divine is not physical. The Divine is incorporeal. The Divine is all. The false
shadow of form is world belief formed. We impersonalize person. We impersonalize material
being. We impersonalize material form. We are removing in our consciousness the belief in
time, place, and material form.
And finally, our fourth impersonalization is the removal of the belief in material
condition. There is no time, place, form, or condition in Christ consciousness. To us that's a
slow learning process. To the one called Jesus, it was an instantaneous knowledge born of all
of the incarnations in Truth leading up to the final total realization of the divine Self, the
single eye looking out only at the perfect universe.—This cannot be. All that stands there is
the perfect invisible divine Self misperceived.
Now when you impersonalize time, place, person and condition, you’ll find you’re left
with a great hollow, but that hollow is the removal of the universal world beliefs, and it's the
beginning of a very strange new kind of stillness, a stillness that may even ache a little bit.
Because in this stillness, it isn't just the stillness that you bring about by saying, “I'm going to
be still now.” This is a stillness that falls into a new groove. This is a stillness in which the
world is still. All around you is a vast, almost infinite stillness, and you’re somewhere in the
center of it, but not very clearly defined. You’re even part of the stillness.
You’re breaking the dream. You’re breaking the dream of the divided consciousness
which has presented to us a self that is born and must die, a physical being. You're crossing
out the third dimension of consciousness which never existed as reality, and you're coming
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into the recognition that only the God Consciousness exists. Only the fourth dimension of
Consciousness exists around you, nothing else. And if this becomes your experience, you'll
never forget it. You'll remember it sufficiently so that, as you walk through this world, you
will know I am not walking in the third dimension of consciousness at all.
It isn't here. It’s the myth. I am consciously in the fourth dimension for that is my
name. I am the fourth dimension of Consciousness. I am the Spirit, and the material world,
which was born of the divided consciousness, loses its potency, its validity, its power to mold
you, its power to cause you fear, concern, and anxiety. You recognize the non-presence of the
third dimension of consciousness called mortality. This vast stillness becomes an insulating
factor. Nothing can enter this stillness. It is a stillness you have never experienced except
through the realization that all that exists is the divine Self.
And then, all evil on the earth, for you, has no meaning. It is just something you see,
but it is not reality. It is not ordained, it is not upheld, it is not part of the experience of the
Christ Consciousness. In Him is no darkness at all. Now, we are all working toward this
stillness, and one of the great mystifying things about it is that even at this moment, the
human mind cannot acclimate itself to the drastic change that is required of it. Even at this
moment, no matter how strange it may be to hear that I am an incorporeal being, the mind
does not really know what that means. The mind cannot make its adjustment.
It cannot be sudden. It must be gradual. It must be a slow, daily sowing to the spiritual
Self. If you try to hurdle this in a night or a year or five, you find it is too awkward because
you're going to come to a place that you've never been in, a place that I’d like you to
recognize now. You're going to have to see that when somebody gets on the phone to call you,
that it isn't happening. It isn't happening. You're going to have to come to a place, however
startling, where you learn that you are not breathing. It isn't happening. Your heart is not
beating. It isn't happening.
Nothing that you think is happening is happening in Spirit, and when you come to this
zero, it won't be because you heard somebody say it or read it in a book. But at least you’ll be
alerted to the fact that when it does happen in your experience, that you're not going crazy.
When you know that you are not living as a human being with a breathing lung and a
pumping heart and a thinking brain, you will be very sane, more sane than any man who
walked the earth before Jesus, for when he came to that realization, he was the firstborn. And
believe it or not, we are all going to come to that realization before we step out of the mortal
mold.
When you practice the allness of God, you do so without the realization that that
means the nothingness of me. Now we must learn to practice the nothingness of me. That is
the only way you honor God supremely. At first it's a dark, dark night. You realize then that
impersonalizing time, space, person, matter, condition leaves you without a human selfhood.
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It leaves the world without a human selfhood. That's why there is a great transition of
consciousness from Adam to Christ Jesus.
The giving up of the belief in a human selfhood is impossible to a person who has not
been touched by the Spirit, and even those who have been touched by the Spirit find that they
want to cling to that human selfhood. It’s all they know. They don't mind clinging to it if they
can just get Spirit to function in their lives. But more and more and more and more the Master
impresses upon us there's no place you can stop if you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
The narrow gate is total reliance upon the Spirit, the complete willingness to drop all belief in
a mortal universe, a material universe, this world. I can't say how many among you at this
moment want to live that way, but it's necessary at this time to let those of you who want to
live that way know that there must come the moment when you can see the nothingness of
your human self, down to the point that you know you're not breathing.
And after you’ve tried it, you might even say, “Well, that wasn't as difficult as I
thought it would be. Something new happened. A new dimension of me was born when that
happened.” That's what you might say. You might see, then, what is the meaning of being
reborn to the Spirit. This is how the false second self is slowly dissolved to reveal the
immaculate nature of your Being. We are sowing to the immaculate, which cannot be blended
with anything else. There can be no degree of humanhood in the immaculate, and so
incarnation after incarnation had to proceed before there could be a moment of an immaculate
conception, and in that immaculate conception One Consciousness was the only one left on
the field.
There were two, and one was taken away. Jesus, then, walked the earth as the
undivided Consciousness, and the powers that he manifested are the powers of the undivided
Consciousness. The power to witness perfection, where the world sees a withered arm, is the
power of the undivided Consciousness that is available to all of us who want to walk through
that narrow gate. Now eating of my flesh and my blood, then, means not of the universal
world belief but of the Divine, fidelity to the Divine of your Being, standing still to the world
that comes through you as opinions, beliefs, and appearances, concepts. This narrows us
down. It narrows us down to such a point that we, too, find the meaning of the three
temptations in a new way.
We were told to forgive seventy times seven, and now we see it wasn't a demand on
us that we be kind and big-hearted and compassionate at all. To forgive seventy times seven
meant to look out there and to see that all that’s there is Divinity. There’s nothing big-hearted
about it. It’s the recognition of Reality. There's no one there to forgive, and there's no one here
to do the forgiving. All that is present is the fourth dimension, Divine Consciousness. Fidelity
to that was the purpose behind the teaching forgive seventy times seven.
Now, when we go to Jesus, we find that he lived in fidelity to the highest possible
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Truth on this earth, that there is naught but God. He recognized no divided consciousness,
even in himself. And we must learn to do this when, within ourselves, the tempter says, “You
have a withered arm.” We must say to the tempter, “Who told you so?” When the tempter
within us says, “You're getting old,” we must say to the tempter, “Who told you so?” When
the tempter within us says, "My daughter is growing up, and I have to watch her very
carefully or else she'll become part of the new ways that I don't like very much." Then you
must say to the tempter, “The only daughter I have is the true Consciousness of God within
Myself, and that is the Consciousness of that which you call my daughter. I recognize only the
Divine Consciousness, and that is my daughter.” There is no person there. There is no beating
heart. There is only the Spirit, and this is the immaculate conception of a daughter. Always we
are doing what the world cannot do, what no mortal mind can do, what logic will not do. We
are translating the human scene. We are rejecting the tempter which says, “There is divinity.
There is Spirit. There is God, but there's also mortal being.”
And you know, it’s very difficult to see, perhaps, but Jesus had already rejected the
idea that there was Jesus. He had rejected the idea that there was God and Jesus. It was his
overcoming of the belief that my name is Jesus and that I am Jesus which enabled him to
witness that there is no withered arm. If there was still a Jesus in his consciousness, the
miracles that he was able to manifest, to witness, would have been impossible. He had to
remove the belief in the divided consciousness which says, “There is divinity and me.” And
he couldn't be pantheistic and say, “God is my being, even though I'm in the flesh.”
He couldn't say that tree out there is Spirit. He had to know that the tree out there isn't
there, but Spirit is there. He had to know that the man with the withered arm wasn't there, but
Spirit was there. He had to know that Jesus wasn't there, but Spirit was there. And we have to
know that we are not here, but Spirit is here, and then, when we know that we are Spirit,
we’re ready for that tempter. The tempter will then say to us, “Prove you're Spirit,” and if you
know your identity to be Spirit, you will say to the tempter, “To whom shall I prove it? There
is naught but Spirit.” “Well, show your great powers.” “Well, to whom shall I show these
powers?”
You see, the tempter is the world mind in you. That which you have called your
human mind is the tempter, and it's always challenging you to show your spiritual power. And
whom shall you show that spiritual power to––this non-existent world mind? All there is is
your Spirit everywhere. My Spirit knows no boundaries, for my Spirit is the Spirit of God.
The Spirit of God––whom shall tempt the Spirit of God? Is there another to tempt? And so the
temptation comes from non-existence seeming to be existent.
The rejection of the temptation is the rejection of that which is non-existent. There is
no tempter. The tempter is as much an illusion as water on the desert, and when you accept
the tempter and wish to show the tempter your spiritual power, you might as well show that
spiritual power to a mirage on the desert. And so the revelation of the rejecting of the tempter
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three times by Jesus is the revelation that there is only One Self. There is no other to do the
tempting and no other to be tempted. There is only one Being, and that One Being is always I
Am.
Impersonalizing is a very nice word for crucifying. When you crucify time, place,
person, conditions in person, you are meeting the tempter––the world mind––which has
presented time, place, person, and condition to you. And you are saying to the world mind:
My integrity to the One Self of My Being, to the undivided Consciousness, has now reached
the point where I can stand firm in the knowledge that I am not two, a Divine and a mortal,
Spirit and matter, Son of God and a human being. I eat only of the flesh and the blood of the
invisible Christ. I walk in Oneness in the realization that only the One is present.
I'm not making withered arms disappear. I'm recognizing their non-reality. I'm not
making cancers disappear. I’m recognizing their non-reality. I’m not making the problems of
this world disappear. I’m recognizing their non-reality. We're getting behind the scenes to
recognize that God is all and in Him is no darkness at all. And our work is to banish in us the
thoughts, the beliefs, the seeds of concept that accept another life, another power, another
activity than perfect Divine activity. There is no other. The acceptance of another is the
continuation of a divided consciousness.
Now the mind begins to be very uncomfortable. It had expected that everything could
be understood by it and that if it did something, it would do it because it understood. But now
it reaches an area where the things it hears are very uncomfortable. It doesn't want to hear that
I'm not breathing. It doesn't want to hear that I'm not a mortal being. It wants something
understandable, and at this stage you will find that whatever is understandable to the mind is
untrue. If it's understandable to the mind, beware of it. It isn't the truth of God, because there
is a place where the truth of God is very upsetting to that mind. It’s telling that mind, “When
you impersonalize, impersonalize yourself too. Get rid of your self. You don't know Truth.
You're just the world mind appearing in an individual as an individual mind. You’ve been the
cause of all the trouble these many thousands of years.”
We begin to see that this mind is what folds up when we leave this plane, and when
we return we can't even remember we were here because it wasn't a mind at all. If it was a
mind, it would remember. All of our sense mind is lost. The only thing we gain during this
lifetime is that degree in which Consciousness frees Itself from the world belief that is in us,
so that right now, perhaps, if you're two percent divine and ninety-eight percent human, you
might return three percent divine, having made one degree of progress during your whole
seventy or eighty or ninety years. But, the world consciousness is changing, and the degree of
progress we had made in the past is not the degree of progress we can make in the present.
It's possible today, right here in the Kingdom at hand, to dissolve the world
consciousness in this incarnation, provided you have been touched deeply enough to make
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your dedication without compromise. For instance, had you been caught in the temple with
this withered arm requesting help in the presence of the higher priests, some lesser man might
have compromised. He could even have said to this withered arm, “Well, I’ll meet you
outside, and we'll talk about it later. Or he could have said, “Come back tomorrow.” But in
our commitment to Truth alone, we don't say, “Come back tomorrow,” or “I'll meet you later.”
We meet the lie now when it appears and wherever it appears.
We meet it because we must be true to Self. We must find Self. We must overcome the
un-self that is the false, the limited, the one who is not My Eternal Being. And we find that is
only a shell called the false consciousness. As soon as it is met by the Truth, its falseness is
revealed. When there is no Truth in your consciousness to meet it, it continues and takes over
your life. If you could shear away, at this moment, all of the falseness of your Being, you
would know that there is no place where you are not. Now if you think this is difficult, be sure
it will become more difficult. It will become so difficult that there will be a place where those
who faint will want to turn back, and that is the place where those who have been touched are
anxious to go.
The place where the dark night of the soul truly begins is where you let go of the
world consciousness within you, and with all total reliance on the invisible Self, leaving all
weapons behind, all reason, all logic, all fear, all doubt, you entrust yourself 100 percent to
the Self you feel you are, which is not living in this time or in this space or in this body or in
this condition, and you see the shell that had pretended it was you. This total rejection of the
false self is necessary before the real Self can shine through. There is a totally different Self
waiting to reveal Itself to the one who rejects the false self completely, and that complete
rejection will come about as you practice the impersonalization of the false self in all
qualities. If you thought your intelligence was limited, impersonalize that. It isn’t. If you
thought your life span was limited, impersonalize that. It isn’t. If you thought your capacities
in any direction were limited, impersonalize that. It isn't true.
God is unlimited in life, in capacities, in intelligence, and I and the Father are one
Spirit.
Remove all boundaries on every limiting factor in your life, in your integrity to Self.
Remove the belief that a boundary is real. Remove the belief that you walk in space. Remove
the belief that you walk in an aging form. Remove the belief that you walk within a limited
period of time. These are all conditioned beliefs. The moment you do this, it is astounding
how clear it becomes that they are nothing more than concepts. The whole world of concept
begins to peel away. The onion skins of belief are removed one by one or ten by ten. Your
mind begins to race with the possibilities.
There is another Self, and that other Self is the undivided Divine Consciousness, the
fourth dimension, which is all there is right here and right now, and there's a way of accepting
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that and letting it reveal Itself as you accept It. The way is to reject all that comes to you in the
third dimension. Stand still. Reject it. Reject the arm, and you'll find it easier to reject the
withered arm. Reject the back, and you’ll find it easier to reject the arthritic back. Reject the
material self before it becomes a problem, and you'll find the problem will have no reality.
The limit to which you learn to reject this world is limitless. It is a total rejection of the reality
of any event in this world until you're walking in the knowledge that nothing is happening,
absolutely nothing is happening. And then you know that all that is happening is Spirit Itself
maintaining Itself being Its perfect invisible Self everywhere.
But that is I. I'm not apart from that Spirit. That Spirit is called “Our Father.” The
Father is the Spirit, and that Spirit, our Father, is my Self, your Self, his Self, her Self, Jesus’
Self, the withered arm man's Self. That is all there is, one invisible infinite Spirit. And you can
feel it because you have dropped from the false consciousness, the divided consciousness, and
the vacuum of this great stillness is filled as the wisdom of the Father flows forth. Then you
know what no mind can know. It has been transcended. The knowledge you have, then, is not
of a mind knowing Truth, but of Truth knowing Itself.
This is a strange Self that we're discussing, and we're discussing it with minds, and
those minds are all really the non-mind, but the experience transcends all discussion, and in
that experience is the germ of Light, Self-revealing, which brings to you a conviction. This
new experience outside of form, outside of mind, outside of time, outside of place – this is the
first awareness of my spiritual Being. This is the Divine Self I feel. It is like nothing I had
imagined. It has nothing personal. It hath no place to hang its head. It is not a material being.
It is a completely new kind of being no man has suspected. It is God’s Self, being Itself, and It
is Itself right now whether we come into the realization of it or not. It is the only Self. It is the
Universe, and its imitation has been that which we have accepted up until the time that the
first kicking of the Christ within brings to us the realization that there is a higher Me, a Spirit.
We're looking at Isaiah 43. Jacob had proved himself. He had reached the point of
working to eliminate the false consciousness, the intruder. He had wrestled with it, and now
the Voice within is speaking through the prophet Isaiah. And this is really the Tree of Life in
you. This is the Divine Self in all of us saying,
“I will say to the north, Give up; and to the south, Keep not back: bring my sons from
far, and my daughters from the ends of the earth; Even every one that is called by my name:
for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yea, I have made him.”
This is revealing the identity of I as your identity, not the form you think is you, but
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the Spirit of God that is you.
“I have made him for my glory.”
In other words, I am the substance of your being. That which you call “your being” is
the substance of God Itself.
“Bring forth the blind people that have eyes, and the deaf that have ears. Let all the
nations be gathered together, and let the people be assembled: who among them can declare
this, ...”
This is the household of Spirit being assembled, all who know the Truth of being, that
I am the Spirit of God.
“... and show us former things? let them bring forth their witnesses, that they may be
justified: or let them hear, and say, “It is truth.”
This is speaking directly to that of you which can say, “Amen. Yes, I know, for that
Voice is my Voice.” But look:
“Ye are my witnesses, saith the Lord, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye
may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me, there was no God formed,
neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord; and beside me there is no savior.”
Now this Spirit, which is God saying, “Beside me there is no savior.” was obviously
the realization in Jesus which enabled him to say, “Why callest thou me, Lord, Lord? Why
callest thou me good? I speak not my doctrine but his that sent me. I of mine own self can do
nothing.” He is revealing the non-reality of Jesus, isn't he? He is accepting that beside me
there is no savior. He is revealing that He is the Spirit of God, that there isn't the Spirit of God
and Jesus. There is the Spirit of God seen through human eyes as Jesus, and there is the Spirit
of God seen through human eyes as you. And that is the point. When you accept that the Spirit
of God is the Spirit of you, you have come to that realization that the Spirit of God is the
Spirit of Jesus which he accepted, and then you are not in the divided consciousness.
Now because he had accepted this, because he had died to self, because he could say,
“Now all that stands here is the realized Light of the Father,”––then he would appear, and he
would say to the withered arm, “Stretch forth thine arm,” and it would stretch forth because
there was no Jesus anymore saying this. There was no divided consciousness here looking at a
divided consciousness there. There was One Consciousness, One. “I am the Lord thy God,
and beside me there is no savior.” There was only One who accepted this, and so they said to
him, “How do you do all this? What's your big secret?” Well, you could read it in Isaiah, and
that's my secret. But if you don't want to read it there or don't understand it, I'll repeat it for
you.
So there are many places in here where he repeats it for us. My secret is that there is
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no me; there’s only the Father. I have died. I'm not here. And if you know my name, you’d
know that I am Christ. Who is Christ? Christ is your Self, but you haven't died to Joe Smith,
and Frank, and Harry. You’ve still got a second consciousness. “Aw, come on,” they say. “Tell
us the real secret. You're only spoofing.” In fact, they did worse than that. They chased him all
over the hills and said, “Heal me, heal me, heal me,” and he did. No sooner had he done it,
then he went away to pray. Here he was to teach them about God within themselves, and that
was the last thing they wanted to know about. They wanted the healing.
Let's look at some of the passages where he gives us his secret so that we indelibly
know that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ did not occur as it is seen in the Bible. The
crucifixion of Jesus Christ occurred when he died to self before his mission began. That's the
real crucifixion. What you see in the Bible is the visible crucifixion which is the result of the
real crucifixion three years earlier. The real crucifixion of Jesus is three years before the
physical crucifixion. When Jesus knows I am not Jesus; I am the invisible Spirit of God, that
is the crucifixion, and it makes possible the visible crucifixion. When you and I know my
name isn't Herbert, my name isn't William, my name isn’t Frank, my name isn’t Ruth––I am
the Christ of God.
And when this is an experience, called “crucifixion,” you'll walk in the same-
appearing form. But later, three years later or ten or fifteen, you'll find there's no death
possible because that crucifixion is also the first resurrection. It isn't earned lightly. It’s earned
through fidelity to removing the false consciousness, because the only thing that's ever going
to die is the false consciousness. When that's removed, what's going to die? What's going to
get older? What’s going to be limited? All that is remaining is the Christ consciousness, and
that's why. That's why this is a difficult teaching, because if it were a simple one, we'd be
much too satisfied, and we would not reach that level which is Resurrection.
There's probably very few places in this world where you can be presented with Truth
without tarnished half-truths. And if we were to watch this class dwindle down to two, this
would still be the way this class would be conducted. There must be that uncompromising
dedication to the complete truth that he showed when he would not accept, at any moment,
anything on this earth unlike God as real. That must be our consciousness, you see. Anything
on this earth that is unlike God cannot be real. Anything on this earth that is material is not
Spirit. That must be crossed out in your consciousness. The best way to do that is to cross out
the consciousness itself which entertains ideas that things unlike God can be real.
And the death of that consciousness is the birth of the Christ Consciousness, and that
birth, that birth which the world celebrates on the twenty-fifth of December, in your
consciousness, that is life eternal. It is the removal of all that is unlike God in you. And
remember, after Jesus had removed all that was unlike God in him, he was still visible to the
world. The world still saw the form. We still walk in a form when we have removed that
which is unlike God from our consciousness, but the form we walk in is only an optical
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illusion. It’s the illusion of the world mind shared by all because all are part of the world
mind. When the illusion dies, the Reality doesn't die with it. The Reality doesn't re-incarnate.
The Reality doesn't feel pain. And though we may experience many dark moments in our
pursuit of this Reality now, those dark moments are nothing compared to the dark moments
we eliminate which would occur in a false human consciousness.
You can even see pain now as an illusion if you carefully look at it. You know your
arm has no intelligence. The arm doesn't know anything. You know it doesn't have any
capacity to know it hurts or it doesn't hurt. The arm can't make up its mind to do something.
What is the pain in an arm? It is your mind planted in such a way in your body that it
announces, “I pain.” And we say the arm hurts; or the mind plants itself in the foot and says,
"I hurt.” And we say, “The foot hurts.” But the pain isn't in the foot. It isn't in the arm. The
pain is never in the body. It’s in the mind, and that mind transcended has no capacity for pain
anymore.
We know that Jesus didn't suffer on the cross. There wasn't anybody there. Do you
know how Isaiah died? Did you read the Apocrypha, the way Peter died, with his head down
so that he wouldn't seem more important than Jesus with his head up? They took a wooden
saw, and they cut Isaiah in half with it. It says, “He was sawn in twain,” and while he was
sawn in twain, he was looking up. What is the meaning of all this? Is it to show us that these
men could absorb great punishment? Do you see it is to show us that they were not there?
That false consciousness that I am living in a form had already been crucified, and
when the visible physical crucifixion took place of Isaiah, Peter, Jesus, there was nobody
there. There was no consciousness there. There was only world belief appearing. The Self had
already been found and was lived in; and that's the hard way, to find the Self and to live in the
Self and only in the Self. And so you see, there is a Self that you are which is independent of
the form, and that's the reason we see these strange crucifixions, to teach us that there is a Self
totally independent of the form, a true Consciousness. God being all, God being the only
Consciousness, you can be sure that God Consciousness is not in a crucified form.
To come out of the false into the true is to come into the realization that my
Consciousness and God Consciousness are the only One Consciousness there is, and then the
mind that finds pain in its own foot or head or something has been overcome. It's the false
world mind appearing in us as the pains we feel. You see how sublime this teaching really is?
It is showing us the false suffering of mankind, the false hates, the false lacks, the false fears
and the part we don't like to hear, the false lives, but we have to take the bad and the good and
remember that we are weighing these things with a mind that is not the Christ mind.
And when this mind has been transcended, the great teaching that came down through
the ages culminating in the birth of Jesus through Mary and then the release from the false
consciousness of the adult Jesus and his walking in the Spirit on this earth as Spirit alone, all
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of this did not take place yesterday, for the Spirit that was released as the only Consciousness
is right here. It has never existed two thousand years ago. It knows nothing of those years. It
has ever been Itself. That Spirit which is your Spirit has ever been a now Spirit.
It walks the earth now, and there is no one else on this earth but that Spirit. It’s the
false consciousness of us that does not know this, and therefore, cannot let itself dissolve into
nothingness so that the Self that I am, alone stands where the world sees me. There are
moments when you can almost feel that Self, and then you realize why all power is in you, all
health is in you, all life is in you. There is nothing else but that Self. Only your false
consciousness of another self brings about the ups and the downs of this world. Do you see
that false consciousness, then, is this world, and the Spirit realized is My Kingdom.
Now there's a place in John where Jesus gives us this quite clearly. I think it's 14:10. I
want you to look at it with me. It's his answer to, how did you do it? “Believest thou not that I
am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself:
but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.” No self there other than the Father
Self, and that no self other than the Father Self is the living Consciousness that is there. It
would be impossible for that Consciousness not to reveal healings. Jesus couldn't withhold a
healing.
When you entered that Consciousness, you entered the Light, and your darkness
disappeared because you were in the Light. There wasn't any person healing. There was
merely Light realized walking the earth, and when you touched it, as the woman did with the
blood problem—she just touched the Light—and the darkness disappeared. In Him is no
darkness at all. And when you realize that this Light that you touch, and darkness removes, is
the only Light of your being, the only Reality of you, you can see that the darkness of life is
the second consciousness, which has no existence.
We're crossing out the second consciousness, the breathing consciousness, the heart-
beating consciousness, the thinking consciousness, and letting that stillness reveal that the
fourth dimension is here at hand, the Kingdom within. Jesus, then, should represent to you
your finished Self. Your undivided Consciousness walking this earth would accomplish
exactly what he did. Your undivided Consciousness is ready to do anything that was
demonstrated through the undivided Consciousness called Jesus.
Another way to call it is the inner Consciousness, the within Consciousness, the Spirit
Consciousness. But there's no other consciousness. How can there be another Consciousness
if all there is, is Spirit? Anything else must be an illusion. Can you feel that there's no other
Consciousness than the Spirit Consciousness? He did. Now the temptation, then, is to believe
there is another consciousness, there is another power, there is another mind, there is another
substance, and all of these are from world belief, conditioned mind.
Do you see how you cross the zero point in your own experience before you emerge
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as a spiritual child again? You must cross the zero point. That’s why it's the narrow way. The
zero point is where you are unborn in order to be born. You cross out of third dimension into
nothing and begin in fourth dimension as a child again without any pre-concepts, with no
knowledge, and your Father within leads you just as a child is being led.
There was something interesting came about this Father within. You may feel it as it
came to me. It was when I requested some information on why I, being the Spirit, should be
conscious of my body and not someone else's body in the same way. I don't feed your body. I
feed this body. But if I'm Spirit, why do I have a partiality toward this form instead of
someone else's form? I wanted to know more about that, and the answer was that we're given
a body for a reason, even though it be illusory, and that is that we may begin to see that we
have only one responsibility in this world. We must become a parent to this body. We must
become the mother or the father of this body. It must become the child.
And if you, for example, had a child to take care of now who, let’s say, was seven or
eight years old, and the child went to school, you’d have to arrange your day in such a way
that you would be available when the child needed you. You would have to teach the child,
and your whole life would revolve around what that child required, as well as your own
personal needs. Now you must realize that your body is your child, and out of it must grow a
new you, a new you that trains this child, and this new you is your Self. The child is revealed
as someone who needs training to learn who it is, what it is. And only as you take this child in
hand to train it does that new you come into realization.
Now this child wants to do something, but the new you must tell this child, “No, this
is the way.” And so this training is this new Self arising out of this form, this new higher Self
which trains this child, and you become that higher Self. That’s where your Self is realized,
and you're overcoming this child, disciplining this child until it no longer wags the dog, until
it doesn't run off doing what it wants. It’s responsive only to this higher Self, and slowly the
higher Self, having trained the child, the higher Self becomes conscious of Itself. And you
find that higher Self can now drop the illusion of the child and realize that It functions
completely in God, walks in God, thinks in God, lives in God. If you haven't reached this
place where this form and this mind of you becomes the child of you, the higher Self doesn't
begin. Instead, this remains your self when it actually isn’t. Out of this must grow the higher
Self, just as out of the seed must grow the tree, and that's the first way you become aware of
your higher Self.
Adam was your name on this earth before, but it was your false name. Christ always
was your name, but Adam didn't know it. So Adam reincarnated again and again and again
until this moment when Adam appears as you, but Christ is still the name that you ever were.
And now Christ must show Adam, and then in Adam is born the Christ realization, and Adam
is revealed as the Christ. And one stands on the field, and the other is taken away. Christ
stands revealed as your Self.
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Adam lives in time, space, body, mind, condition. Christ sees through all these, and
when you crucify time, space, body, condition with that nice friendly word called
impersonalization, then those things which the mind finds difficult now will become easier,
and a new order of intelligence will creep in.
The senses are like petals. Nobody sees any visible power that opens the petals of a
flower or closes them, but they open and they close in spite of the absence of a visible power.
Your senses can be that way. In this level of Consciousness, they have opened up. You can
consciously fold them back. You can take the sense of vision and know that it can fold back
just like the petal of a flower. You can take the sense of hearing and fold it back easily like the
petal of a flower. You can go through the five senses until all of them are folded back like a
flower, and you’ll find those five senses were your intelligence in this level, and when they
are folded back quietly your intelligence is no longer confined to this level.
You find there's a level outside of this intelligence and a level under this intelligence,
and all levels begin to flow because the Infinite becomes your consciousness now that the
petals of the senses are folded back. In that moment, you become no longer a finite
intelligence or a finite experience or a finite being. The illusion that the five senses have
opened in a limited degree of consciousness is overcome, and all of the Infinite flows through
you. And that's why we rest the senses so frequently. It takes us out of the limited
consciousness. It opens the way for the fullness of your Being, and now the Light steals
through with a new wisdom, a new teaching, a new idea, a new release.
You become aware of the Life that exists outside of your limited consciousness. You
want more of it. You know, finally, you are poor. You’re poor in the Life that exists outside
your limited consciousness, and you seek It. And this opens you to more and more of that
Spirit until it announces “I am Thee.”
Now I find it necessary to impersonalize just about everything in this world and the
more often you do it, the more often you will open yourself to the infinite Consciousness
instead of the limited, finite, five-sense consciousness. It’s a luxury to sit back, to know that
there is only one Master, and that Master is the infinite Self and It is present. It is all that is
here.
Only God, the infinite Self, the divine Spirit is here. I reject all else and rest in that,
and I don't have to have something happen right then. That can be erasing karma in a lifetime
17 centuries ago, and the next meditation can erase some karma in a lifetime 12 centuries ago.
You won't know about it right away, but the untruth that is erased will prevent the
compounding of that untruth; and suddenly one day, all of these meditations seem to take fruit
and root. And something in your present immediate experience that was undesirable is
removed because you got way back to the seat of it in all the previous meditations, and now
the world mind in that particular sequence in you has been blocked, dissolved. Some more of
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the onion skins are peeled away. Some more of the Light can come through the absence of the
density, the new Consciousness.
The Spirit that walked as Jesus was very careful to point out that we're not trying to
change our concept of religion at all. That Spirit was showing that there is no such thing as
religion in Spirit. Spirit knows nothing about religion. Spirit is perfect. Spiritual realization is
not improving religion. Spiritual realization is to know that only Spirit exists. There is no
person to have a religion. Jesus created and formed no religions and made it clear we don't
want to take this religion and patch it up. We don't want to take an old garment and put a new
patch on it from a new garment.
This is a total change of consciousness, total, a total rebirth. The old self is gone. The
old self with its religion is gone. This is a living God, not God and a religion. This is the
living God of your Being, your spiritual Self. What need does God have for religion? Religion
is for those who haven't found God. When you find God as the Substance of your Being, I and
the Spirit are one, and the duality which needs religion or philosophy or even metaphysics,
that duality is gone. I am the Truth. I am the Spirit. Do you see how duality is perpetuated by
the belief that we need a religion? Do you see how that is the obstacle to the realization of the
spiritual reality of Being?
I am the Lord thy God, and there is no savior on the earth beside Me. And then Jesus
comes along and says yes, and that's the narrow way. The flesh and blood of the Christ of
your own Being is the narrow way. Few there be that find it, for they all want external gods.
They want an easy way. They are not ready to make the sacrifice of the false self.
Between now and the twenty-first, which is next Sunday, you could be practicing this
new way of impersonalizing, which is quite complete, and you can even add to it new ways to
impersonalize beside the four major impersonalizations we have discussed. Never be limited
by what you hear. There is a seed of infinite variety within you ever teaching you, ever
opening you up to Itself. You can experiment infinitely. Each of us is going to bring forth,
then, an individual expression of the Spirit, and you'll find we cannot duplicate each other.
Spirit never repeats.
Now, if you have sufficiently impersonalized this world, this century, this era, this
place, and if nothing is happening other than Spirit Itself, you will find you can stand in the
midst of the world and its problems without the feeling that there's something you have to do
to protect yourself, to improve yourself. And that's how you will know that you have come to
the place where you have realized your Self, because your Self never needs protection from
this world. When you feel that vast stillness, and know all there is in this world cannot enter
into that stillness of your Consciousness, you will know that something has happened of
major importance. And then you won't be between two worlds anymore. You won't be the
place where the Spirit and the flesh conflict. You’ll be walking in the only Universe there is,
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but appearing to be in this world, and you’ll know the difference. By your fruits you shall
know the difference.
[Silence]
You might say that what we have discussed is how to give the universe back to God
and that that is what was taught on this earth by the great leaders––how to give the universe
back to the Spirit of your own Being––to step up one step from the belief that we came into
this world empty-handed and to recognize that we never came into this world at all. We have
ever been the living Spirit of God.
It was necessary to go through this illusion of coming into the world in order to
become Self-aware, and it is still necessary, but the age of Self-awareness is now upon us.
And all of us who can learn to crucify that false sense of self will discover that we have
learned the lesson of the Bible. We need not fear what mortal man can do to us. We need not
fear the powers of this world or the illusions of this world, which are those powers.
None of what we have discussed is beyond your reach. In fact, there will come a time
when it will all seem like kindergarten. It is only strange now to our conditioned minds. The
day will come when it will not be strange––when everyone will be born into this awareness––
and they’ll look back at us and think that we were some sort of obsolescent creatures to come
to it so late. Today’s newness is as old as yesterday's hat in just 24 hours, and as you get used
to it, you’ll look at yourself that was and say, "How could I have been so slow in learning?”
You might even say this next week because once you get used to spiritual identity, it sort of
sours you on everything else.
Again, I want to express my gratitude for your presence because we're going through
a difficult time together and all of the patience and understanding that you bring with you is
more helpful than you can ever realize. But a new us is being born, and it takes everything
that all of us are doing to effect that, to make it possible. So thank you very much.
We have two more in this series, next week and the week after. I think that's right, and
then we go into Joel's book, which I think will be an excellent way to pin down all that we
have learned; to verify, confirm, and affirm the things that we have been doubtful about so
that we can walk with less of an uncertainty in this new way––proving instead of talking.
So it’ll soon be our 1970th year, which will possibly be the birth of the Christ on this
earth for many. Hope to see you next week, and if I don’t, a very joyous Christmas to you.
Thank you very much.
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Class 4
Immaculate Self Conception
Herb: This passage is from Isaiah, twenty-fifth chapter verses seven and eight. “And
he will destroy in this mountain the face of the covering cast over all people, and the veil that
is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord God will wipe
away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the
earth: for the Lord hath spoken it.”
The veil that is covering the face of all nations is to be wiped away, and we may
speculate on the nature of that veil, but today we're going to do it in quite a different way.
We're going to look at television, and we're looking at a chorus of 500 singers. Throw in a
little ballet, if you will, and there they are performing. They're all on the right side of you. To
the right of you in the studio is this great ballet and choir, live, singing and dancing. But to the
left of you, there's a television screen, and there is the same ballet and choir on the television
screen to the left of you, whereas to the right of you, they are in the flesh.
Now, you'll notice that everything they do to the right of you appears on the screen to
the left of you, so that as you watch them on the screen, you are watching an image that
appears there because there is a live performance to the right of you. And you’ll notice that
there's no one on that screen that can drop out of the picture of their own volition. That little
ballerina up in the front left on the screen, she can't even scratch her nose if she wishes to,
because if she wants to scratch her nose, it must first happen on the living ballerina to the
right of you; and if that same ballerina to the right of you goes out of the room, out of the
studio, you will see that she drops out of the picture on the screen. Everything on that screen
depends upon what is happening in the live personalities who are performing.
Now let's change the picture. Let's have a boy and a girl to the right of you and watch
them on the screen. They’re kissing. Now can she on the screen suddenly slap his face if the
live girl to the right of you in the studio doesn't slap his face first? Is there anything that she or
he can do on the screen independent of what the boy and girl are doing in the studio? And
you'll see that the image is totally dependent upon the live person.
Now let's say that that boy is sick. There he is. He’s grieving. He has cancer, and the
girl is very unhappy. And you, as only a TV viewer, you would be very unhappy for her sake,
for there's this handsome lad and he’s only got three weeks to live, but that's on the screen.
Look to the right of you, and there's an actor playing a part. He hasn't got three weeks to live.
He’s going to live till next week's show. And so you find now that the actor, the real actor,
doesn't have cancer, only the one on the screen, and you begin to differentiate between the
reality and the image.
Now, we have an Indian scene, and all the horses dropped down. How many were
killed? Do they kill the horses, or do they just fall down and seem to be? Do they kill all the
actors? Do they kill all the Indians, or have we been looking at images and momentarily got
lost in those images? Finally, it's very clear to us that nothing on the screen happens except it
first happens in life, and that which happens in life determines that which appears on the
screen. Once you have carefully separated the two, you can now see that the same thing is
happening from world mind to person––that when the person lifts his hand, he isn't lifting his
hand––but rather, something is happening in the world mind which appears as person lifting
hand.
When the person dies, he isn't dying. Rather, something is happening in world mind
which appears as person dying. And you begin to get the idea that this world is a television
screen and that whatever happens in it must first happen somewhere else, just as the boy who
had cancer on the screen had to first be acting to have cancer off the screen, just as the girl
who wanted to leave the TV room left it, and then her image disappeared from the screen.
Whatever happens on this earth first happens invisibly in the world mind. That
world mind is where the activity takes place, and the screen of matter where the images called
forms, people, animals, nature appear––these are the appearances on the screen of that which
is transpiring in the invisible world mind.
Now, this may seem to you somewhat far-fetched, but I mean it literally, not as a
symbology. It is what takes place, and if you look at the world mind for a moment, you will
see that it is pointed directly at the real divine image, the divine image mentioned in the Bible
as creation, the divine image mentioned in the Bible as man, Reality, that which is. And
pointed at this Reality, this true creation, is this world mind making its photograph, its
continuous photograph. And as it takes the photograph of Spirit, this Spirit, which is invisible
to us, photographed by the world mind is now focused the other way and becomes the image.
Spirit, through the world mind focused into visibility, becomes the physical, visible,
tangible image, which is the world mind’s impression of reality. And now you're looking at
the images and calling them mother, brother, sister, father, son, and my own self, dog, cat,
antelope giraffe. These are the images on the screen projected by the world mind, and
whatever happens in the world mind appears on the screen as the activity of the world. There
is where you're going to see all the good and the evil, which has been real to us, but which
exists only in the world mind. And as you are able to feel the image nature of the world that
we see, you find that you have the capacity to draw back from the images, the appearances,
and to view them without accepting them, accepting them at their face value.
You can see that the images are comprised of those things which normally are your
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Class 4 : Immaculate Self Conception
sense impressions, and that the images are not only in form but images in taste and smell and
touch. And each of these represents that combined activity of the world mind through yours
finally appearing as the taste, smell, touch, etcetera. Now we're looking at a broken bone, but
we're remembering that that which appears on the screen of TV is based upon that which is
happening in the studio. And so the broken bone on TV obviously is not a broken bone in the
studio. The actor doesn't break his bones to play the part that realistically. It’s the appearance
of a broken bone.
Similarly, the broken bone in the image of this world is a thought, an idea appearing
in material form, and when you can separate yourself from that idea in consciousness, you
discover the bone isn't broken. When you can view the cancer that appears on the screen of
the human personality or the human form, and disassociate yourself from that idea and the
belief in it, you find you overcome the cancer. As you develop the capacity to witness the
image with no belief in its veracity, with a consciousness that all that happens is a television
image on a cosmic level, you will find you can stand still and behold the salvation of the
Lord. You are rending the veil that covers the face of all nations. You are seeing that cosmic
television is the nature of this world. You are seeing the evil of it and the good of it as images
presented to you by a counterfeit mind on a cosmic level, which is interpreting the perfect
creation and has no capacity to do so.
At first you may shrink from this, or if something has happened in you to this point
that gives you an understanding, a foundation to realize that this is the Truth, you will find
that through practice you can look at this world and whatever occurs in it with the
understanding that nothing––either the good or the bad––is of God––that all is the re-created
image of the world mind. And you can walk through it, not grasping at it, not clinging to it,
not regarding everything as an adversary to which you must react; and you can find your
peace right here in this three-dimensional image world, knowing that all it is, is a five-sense
image projection.
You can smell something that smells rather offensive to you, and in the realization
that this is an image happening in the world mind coming to your attention as an image in
smell, you can eliminate it. You can face a pain and realize this is an idea in world mind
coming to your attention as a pain, and you can diminish it and then eliminate it. Always the
Truth that you know in Consciousness––that the image world of man is not your Father's
Kingdom––enables you to observe the appearances without judgment, without reaction, and
finally to determine a course of action that will enable you to walk through these images
untouched. And that course of action may be described partially by the beatitude, “Blessed are
they that mourn.”
The moment you learn that the meaning of mourning is to become dead to the images
that are presented to you in this world, you understand why the Master could say, “Blessed are
they that mourn: [for] they shall be comforted,” for behind this television image on a cosmic
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scale, called the world, there is another television image on an infinite scale called the
Kingdom. And it is only when you pass the point in which you can agree with this adversary,
in which you can stand face to face with the images of the world unmoved in understanding,
nonreactive, that you are then said to be in agreement. And in this zero point of non-reaction,
you become aware of the refined images that lie behind the images of the mortal mind.
There is a complete Universe standing behind it, and it is the divine television image.
It is perfect in every respect. It is Heaven on earth. It is inhabitable by the one who stands still
in the face of that which is not, recognizing the non-validity of the images presented by the
senses––reacting not to them––but through Truth recognizing that God is the all-ness. And
therefore, God being Spirit, behind the material appearances called images in this work, there
is the Spiritual Universe which presents to you a completely different kind of image––an
image that is not measured by the senses nor discerned by them––a divine image, an image in
which there is only harmony, only peace, only Truth, only Life without death.
Now, the birth of the babe has been worshiped every year now since Christmas
became an international event, and every year man returns to worship a tiny child. We did it
last year. We'll do it again next year. We've done it for centuries. It's as if man is stuck at a
certain point and cannot grow up, and so this year's child is the same age as last year’s.
Always the infant remains the infant, as if we, in our incapacity to grow, refuse to let the
infant Christ grow up.
But the infant Christ is not an infant anymore. It’s ever been ready to do Its Father's
business on this earth. And as we [fail to] get off this rut of worshipping an infant child every
year and [do not] come to the point of seeing the meaning of the immaculate conception, we
continue living in the images of the counterfeit mind of the world, parroting those images in
our daily lives. And finally, having lived in an image that is not real, we die to the image, and
we step out of the world, again to reincarnate back into the dream world once more.
But here comes this child, a very different kind of child, so different that many
strange stories, many myths had to be invented about it in order to establish that it was
different. The honesty of the men who wrote the Bible is beyond question. Each had a great
story to tell. What is questionable is to what degree were they aware of the real story? I don't
know if there's anyone who has greater respect for the Bible than I, and yet, I look at the Bible
with a full realization that it is a fragmentary picture of the Truth, that it has gone through
many hands, that it has been changed to suit the whims of politics, of religion, of translators,
and of men who had good faith but were motivated by what they felt was a good purpose.
And so you can look at the Bible today, and it becomes very necessary to sift the
wheat from the chaff, the symbology from the fact, and under it all to find that the underlying
truth of the Bible has never been changed, only the fringes, only the packaging, only the
ribbons. The facts are there because the Truth maintains Itself, and no matter how many
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mistranslations, no matter how many words are changed to suit a local condition, no matter
how many pages of the actual originals were lost and rewritten by interested friends, still the
nucleus of truth remains, and that nucleus is found in the immaculate conception of a child.
What is different in our understanding of that child today as compared with our own
understanding of it ten years ago, or five years ago, or two or one? Can we ever say that we
fully understand what was behind the recording of the birth of a child to a virgin? And so this
was the quest that I had in preparation for this class, and it has been answered in a way that is
Truth today. Tomorrow a new Truth will come. Never is the Truth finite so that we can say
this is it; the chapter is closed. But always we find that today's consciousness is the moment
of Truth for us, and tomorrow's consciousness will be a higher moment of Truth. And so no
one is precluded, ever, from going beyond this moment. Individually or collectively we will
all rise beyond today for sure.
But we look at this child now, and we're really looking at a preview of ourselves, for
this is not a child. This is a different kind of birth than any up to that moment recorded in
history, not because Joseph and Mary were not man and wife as other men and women,
because they were; but a child that is different because of its own past lives, a child that had
lived and had attained a very high consciousness, and because of it was able to draw to itself
the mother consciousness that it needed for its next experience, the mother consciousness that
it needed in order to bring into appearance the birth of a Divine image instead of the image
that we all see on television when a child is born into this world. This was a birth that was
establishing the nature of Being.
This was a birth that had accomplished everything that you and I are trying to
accomplish.
This was Spirit reborn. There was no mother. There was no father. The
difference is that it was realized, and there appeared what to human sense is called a baby. But
there was there only a Divine idea, a perfect Self, infinity individualized in a pure
consciousness ready to enact on earth the total will of God. This was the undivided
consciousness appearing, and if you will, it was God appearing as. This had happened on
earth many millions of times but always obscured by the consciousness of parents and of the
world.
What made this birth distinctive was that the parents had been trained. They had been
trained to anticipate the Divine consciousness expressing through them. They had purified––
they had dropped their human concepts. It is even said that Mary herself had been so
conceived, and through their dedication to the one Self, the one Being, the one Life, the one
infinite Spirit, they were able to––in collaboration with the consciousness of the unborn
child––become channels for the appearance of a different kind of form, a form that was not
under material law. But they did not make the mistake of separating the form from the Life.
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They did not make the mistake of viewing this as a physical form.
They recognized that it was Life seen through the eyes of men. Whereas we came into
this world as form, this child came into this world as Life living Itself. And this was the
preview of the Consciousness of man toward which we are all moving, the knowledge that we
are Life living Itself. The fact that it was an infant merely meant that there must be a
beginning. It did not mean that you and I must come into this world as an infant, other than as
a spiritual infant. It was teaching us that there was a moment in our consciousness when we
became as a child again, spiritually aware that we are Life living Itself and not form, and at
that moment when we reach that level of consciousness, we too are immaculately conceived
within ourselves. We are reborn of the Spirit, and we literally at that moment are that child.
Now the power of that child was such, because it was Life Itself, that it remained
unharmed by the order of Herod to destroy all children under three. There was no power on
this earth that could destroy Life when Life understood Itself to be Life; when there was no
second consciousness, no consciousness that said I am a human being, a physical form, a
human mind. All this had been obliterated. All that was there was Life, Divine Consciousness,
pure infinite Mind individualized and appearing to the rest of the world as the child. There
was no child there. Never is there a material being. The world saw its television program, but
it was now looking at the television program of the Divine unmasked without the glass darkly
of a world mind between. This was the distinction of this particular birth.
Each of us could then view what happens when there is a pure Consciousness devoid
of the human consciousness. For example, this same child now grown into our vision as an
adult stands before a tomb and says, "Come out, Lazarus.” And the teaching there is that for
every dead image that we see in this world on our cosmic television program, behind it there
is a live image waiting to be recognized, and that is why a living Lazarus steps forth because
he has been recognized by this pure Consciousness called the child. In your pure
Consciousness, when you vision the Living image behind the dead image, you are redeeming
this world. You are looking past the appearances. You are recognizing that behind the good
and the evil, there is only the perfect Reality.
And so this child becomes the Way-shower, the prototype of your own life, and It says
to you, “If you believe on me, the works that I do ye shall do,” because this is the child that
rents the veil. Having only the pure consciousness, It looks at the images on TV, and when It
sees the cancer, It knows there's a studio actor behind the TV set somewhere who doesn't have
the cancer, and It says, "Lazarus, come forth” within Itself. When It sees any form of discord,
It knows this is only TV and behind it is the perfect Spiritual Universe, and silently It says,
"Lazarus, come forth.”
Behind every appearance, It knows the reality of Spirit is. This is the pure virginal
Consciousness, born of a virgin, born of a virginal Consciousness. One that knows the reality
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behind the appearances. One that is faithful to that reality. One that sows not to the cosmic
images of this world because this world––these images, these conditions, these persons, these
objects––all that occurs in time and space, and time and space itself is called “the flesh.”
And so, when you sow to time, you're sowing to the flesh of time. You're sowing to
the flesh of space. You’re sowing to the flesh of person. You’re sowing to the flesh of
condition. You’re sowing to the flesh of the appearances which are the cosmic television
images, and behind them is a world mind, the tempter, presenting these pictures to us. And we
have invariably accepted them, have fought with them, and have striven to overcome them
and in some way improve them or dissolve them, not knowing that they are not there.
The dial that turns the pictures off is the Kingdom of God within you, and we learn
that we can turn on the Kingdom of God within us because that's the Kingdom of divine
television, the divine image and likeness, and we can get the images of the Soul, the Soul
images instead of the mind images, the Christ images instead of the mammon images. And
this becomes the way of life, the standing still, the watching, the beholding, looking at the veil
which is called birth, life, and death; and we find that just as the child becomes the adult
Christ and walks the earth to be crucified, we find that we, too, must walk the path, but our
crucifixion is a joy.
We crucify the false images of this world, and we are resurrected into the Divine
images of my Father's Kingdom on this earth; and we walk in those for a while, still as the
image, but now we have the improved images. And as we walk in these improved images, it is
called resurrection. All the images are now under spiritual law. No weapon can be formed
against them. They are free. They are not under the law of matter, of age, of change, of pain,
of suffering––because they are no longer cosmic mind images. They are Divine images. They
are pure form of the Soul, and it's still the resurrection stage, and this––this Christ––walks in
the form called Jesus. That is the resurrection. It is still a form.
And after this has been lived in, when the Consciousness is established, then out of
the form, out of visibility, ascended above even the images called Divine into being Self
without images, ascended––all this is the veil being rent by the Truth in Consciousness. And
when one walked the earth as a prototype, the spiritual possibilities for all of us were brought
into focus.
Now some of us have developed a capacity to look at the images relatively unmoved,
and you will find there is a great release in you when you learn to actually look at the forms in
this world as television images.
You will see that the weight of them, the validity of them, the power of them, the
anger of them, the hate of them, the density of them, all seems to leave your mind. The weight
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of the walls of a room, the floor, and the ceiling begin to diminish, and you realize these truly
are television images on a larger scale than a little TV set. In fact, that's why television was
invented. It was a copy of the real television of the universe of man in which images walked
the earth with names. And in your Christ consciousness, you can behold these images. You
can realize that you, too, are one; that all of the images are in one cosmic image. And the
mind will squirm, but ultimately the mind will yield, for in this you will find a new kind of
freedom.
You have been locked into an image called form. It was a tomb from which Christ
rises. You have been locked into a world mind which projects these forms using your mind as
the picture tube. Right through the picture tube called your mind comes the patterns that are
translated into the form. You played a part in your own birth, a part in your own death, a part
in your own concept of existence. You played a part in every virus that you put into your body
when the picture tube of your mind accepted it from the world mind. You infected yourself.
Unknowingly we have accepted these pictures and have given them the name of reality,
always unaware that the perfect Divine Universe has none of these changing pictures of good
and evil.
And now we're standing still. A new strength comes into you, and just as the cancer on
TV is seen through as nothing more than a visual image, so the cancer on cosmic TV is seen
through as exactly the same thing on a larger scale. You find in you the ability not to deny the
invisible presence of God by accepting that which cannot be real if God is present, and you
can label it television. You can make a test quickly to yourself sometime. Whatever it is that
disturbs you must be cosmic television. It is not of God, and you can stand and face it,
whether it's a smell, a taste, a pain, a condition––whatever form of discord it may be.
And you will find that in the realization that it is only television––an image coming
through either one, two, three, four, or five of the senses and sometimes all five at the same––
but in your realization of that nature through which it is happening, you will find that you
have actually felt a moment of relief right at that moment that you realized this, and that
moment can become a complete relief. It can become a separation from the television image.
And that is why we were taught to come forth and be separate, separate from these images
which have been placed before us by an invisible temper.
Now, if all of this year had brought us to the point where we could feel the measure of
Truth of our own being and feel the birth in us of that realization which is shown forth as the
birth of a child, a holy child, a Christ consciousness. If this could come to us even in a
measure, this would have been the most glorious year of our lives. For proceeding from that
point, having found in a measure the capacity to behold all appearances––all smells, all sights,
all sounds, all feelings––as the images of this world, you feel the rebirth which brings you
into another Self, a holy Self in the sense that It is this child born in you. And this is the holy
city, that place in you where the beginning of a new way to live is born. A new way to see, a
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new way to hear, a new way to know, a new way to be, a way that is too pure to behold the
iniquities of this world and accept them, a way that has a fidelity to the Light and not to the
shadows.
There is more that happens with this rebirth. This child is able to say to the storm, “Be
still,” and the storm is still. This child is able to say to the mountain, “Dissolve,” and it is
dissolved. This child can step on the ship, and it is upon the shore. All of the known laws of
matter are completely disregarded. Is this child now a person or something more? Its
influence extends to the oceans, to the mountains, to the sky. Its influence extends throughout
the universe. Is this a child or is this a Universe? And now the meaning of the second birth,
the birth of the child, the rebirth of man to Spirit becomes very clear. Your first birth was as a
person. Your second birth is as a Universe.
You are born as a child, an infinite child, and this is the beginning of coming to
understand that you never were a person, and the child is to grow into the realization that I am
a Universe. All that is I am, and the invisible Kingdom of God behind the fleeting pictures of
the mind become your reality. You are to bring forth into experience all that exists behind the
changing television pictures. The one Power, the one Mind, the one Life, the one Being, the
one Law, the one infinite activity is not the work of a child. It is the work of the infinite Self
that I am, and the rebirth is the birth into the realization that you never can be a person. There
is none.
There is only the infinite Universe, the one infinite Self, and this is the purpose of the
rebirth, to come into the realization that I am that one Universe, and this was exactly what this
child did. I and the Father are One. The Father is the Universe. I and the Father are one
Universe. The Father is omnipotent, so, therefore, I am omnipotent. As a child, as a person?
No. As a Universe. And now we have a new feeling about the meaning of the word Universe.
It doesn't mean what we thought a Universe meant. This is a spiritual Universe, but Universe
is but a word. The one spiritual Being is the Universe. When I say, “You are a spiritual Being”
or “I am a spiritual Being,” the word “Being” and “Universe” are one and the same. The size
of that Being is universal. The infinite powers of that Being––all must be included in this
child. “Son, all that I have is thine.”
This child, then, is Divine seed, and the Divine seed becomes the Divine Universe.
The growing realization within becomes the Kingdom of God realized, the Universe realized
as your Being. And if all of this seems too overpowering for the human mind, fine, for we
have outgrown that human mind. We are coming of age. We are not worshipping a tiny infant
in a manger, but rather, we are taking the divine Truth given to the world as that tiny infant in
a manger and accepting it on the terms through which it was presented. “If you believe on me,
the works that I do ye shall do, and greater works shall ye do.” And we must accept this
Divine Child now as my new Consciousness. My new Consciousness is the Child the world
saw in that manger, and as this Divine Consciousness in me matures, grows up, is accepted in
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the fullness of what it is, the works that this Divine Child did as it grew up on the earth, I shall
do.
As we deny the picture image on TV called my personal self, we are picking up our
cross and following this Divine Consciousness. It ever says to us, “Deny thyself.” Did you not
know that the moment you accepted yourself to be reality, that you committed yourself to
death? Do you not see that these Divine Images behind the world images are under the law of
God and that the images in time and space are not under the law? Do you see, then, the new
dispensation is to reveal to you the timeless nature of your being as you crack through the
cocoon of humanhood, laying down the personal sense of self––realizing that every bone in
your body, the blood that flows through those bones, your vision, your hearing––all this is the
temporary picture on TV? The Christ child had died to that and had returned free. The turning
within you when you die to this is the beginning of that freedom.
We all must follow that path, and so we find within ourselves this Christ child. It is
the Way. This living Light within us looks past all the TV pictures of this world, recognizing
only Its infinite Self everywhere. It doesn't need diagrams or comparisons or analogies. It
instantaneously is Itself everywhere. And when you find the Christ child within you, releasing
the TV image that you have called yourself to the Christ child, then the will of the Father is
done in you, and this will demonstrates the presence of the harmony and perfection of Reality
all around you. This becomes the single eye of Christ in you witnessing the reality of
perfection everywhere, and by its fidelity to the truth dissolving the TV images of good and
evil that have veiled us from Reality up to this moment.
It is not quite certain that Paul knew the absolute Truth. It seems fairly evident that he
was influenced to a certain degree by the Stoics, by Philo, by the Hellenistic culture around
him, and he actually did not present the Jesus message in its purity. However, in spite of that,
it is through his work that the message of Jesus became known to what is now the Christian
world. But it was never the pure teaching of Jesus. It was never fully understood as oneness
with God, that Jesus was Christ realized, and that this Christ realized, which was the
appearance called Jesus, was the same Christ realized which would someday in each of us do
on earth the identical works. You’ll find that, although Paul was one of the seven highest
Lights of that era, there is much to be said in his work that argued against the very things he
was teaching.
You will find that Luke, as noble as he was, didn't know the full Truth of Jesus and
spent much time trying to persuade the world that he came from a certain lineage of David.
You will find that Matthew didn't even write his own Bible, but it was done for him by one of
his own disciples with his approval. You will find that Mark was the first who wrote the
Bible, and he was just a young fellow. It was approved by Peter under Peter’s supervision, and
it was written after Peter died. You will find that John didn't write John's Bible. It was written
by his student Nathan with his permission, but in the year 110. You will find that the first
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Bible, the first gospel actually written by Mark was in about the year 67, and so you and I
might just as well, 60 years from now, try to record what happened in our lives this very day.
In our own lives, we can't remember that well, and he was recording someone else’s.
Always these stories, then, were augmented by a desire to present the Truth in a certain way,
and finally the written Word coming out of the Aramaic, some of it in Hebrew and some of it
in Greek—Paul wrote in Greek—reaches the hands of people who, not being close to the
original, must naturally filter their understanding through their own particular kind of
intelligence. And so, again, more of the teaching of Jesus is lost because certain words have
no meaning for the Greek scribe who is making a translation, and so they find a word that will
fit the bill as closely as possible.
And then through the years, translations into the Vulgate, the Latin, and finally, along
come our English translators, some great dedicated souls, but all of them totally, blissfully
unaware of the great meaning behind crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension, bringing us
finally a message in which the world is persuaded to try to ride into heaven on the coattails of
Jesus, instead of finding the Christ child within. So the Bible, in spite of the many hands who
have hacked away it, has survived even them. The original Spirit is still intact. But now, it
being that time, that age when man is no longer confined to the ignorance of the churches, of
the philosophies, of even those well-meaning individuals throughout the world who worship
the ground that Jesus walked upon...
Suppose you suddenly realized that before you left home today, you left your
television set on. Maybe you're not going directly home, so for the next eight or nine hours,
it’s just going to be playing to nobody there. This would be a most undesirable state of affairs,
and you certainly wouldn't do it knowingly. However, we have committed a greater error than
that in the fact that if you do nothing about it, the television program of this world will
continue to come through the picture tube of your mind. You have left it on unawares.
Take a faucet that's dripping. If it continues to, we’re going to have trouble
later, and so we want to make the repair. Let us see that the human mind is like a dripping
faucet. Constantly through it are coming images that have no reality and that your peace, your
solution to the mysteries of life is going to depend upon your ability to control that faucet, that
mind which automatically drips images, because its whole function is to be an image maker.
And for the moment, just turn off the faucet now. Consciously stop the images of the mind.
[Silence]
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In the Book of John, he tells us to do this in a different way––tells us to lay down our
lives––and what he really means is lay down the image of the world that you have built within
yourself, including the image of yourself in that world. He's telling us to turn off world
images, and then he says, "If you lay down your life, you will pick it up again.” And so he's
telling us that behind these images that we turn off, there is another set of images that come
on, and this is the real life. His phraseology runs like this, "I say unto you that if a man keep
my saying, he shall never see death.” “Keep my saying.” This could well be translated: If a
man has fidelity to my teaching, he will never see death.
How can he say that? He knows that death occurs only in the television image of the
cosmic mind. There is no other death. When the images are seen as unreal and you are
walking in the divine image behind the images, there is no death there. Whoever keeps my
saying will never know death. You’re changing from the images of the cosmic mind, by non-
acceptance, to the Divine Image that you are, and you will never know death. It is no longer a
deep mystery. Once the surface life of the senses is no longer accepted as reality, then the
ever-present, all-pervading Spirit Life, which the senses are too coarse to experience, becomes
your living Self realized, and It never dies. This is the continuous Life revealed by John who
is recording the words of Jesus. Whoever keeps my saying will never know death. He is
revealing that Life is continuous, and that we who have not accepted that Life is continuous
are living in the changing television of this world, although we do not have to.
There are two more passages that John has along the same line, and this one is 7:28.
That other one was 8:51. This is 7:28: “Ye know not whence I am, and I am not come of
myself; but He that hath sent me is true whence ye know not.” He is revealing now that this
child, which has grown up in the form of Jesus, is the first appearance on earth of the Divine
Image sent by the Father. The meaning is that the world mind has been overcome, and now
the Image coming forth is not from the world mind but from the Father. It is the Divine Image
of Genesis made visible. In other words, there is now direct cognition of Reality showing
forth as the form. The form isn't going through the processes of first being interpreted by the
world mind and then into material form.
He is revealing that the Divine Image that stands before the world called Jesus,
which was possible unto Him because He is the Light, is possible unto you and to me because
we are the Light and that we can walk forth in and as the Divine Image. The laying down the
life is laying down the image of matter. The picking up the life is picking up the realization of
Self as the Divine Image, and the Divine Image never knows death. But behind all this is the
positive knowledge that we always are the Divine Image. The reality of us is never less than
the Divine Image. And so it isn't a question of becoming the Divine Image. It’s a question of
dropping the belief that I am anything else.
Now, if you can control the dripping faucet of a mind, which keeps making images
that are not Divine, and bring it to a moment of stillness, the Divine Image creeps in and takes
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over where the false image had been, and this is how the harmony seeps into your life. This is
how the sickness begins to dissolve. This is how all of those things in our lives that were not
the Divine Image expressing are dissolved, and in their place comes the appearance of
invisible reality formed, called resurrection, “the Word made flesh,” and it is all because the
faucet of the mind is no longer dripping images.
If between last week and now you were able to practice impersonalization four ways,
you will have found that the mind which you impersonalized lost its capacity to tempt you to
a degree, and to that extent more of the Word made flesh came into your experience during
that week. Now with a few who have done this, a great power was revealed. And as you
maintain your fidelity to that four-way impersonalization, you will discover that you are
destroying the power of the television images of this world to influence you, to govern you,
and to mislead you.
The first was impersonalizing time, knowing that time has no existence in Spirit, that
there is no passage of time in reality, that time is a false activity only in the world of mental
images. And so the mind––which subtly unknowing to itself had yielded to the illusion of
time––dripping out its images in time––is now released, impersonalized. And we stand in the
Eternal, where now is the eternal time without beginning, without end, without change, a now
that is infinite, and we are out of the passing time. All of the images that come on passing
time lose their foundation. We become aware of worlds beyond the world.
We impersonalize place, space. We impersonalize that which is finite, a place which

begins here and ends there, a place that is formed, a place that has boundaries. We rest in the
knowledge that Spirit is boundless with an infinite continuity and never divided or
interrupted. And we feel that something in the mind is going away because the mind cannot
hold on to that which is timeless, boundless, eternal, and infinite, and by this method we are
relieving ourselves of the false pictures of this mind.
And then we move on to person, matter, thing, object, structure. This too is finite, and
we impersonalize person. We impersonalize person because only Spirit is there. Only the
Light is there. And now we have no time, space, person. We have no place where we can hang
a condition. You cannot hang a condition on matter that isn't there, on time and space that isn't
there, and so we impersonalize every human condition. And we are coming into that zero
where we have impersonalized the world, and we have included this physical me in time and
space, in form and its conditions. That, too, we impersonalize.
And now we are in the All-ness of Spirit, where God is all, and we are not denying
that All-ness by interjecting another self, another being, another thing, another substance.
There is one Life here, Spirit, God everywhere. And now I am in the state of a faithful
witness. But I am that Life. I, too, am impersonalized. I am that Life which is called “God,”
for there is only one. And this is the way out of cosmic television.
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Every picture that presents itself is a denial of the allness of God. Every claim, every
lack, every limitation says, “Spirit is not all; God is not all.” Every claim becomes the tempter
saying to the Christ, “Make the stones into bread. Prove it.” But you have learned the secret of
the ways in which the tempter finds its method to find your vulnerabilities making you think
that you are proving Spirit by proving something to nothing. And so finally, there's nothing in
this world that can tempt you to deny that only Spirit is. You're almost ready to be that little
Christ Child. And now, because only Spirit is, “I of mine own self can do nothing,” I have
absolutely no power, not even to see or to hear, not to walk across a room.
Oh yes, there is no me here. I am impersonalized. All that is here is the Spirit, and this
is why the Christ Child was so unique. All this had been done for the Christ to appear as that
Child. It had been a total self-renunciation of all that was material, accomplished, proven,
demonstrated; and now only Spirit Itself existed in the Consciousness of that Child. It was a
living spiritual Consciousness. We are afraid to be a Child again, but that Child is greater than
every material being on this earth, for that Child is omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience.
That Child is infinity expressing. In our total impersonalization of self, we become infinity
expressing. When you are nothing, you are all.
Now we find a higher power moving through us. It is not the power of a human mind.
It is a power released because the faucet of the mind has been turned off. The higher power is
grace. It is the invisible Word activated, released by the absence of the image-making mind,
and there comes harmony now forming itself as a different kind of image in your life. There
comes health. There comes comfort and security. The Father which seeth in secret, the
invisible Divine Reality which is no longer sharing the throne of your Consciousness with a
human belief, is now the only law, the only governing factor of your Being, and It knoweth
your needs. It is everywhere. It is governing your infinite Being at all times.
It looks through your eyes at the images of this world without flinching. It is not
afraid. It is not uncertain. It sees nothing but Itself. It is the new You functioning as Itself
where you stand because the old adult is dead to the new Child. We die to the cosmic TV of a
me, of a him, of a her, and we are born with a new vision, a new understanding. We literally
walk in a new Mind, and now Life is no longer dependent on the form. We reach the point
where Life does not depend on the organs of the body because you have never really
depended on the organs of the body, except in the false sense of self. This new Christ Child is
immune to heart attacks, brain tumors, immune to every form of human power, and we are
told the magnificent news that this is the Truth of our true Being.
No weapon formed against thee can prosper. But where is your consciousness? Is
your consciousness a Christ Child, or is it an adult in the flesh? Are you sowing to the adult or
to the Christ Child? Are you sowing to time, place, person, condition, or are you sowing to the
all-ness of Spirit? The Christ Child was once on this earth as the son of matter but outgrew
that belief and became the Son of God realized. Everything you saw in the life of Jesus is
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what, in time, becomes your life. There isn't one particle of it that is not included as your life.
It is the true Self and Its power made visible.
You may know by now that crucifixion of your false self was begun quite some time
back. Resurrection is taking place. The personal self is being submerged. The cosmic
television is being overcome. The real Life is coming forward. The Divine image and likeness
of the Father is being made manifest where you stand. This should be the Christmas message,
that everyone is Christ in the making, and that Christ on earth as the only Life, the only
Presence, the only Power, the only Reality was the symbol of that Child. It was revealing that
beside Me, there is no other, and that little Child is destined to be the Life of every individual
on earth, realized. That will be the era of Christ Consciousness.
The images all around us are projected into visibility in a way that no scientist has yet
defined, even in a way that no scientist has yet discovered, and yet this process has been
going on under our noses since the beginning of the world. When there was one who could
look past the images, it was revealed that the images had no power and were dissolved. That
one who looked past the images which were dissolved to reveal present perfection, that one
has been named as the Kingdom of God within you. That One is the true eye of your eye, the
true ear of your ear, the true Life of your Being, and to realize that One in you enables you to
see through those false images, just as that One has ever seen through those images in Jesus
and others before.
Now the mind does not know the great power that is generated when you only begin
to do this, and I urge every one of you to consciously spend some time looking at an
inventory of your problems one by one with the view that each problem is a false image that
only appears in your experience because it is happening invisibly in a world mind. Only to
know this is all that I am asking you to do. To know it, to put it to the test, to know that
problem that you are beholding and experiencing is there because a world mind has that
thought in it, and that instantaneously––with electromagnetic precision––that thought in the
world mind is functioning through the tube of your mind as the problem that you are saying
you have. Just to know it and be still, and you will find the power of release is there.
You shall know the Truth, and then as you know this Truth and find that release, you
will discover the power of the Christ in you has always been waiting your recognition, just as
the invisible Lazarus was waiting the recognition of the Christ to say, “Come forth.” Behind
every false image there is a true image, and if you never forget that, you will look at every
image of discord, every form of problem that encounters your mind, and you will know that
behind this image is another image. The only reason a false image appears in this world is
because it is an impression we entertain about the perfect Divine Image behind it. Where the
hate appears, the divine image of love is present.
You can go on down the list of every problem you have. Don’t do anything about it.
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Simply know that the true image is behind the false, and this is how you take the sting out of
the world thought and denude it, reducing it to helplessness. It can no longer use your mind as
a picture tube to bring forth its thoughts in you as form. This purification opens the way for
the true imprisoned splendor of the Divine. I know it works, and I know it works in anyone.
You don't have to be high on the totem pole. You simply have to do it, and you find you have
the power to look at these images and remove their power by knowing they are only images,
no matter what name they go by. And this, of course, is the beginning of a Christ birth in us.
You have the weapons––the four-way impersonalization of time, space, person, and
condition; the realization that matter cannot be because Spirit is all; the knowledge that if you
face the appearing images of this world and recognize them only as images coming through
the tube of your mind from a world mind which is imitating reality, you will stand fast and
behold and non-react and agree with thine adversary and mourn, so that you become dead to
these false images. And lo and behold, as you become dead to the false, you become alive to
the true. The only life you laid down was a life on a TV program that was not originated by
God, and as you lay it down, you're laying down the ability to die in that TV image because
that's the only place you can die. When you overcome the images, you've overcome death.
Death has been overcome to the point of losing its victory. The TV image was the only place
where death occurred.
This is our way. It isn't a way of fancy words or of sentimentalism or of holy

phraseology. It’s a way of putting on the line of proof and demonstration the Christ Way of
life and living out of that Christ center, which never bows to a TV image of this world. The
quicker you start, the quicker you will realize that we are all beginning to speak with tongues.
We are all beginning to feel spiritual guidance in a very heightened fashion. The living
Presence is very pronounced.
One more passage, John 10:17, and that will be the summary of today, I think.
"Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it up again.” I
lay down the belief in the world picture images so that the Divine Image of Being can come
forth as My Self. “No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay
it down, and I have power to take it again.”
I, in the midst of you has power to do this, to translate the visible un-reality into the
invisible Reality. Turn ye, and then we will walk forth as the Divine Image realized. Now let’s
take each other's hand on this because we're at a very fine place where, instead of talking the
Bible, we are going to live the Bible. We are going to do what the Master did and make
manifest the Spirit of God within us.
[Silence]
A very Merry Christmas to everyone.
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Class 5
Secret Of The Resurrection
Herb: However, you realize that there’s really nothing we can ever do that does not
include living the fourth dimensional Life. And so when we begin the new series next week
called The Thunder of Silence, behind it––behind every chapter, behind every word––will be
this Consciousness that we have been trying to develop with each other of living in this three-
dimensional physical existence with the knowledge that there is a true Self, an eternal Self
which does not walk in a form on this physical earth. And we will ever be cognizant of that
true Self as we walk in the appearance of form. All of this was a necessary preparation for the
ultimate realization of the Christ revealed on earth by Jesus.
There was a time when He laid down His form, and now he was in a tomb. There was
a napkin around his face. His body was covered with white linen. It was scented with myrrh
and aloes. To the world he was dead, and the message of that death has not come down
through the ages in the religions of the world.
He rested now asleep. To the world, the political and religious agitator had died. And
now there was a captain of the Hebrews with a little squad of men, and that wasn’t enough.
They had to have a Roman guard as well, and these 20 of them sat outside the tomb, guarding
it. It wasn’t enough to just roll a stone over the tomb. They had to roll another stone over the
tomb to make it two. Then they had to put the seal of Pilate on that stone to be sure that it
wasn’t moved so they could detect any change.
They were protecting the possibility that the body of Jesus would be stolen by his
followers in order to make good his statement that if you destroy this temple, in three days I
will raise it up again. And the Hebrews who had trumped up the charges in the first place had
prevailed upon Pilate that it would do a great deal of harm if the disciples of Jesus did steal
the body and let the world believe that he had really risen from the tomb.
They needn’t have feared at all. The disciples were in no condition to steal a body.
They were completely confused, bedraggled, fearful. They went into hiding. As far as they
knew, the man they had worshipped was not the man they thought he was. They had seen him,
a common criminal in their eyes, in the eyes of the mob, spat upon, ridiculed, mocked,
taunted. They had seen him, in their eyes, powerless to do anything about his predicament,
him whom they had called Messiah. Where were these angelic hosts who would come down
and deliver him? Where was the God with whom he said he was one? Where was the power
that fed the multitudes? Why had it deserted him? Why was he now crucified between two
thieves?
They even had to make sure he was dead, so they put a spear in his side; and then
Joseph of Arimathaea received permission to get the body. Somehow, he felt that the promise
that I would rise again would be fulfilled. Even Nicodemus entertained that idea, the elderly
gentlemen who had discussed rebirth in earlier days with Jesus, but you couldn’t find a single
disciple to say, “Yes, he will rise again.” They had never really understood the meaning of
that.
As a matter of fact, they had quite a mental block about it. Every time he said, “But I
will return again,” they failed to hear the inner meaning. They could never conceive of a life
on earth without their Master, without his physical presence, without his human authority and
leadership to tell them where to go and what to do, how to think. And so, they never really
listened carefully when he told them he would return. To them this was just a vague promise
that they could not comprehend.
And now, having seen how powerless he was against the Romans, against the
Sanhedrin, they were literally certain that they had made a mistake. Peter particularly was in
deep fear, a fear born of a sense of guilt. He had denied the Master three times, and the Master
knew it, and the Master had predicted it. And he had seen the look on the Master’s face after
his denials when he had passed by, a look of love and compassion. And Peter wondered if the
Master actually did rise again, what would become of him, he who had three times said, “No,
I’m not one of his followers. Why, I don’t even know the man, never saw him in my life,
never heard of him. Who is he?” Yes, this was Peter now, wondering what had come over him
to declare that he did not know the Master and yet, vaguely, he sensed the possibility that
there would be a rising. And the question was: What would happen to me, Peter, if the Master
did rise?
And each disciple within himself had a battle to fight. Some feared for their very lives.
They were known to be followers of one who was declared an enemy of the Roman empire.
No, they weren’t going to go and steal the body to prove it could rise on the third day. If you
wanted to find them, you’d have to go to the house of Mark in the upper chamber where 10 of
them were hiding. You wouldn’t find Thomas there. He had gone off by himself. And that was
the state of the disciples at the time that the body of Jesus lay in the tomb of Joseph of
Arimathaea.
The Sanhedrin had won a great victory, they thought. Here was this religious agitator
who had denied their God. There was no way to kill him legally. The only charge they could
get up was one that he was disloyal to the religion of the Hebrews. They could not kill him on
that basis without the permission of Rome, and Rome would not hear of it. So they had to
trump up the next charge, which they did, and that charge was, “He has told us not to pay
tribute, not to pay our taxes to Caesar.” And then a third charge to make it more persuasive:
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Class 5 : Secret Of The Resurrection
“He has declared he is a king and he has a kingdom.” And any other kingdom than the Roman
Empire would be a threat to the kingdom of the Roman Empire. “He is even violent. He said
he would build a temple after this was destroyed, and he’s sort of a maniac because he said he
would build a temple without hands. We must get rid of this man.”
A very interesting observation is important here. You will notice that in the
multiplication of loaves and fishes, there was first a demonstration among the Hebrews, and
when they returned the next day for more bread, more fishes, he said, “Oh no, no. I taught you
something yesterday. That wasn’t just to feed your stomach. I taught you a principle, but
you’re not interested in my teaching. You’re interested in the food.”
And so he went across the bay, performed the same experiment there, and again with
loaves and fishes he demonstrated, not to the Hebrews but to the Gentiles, the multiplication
of loaves and fishes. And because we know today that this was possible only because of the
invisible Christ, we realize that he was demonstrating the Christ omnipresent where the
Hebrews were and then the Christ omnipresent where the Gentiles were, showing the
omnipresence of Christ regardless of religion.
And now in reverse, another principle was being demonstrated, almost the same. First,
the trumped-up charges of the Sanhedrin. Here’s mortal mind, omnipresent among the
Hebrews, but not only there. Now we go to Pilate, and we find mortal mind omnipresent
among the Gentiles. He was demonstrating the two forces in this world: the Christ
omnipresent among all nations, and now mortal mind present among all nations––the two
great forces––the one real, the one unreal.
And Pilate, himself a coward, had proved many times that he could be swayed by the
Hebrews. All they had to do was wiggle a finger under his nose and say, “If you don’t do this,
we’ll let the emperor know about your treason.” And Pilate would swallow his pride and
kowtow because he feared more for himself and his job than anything else. And now he was
met with the angry Semites, a mere handful of 30 who had met at a very unorthodox hour,
men who in one part of their consciousness were able to say, “We uphold the law of God” and
able to say that “We cannot meet on Saturdays, and we cannot do things on the Passover that
we do on other days.” But here it was the morning of the Passover, and they were very able to
meet to condemn a man to death. There has been no greater hypocrisy anywhere. This is an
impersonal statement as you’ll see.
From this, we find Pilate now faced with their demands that this man be removed. But
Pilate can find no fault with this man: “What has he done? What are the charges? If he’s a
religious fanatic, that’s no business of Rome. And about these taxes you say he shouldn’t pay.
He tells you not to pay? I can’t believe that. This is the man who said, ‘Render unto Caesar
what is Caesar’s. And his kingdom––I have spoken to him about that. Do you know what he
said to me? He said that he has no kingdom on earth. He said his kingdom was not of this
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world. Now, this is no political agitator. I cannot take this man’s life on my hands.”
“Oh, but you must, you must!” said the Sanhedrin. And now they plotted beautifully.
There was an angry mob outside. It was that time of the year, the Passover, when one thief,
one prisoner was released by Rome to show their goodwill to the Hebrews. And Pilate saw his
opportunity, and so he said to the angry mob, “Take your choice of the prisoner you want
released,” thinking of course it would be Jesus, the Rabbi, and then he would be relieved, but
he reckoned without the power of propaganda.
By now the mob was incited, and the Sanhedrin itself spoke out, “Give us Jesus the
Christ crucified. Give us Barnabas free.” Not Jesus, Barnabas. And naturally, the mob
followed its leaders. The same one––the same very one whose healings they had walked the
countryside to secure, the same one they had gone to for their loaves and fishes––now it was
crucifixion.
The human mind revealed there as that fluctuating commodity which is not of God––
the hate, the desire to kill, the fear; the desire to preserve one’s own ideals, one’s own
personality regardless of what you’re annihilating in the process––all of this mortal mind,
crucifying not Jesus––crucifying the invisible Spirit within each individual there. The outer
appearance of a Jesus was but the symbol of the inner crucifixion that each man was doing at
that moment to the Christ of his own Being, the crucifixion that is continued to this moment.
And then between the two thieves, taking the place of the one, Barnabas, who was
released, he was crucified. Why two thieves? It had just been revealed that mortal mind
dwells in the Roman empire. Mortal mind dwells in the Sanhedrin. Each was willing to
sacrifice the invisible Christ, personified by the physical Jesus. Why? Because each was
protecting their own physical lives.
Pilate was protecting his position. How could he thwart the desires of an angry mob?
How could he thwart this Caiaphas who came up to him and looked at him and said, “Rome
will hear of your treason if this man is not crucified.” And so, he washed his hands. He turned
his back on Truth, ever willing to compromise. And this little band of the Sanhedrin who had
met secretly without all of their members, just a quorum of those, mostly Sadducees, for even
the Pharisees would not condone such an act. They won their point.
But upon the cross, Jesus turned to one of the thieves, “This very night I will take you
into paradise.” Why not the other? If you see the thieves, one on each side as representing
one, material world, and the one on the other side, the mortal mind which makes the
appearance of a material world, you see that Truth is buried between mind and matter. Mind
and matter combine to keep the invisible Spirit out of their lives. But he didn’t say to both, “I
will take you into paradise.” Only to one. Once you have overcome the mind, you’ve
overcome the body. Once you’ve overcome the mind, you’ve overcome the material world.
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And so he lay now in the tomb, and you must ask yourself: What has this to teach
you? Because we know that between that moment that he was placed in that tomb on a Friday
afternoon and on Sunday morning when the women came, he was no longer there. What
happened in between? A whole religion has been built upon what happened in between. He
rose from the dead, but did he? He came out of the tomb in spite of all those great stones
placed there and in spite of the Roman guard, in spite of the Hebrew guard. But did he, or
have we been misinformed?
It is important today to learn that he who taught the incorporeality of the divine image
and likeness of God was not buried in a tomb, that he did not de-materialize, that he did not
rise as a physical form out of the tomb. He did not walk out of the tomb. He did not resurrect.
As a matter of fact, he was clearly showing us all of that. Instead of the belief that because
there were extra stones at the tomb and an extra guard, and that in spite of it he could walk
out, he wasn’t trying to show any great ability to walk through stone, but rather was being
demonstrated there that Life is independent of form––that Life is all that exists––and that
form can never contain or confine Life.
He was revealing the nature of your being as Life, not form. And as you learn to see
that he never walked into the tomb as a corpse––he was never placed there––and he never
walked out of the tomb as Spirit, you will discover the revelation that no Jesus was ever
buried. No Jesus ever lived in a human form. You will discover that no person was there to
bury him, no person to carry him into the tomb. He was revealing the non-reality of all form
on this earth.
Now if you will look at it from that point of view for a moment, you will discover that
when the first women came and found that he was not there, there was one who stayed behind
while the others ran away. And this was Mary of Magdalene, and it was in the garden where
she saw him, but as a gardener. She was not sure who this was. It was some man who might
have taken the body, and so now she was looking at a form in the dim light of morning, a
form that she could not recognize as Jesus, a different form, you might say, than the one she
had known. And it said to her, “Mary,” and then all of the recognition poured through her, and
she wished to touch him. “Touch me not. I have not yet ascended.”
In these words was a revelation that he had been trying to give to his disciples for
those three years. Don’t lean on the physical self. Don’t touch this so-called physical me.
Don’t depend upon anything physical in this world. Wait till I have ascended means: Find
instead the spiritual reality, for as you place your faith on anything physical in this world, you
are placing it upon an illusion that cannot sustain your faith.
Never had his disciples understood the non-reality of form, and even in this last
moment that so-called resurrected form was telling Mary, “Do not touch me. I have not yet
ascended.” This was the intermediate stage between man’s recognition of the spiritual reality
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and man’s departure from the material form. This represented not Jesus’ transition in form,
but rather the transition in the consciousness of mankind coming to the belief first of material
form, then of an intermediate form, a transitional form not quite like the physical form––a
form that probably required no circulation of blood, no senses, no air to breathe––and then
finally rising to the highest Truth of all, that of spiritual form completely invisible to all
human sense. He was telling us not to be satisfied with even an intermediate form, but only to
accept the pure Truth of Being, to ascend unto the reality of the spiritual nature of our own
Being.
The form of Jesus represents your form, and as he died physically to that form, he was
setting an example for each of us to learn to die physically in our consciousness to the belief
in form. And dying to that belief in form, we too rise out of the tomb, not by going into a
physical tomb and rising out of a physical tomb, but by rising out of the tomb of physicality
created by the two thieves on the cross, the thief of mortal mind on one side and the thief of
matter on the other. We, too, learn that we have been crucified between these two thieves in
the same way, but he voluntarily permitted himself to be crucified and to walk into a tomb.
We must voluntarily permit ourselves to enter into the new understanding that Life is
your only name. You are neither human mind nor matter. And as you rest in the tomb,
dwelling there in the realization of identity, you will find that all of the Roman guards outside,
the Hebrew guards, the double stones, the seal of the Pilate––all of this will be unable to
maintain you in that tomb of matter. All of the world’s power will be unable to hold you
bound, confined, for the real release is in the knowledge that I do not dwell in physical form.
When we see Jesus in that light, we will see the demonstration that the disciples could
not understand, and we will be lifted higher to see that the rising of the Christ is the
understanding within ourselves of the great revelation that throughout all the nations of the
world, all the religions of the world, all the peoples of the world, this invisible Christ dwells
as the only Life of everyone appearing in form. We are to love that Christ as our Self, within
our self, within our neighbor, and to rise still higher and love that Christ as the Christ has
loved us. Love each other as I have loved you. We are to become aware of the vast illusion of
the two thieves that have robbed us for these many centuries of the reality of the divine image
and likeness of God which we are. “Love one another as I,” the Christ of God, “have loved
you” is the revelation of the one, invisible Christ omnipresent in this universe. There is
nowhere and no one who is not this invisible Christ.
And when you put it all together, you have the revelation of one perfect Life which is
never in a tomb, but may appear to be if you devaluate reality into a mortal being, which is
never entombed even though ignorance and superstition may seem to entomb it. And there
were several who knew this. One was one you’ve never heard about, a young boy. His name
was David, and he was the brother of John and James, David Zebedee. You’ve never heard
about David. He didn’t get a chapter in the Bible, but he was there. He ran a little messenger
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service, and after Jesus was taken in the Garden of Gethsemane, it was David who sent out his
little messengers to all those who were interested, to all those who believed.
He had 26 of them, and these little messengers were sent to the disciples, to the
women, to Lazarus, to Mary, to Martha telling every hour what was happening: “Now they’ve
taken him to the temple of Annas. Now they’ve taken him to the temple of Caiaphas. Now
they’ve taken him to Pilate. Now he’s gone to Herod.” Back and forth ran the messengers.
And this little boy David, the younger brother of John and James, had heard the Master say, “I
will raise up on the third day.” He said, “I may not be an apostle, but I believe it.” And after
crucifixion, he simply gave the order to his twenty-six messengers, “Be back in three days.
We’ll have a job.”
And they were back, and before there was any knowledge that the body was not in the
tomb, he sent them out. He said, “Now, here’s the work for today. I want you to go out to
Lazarus here, to the apostles there, to the Greeks who have followed him. These are your
assignments, to go everywhere and announce, ‘He has risen.’” And they believed him. They
didn’t know what he meant, but they believed him, and this is what they announced. This is
what they were announcing when Peter was in doubt, while the 10 were hiding, while Thomas
was hiding somewhere else.
And so it was that after he appeared in the Garden, he then appeared in other places. In
our Bible it says 550 or 525 in there saw him. Obviously, he didn’t quite look the same. On
the road to Emmaus, just out of Jerusalem, the two shepherds met this stranger. They talked
with him. One had actually seen Jesus before, but he didn’t recognize him. And then he sat
down and broke bread with them, and suddenly they knew. Why yes, this stranger was telling
them all about scripture and its meaning. This was the risen Master.
How many times he appeared, you will never know perhaps, not while in this form. It
is recorded somewhere, again not in the Bible, that he reappeared nineteen times, three times
to his apostles and at other times to everyone concerned with the Truth who had studied it
through him or through his apostles, appearing separately in Philadelphia to Abner and
Lazarus, to the seventy that he had sent out, to certain Greeks who had been present in the
Garden of Gethsemane when he was taken. And always his message was the same: Go forth
and preach the one gospel, not thirty religions, not eighty-five religions, not many paths to the
Truth. Go forth and preach the one gospel, and that gospel was oneness with God, Sonship
with God, which means the Spirit of the Father and my Spirit are the one Spirit.
Now, did they bury the Spirit of God? Did they put the Spirit of God in a tomb? Did
it resurrect from a tomb? The illusion of the form is so bewildering to the human mind, one of
the thieves on the cross, that matter—even in the great teaching of the non-reality of matter—
is still believed to have risen from a tomb and walked out. And yet, this is the basis of all
Christianity, the false basis. It is as false as the teaching that Peter himself began when he was
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welcomed back by the Master.
It is recorded elsewhere that before he reappeared to the apostles, he first reappeared

to the five women who came to the tomb, then to Mary, and then privately, in his third
appearance, to his brother James. His brother James was with Martha and Mary alone by the
tomb of Lazarus; and there, just as one of the messengers of David had come to announce that
he had been risen, they were looking for James to tell him this when the risen Christ appeared
there to his own brother and said, “James, I have come to ask you to join the work.” And then
before appearing to the apostles, while Peter was privately living in his own personal torture,
privately there it is said that the Christ appeared, assuring him to drop his sense of guilt. What
he did was normal and understood, and he was accepted because the very Spirit of the Christ
was the name of his own Being.
A very strange thing happened when Peter made his first public speech. It is said that
the Spirit of Jesus appeared there, too, as one of the reappearances of resurrection. But now, a
very unusual occurrence came about. Peter was still personalizing the Christ, and so Peter
began to teach not only the one gospel, Sonship with God, but Peter taught the risen Christ––
he who had walked out of a tomb in the flesh to come back––and Peter was still missing the
point. Peter was teaching no longer the religion of Jesus, which is the religion we must all
learn. He was teaching a religion about Jesus, and the distinction is the difference between the
teaching of Jesus as it was and the teaching of Jesus as we have been given it by the religions
of the world.
The personalization continued. There was no understanding that a man had not risen
out of a tomb. There was no understanding that no one had been buried in a tomb because the
illusion of matter was not understood. So many times going back over the message, you will
see that the Spirit was well aware this would happen. To the Pharisees many times [he] had
said, “Ye judge after the flesh. You judge after physical appearances. I judge no man.” So
many times it was said, “Henceforth, judge we no man after the flesh.”
And so, you must see the vast panorama of this teaching is that Spirit being all, the
acceptance of a material world––including the acceptance of a material crucifixion, a material
resurrection––is part of the illusion of the teaching itself. It is revealing the all-ness of Spirit.
And the same crucifixion of the falseness of the material world, right down to the falseness of
the material self, is the narrow way to the final realization that I, the risen Christ, the spiritual
Being that walks this earth, can never be bound or clothed in a material form.
Now, who will understand this? Who can deny himself? Who can redeem 50 and 60
years of living in the flesh? Who can redeem 500 different lifetimes of living in the flesh?
Who would be willing to do that? Only one who has felt that intangible something called the
Presence of the Spirit of God in me. No one else can be expected to do that. Only when the
finger of Spirit has said, “I am here in the midst of you. Don’t dwell in that temporary
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selfhood. I am your eternal Self. You know I have no physical form.”
And only when this has occurred within you––when the reality of Spirit has so
penetrated your consciousness that somehow from you, as from the disciples when they
finally were able to sit down with the resurrected Jesus––you discover that the resurrected
Jesus has also visited you. For your consciousness has then risen to that point where you
know what they were learning, but didn’t know they were learning, is that they were not
seeing a resurrected Jesus. They had risen to the point in consciousness where they could feel,
to that degree, the spiritual nature of Being, which to them appeared outwardly as the
resurrected Jesus. They were seeing their own consciousness. That’s why only five hundred
and fifty saw him, or the thousand that I believe saw him. They had been resurrected in their
consciousness.
He hadn’t been resurrected. Their consciousness had dropped that degree of

corporeality which enabled them to see, to that degree, the incorporeality of what they had
been calling Jesus up to then. It had not changed. Spirit will never change. And when you feel
this within yourself and can sense, not with five senses, but with a different level of
consciousness your incorporeal Self, you become aware of the risen Christ in you to that
degree; and then no man upon the earth can persuade you that you are man of flesh. For
having felt the Spirit, something in you makes you sow only to the Spirit, for you realize
you’re only halfway home.
Still you must not accept yourself as the flesh, for you have not yet ascended. Touch
me not. Touch not even this transitional form. There is no place to stop. There must be a total
ascension above the belief in corporeal form. Not even this transitional state is enough. And
all of this is the inner consciousness of the disciples revealed in a physical way for the world
to see, that it may understand that they are going through a transition of consciousness which
out-pictures as the crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. But nothing is happening
to Jesus. It is all happening in the consciousness of the disciples.
Jesus is that pure Spirit attained, understood, realized, lived in, which says, “I and the
Father are one.” And we are beginning that transition ourselves. Only in our case, the
resurrection won’t be of Jesus. It will be the resurrection of your own Self realized, right here,
as the tomb of mind is overcome in consciousness. As you feel this, this being released from
the tomb of matter, you are having your visitation, your release from the false sense of
physicality.
The religion of the Spirit is not the religion of men of flesh worshipping an external
God. The religion of the Spirit is the realization that Spirit is God; Spirit is Self. Spirit needs
no ritual, no ceremony, no words of prayer. You see, Jesus had taken this beyond Moses. “I
am that I Am,” and that was as far as Moses went. Now the nature of that I Am is revealed.
That I Am that I am is God Itself, and the nature of God is revealed as pure Spirit, infinite in
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nature, eternal––and we find there is no temporary creature on the earth. As we thaw out of
this false consciousness, we can know that we are not temporary creatures encased in
temporary matter. That was the demonstration of the Master.
“I go before you to prepare a place for you.” What kind of a place? A place in a higher
consciousness, a place where you will realize that unless you are released from the form, the
many mansions will ever remain for you a mystery. But surely, those of us who have found
the entrance to these many mansions know that there is not a moment when a new mansion is
not opening up because there are no locks on the door for the living Spirit, revealed as never
confined in a tomb of stone, a tomb of matter, a tomb of mind.
Your many mansions are continuous, and you can recognize that you are in the Spirit
by that very fact. The many mansions are the constant, continuous inflow of new
understanding, new levels of peace, the glorious realization that I have found Identity which is
continuously fed by the Spirit Itself, nourished by the Spirit, maintained by the Spirit, and
then, perhaps, a realization that has not come to you that the space around you is not empty.
You know it’s filled with warmth and light and air, and maybe sounds that the ears cannot
hear, and sights that the eye cannot see. But none of this is what’s really there.
Right where you are comes that glorious knowledge that all this so-called empty space
is the Spirit of God––all of it––right up to your very tongue, right up to your face, right up to
your skin. All around you is the Spirit of God. And everywhere that it is, it is a garment
without a seam. It is undivided. It is continuous, and these little marshmallows popping
around in that sea of Spirit called form––they never were us. We are the sea of Spirit Itself,
and your consciousness moves out of the form into the sea of Spirit and sees the form for
what it is, only an out-picturing at a certain point of a mental idea. This sea of Spirit around
me is my name. This is the Christ. This is reality, and you’re out of the marshmallow form,
out of the tomb, risen from the false conception, risen from the false consciousness. But you
haven’t risen. You simply know who you are. This is the meaning of resurrection.
Yes, there’s more. But if you remember, the Master said to his disciples, “There is
more that I would tell you, but you’re not ready for it.” Do you think he meant because they
had no capacity for it? No, there was another meaning there, for he later said, and not very
long after he said, “I have told you everything that the Father has told me.” And yet he said,
There is more.”
And so when you put these two together, you find what he was saying is this. There is
a place in consciousness where you must terminate your belief that you’re going to find
something from someone else. Even that which appears as the Master had to say to them,
“There is more that you should know, but I cannot tell it to you. But when the Comforter
comes, when the very Spirit of Truth comes, you will be given that which you must know.”
And so there is a place where mouth to mouth reaches a limitation that must be
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fulfilled only by Self-realization that I am the living Spirit Itself. And then the Spirit of Truth
of your own Spirit becomes to you what Jesus had been to those disciples––your living
Comforter––as it became their living Comforter when the man of the flesh was no longer
visible to them. And finally, the Spirit of Truth came to give them what he had said was
available for them but could not be given them by the personalized Jesus, but only by the
realized Christ.
Your education begins when the Spirit of Truth enters your consciousness and the
Infinite becomes your teacher. Then you know that what is being fed to you is the living Spirit
Itself living Itself as your Self. Then the many mansions begin. They do not begin when two
of us get together and talk truth. The many mansions have nothing to do with a truth that
passes from one mouth to another. The many mansions begin when there is only one, and that
one is your spiritual Self, and that is the place he went to prepare.
Always the symbolism must be seen. I am that place. I, the Spirit of your Being, am
that place where the many mansions begin, and you cannot find I while you dwell in the belief
of a human form. That must be understood.
Let’s try to see within ourselves that I, Spirit, is all there is, and whatever is not I,
Spirit, is non-existent. Now, we find the false consciousness begins to interpret I, Spirit. The
false consciousness is non-existent, but it thinks of itself as being real. And as it interprets I,
Spirit, it only interprets that which it is able to receive; and being a false consciousness, it can
only receive a false impression. And its false impression of I, Spirit, is going to become what
you call your form. That form ages and dies. That is your false image. And as that form ages
and dies, another false consciousness will now take another look at I, Spirit, and form another
form which will age and die.
And this continuous reincarnation now reaches the place of a Jesus who says, “Let’s
put a stop to this false consciousness and the changing image it creates, which is destined to
always die. Whoever believes on me, whoever believes my teaching, will not die. And now
this I finds there is no false consciousness to receive it, but instead there is a Consciousness of
Spirit called a Christ Consciousness, and the form that now appears is not destined to die, and
it has the name called Jesus. And this Christ Consciousness, which is out-pictured to us as a
form called Jesus, is demonstrating that the form that I am producing does not die, because I
am not a false consciousness receiving a false impression about Spirit and then out-picturing
that as a false form. I am Christ Itself.
I am the Spirit out-picturing Itself. I and the Spirit are one and the same. We are not
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giving you an impression. This is a spiritual form which you are perceiving as a physical
form. And this spiritual form was demonstrated to you on the Mount of Transfiguration as
pure Light. It is not a physical form. And even now, as you look at this pure Light, you
perceive a physical form. The error is in you, not in the Consciousness that is out-picturing
the pure spiritual form, and this form will never die. Men will only pick up the images in their
own mind and put it in a coffin. This invisible spiritual form can never die.
There is no physical form. The physical form is your own consciousness out-
pictured, your own false sense of the Spirit. And then, as it is demonstrated that this physical
form, which allegedly was buried, appears again, that which was already stated––that I will
return––is completed, and the revelation that there is a kind of form different than the physical
form of men. The physical form of men does die and does not return in that same form. This
form did, and therefore, it is a different form than the physical form of men that we know.
That form was the out-picturing of the Christ Consciousness, and only that form
which is the out-picturing of the Christ Consciousness demonstrates the continuity of life
eternal so that it reappears as the very same form which allegedly had died. Your form and my
form in our present appearance cannot do this, but your form and my form when we have
reached the Christ Consciousness will do this, but it will do better. It will simply be a
continuity of that Consciousness, and without the need to instruct the world about it, we will
simply continue to live in that Consciousness, which out-pictures perfect form without
interruption.
Now the inner teaching here was given by Jesus before he went through the
crucifixion, and the reason we have not been able to understand it was also given by him in
advance. There are just a few passages needed to open us to this understanding. Let’s look at
several of them, and you can then differentiate the Truth from the lie and see why it was so
difficult for even the disciples to understand it and why those who followed him have been
unable to, for the main, give us the Truth which some on this earth have at present.
We’ll just look at John. John was the youngest disciple, and it was not given to him
at the time to take over the disciples after Jesus left. It was given to Peter, but John was
always the one who seemed closest to the understanding of what was really happening in the
invisible, and so we find in John this statement. We’re in the sixteenth chapter, and in this
twenty-second verse Jesus says, “And now ye have sorrow. He’s talking to his disciples. “. . .
but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”
This was the promise that I shall see you again. How did he know he could keep that
promise? Because the one who made the promise was not Jesus. The one who made the
promise was the Spirit saying to the disciples, “I shall see you again.” And of course the Spirit
would see them again because the Spirit wasn’t going anywhere. That which they called Jesus
would go, but the Spirit would ever be there; and they would become aware of It again within
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themselves, and this would be how I, Spirit, will see you again. And as they became aware of
it within themselves, they were receiving that Spirit of Truth.
Now, when you try to understand the New Testament without having received that
Spirit of Truth, you’re in the position of the various religions of this world which went to war
many times because another religion disapproved of their way. And so they defended their
way by war and destruction and blood, proving that it wasn’t the right way to begin with.
Until the Spirit of Truth is received in your consciousness, you’re going to say again and
again, “What is the Truth, and what is the lie? How do I know this, and how do I know that?”
And so the only interpreter of the Truth has to be the Spirit Itself in you. And so we
have all kinds of religions without the Spirit of Truth, all kinds of ways to Truth. But there are
no ways to Truth. There’s only Truth. Truth is all that exists, and it all comes down to the fact
that as long as there’s a person looking for the Truth, you have the lie looking for the Truth,
and the lie will not find the Truth. And always the lie is the person who is looking for the
Truth. In the Christ teaching there is no such person, and until you receive this realization that
the person seeking the Truth is the lie itself, the lie will continue to not find the Truth. You
must crucify the lie. You must crucify the person, and the human mind just shuns this as if it
were a snake.
The Spirit says, “I will see you again.” And it says it to you seventy time seven, if
necessary, until something in you says, “That Spirit which says ‘I will see you again’ is telling
me to release my concept of being a human self so that I may know I am the Spirit, that I may
receive that Spirit of Truth which I am.” And then there’s nothing to be explained in the whole
Bible to you, because the Spirit of Truth is the invisible Bible.
Now watch how this theme, which is so difficult, is constantly put up before the
disciples; and each time they look at it, there is a me called Peter, a me called Nathaniel, a me
called Andrew, a me called Mathew. And they’re all trying to understand the I of Being within
themself which appears before them as a physical Jesus. And always the me can never
understand the I. But when me is no longer there, then only I am there, and that is the Self
realized.
The Spirit says, “I must go away now. I’ve come to you as a physical form called
Jesus, but there’s a limit to what you can learn from that. And so I will leave, but I will send
one who will help you, who will tell you things that I have not told you; and this one will be
the Spirit of Truth of the Father.” And the disciples do not understand that. They want Jesus.
They know what he can do.
The Spirit of Truth––that’s an abstraction to them. But yet the Spirit of Truth is the
reality of Peter, the reality of Nathaniel, the reality of Andrew, the reality of John, the reality
of you. And always, the unreality of you is piercing that reality by looking elsewhere, looking
to a man called Jesus who says, “No, no. Let go. Don’t cling to me.” And he’s saying get out
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of the false sense of you which needs a me. Get out of the false sense of you which has to
look outside of yourself, and the Spirit of Truth, which will come to you, will be your very
own true Being. Always, he is closing the gap between the dual nature of the human creature.
And then later on: Your Father loveth you. Now take those words apart and see them
for what they mean. The Spirit of Truth is the Father. And what does it mean that the Father
loveth you? He’s revealing their nature as that very Spirit of Truth which is the Father. They
don’t need love external to themselves, but not knowing themselves, they think they do. If
they knew themselves to be the Spirit, then all that the Spirit is, Its love would be their very
own Being. He is turning them to them-Selves.
Do you see how the world has rejected that? How the world––being turned to
itself––preferred instead to crucify that understanding? Do you see how we have squirmed
and wriggled away from that and have tended, without realizing, to crucify? The way we have
crucified the One that we are is by insisting that we are a different one. As long as we
continue to walk in the belief that we are this one that you see, we are crucifying the Christ,
and as long as this one keeps looking for the Truth, he is denying that the Christ is the Truth.
Now where do you stand still to behold the salvation of the Lord? Where does that
take place? That takes place in Heaven, for that’s where we find the Spirit: “Our Father which
art in Heaven . . .” And so Heaven is the place where you’re willing to die to what you are not
but seem to be, and accept what you are but do not appear to be. That is the beginning of
Heaven. That is the beginning of Truth. That is the beginning of the mansions, and that is the
beginning of that Life which is protected in the reality of its own Being.
Now look at this again and see that when there is a demonstration called resurrection,
you are watching a demonstration of the illusion of death, not an overcoming of actual death,
but an overcoming of the illusion of death. And the overcoming of the illusion of death is the
revelation of the eternal nature of your Life. But this wasn’t the overcoming of a head cold, of
a backache. It was the overcoming of anything unlike Life. And therefore, in one fell swoop,
it is the overcoming of the illusion of sickness; it is the overcoming of the illusion of disease;
it is the overcoming of the illusion of all things which contribute to the ultimate belief in
death.
It is an all-embracing revelation of the illusion of the material experience. But if we

do not accept the revelation of the illusion of the material experience, then we continue to
walk in the false self which knows death. You can’t just walk around this feast and say, “I’ll
take a little of this and a little of that.” You can’t make a smorgasbord out of Christ. The fact
is that Christ is all there is, and you can’t pick. You either accept this invisible spiritual reality
as the only, or you don’t. There’s no halfway. And only when you do, only when you do, do
you receive the Spirit of Truth which gives you the intelligence and the wisdom to understand
what you have accepted on faith.
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You don’t have the intelligence when you start. The Spirit of Truth cannot enter the
human brain. And all of our desires to have God come down and point out some things that
we’d like to know before we make our step––it doesn’t work. There has to be this great
dedicated faith which says, “Well, there it is. I see it, and if I don’t even understand it, I see
what’s happening. There’s a message there for me, and I can’t prove it.” Peter couldn’t prove
it, but he learned to accept it. And after he accepted it, then the Spirit of Truth descended. He
had opened the door first. And if you find that the Spirit of Truth hasn’t descended, you
haven’t accepted it, and you’re waiting for the Spirit to descend before you accept it. And it’s
going to be a very long wait. It doesn’t work that way.
Once we have accepted it even intellectually that I am living Spirit, and therefore I
do not live in time or space or body, and my life is independent of form––well, I don’t feel my
Self out there––but I accept it. I must accept it before I can begin to feel it. You’ve accepted
other things before you knew about them. When you were a child growing up and learning
mathematics, you accepted there was such a thing, and you went in with perfect faith to learn
about it. Suppose you didn’t accept it and said, “Oh, there is no such thing.” You’d never have
learned it. In fact, everything you’ve learned has been because you accepted that it existed,
and then you went out and learned about it. But first, you accepted that it existed. And now to
accept that there is an invisible spiritual Self called the Christ is prerequisite to experiencing
it.
You can stand on the brink and discuss it all day. The Spirit of Truth will not enter.
But it is the Spirit of Truth that can tell you those things which Jesus said to his disciples:
“There is more to tell you, but you cannot bear it yet.” Only the Spirit of Truth can tell you
those more things. There’s a place where I know I feel a wall. There’s just no place further to
go with a certain kind of person than that place up to which now it’s up to you to say, “Yes,
there is an invisible Self that I am.” And until you come to that, there’s not a word that will be
as important as that inner revelation, and only that inner revelation can give you what the
Master called Truth. He didn’t say read the Bible even.
“There is a place beyond which I cannot go,” he said, “and so, I’m leaving you.” And
that was the cue for every reader to say, “There is a place beyond which I cannot advance
until I turn to that inner Self that He is going to reveal as the Self of all men, and when I turn
to that inner Self, I must let go of this one. I cannot be that and this. I must begin to work with
my invisible Self in such a way that I am leaving the concept of a temporary being and
accepting my eternal Self right here. I must live in that eternal Self, for there the Spirit of
Truth makes its home. There is the Voice. There is the wisdom. There is the real Truth that
makes you free.”
Do you see why it’s said that Moses only took his people up to the Promised Land
but not in? Same as Jesus here. There is no truth that mind communicates to mind that will
free you. The Truth that frees is communicated from the Christ of your own being to and
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through what you have called your human consciousness, and this is how you get out of the
tomb of a mortal who dies.
Now I can assure you that if you haven’t up to this point felt the presence of the
Spirit, that where we have gone is too far for your present level of development. I can assure
you if you have felt the presence of Spirit, then there’s nothing we could possibly do that
would be too far for your level of development. The presence of Spirit realized in you is the
magic key to all of your future progression; and if that has not happened, then every moment
that you spend to unveil that spirit of Truth in you should be your one and only spiritual goal.
From that point on, you don’t have a goal. That spirit of Truth in you says, “I am the
Way. I am the Truth.” And if you’re looking for other truth, you’re missing the Truth. I am the
Truth. Only I in you is the Truth. Jesus was pushing his disciples almost bodily into that
realization. He wanted them to carry his message throughout the world. Significantly, he
didn’t write a single word down. What did he leave? Not one word. Why? Because he knew
that the words of a man are not the Truth. The words of a Jesus are not the Truth. The only
Truth is the Word of the Spirit of Truth in you. That’s the power of the word. It carries more
than the word that says truth. It carries the power of the Truth, the substance of the Truth, the
activity and law of the Truth, and all of these must accompany the Truth to be the Truth.
The Truth must embrace its own power, its own effect, its own law, its own universe.
Truth isn’t a word that you speak with your mouth. Truth is infinite Omnipotence expressing
Itself, enforcing Itself, maintaining Itself. Let us come out of human concepts of Truth, for
they are superficial and shallow. There is only divine Truth, and divine Truth is not waiting
for human minds to understand it. It’s waiting for human minds to move away and say, “Work
your magic within me.” And so, he pushed them and pushed them and pushed them, even to
the point of self-annihilation.
When he said, “Love one another as I have loved you,” the love he showed is that he
laid down all physical concept of self. That was the kind of love we were looking at, for if he
didn’t lay down all physical concept of self, they would still be worshipping a physical
concept. And that was the love that we were told to love one another with. And so, I must lay
down my physical concept of you and of me, for that’s the only way I can love as he loved us.
He laid down a physical concept of self to show there’s only a spiritual reality present, and we
must do the same.
And as we do the same, we are born into the Spirit, and then you won’t say, “What is
the Truth and what is the lie?” You’ll say, “I am the Truth, and what I am not must be the lie.”
All that I am is Truth, and therefore, whatever I am, being Truth, must be perfect and
harmonious. If it’s not perfect and harmonious, it can’t be the Truth. It’s the lie. Whatever in
your life is not perfect and harmonious is not the Truth. It is the lie, and it exists only because
there is still a divided sense of Self. The lie is always the out-picturing of that consciousness
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which is not the true spiritual You. And that is why we have an out-picturing, so we can see
with our eyes that which is to be corrected, adjusted.
That is why there was a Jesus, so the world could see with their eyes that which they
could not detect in their consciousness. And that which they saw was Jesus which was really
living with them outwardly as the Spirit of themselves inwardly to show them there was such
a thing as an inward Spirit. And then, with that mission completed, “Goodbye.” You have no
need of this outer Jesus anymore because outer Jesus is only the revelation of your inner
Spirit. And now live in that Spirit. Get out of the tomb of a “me” who is looking for Truth.
There isn’t any to find from “me.” Get out of the lie, and the lie is “me.” That’s the lie. Get
out of “me,” for there never was a “me.” There is only I, the invisible Christ.
Now there are passages we could look at, but I feel at this moment that if you will
renew your contact with what you have called empty space and feel that you are a false
consciousness moving in the fullness of Spirit and rest until the fullness of Spirit dispels that
false consciousness, you will be duplicating in that experience, in a small way, the complete
pageant of crucifixion and resurrection. You will find you have entered into one of the most
joyous stages of your work. You are truly passing from human consciousness to spiritual
reality.
As this deepens, the thunder of Silence becomes the living Spirit of Truth that
awakens you to the Kingdom present on earth. You find that the pure, perfect Heaven on earth
has been obscured by the false sense of a me. Mortality was the tomb. The rising is simply
coming out of mortality into the experience of the Kingdom of God within you. There is less
of a “me.” There is less of a will, less of a desire, less of any human needs. There is more of a
knowing that the Father within is just another way of saying that I am the Spirit of God. There
is a willingness to live in this somewhat difficult stage for a while because the transition was
never from crucifixion to ascension. There had to be the intermediary stage. It’s the waiting
period. It’s the testing period.
And that’s one of the reasons why, in resurrection, Jesus did not appear immediately
to his own disciples. The world had to see how lost they were. The world had to see that
without the Spirit of Truth in them, even though they had three years of teaching from the
Master, they were in a state of fear and confusion. And the world had to see that without the
Spirit of Truth in us, we too, no matter how much Truth we have from anyone, we’re always
in a state of unknowing the Truth even with the greatest Masters in our midst. Until we, too,
have found the Master within. Then the fear is gone. The confusion is gone. Then we can
come out and proclaim openly, “Yes, I follow the Christ.” Then we’re not concerned about
world opinions.
Once we have found what we have sought as the substance of all Being, then we’re
no longer concerned what mortal man can do to me, what mortal condition can do. And if you
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have that feeling now, that you’re not concerned about the world––you’re not concerned
about its threats; you’re not concerned about lacks and limitations––then be sure it is because
you have felt this invisible Reality which was revealed as that which can never be crucified or
entombed.
The remainder of your teaching must come as this, this Spirit of Truth unfolds Itself
to you through the thunder of Silence. That Silence is really your withdrawal from the world
of the mind, from the world of matter, from the two thieves on the cross, and the tomb in
which they have buried each individual on this earth. Even to the last second, all materialism
was removed, even the clothes, the garments. They fought about his garments until there were
none left. Why? There was nothing left of a material nature, not a word nor a garment. All
that existed was the pure Spirit. No matter to idolize. He was revealing that he was Spirit
alone, totally pure Spirit. The last remnant of human consciousness was gone.
If you believe on this, you have learned the Truth of your Self, pure Spirit. And so,
we have a measure of our eternal Self revealed to us. That is what we should be taking into
what is called the year 1970. You have by now probably ripped up your calendars in
consciousness and know that the only year ahead is the year of Spirit. And if you walk into
this year of Spirit with the knowledge that I am Spirit and learn to be faithful to this
knowledge, it will be a totally different decade for you than for those who walk into it as man
of flesh. You will discover that there is no year 1970, 1, 2 or 3. You’ll find yourself walking in
the timelessness of the Spirit. And even the years that have come up to this point will drop
away, and you’ll see that they never happened except in the false consciousness of the two
thieves that have run your sense of Life. Really time ceases to have the significance or the
power to fool us.
And so, 1970 for us as we walk in the Spirit becomes a grand opportunity to show
the degree to which we have stepped out of the tomb of mind and matter––using the outer
events of the day as a mirror in which we determine our spiritual progress––making the
adjustments within when we see the lie without––until you find the law of multiplication of
Spirit functioning in you as it did for the multitudes when Christ was revealed as present
invisibly on the earth. That same Christ accepted as your Being becomes your total law of
harmony, and you find the faith that enabled you to accept this Christ deepens beyond faith
itself.
The next 10 years for man are going to be quite a shock for some, and for some
they’re going to be a most unusual experience. Be sure that we are not being prepared idly.
We’re going to need all of this preparation. Spirit is ever aware of what it is doing and ever
fulfilling its purpose in its perfect way. If you have reached that place now where to you, the
spiritual universe is a reality, it was necessary that you come into this realization before
certain other things in the material world take place.
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The two covenants which form, I think, the first chapter of Thunder of Silence and all
that follows in the next nineteen weeks, if that’s what it is,—I think it’s nineteen—will be
aimed at one goal: To release you finally into the knowledge that all dominion of your life
rests within your Self. There is no outer force that has power over the reality of You. And if in
the 19 weeks that follow you can come into this ability to rest in the dominion of your own
true Self, you will have demonstrated that you have come far out of the tomb in which
mankind still appears to be resting.
I wish you all the very best for this coming year. To those of you who have felt the
progress within yourself over the past years, I can only say that nothing, nothing in this whole
world could be more important to the Spirit than the realization in you that you are the living
Child of God. Be sure that whatever you feel in that progress is appreciated in many places
that you know not of. Your Life is independent of what you had called your form. Live in that
Life, and not in that form, consciously.
Thanks very much, and I hope to see you next year.
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Class 6
Invisible Resurrection Of Your Real Body
Herb: Now in the course of your study, you have undoubtedly had many
puzzlements, sincere doubting. Wondering not only is this the way, but do I have what it takes
to attain the ultimate? Be assured that doubting was anticipated by the Spirit, for we have the
classic example of the doubter who doubted everything right up to resurrection. And if you
can put yourself in Thomas' place for a moment, you will see that he and you at one time or
another have had similar experiences.
It may not be known to most people, but Thomas had four children, a wife, a
prosperous business, lived in a little city just on the south bank of the Jordan. He was a stone
mason, and in the city where he lived there was nobody more influential or more respected.
Thomas was not exactly a doubter, as we have used the term. He was a skeptic. He was a man
who thought straight, and from his personal experience whatever you see you believe and
whatever you cannot see you do not believe. Thomas said, in his own mind, that there is never
going to be 13 inches to a foot; night will follow day and day will follow night. That which I
see before me, this world that I touch, I understand it through my mind. He represented in that
day what we might call today's scientific viewpoint. Prove it. If you can't prove it, forget it.
And yet, in spite of his doubting, in spite of his very serious skepticism, there was
something that drew him to another man, drew him to such an extent that he actually left his
family and four children, left his thriving business, incurred the criticism of all his close
friends. “Thomas has gone daft. He's gone off with that renegade, a little ragged bunch of
men,” maybe called the hippies in those days, “and what had they offer him?” Nothing you
could put your fingers upon.
He had his doubts but he went, for something in him said “I must go this way,”
something that he probably could not control called the Spirit in a man. And so he became a
member of this little band, but he didn't stop doubting. It made no difference what came up. If
a cripple was healed, Thomas said, "If I hadn't have seen it, I would never have believed it.”
And so miracle after miracle after miracle still found him doubting the next miracle, never
taking anything for granted.
And then one day the leader was crucified. He had said, “Destroy this temple, and in
three days I will raise it up again.” But you know what Thomas thought about that. If he had
any doubts, now he saw that the accumulated doubting had taken form. The most serious
doubt of all had been consummated. He had followed the wrong man. He was not only
Class 6 : Invisible Resurrection Of Your Real Body
heartbroken. He was completely broken. He wouldn't stay with the other disciples. He took
off. He went to a friend called Simon in Bethany. Thomas had thought, as most of the other
disciples had thought, that Jesus Christ was going to free the Hebrews. He was going to take
the yoke of Rome and unchain the slaves of Israel. He was going to bring the Kingdom of
Heaven down to the Israelites, and now he was gone.
Their long hope for a Messiah was dashed. Nobody took it worse than Thomas. He
couldn't go home. He couldn't face the humiliation, and now a strange thing happened. Mary
Magdalene said, “His body is gone. It isn't there,” and not only that, “I talked to him. He
talked to me.” When that got back to Thomas, you can imagine how he doubted, doubted to
the point that he thought it was ridiculous. The poor woman was obviously hysterical.
Peter and John dash to the scene. True enough, no body. And a strange thing was that
the grave clothes were laid a certain way. They had carefully wrapped him in bandages. They
had put something over and under his head. They had put a sheet over him. There it was, all
lying there. The only thing that was missing was the body. They couldn't figure it out. There
was no struggle. There was no sign of him having put up a fight. There was no sign of
somebody having carted the body away. Everything was perfectly placed in perfect order,
intact, but no body.
And to add to the confusion, Mary Magdalene said, “And now when I came back, I
spoke to him again, and he said, ‘Go to my apostles and tell them you spoke to me again.’”
And she did. And lo and behold, there the Master appeared to the disciples in the absence of
Thomas. Finally word got back to Thomas: “He has returned. He has risen.” “Oh no,” he said,
“You're all insane. Your grief and your love has overcome you. Your wishful thinking has
persuaded you that a man can return from the dead. I won't believe it, not until I feel the
wounds, not until I touch every scar where the nails were.”
And then come the words, "Peace be with you,” for there stands the Master.
“Thomas, here, touch, feel, look. Is it me?” And Thomas is overcome. Now he's on his hands
and his knees and he says, "My Lord and my Master!” He has accepted the resurrection.
That’s where it stops in the Bible, and there are a few more isolated instances where Jesus
appears to others. All are convinced he has been resurrected. And on the basis of that, the
mass insanity begins. Now we have a man who was resurrected, and we must worship the
man because he was resurrected and call him the Son of God. And the foremost dissenter of
that theory is the man himself.
Now it is at this specific place where Thomas says "My Lord and my Master!” that
you and I must stop and say, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Isn’t this where Christianity
begins to go in the wrong direction?” You will discover that none of the gospels have this
account. There is the statement of Thomas feeling the wounds, but only John has Thomas
going to his hands and knees, and saying, “My Lord and my Master!” And so now we turn to
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this passage, and we look at it, because we must discover what our authorities have missed.
We must discover how the hard core of religion has walked right by the great secret
contained in the fact that only John saw fit to put these words in the Bible. To Matthew, to
Lucas, to Mark, it wasn't important at all. They probably were sparing the feelings of Thomas.
“So he got on his hands and knees and he said, ‘My Lord and my Master!’ What of it? We all
felt that way.” But John didn't want that moment to be passed. He wanted us to know what
was going on inside the man called Thomas. And although, literally, Thomas got on his hands
and knees, there was another meaning there, and that meaning should be the basis of
Christianity.
The first secret of the resurrection is contained in the words: The door was shut. Now
watch it very carefully. “[And after] eight days again his disciples were within.” Within
where? We’ve all come to know this within. It isn't within a room or within a house: “ . . . his
disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus [the doors being shut]” Then
came Jesus. And strangely enough, I hadn’t noticed it before. The word “then” is italicized.
After they “were within, and Thomas with them," within, “then came Jesus, the doors being
shut.” Hadn’t he said, “Shut your door. Go into your closet.” when they asked him how to
pray?
Can you see now that “the doors being shut” means they had shut their mind to the
outer world? They were within Consciousness, and because they were within high
Consciousness, they could perceive a form that other human eyes could not perceive. Here we
have spiritual discernment perceiving the invisible form of Jesus. It is said 500 people could
see him. Why couldn't the rest? They were not within, and their door was not shut. And so
that's the first clue to the resurrection. At a certain level of Consciousness, you can perceive
the invisible body.
Now we have another when we go back to the first return of Jesus: “Then the same
day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples
were . . ., then came Jesus and stood in the midst . . .” Again, when “the doors were shut.”
And so the emphasis now is on that Mind which is not open to the five-sense world.
Now then, after Thomas feels the wounds, he gets down on his hands and knees. He
gets down on his knees, at any rate, and he says, "My Lord and my Master.” Now, this is a
symbolism, and that's why John put it in because he alone knew the meaning of getting down
on your knees and saying, "My Lord and my Master.” This was the acceptance by Thomas of
the Christ within himself. Thomas was capitulating finally to Christ instead of to sense
perception. He was accepting Christ within. Anyone else in that room who had not gone
through the steps these men had gone through would not have seen that which is called the
resurrected body. Only one who had accepted Christ within could see it, and that is why
Thomas was now on his knees saying, "My Lord and my Master.” He was surrendering to
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Christ within.
Now, although at this point nothing further happens, it should be clear to anyone that
the Master would not appear for a moment, doff his hat, turn around and walk out. And so
you may be sure that there were endless hours of conversation, and what you have here is the
essence of what occurred. And I can tell you that in those hours of conversation, that which
Thomas had done was cleared up. You can almost hear the Master say, “Now Thomas, get up.
That's fine, but let's not make this mistake of worshiping me. In the first place you're not
witnessing my resurrection. Resurrection is not a physical form reappearing. That isn't
resurrection at all.
Resurrection is an invisible process whereby a man leaves a sense of mortality and

accepts the Christ. This is resurrection. The outer manifestation is the second resurrection.
The first is the spiritual resurrection within. Later, you remember in the Revelation of Saint
John, the Word was received. He who enters into the first resurrection will not be touched by
the second death. This visible resurrection is the second resurrection. The first is when a man
within himself yields to Christ and, through the process of the mind being renewed, is
transformed from the human sense of body to the soul sense of body. And this is all an
invisible transmutation. It has nothing to do with a visible form until the invisible
transmutation is completed. Resurrection takes place within you, and now, long before the
outer effect of it appears.
Now because the world has accepted the return of Jesus in the body as a sign that he
was resurrected, it was necessary for Jesus to make clear to his disciples that this was not the
Truth. He might have turned to John and said, “John, what did I say at the tomb of Lazarus
when Martha said, ‘If you had come sooner, my brother would not be dead?’” And John
might have replied, “Well, you told her that her brother would rise again.” “Fine,” said Jesus,
“and then what did she say?” “Well, she said that her brother would undoubtedly rise on the
last day, and you corrected her. You said, ‘No, no, no, not on the last day. I am the
resurrection. I am the Life.’”
Then he could say to Thomas, “Thomas, did you believe that?” “Yes, I believed it.”
“Then answer me this, Thomas: How can I, the resurrection, be resurrected? How can I, the
Life, die?” You see, in accepting the resurrection of Jesus, we are rejecting his teaching that “I
am the resurrection.” There was no resurrection. Then what was it? Well, Jesus was
demonstrating just what he said he would be, Life everlasting. He was demonstrating where
the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. He was demonstrating the myth of mortality. He was
demonstrating that Life is always Life. You don't resurrect Life.
He was demonstrating the great illusion of the senses, and Thomas, believing that the
Master had been resurrected, and the other disciples, believing that the Master had been
resurrected, had not accepted who he really was. To them it was obvious. A man was
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crucified. He obviously had to be dead. A man was raised; therefore, God had raised him. And
if God had raised him and raised no one else, this must be the Son of God. Later, there are
three passages in the Bible where the same thing happens to Peter and twice to Paul.
Cornelius, a Gentile, wanted help, and Peter said, "Oh no, I only serve the Jews.” He
thought about it for a long while before he realized from within how wrong he was. Then he
went to Cornelius. Cornelius got on his hands and knees, treated him like a god. Peter said,
“Stand up. I'm a fellow servant like yourself.” Paul and Barnabas did some miracle work,
healing work. Paul was called Jupiter, and Barnabas was called Mercurius. They said, "The
gods have surely come for these two to do such great miracle work.” And Paul said, "Oh my
god, don't worship me. I'm a man of passion like yourself.” And again, when Paul was
stricken at Damascus, he, too, was on his hands and knees like Thomas, and the Master within
said, “Arise.”
If Jesus were here this minute to explain to us what had happened, you might discover
that a very simple thing happened. He not only wasn't resurrected, but he wasn't crucified.
And you can hear Andrew, the solid one, the senior citizen, “But Master we saw you
crucified. We saw you walk through the streets carrying the cross. We saw you spat upon. We
saw the nails dug in. We saw them pierce your body. We saw blood spurt forth. We saw you
buried. We saw you mocked, and you say you weren’t crucified?” “Well, I'm here, Andrew.
There's no corpse to prove that I was crucified. You simply still do not know who I am. You're
still seeing a man that you have elevated to a God. As long as you have a crucifixion and a
resurrection, you're going to miss my complete teaching, as the world will.”
And then the Bible tells us a very important passage. “God so loved the world, that he
gave his only begotten Son . . .” It is exactly what he says, “that he gave his only begotten
Son.” And so what do we think it means? We think God so loved the world that He crucified
His only begotten Son. “Gave” to us means crucified; but it doesn't, does it? It doesn't say
God so loved the world that he crucified his only begotten Son. It says, “He gave.” And so,
this is Christ in you. Christ in you is what He gave. That is not crucifixion. That is Life. Do
you see the mass insanity of believing that God permitted the crucifixion of Jesus Christ?
“But then how did it happen that you weren’t crucified and weren’t resurrected?” “It's
very simple, Andrew. Let me tell you how it happened. I wasn't in that body that they
crucified, Andrew. That’s how. I was absent from the body, Andrew, and I was present with
the Lord. Not only that, Andrew, I expect you to do the same, and I expect all of my disciples
to do the same, to be absent from the body and present with the Lord, literally.”
There is no Christ in a body of clay to be crucified. There was a man named Jesus
who learned the way to overcome the mortal sense of life and to step out of the mortal body
of clay. He was never resurrected. He was never crucified. He had overcome the world. He
had become the Spirit without an opposite. “I am the Way-shower. I am the Way. I am the
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resurrection. I am the Life. Pilate, thou hast no power over me. You can't crucify me.”
The Son of God isn't crucified to save the world. The Son of God demonstrates there
can be no crucifixion, and that's how the Son of God saves the world. The Son of God says,
“Follow me. I am the Way.” And when they had said to him, "When will the Kingdom of God
come to earth?” “Come to earth? Are you fooling? Do you think that God has ever left this
earth? The Kingdom of God is within you now. Who can crucify the Kingdom of God within
you? Is there a power on this earth to crucify the Kingdom of God within a man?”
One day these very same disciples learned their lesson. And Thomas, who had
misunderstood resurrection and crucifixion, was eager to go out and get crucified and did.
Seven of them went out and got crucified. They couldn't wait. Why? Because they had
overcome the mortal sense of body. They had learned to step out of the sense of body so that
when crucifixion for them occurred, they were not in the bodies that were crucified.
That is the meaning of Christianity, to come into that sense of Self which can say, “I
have overcome the world. I am not subject to the powers of the mortal universe. I walk in the
rhythm of the Father. Thou seeth me, thou seeth the Father. All that the Father hath is mine. I
will not be crucified. I will not be resurrected, for the Life of God is my Life, and that Life is
eternal.” The demonstration that the Life of God is eternal is totally different than crucifixion
and resurrection. Turn ye from the belief that there is a mortal body to be crucified, to be
resurrected, to ascend. All resurrection, all crucifixion, all ascension is done in the
Consciousness of the individual. It is an invisible activity of Consciousness.
And so, he was demonstrating that Life was his name, that Life which is the Life of
God. It doesn't have to be resurrected. He was demonstrating the all-ness of divine Life, and
God, being all, is never crucified, never resurrected, never ascended. This is the mortal sense
of the Bible, and because of that mortal sense of the Bible unable to discern the meaning
behind what is called the resurrection, mankind has not sought the Christ within, the Kingdom
within, but has done exactly what it appeared to those present that Thomas was doing––
worshipping Jesus Christ as “the” son of God who is “the” Way. And unfortunately, that is
precisely the opposite of that which Jesus Christ taught: “Worship me? What good will that do
you?” Will that get you out of a hospital? Will that pay the mortgage? What good has it done
the world to worship Jesus Christ?
Even the churches down in Los Angeles found the earthquake hit them as well as the
other houses. They were worshipping Jesus Christ. Half the world is worshipping Jesus
Christ, and Jesus Christ says, “Don’t call me good. Why callest thou me good? My teaching is
to worship God. I’m just a fellow servant who found the Way. Follow me. Do what I did.
Learn what I learned. Let my deeds and my demonstration be a guide and an inspiration to
you, but don't hang onto my coattail. Don’t use me for a crutch.”
“Peter, you can't walk on the water because I did. You've got to learn in your own
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Kingdom of God within how to do it. Believing on me won't help you. Three times then:
“Peter, do you love me?” “Yes, I do.” “Then feed my sheep.” “Peter, do you love me?” “But
Master of course, I love you.” “Feed my sheep.” And a third time, “Peter, do you love me?”
By this time Peter is grieved. “You know I love you.” “Then Peter, feed my sheep.” What was
he saying to him? Precisely what the world had thought Thomas was saying. “Peter, do you
love Me”, or do you love Jesus Christ? Do you know who “Me” is? If you don't, how can you
do the greater works? Because you must believe on “Me” to do them.
“Me” isn't Jesus Christ. “Me” is that eternal Life, that I, which cannot be crucified and
can never be resurrected because It is always living. And It is the Kingdom of God within
you, Peter. If you love Me, that means you love the Kingdom of God within you. You discern
the Christ of your own Being. That’s the only way you can feed my sheep, Peter, because
Christ does the feeding. You can't find Jesus Christ to feed the sheep now. The Christ in the
midst of your Being must feed the sheep. The Christ in the midst of your Being hath all that
the Father hath.
And so there must be a correction. There must be an understanding that You

could never be crucified, because as long as you feel that there was a crucifixion and a
resurrection, you have not caught the meaning that I in the midst of Thee am mighty, greater
than he that walks this earth. There must be an acceptance of the eminence of Christ, that
ever-present Self which is the all power, against which the power of Rome or any world
power is powerless. Crucifixion, you see, is the ultimate death. Every other form of death is
included in crucifixion.
Just as Jesus could not be crucified because he had attained Christ awareness, he
could not have died of cancer. He could not have died of any disease or disaster. Life realized
is always Itself. And he was teaching these who followed him to do likewise. He was teaching
his disciples to set an example for us to know that as they could walk through crucifixion
because they had attained the soul body, we can. Those men he picked were a cross-section of
the different kinds of human beings who walk this earth. Some were simple men. Some were
businessmen. Some had the feeling, intelligence of the highest, and some of the middle, and
some of the low.
You never hear anything much about the Alphaeus twins, and yet there they were.
They were ushers. When they had to preach a meeting, the Alphaeus twins were the ushers,
but they were among the 12. They were errand boys. When Nathanael had to send something
to the families of the disciples while the disciples were on the road, he called Jude or James,
the Alphaeus twins, and they would carry the clothing or the food or the money or whatever
was needed by the families of the disciples. You never heard much about their great
contribution to the work, but they were there to prove that at any level and at every level,
everyone is qualified to walk into that awareness of Christ, which is life eternal.
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Now this should have been the turning point for the peoples of the world to
understand that all life is immortal, that all life is eternal, that all power is in God––that there
is no power of death, no law of death, no possibility of death––that there is no law or power
or possibility of those conditions that lead to death. The identity of each individual was
established that day as the invisible Light of God, and they learned that lesson. They learned it
well enough to be lifted into the Spirit, to receive the Holy Ghost.
Now if you've had your doubts about your progress, your capacity to move ahead,
please remember those 11 had their doubts, too. It is necessary at this point to erase in our
consciousness the belief that there are several kinds of Life. Our function is to supply a
missing ingredient to the world we see. Each of us must do it. That missing ingredient is
Spirit. It cometh not by observation. You will never see the Spirit, and if you are not watchful,
you will not be furnishing that missing ingredient to your experience, which transforms your
experience.
All that happens in your life is shadow without substance until you furnish that
missing ingredient––until you will take the time and make the effort to redeem this world in
your Consciousness––by knowing that never will you see the Truth in the outer; never will
you see it in the inner. You must accept Its Presence where you are. Jesus Christ never left this
earth. There simply are not eyes that can witness His Presence, and yet it is because he was
present that the appearance of resurrection came about.
It is much the same as the Transfiguration. When the disciples were lifted up to
witness the Body of Light, they witnessed the Presence of Moses and Elias. They hadn't gone
anywhere. They were there. There simply wasn't the consciousness on earth to see them. And
so with Jesus. Be assured Jesus Christ is as present as ever. Life doesn't go anywhere, but you
will never see that which is present with human eyes. You must be lifted in consciousness.
Similarly, you will never see the Body that is yours. You must be lifted in Consciousness.
His Body was present but seen only when they were lifted in Consciousness. Your
Body is present but will not be experienced until you are lifted in Consciousness. And when
you are lifted in Consciousness, you will become aware of another Body than the one you are
walking in, and you will realize that invisible Body will never be resurrected. It isn't going to
go anywhere. It is always going to be your invisible Body. It will never be crucified. It will
never suffer. It will never feel pain.
How do we know It is there? Because that was the purpose of his demonstration.
“Thomas, just as you have thought I have been resurrected, when you come into the
knowledge of your Soul Body, the world will think You are resurrected.” Whoever comes into
the knowledge of their Soul Body realizes It has always been present. It never goes anywhere.
It is ever awaiting your acceptance, and this is the missing ingredient that you must supply to
your daily activity. You must supply the missing Soul Body to everything you do. For that is
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the purpose of the appearance in the Bible of the resurrection of Jesus Christ––to advise every
person on this earth that where you stand is holy ground because you have an invisible
spiritual Body which is ever immaculate, ever perfect, eternal, immortal. It is yours. Claim It.
Accept It. Live in It consciously, for that is the path to Transition.
That is the meaning, as you know, of he who enters the first resurrection will not be
touched by the second death. That first resurrection is the acceptance in Consciousness,
without ceasing, that right where I stand is an invisible spiritual Body––not made of clay, not
subject to the whims of this world, not subject to mortal mind, not subject to the mass beliefs
of the world––but free, independent, unconfined, perpetually young, never aging, never sick,
never suffering, never sorrowing. And when you have started to live in that body consciously,
you will discover the inner does govern the outer. You will learn to look at your neighbor,
your associates, your friends, your close relatives, your loved ones, and you will accept for
them their invisible Soul Body, which is undying. You will put on the garment of immortality
for everyone you know.
Now this is, then, the new Consciousness, or at least the first sprig of it––the
beginning of an acceptance that resurrection means to me the resurrection in consciousness of
the Truth from which I had unconsciously fallen––the Truth that the Spirit of God is the
substance, the one indivisible substance behind the multitude of forms that I see––not just
mine, not just belonging to my loved ones, but even to mine enemies. There is no place where
the invisible spiritual Body of God is not present. This is accepting the immanence of God,
learning to live with the Presence as a reality, as a finished fact. Not something to be attained
in the tomorrows that lie ahead, in the hereafter, in a heaven remote from this place whereon I
stand. Not to be attained by worshipping Jesus Christ, but by accepting his teaching: Within
you is the Kingdom of God, and that Kingdom is your eternal Life, your eternal Body, your
eternal Mind, your eternal perfection.
Where do you think it is? Whereon thou standeth now, to be accepted. And it is up to
you to supply that missing ingredient to your daily life, that acceptance of the fact that will
never change. Here stands my perfect Soul Body, and I don't have two bodies. And therefore,
the outer evidence of pain, suffering, disease, illness is a denial that I stand in the perfect Soul
Body. It is a denial of spiritual identity, is a denial that the Kingdom of God is within me. I am
saying I have not that spiritual Selfhood. And to him who hath not, from him will be taken
that little which he hath. But to him who hath, to him who has the knowledge, the acceptance
that I am the Spirit of God now––not tomorrow, not to be attained––but whereon I stand now,
I am the Light of God. Though I may appear to the world to be a criminal, though I may
appear to the world to be a Medicare case, though I may appear to the world to be anything
but what I am––I must supply the missing ingredient of spiritual Selfhood accepted.
Now we could go on and fool ourselves with half-truths. The world seems to want to
do that, but it doesn't say you should know the half-truth and the half-truth will make you
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free. Only the Truth. Truth isn't going to become Truth. It is Truth. The acceptance of It brings
to you He who seeth in secret and rewards Thee openly. The acceptance that I can never be
resurrected because the Spirit of my Being is the Resurrection ultimately defeats the world
mind, which believes in recurring cycles of reincarnation. We graduate from those recurring
cycles.
Perhaps it's wrong to call this the PhD course in Spirit, but at least it's a place where
we're going to face all of the conditioned beliefs that we have and meet them and route them
out until we can relax with confidence that the presence of God, which is the very substance
of my inner Being, is always here, always knowing my needs, always performing. And it
makes no difference what appears to me in the outer. I will reject it, for I am accepting only
the inner Spirit as my identity. This is following Me. This is denying thyself. This is picking
up your cross. Don’t talk about Jesus Christ. Follow what He did. Don’t praise Jesus Christ.
Praise the God He taught is present within you. Love that God, and that God will love you.
Bring peace to that God, and that God will magnify your peace.
Remember the little cruse of oil. What have you in the house? Oh, just a little cruse of
oil. Well, that's marvelous. That’s as big as a mountain. All you have to do is pour it. A little
bit will do. If you bring a little peace to God, just a little peace to God, the Father will
magnify that peace. Whatever you acknowledge to be present in yourself, that
acknowledgement is the little cruse of oil. Yes, love is present. I'm not getting much of it, but I
know it's present. I accept its presence. Good! Come unto me with that little bit of love, and I
will magnify it for you.
All that I have is Thine, but if you won't make the first step and acknowledge even the
little bit you have, how can I magnify nothing? But come unto me with something. A shred of
faith is enough, and that little cruse of faith will pour mountains because whatever you
acknowledge to be present in your Being is saying, “I have.” I have, not I have not. I have. All
that the Father has, I have. Where? In my Soul Self right here. I can't see it, but it's here. I
accept it. It’s the only Me there is. It can walk through a fiery furnace. It is my name. It is my
Being. It is what the Master taught I am, and you, and you and you.
Now then, this being only the first course, the first class in 1971, we want to get off
on the right foot of acceptance that the Spirit of God which indwells my Being is my Self.
And I must live there in my Self, not in another self, a borrowed self, a transient self, a mental
self. I must live in my Self, and who is going to do it for me? Jesus Christ will not do it for
me. He has said so. “Peter, you want to walk on the water? You’ve got to do it by your Self. If
I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto You.” The Comforter is your Self. And
everyone who has said, “Oh, if I could just straighten out my life first, then I could do this sort
of thing.” It’s the other way around. You first do this sort of thing, and It straightens out your
life.
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We don't make our own rules. We don't decide the way we think it ought to be. We
have one authority here, no human being. The authority is Christ. There is no other. Christ
says, “ . . .seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things will be
added unto you.” Now, that isn't saying first straighten out your affairs, and then come to
Christ. I’ve heard that two or three times in the last few hours from people: “If I could just get
these things straightened out, I could then go to Christ.” Well, Christ says the opposite.
In fact, we don't go to Christ. We don't leave Christ. We stay there. How can you
come to your Self? Who's coming to your Self? Is there another you than Christ? Hadn’t Jesus
accepted his name to be the Christ? Isn't that why He had overcome the world? Now then, we
go into the awareness, then, that every time I think of the risen Christ, the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, I must realize that the reason He couldn't rise or be resurrected was because He
was not dead. He was always living as the invisible Self, ever Present, ever Alive, ever
Being––in fact––the only Being on earth. And that Being, being the only, I am now. The
Kingdom of God within me is the I, and that I is the living Christ.
I must feel my living invisible Self. That must become my daily Awareness. Never
can I go seeking God anymore. Never do I have to go outside of my Being and say, “God,
help me. God, bring me this. God, help me to do that.” The invisible Christ of my Being is
here and now, and all that the Father hath is functioning invisibly where I stand. This must
become our daily acceptance until there's no question about it, until nothing can tempt you
away from that belief. Then you won't have to improve any situations because the situation is
a denial of the Truth. You will be guided from within. Omnipotence is right here without
lifting a finger. How? Christ is here. Christ has overcome the world. Believe it. Accept it.
Trust it consciously, and it will be a resurrection to every form of discord that you may
experience.
I am the resurrection. There are no question marks about that. It's a statement of
Truth: I, the Kingdom of God within you, accepted, lived in daily, I am the resurrection. And
so it says he who hath shall be given. Whoever has accepted identity as the Spirit of God has
all the power of God present where he is. You say, "Why doesn't it show? Why am I missing
this and that?” That should be clear to you: because you haven't accepted with confidence and
trust who You are.
We should have now the capacity to relax in the knowledge that where I stand Christ
alone is. The invisible Redeemer is the only present living reality of my Being. Only Christ
walks this earth. I am supplying the missing ingredient, that where the world sees form, I
accept Christ. Where the world sees pain, I accept the perfection of Christ. Where the world
sees lack, I accept the supply of Christ. Always you are living in the reality of the present
Kingdom of God, needing no power to overcome any other power on the earth because in
your knowledge of Truth, you know there is no other power to overcome. In confidence that
Christ has overcome the world, You rest, You abide, You accept.
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[Silence]
Suppose we take a little breather now and start again in about 10 minutes.
A big question in your mind will be: Well, if there's an invisible body here, which is
my body, how do I become conscious of it? I believe that was the very core of the Christ
teaching. How do you become conscious of your invisible body? There's really no point in
teaching about one if you can’t become conscious of it. When this difficulty made itself
known to me, I found I had to be very quiet and obedient to the Spirit. I had to show the Spirit
that I meant business and would accept guidance. Spirit will only come where there is a
willing, yielding consciousness, and it will not come because you have decided that there's
something in this world that you want.
Spirit isn’t coming to you to make your human life happier. Do not be deluded into
thinking that when you attain the Spirit, you will then have a happy, healthy, wholesome,
wealthy, safe, secure life. That would be another half-truth. The disciples were crucified, as
Jesus was, to all human eyes, but they had done their homework very well. They had gone
through their own inner crucifixion before the outer crucifixion occurred. They had died
before they died. They had died to the false sense of Self. They had been through the first
resurrection. They needed no second in the visible.
Now, in order to feel the invisible Soul body which they felt, which they experienced,
and which went through crucifixion untouched, it is necessary for us to finally come to that
place where we're willing to obey one specific command: Thy will be done and only thy will.
For until you have learned the secret of that statement––Thy will be done on earth as it is in
Heaven––you will be in a human sense of body wondering how to find that invisible body,
and the best you will get is a glimpse here and a glimpse there.
You will find that the sense of will which moves you through the day is deeper-seated
and more subtle than you have dared to imagine. Your very human life itself is your sense of
will. Everything you do that is not in the Spirit is your human sense of will. The very serpent
in the Garden of Eden is the human sense of will. The devil in the Bible is the human sense of
will. Judas is the human sense of will.
When you surrender your will, you surrender your mortality, for mortality and the
human will are one and the same. Where is this human you? How far back does it go? Can
you really locate the human you? Is it deeper than just a mind and a form? You'll find that
finding the human you is a task all by itself, because you don't know what motivates yourself.
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You don't know how far back these motives go, and no matter how you strive to unearth you
and to find where you are, you will always find that something else happens and you move in
directions you hadn’t planned to.
You're like Paul. What I would do, I do not, and that which I would not do, I find
myself doing in some strange way. You are moved by forces beyond your control, and they
move right through you making you do things that you hadn't intended to do at all, giving you
goals that you hadn't intended, and you will discover that the human will that moves you is
not your human will at all. Your human will is a servant of the world will. The mass
consciousness is your will. It wakes you up in the morning. You have nothing to do with it. It
is your will to do this and your will to do that you think, but it is not your will at all. The only
will in you is the will of the Father, and all that usurps the throne of that will is your false
sense of self.
You'll find yourself doing all kinds of things that appear good, desirable. They won't
be the will of the Father at all. They’ll be your mortal sense of good, and that mortal sense of
good will be planted in you by that talking serpent. You may think certain things are good for
you, but you've got to learn that that will which thinks so is your enemy. Your Father knoweth
your needs, and if you want to experience that invisible body, which is the body of the Christ,
you must yield that human sense of will because it has created a second self. The mortal self
that you walk in is the visible expression of the will of the world expressing in you––a false
personality, a false sense of self, even a false mortal structure. All of this is held together by
the world will in you, and that's why the name Satan/Devil in the Bible could never be
understood.
Devil is the will of the individual, the human sense of self. The only problem on our
earth is the conflict between the will of the Father in you and the will of the world in you. The
will of each functioning through you creates the division which appears outwardly as your
problem. If you were single-willed, obedient only to the will of the Father, the one will,
having no will of your own other than that will of the Father in you, you could not have a
conflict of any kind, for the will of the Father fulfills Itself perfectly at all times. And
therefore the secret of harmony is to live in Thy will on earth as it is in Heaven. The absence
of conflict between my human will and the will of the Father is the absence of the outer
discord, which expresses visibly that conflict. And so it may come to you that the first order in
which you attain awareness, living consciousness of your soul body, is to surrender that will
which is the very core of your human sense of self.
We are all reluctant to do this, but when you make the effort, you discover that it not
only is possible, but new vistas open. Now I want my will to be functioning in you, says the
Father, without opposition, because any opposition you have to my will would be fruitless. It
will only set up a karmic system and a violation of my will, which will penalize you
generation after generation. And so the will of the Father says, “Come unto me. Rest in me.
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Abide in me. Let my will be the only will in you. Consciously, instead of attaining my will,
crucify your will. Your experience, your function on this earth is to erase your human sense of
self, so that your Divine Self can walk through the false experience of death that the human
mind encounters, and you will do that first by surrendering your will.”
And I said to the Father, “How can I do that? I can't even recognize my will. It’s done
things before I know what to do. Sometimes it's gone so far that it takes a long time to repair
the damage.” And the Father said, “Well, why don't you be still and take no thought?
Remember the little head of the turtle that comes out from under the shell? Your will will stick
its head out. Watch when it does.”
And so you watch. You’re looking for your human will. Nothing happens, and then
begins the little bud of desire, an innocent one, perhaps. “I think I will do so and so.” And
that's that little head of the turtle coming out from under the shell, and you pounce on it, and
you say “No you won’t. You have nothing to say about this body, nothing whatsoever. Only
the Father's will in me, not you. There is no second will in me, only the Father’s will. Poke
your head back under that shell because you have nothing to say.”
Well, that might be the first time you ever actually have said to your will, “I'm sorry.
What you had in mind might be good for you, but it isn't what the Father wanted. I'm only
interested in what the Father wants.” And so the will gets pretty smart, and it disguises itself.
Now it sticks its head out, and it says, "I'm going to do something that I'm quite sure would be
approved by God. Let's go over there and help Mrs. Jones.” That sounds fine. Certainly God
wants you to help Mrs. Jones. So you're all ready to do that until something happens inside
that says, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. If it's the Father's will that Mrs. Jones be well, why
isn't the Father doing something about it? Why is He waiting for me?” And then you will hear
the Voice say, “I already have. I am the perfect Christ in Mrs. Jones. You can't help her. I am
already there doing it. She is perfect as her Father.”
What about this little will that said run over there and help her? This little pretender
was denying God's omnipresence, and you fall into the trap very quickly. And so, before you
go over to Mrs. Jones, you first in consciousness say to the Father, “What is thy will?” And
the Father tells you, “Recognize the Truth of Mrs. Jones, and then whatever you do will be
ordained.” Oh, you might go over to help her, but the Spirit will go before you because you
know that I am there, and then you are alerted to all the little disguises of the will. It wants to
get its own way. It’s going to do some nice things, and it's also going to try to glorify itself
when you're not aware of it. And so now you're not concerned with the outer world. You’re
concerned with overcoming this will.
At first it seems like a hopeless task, but when you begin to master the art of
overcoming your will, you see that your false sense of self is going with it. There's less and
less of a you there to oppose the reality of your being. You are emptying out a way for the
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imprisoned splendor. I said, “Father, I've got the idea. You don't have to tell me anymore. I'll
do it.” And the Father says, “Wait a minute. I haven't dismissed you.” “Alright, I’ll listen
some more.” The Father says, “I want you to do that all day, all day! I don't want you to do
anything else today.” “But Father, I’ve got to do this and that and the other.” “No, that's your
will. My will is do nothing today, except what I am telling you.” “Alright, Father, I’ll do it
today.”
And then said the Father, “I want you to do it for 29 more days, 30 days.” “Thirty
days of just following your will, Father?” “Yes, 30 days so that you get the habit so deeply
ingrained that automatically you will do nothing but my will. And when you will only do my
will, you'll find that you won't even do that, because my will will do itself through you. You
will be an instrument for my will. You won’t have to say, ‘Yes, I'll do that, Father, or no, I
won't do that, Father.’ You will remove all will, and my will will function as your Being as it
did in my son, Jesus Christ, and in those who learned his way. My will in you on earth as it is
in Heaven is the only way in which you can function in the Kingdom of God on earth. There
is no other way that you can function and feel and experience and know my grace, for my
grace functions only in my will in you.”
That is crucifixion, and that is resurrection, and that leads to ascension into the Life
which knows no end. My will in you is the only way in which you can know God aright. Now
is it worth the time, the effort, the love to watch your will and crucify it daily? If not, you will
continue in all forms of half-truth. You must learn to crucify the will. You might say, "Well,
that will just make me a––a little mat for people to walk over.” Your Father knoweth your
needs. Your Father who seeth in secret will reward thee openly. I in the midst of you am your
will, and I am greater than he who walks this earth.
Do you see how the crucifixion of your will is the acceptance of the I in the midst [of
you]? And when you're unwilling to crucify the will, it is because you're not willing to accept
the all power of the invisible I. That’s the conflict, the fear, the caution, the uncertainty, the
unwillingness to yield me that I may walk in I, and it isn't done with broad strokes of words. It
isn't done with elocution, with affirming and denying.
It’s done by the daily, minute-by-minute discipline of standing porter over that will
and saying, “You go back into your shell. You are not running this form or this life anymore.
You might as well face it. You're an impostor. You’re a second self, and there is none, and no
longer will I follow the talking serpent.” When that talking serpent is done, you're without a
human will, but the divine will in you is moving the Christ of your being in the divine pattern
of life, and there are no conflicts in that activity.
Now you say, “I have a job, and I am a housewife, and I have a husband or I have a
wife, and I have these four children, and next week the grandchildren are coming. How in the
world can I do that?” What's the difference what is going to happen next week or the week
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after? If to live in the will of God is our function, it’s to live in the will of God under every
and all circumstances, regardless. There are no exceptions.
The Christ doesn't even stop for an intended crucifixion to change its course. It puts
up its sword. I live in the will of the Father. That’s the name of Christianity. Whatever ye shall
ask in my name, in my will. And if you do not live in that will because you have this excuse
or that excuse, you're not only rejecting the will of the Father in you, but you're making it
difficult for that will to function in the other individuals that you are accepting on a human
level. You’re malpracticing them as well as yourself.
Now I know this is difficult because I have to pull myself back all the time, and I have
more time to do this than most of you. But you're always running off because something else
is calling your attention, and before you know it, God is forgotten. The pressures of the
moment are the only thing on your mind, and the reason God is forgotten and these pressures
are accepted is because we have not spent the time to ingrain the habit, so that without taking
thought the will of the Father in me comes forward doing what must be done in spite of all
appearances around me.
Now there is a way, then, of establishing the habit so that you're automatically
listening only to the will of God, the inner shepherd, thy rod and thy staff, no other. Many fall
by the wayside at this point. They have a will, and they want to express it. Those disciples of
Jesus were chosen to show that you can be trained by your love of the Father, by your love of
Truth, by your understanding to yield your will in the knowledge that this will which you are
yielding is an impostor––a transient will which dies when the form dies––and there is a
permanent, perfect, eternal will waiting in the wings on the place whereon thou standest for
you to say, “Yes. Yes, of course, you are here. Why didn't I know it before?”
The will with a thousand eyes and a thousand ears and a thousand hands is waiting to
perform its function where you stand. This is a yielding, and from it comes a great peace. You
mean I can just relax and the will will take over? That’s what I've been saying to you for two
thousand years: Abide in Me, acknowledge Me, accept Me in quietness and confidence, that I
am here, and you will find strength beyond your imagination. What must you do for Me to be
here? It doesn't take any great brain. It takes no massive concentration. It just says, “Father, I
accept you are here. I'm relaxed. I have trust, confidence completely, you are here. I accept
you finally. You are here now.” And that's where you rest.
I need no will because You are here. How do things get done? Well, Father, you're
going to show me how they get done. I don't know. I’ll rest in you. You’ve told me to, and I
will. Obediently alert, waiting, only the will of the Father in you. There will be a day when
you will look at a person's face, and you will be able to say to yourself, “Only the will of the
Father is being done in that individual, and therefore I never need fear this person. The will of
the Father in that person must be friendly to me.” And then you will look at those who are not
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doing the will of the Father, and you will say, “The will of the Father is all that is there, too. It
simply isn't visible. And so I need never fear this person.”
Do you know of a place on this earth that is powerful enough to push away the will of
the Father? I know none. I can tell you that the will of the Father is being done on earth now
as it is in Heaven, and when you have accepted that God is all, then only the will of God will
be accepted as being present. And again, you'll be supplying the missing ingredient that it
makes no difference what appearances come to you. You know God being all; Spirit being the
only presence, the only life; the will of Spirit is being done right here and right now. It’s will
is simple. “Be ye perfect.” Therefore perfection is the acceptance all of the perfect living will
of God.
This is the confidence you develop to rest in the knowledge that only perfection is
being done, for that is the will of God, and only the unillumined will witness the appearances
and be pressured by them. God's will is being done. Who can stop it? Nobody. Therefore, it's
being done right there where I see other things. It was only my false sense of me which hadn't
accepted God's will is being done, and now I have yielded my false will. There's no other will
here, only His will functioning. You see, you're walking in the Kingdom. Nobody sees it, but
you're walking in It.
You're among the 500 who see the invisible form which all had thought was buried,
entombed, dug up again, resurrected in some way. And you are seeing it has never left this
earth. It is the invisible Christ, and it is my substance. It is his substance. It is the enemy’s
substance. It is the warrior’s substance. It is the unemployed man’s substance. It is everyone’s
substance here and now I accept. I remove the will that will not accept and wait upon the Lord
to manifest that which I have accepted as present. To him that hath shall be given. Do you see
the invisible substance that is always present has not been accepted by the false sense of will?
It being removed, we come unto the Father. Every word I have said to you, if you understand
it, would make you take the next step yourself.
I will sit down, and I will discover the identity and presence of that false will. I’ll
know who wakes me up in the morning, and I won't wake up in that will. I will catch it before
it begins its day. And I tell you, you cannot do this with a human mind alone because the
human mind will express that false will. You must get deep into the Silence until you feel the
growing power which says, “I can stop this will from living. I can stand right here. Every time
it rears its head to utter a syllable, I can stop it.” And then there's this great power felt.
You can turn to the Father and say, “Father, there is no will here now, only your will.
Speak, Father. There is no will here. I have overcome––maybe for 10 minutes––but I have
overcome that will at this moment. I am ready to listen to your will.” And the moment you
have overcome your will and will listen to the will of the Father––not with an “and” or a
“but,” not nine-tenths of His will and your little will peaking out from the corner, but
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totally––I'm really ready to yield completely to your will with no will of my own––then in
rushes the Spirit, for the Father says, “I am a jealous God, but when you open your heart and
soul and mind and body to Me, acknowledging Me, My will, I come quickly.”
I have never seen a person try this without coming to a place where something
changes in their consciousness. They find themselves about to do something and they say,
“Wait a minute! Wait a minute! Is this my will or God’s?” And oh, how many times a day you
find you have to reply it isn't God's will at all. It has nothing to do with God's will. And then
you stop––if Truth is your only purpose for being on this earth. You can’t fool the I in the
midst of you. It knows when you are in your will or Its will, and your reward is just as
automatic.
Now it takes a lot of courage and understanding and vision to give up the very
substance of all human life, and it won't be done unless something in you has ordained you to
do it. I have the feeling that those who are ordained to do it are being drawn to our little
group. That seems to be the purpose of this group: A little band who want to go through the
ultimate Truth––not talking about it, but completely willing to surrender their lives to His will
in all ways. No holds barred.
It seems likely that this state of Consciousness had to be reached for those who then
went ahead into Jerusalem awaiting the Holy Ghost. For when It came, It came because they
were empty vessels. Their complete life had been shown to be a dedication to the Spirit. They
had visibly physically left their families so that we would know that you must visibly leave
every concept that you have. Just as we had to see Thomas kneeling and saying, “My Lord
and My Master,” we must kneel to the Christ within ourselves and say, "My Lord and My
Master.” That takes a great deal of humility. It also takes spiritual understanding, for it is the
way of transformation. That is the keynote then of all that will follow in our work in this
class. We wish to be worthy to receive the Holy Ghost.
A few words were said to the Pharisees that must be repeated for us. “When,” they
said very skeptically, “will the Kingdom of God come to earth?” When he told them it
wouldn't come through observation, that was for those of us who still think if I sit down and
think hard enough, I'm going to penetrate into something. And when he told them, “It is
neither lo here nor lo there, but the Kingdom of God is within you,” you can show your
understanding of those words by not seeking your betterment in the outer world, but instead,
knowing that oranges on a tree are not supply, but the inner Spirit is. Knowing that money is
not supply, but the Spirit is. Knowing that health is not supply, but the Spirit is. Sow to that
Spirit in your Consciousness. Be conscious of your spiritual identity, and you will discover
that that spiritual identity will become your money, will become your betterment. And don't
try with observation to figure out: Now just what is the way that it does this? Because while
you're in that human mind, you are pushing it away.
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You must be an instrument, not a second self; a transparency, not a second will; a one
Self, not a second mind––the mind that wants to figure it all out. Fine! Go and figure it out.
But have your deep moments of acceptance when the mind is totally still in a state of total no
thought, resting in confidence of the presence of your own Identity, not of a second identity.
And you will find that the Kingdom of God within you, your Identity, is your outer
betterment, is your outer health, is your outer supply. Your Identity is those things now, and
when you have accepted your Identity and no other, that Identity becomes the Word made
flesh. That is the secret of I in the midst of you. All that I in the midst of you have is thine. I
go to the Father.
That's where your betterment is. That’s where your supply is. That's where your health
is. The Kingdom of God within you is your self-completeness in Christ, and when you are not
self-complete, when you think you lack something in the outer, what you're really lacking is
the acceptance of Christ identity. The veil to that acceptance is the false sense of self which is
the will saying, “I lack. I need. I want. I've got to get this.” That’s only human ego, the false
sense of self, the false will.
Now, I hope we’ve made some penetration today. I would recommend that if you try
the thirty-day exercise, that you first give it one solid day in which whatever you do is the
Father’s will. If you don’t succeed in that day, you know the other 29 are going to be nothing.
You must make that effort that first day to get the habit started, and if you find you haven’t
done it, don’t go on a second day and figure that’s your second day. That’s still your first.
Until you’ve spent the day doing it, it is not your first day, and then 29 more.
While you’re doing this, not this book, Contemplative Life, but Parenthesis—that’s
where you should be reading, the chapter that is devoted to just that. It’s in the third section.
It’s “Losing ‘I-ness’ in I.” And I was told to do that chapter a paragraph a day, not the whole
chapter, but a paragraph a day. That’ll take roughly 30 days. While you’re doing the other 30
days, this is to help you do it. Now, maybe five of you will do that. I can assure you, that five
who do will come back here again, and they will have swallowed the canary. They will know
they have done something, because it will change you. It will remove the finite self. It will
show you the meaning of being absent from the body and present with the Lord when done
correctly. This is a far cry, then, from the world's way.
We have here a little article. It says, “Not only do the churches feel the quake’s wrath
down in Los Angeles,” but listen to this. One of the pastors at one of the churches said they
had planned to do a little work anyway on fixing up one of the buildings. “I don't suppose we
could replace it now for less than one million though. We had passed a motion Monday night
to do some work on it, but the Lord made a motion Tuesday morning, and that took
precedence over ours.” Isn't that fantastic? He really said it in jest, but behind it is the belief
that in some way this was a punishment to Los Angeles from God.
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Now, I don't know what he can teach his congregation, other than his belief. And this
is a human, complete unawareness of the meaning of crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.
No awareness that this a teaching that Christ in you is living this very moment. I
would not like to see our children brought up in a repetition of those errors when the Truth is
now very strong on the earth. And so we come to the end of our first class. We’re preparing
for Easter, I suspect, in which we do not say He has risen, but rather, Christ in me is the
accepted fact of my Being.
Part of our normal procedure is, for the student who wishes questions to be answered,
to have them in writing. And if you will put them on the desk here before a class or during the
intermission, preferably before, they will be answered in the class. We prefer it that way
rather than to be spoken as questions from the audience.
Well, happy Valentine’s Day with love.
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Class 7
Freeways Of The Soul
Herb: Now the assignment last week was to crucify the human will. We were given
an assignment to surrender the human will so that the I of Being could come forth into living
experience, and this surrender of the human will was to be done in the following manner.
Each of us was to stand watching the will, just as Jesus said to his disciples in those last
moments, “Could you not watch with me one hour more?” We were to watch the human will,
our will, and not to permit it to function. This was to be done daily, first in one complete day,
to reach that level of consciousness which could say to the human will, “Thou hast no power
over me. There's nothing you have to do or say that can influence me in any way, for the only
will in me is the will of the Father, and that will, and that will alone will I respond to.”
Now, if you have not done that exercise, then you must start afresh today or
tomorrow and go through the crucifixion of the human will. For until there is no human will,
the will of the Father in you cannot manifest Its glory. Then we were told that when we have
mastered the technique of being no longer enslaved by the human will for that day––and only
then––we were ready to proceed to do this for another 30 days.
I'm quite sure those of you who have tried have seen how difficult it is to master the
art of liberation from your own human will. Some may have even encountered the problem
of not being willing to do it, not wanting to yield their human will, let alone being able to
overcome it.
And so it matters not how long you delay this and whether or not you do it this year or
not. This is going to be a requirement for your spiritual progress, and it isn't because anyone
tells you it is a requirement. It is because your own nature will finally force you to see that
this is what happened to the Pharaoh in Egypt. He wouldn't let them go. Every kind of
inducement was given to him, but he wouldn't let them go.
And so it is that Pharaoh in you, that ego will say, “No, I cannot yield this human
will.” But ultimately something will make Pharaoh in you let go, that the Israelite may be
born, and that something will be when the Spirit Itself shows you that there is only one way to
the Father through Christ. And as long as you are in self-will, you cannot be in the will of the
Christ in you. One must go.
In Moses' time in Exodus, the final way in which Pharaoh consented to permit the
Israelites to go was when the Spirit made it clear that the firstborn of every Egyptian
household had to be sacrificed until the Israelites go, and when the firstborn of every Egyptian
Class 7 : Freeways Of The Soul
household was actually killed, only then did Pharaoh say, “Now you may go from Egypt.”
And the symbology is this. The firstborn of the Egyptian household is the false sense of you,
the ego. That is the firstborn of Egypt, the world of the five senses. And only when this
firstborn, this false sense of self, is overcome do you find that the human will in you no longer
is in conflict with your divine Selfhood and the divine will in you. And so delay, if you will.
Yield not, if you will not, but ultimately you must find the way to persuade Pharaoh that he
must let Christ be born in you.
Now this invisible sense of Self, this invisible body of Self that you see not but is
there, this has been veiled from us all these years, and we walk in a concept of self. We call it
“me,” the mortal self. We know it isn't God's divine Creation, and we have been taught by the
Master that he walked this earth in this divine Self, in the invisible Self, the invisible Self that
became visible and was called the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the invisible Self that was
revealed as the invisible Self of every man and woman and child who walks the earth. Now,
we want to experience that invisible Self. We want to come out of Egypt, out of the sense of
mortality, out of the false ego, out of the false body, out of the false life, out of the darkness of
the five senses, out of all twoness, all duality. We want to walk in the fullness of our Being.
Now, here's the thought I'd like you to dwell with for a moment. You are, if you are
not in the Spirit, always functioning as a fraction of your Being, and it is only when you have
attained an awareness of your spiritual Self that the All-ness of your Being will be functioning
in every minute of your life. It is important now to bring into play the All-ness of your Being.
And so we must go behind the veils. You are at this moment all that you can ever be. Never in
another million years can you be more than you are at this moment. All that you are this
moment, you are forever, for the Self of you will never be greater than Itself.
Now we must go behind the seven veils, the seven veils that veil you from your own
Being. And to do this, we're going to meditate in a different way than we usually do. And for
those of you who plan to take notes, I would advise you in this meditation it would be unwise.
Whatever is said in the meditation you may come and hear on the tape privately if you wish,
or you may ask questions about it, but for your own sake enter the meditation, not with a
pencil in hand, not with a thought in mind, or you will lose what you have come for. I don't
often request that, but this is the time.
We are going behind the seven veils, and those seven veils are going to be these:
Time, space, form, matter, the motion of matter, the will, and the ego. When you go behind
these seven veils, you will discover there is another You waiting there to be claimed, to be
lived in, to be experienced, and that is your eternal Self. That eternal Self which at this
moment is all that you are and all that you ever will be. And it is our purpose to bring into this
moment that eternal Self so that you may live in that eternal Self for every moment, instead of
in the passing self. And so as we discovered the invisible form of Jesus, the incorporeal Self
which we called Resurrection, but now we call the realization that his eternal Self is ever
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present and was present then—and but a handful became aware of that eternal Self—we can
then proceed to the understanding that he was not resurrected, but rather they became aware
of his eternal Self.
What does that mean to us? It means that we, too, can become aware of our eternal
Self, for It is all that is here now. Your eternal Self is now where I ask you to live in your
invisible form as pure Consciousness, not in a physical form, and dwell there for a moment,
abiding in the knowledge that there is here an I, an invisible I, not touchable, not seen by
human eyes. But it is I. It is my Body of the Soul. It is ever present awaiting my recognition,
and now I recognize it.
For the moment I live in it. I accept the presence of the Christ Body. And there I
dwell, and I am not in the veil of time. There is no time for my Christ Self. The Christ Self
that I am is already in every tomorrow, right now. Right this minute, I am in every tomorrow.
Right this second, I am in every yesterday. I, the Christ Self, am now in all eternity. There is
no time in which I am not. Is God in passing time? Is the child of God in passing time if I and
the Father are one? And so I dwell in the knowledge that I am in the Eternal. You cannot find
my invisible body in time. And yet, here it is now, here.
I must come to an awareness of it. Tomorrow the form will appear, but I will still be
then what I am this moment. I am detaching myself from the form. I am living in the Life of
my Self, in the Life of my Self that is forever. I am letting that Life be known to my
consciousness. I am Life eternal, and that is where I dwell now, independent of time. Five
hundred years from now, as time goes, will make no change whatsoever in my eternal Life.
I will be exactly then what I am this moment. I am acknowledging my spiritual

identity. I am acknowledging the presence of the Father as the Substance of my spiritual
identity. I and the Father are one Life, one Substance, one Being, and that Being is pure
timeless Spirit. I know no other Being. I am momentarily out of the veil of time. I am also out
of the veil of space, for space is finite, and I am Spirit, not finite. You will never find my
Spirit in space. You will never find my invisible Body in space.
I am neither there nor there nor there, for I am incorporeal Spirit. Wherever the world
sees space, I am there, but I am not visible. There is no place where my invisible Body is not.
Everywhere is the invisible Body of the Father, which is the invisible Body of my Being, and
so I am everywhere, out of space, out of time. I am pure Consciousness. Anything in space
and time that claims itself to be Me is a liar, for if it is Me, then I am saying that I am not that
Life, that Spirit which is called the child of God.
And I am not in form, for form is finite. I am behind the veil of form. I see no one in
form. All are the invisible spiritual Life of the Father without form, without time, without
space. And I see no material self in Me. I am not a material being. I am not in the veil of
matter. Now you’re resting in a place which can never be touched by any material form.
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You’re resting where there is no lack or limitation, where there is nothing to touch, where
there is nothing to be limited. You are simply timeless, spaceless, formless, and non-material
Spirit. This is the invisible present Self, and because I am not material, and material is not of
the Father, the motion of anything material is another veil. Nothing created by the Father is
material and, therefore, the motion of matter is as illusory as the matter itself. All motion is
illusion and behind the veil of motion.
Now I come to that human will. The will of this material form which moves is as
illusory as the form itself. That will is not My will at all. It is not the will of the Father in me,
and therefore, it is another veil. And when I have taken these six veils of time, space, form,
matter, motion, and will, and have collected them into one place, I see that this is what
constitutes the seventh veil or the human ego. And behind all this I am.
When you practice this you discover there is an eternal You which could never be
experienced while you were under the seven veils. But when you afford yourself the luxury of
rending these veils and stand in your eternal You, You bring into play that eternal Self into the
activities of what appear to be the form in the outer world. You are loosing in heaven that
which you will now loose on earth. Under the veils, you were binding in heaven that which
you had bound upon the earth.
You are in the infinite nature of Being where Grace can function in Itself in its eternal
Being. And only one who has learned how to live there, even for a moment, can know the joy
of the eternal All-ness of Being coming into expression throughout the day so that the Father
who knoweth in secret can appear, manifest to the visible world in you as you let the All-ness
of your Being step forth into your daily life––no human decision, no personal me, no desiring
to improve the time-space picture, not being tempted to step out of the All-ness of Being into
the changing images of the world, not being tempted into the dualities. And lo and behold, as
you stand in this All-ness of your Being, "Here I am,” says the Father. “Abide here. Tarry
here. Rest here.”
And now omnipotence has a living meaning, for the All-ness of your Being is
omnipotent. Decisions are made by your omniscient All-ness without effort. Omniscience
begins to have a meaning. The infinite Presence expresses where you are because where you
are is holy ground, released from the seven veils of the human mind. Whenever you do this,
whenever you are willing to stand in the All-ness of your being behind the seven veils, you
will discover the glories of the invisible universe. You will see why we are told to love God.
How can you love God as a human being? You can only try. But if you wish to love
God, you must love the Spirit of your Being, for that is where you will discover God is. I in
the midst of Thee, the Spirit of your Being––love Me, and you’re loving God. Do not love an
abstraction. Do not love God outside of your Being, but come into the Kingdom of God, the
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All-ness of God within your Self and abide awhile. And behold, here I Am will do all that
must be done, for as you love the Father, the love of the Father comes back to you multiplied.
As you love the Father in you, you are multiplying the Lord. “I magnify the Lord,” said Mary.
I recognize my spiritual Being.
Now, what else is there to do when you have come into the All-ness of your
realization, but to rest and let the Spirit do its own work? Let the Holy Ghost come forth
expressing Itself as You, for now the Word will be made Flesh. Here where you stand, I Am. I
have been released from your concepts. I can show you why you need no sword, why you
need make no decisions, why you need desire nothing, for I am come and, behold, the world
is new. Rest in Me. Trust me. I am the All-ness of your Being, the same yesterday, today, and
tomorrow. I invest every moment with your true Substance so that you're not a form without a
fabric. You are the Substance of God Itself. You are letting your Substance live Itself where
you stand. Everyone who practices this will discover a new power, a new vision, a new
strength, something beyond courage itself, but a peace and a sureness, an awareness that this
is My Being.
I have nothing to seek, nothing to strive to attain. I am this Being. I have ever been
this being. I will always be this Being, and whatever denies it is untrue. Whatever denies it is
form without fabric, has no actual Being. Whatever denies my pure, perfect, present Self is
not a pure, perfect, present Self Itself and is, therefore, not here. Whatever denies my
harmony is a lie. Whatever denies my perfection is a lie. Whatever tells me I am lacking is a
lie, for here I am. It was in the desert that the miracle of the loaves and fishes came upon the
world, and it was in the desert for a specific reason, to show you there is no such thing as a
desert. There is no place where God is absent. The desert is a concept, and there in the desert
was the one who knew that here God is. There is no desert in your Life. Wherever you are is
here, and here God is.
And so you take the words now: Here God is. It was Ruth who was told by Boaz,
“Don’t go out there. Stay here and glean the fields here.” When Elijah left Elisha, he said,
“All you’ve got to do is ‘Tarry here.’” No greater words have ever been spoken: “Tarry here.
Abide here.” All through the Old Testament, wherever you see that miracle word “here,”
you're seeing a great secret revealed. Here is God, right here, and when you accept God is
here, can its opposite be here? Can you accept discord and be accepting God is here at the
same time? Ah, but you cannot change the fact that God is here because that is the fact.
Therefore the discord is not here. Always now, you can stand in the realization that God is
here. Wherever you go, God is here. Right now where you are, God is here. This becomes
your religion: God is here. And where God is, perfection is. I am.
This is bringing the All-ness of Being right here, now––not in time or space, not in
form or motion, not in ego or will, but in the spiritual Truth of Being. Here God is, and you
can depend on this. And whenever you learn to depend on this, it will be your permanent
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dispensation. “Here in the midst of the desert,” said the Master, “God is. Sit down and eat,”
and the Isness of God became the loaves and fishes. Now that Holy Ghost, which becomes
loaves and fishes to 5,000, is the Holy Ghost that sets your table when you know here is God.
But here is God and here I am are one and the same. Here where I am is my own
Being, which is God. Here is the Spirit of God which I am, and this that threatens me, this that
paints up a discordant picture, this that tells me something is wrong, cannot be true. It has
nothing to do with me. It is impersonating me. It is presenting to me a concept in time and in
space of matter and form, and investing it with a false ego and a will.
Every second of this mortal world is another image of yourself in time and space. If
you made a collage of yourself in time and space of all of the minutes you have known, all of
it put together would not be here, for you are always the All-ness of your Being, invisible to
human sense, but ever present where the form appears to be. Step back from the form. Accept
the Life. Rest in the All-ness frequently, and watch the miracle of how the All-ness of your
Being, which is ever here, is actually the first Resurrection. I, the All-ness of your Being, I am
the first Resurrection. If you know Me, there is no second death. I am here always, and
merely to know my Presence and rest in Me is to release my infinite power, my infinite
Selfhood. That is how you love God.
Now in this meditation, we have been using Truth to open the way, and if your
meditations have often been difficult, have not opened the way for you into the Spirit, it is
because meditation of itself, when not preceded by Truth, does not open the door. You must
be reborn of the Truth and the Spirit, and when you know Truth, when you are behind the
seven veils or even two of them, you will discover you’re always out of the illusion of a sense
of self that can be hurt, distressed, despairing, lacking, or limited. You feel the symphony of
the timeless Self.
And what we have been doing at this moment is building the freeway of the Soul.
We’re getting out of the freeways of the mind. We’re getting out of the mental universe, and
we are letting ourselves be whisked away on these freeways of the Soul, for there we have a
new firmament. We have a new basis from which we function. In this upper firmament,
everything that comes to our attention is referred to a different level of ourselves. We’re not
so easily tricked into a reaction of the senses. We’re not fooled into believing that we are in
this time-space, changing image.
Now, this is how you will become aware of your invisible Self in a very dramatic
way. This is why we have been told to surrender the will. Because when you do, then the hand
of Spirit can guide you––building your awareness of these invisible mansions––so that
traveling on the freeways of the Soul, you can be led, not by a finite human intelligence, but
by the Spirit of Being, which alone knows the way. You remember in John when Jesus says
we must: “If you believe on Me, believe in my words,” and the reason is that the words
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spoken through Jesus are your guide through these invisible mansions.
With the finite mind you cannot know what is in the invisible, but these words are
spoken by one who lived in the invisible, and therefore they become your guide. You can trust
them better than you can trust your own human mind. When the words are accepted in
preference to what your physical senses tell you, then you will turn to all that denies those
words, whether it be in the form of a person or an event, and you will say, “This cannot be
true,” because the words say otherwise. I know, for one thing, if the words say to me, "Why
callest thou me good? There is none good but God,” I cannot turn around and now regard an
individual on this earth in a higher Light than the Christ which has said, “Why callest thou me
good?” When Jesus, himself, says, "Why callest thou me good?” I have no one on this earth
that I can call holy––no one––for the simple reason that only the Spirit is holy.
We must learn now that when we call an individual “holy,” it must be a recognition of
the Spirit of that individual. But if you are holy, then so is your neighbor. If one is holy, then
three billion are holy because the recognition of Spirit cannot be withheld from a single one.
And so, yes, I will call this one holy, but I must call that one holy. I must see that all is holy
because all is the invisible Being, the invisible Spirit, and no man is to be revered, neither
mother nor father, brother nor sister. There is no individual human personal holiness in any
man, if you would love God. But if you would not love God, then you can have holy people.
You can divide his garment if you wish, and you can walk out of the All-ness of your Being
into duality, denying the Christ teaching of one.
Now you see how far astray three billion people can go, looking up to authorities in
various fields, when there is only one Being on this earth. And so we are to come out––out of
the hero worship, out of the superstitious worship, out of the human worship, out of the
graven images of the mind. We are to release our own form from a graven image in the mind,
and we are to love only Reality, that invisible Spirit which is the Being to which we are all
heir as Christ. When you do this, when you take yourself behind the seven veils, when you
accept the All-ness of your Being, then Christ in you will accept Christ everywhere else.
Christ in you will call no man holy. Christ in you will call no man a sinner. Christ in
you will see neither Greek nor Jew, white nor black. Christ in you will see one impersonal,
infinite Being, and that infinite Being will be your Soul Body, which is the Kingdom of God
on earth as it is in Heaven, and that Soul Body is the only Body you will ever have. That
infinite Soul Body is the Soul Body of your neighbor. It is the Soul Body of the one you
would call a sinner and the one you would call a saint. And if you will not divide that Soul
Body, you will be living in the All-ness of your Being, and It will love you.
These are the days when it is revealed that we are to walk through a period of
transition while appearing in the flesh, and that transition will never be a fact of your Being
while there is a you in a mind seeking, striving, desiring, wanting, hating, condemning or
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loving just those you choose to love. There is a universality being revealed to us, that we love
the fullness of Being. We love the wholeness of Being. We do not cut up Being into pieces,
and love this piece and not that piece. We are learning to look at the fullness of Reality behind
the visible world.
Now when you step out of the fullness, of the wholeness, it will be because you come
back into the veils, the seven veils. Practice them individually. Practice them collectively and
discover for yourself the great freedom of being present in the All-ness of your Being instead
of in a fraction of it, instead of in a divided garment. Learn what it is to live in the seamless
Self woven from above in one piece––one full, complete, spiritual Being with no beginning in
time, no end; no beginning in space, no end––no corporeal you. That’s how you'll be healed
of mortality. That’s how you'll be healed of those discords that appear in mortality. The All-
ness of your Being will be your own physician.
We come back to the word “here.” Is it an experience or a word? Do you accept God
here? Will you deny God here? Every denial of God here is the beginning again of a karmic
series of events ultimating in a debt. Every denial of God here becomes another karmic debt.
Every acceptance of God here is the forgiveness of debt, the release of debt, the breaking of
karmic law. All of the living in Truth is reduced to accepting God here, in fullness, and when
you do that without ceasing, you are in the Lord's Prayer.
Our Father, the All-ness of God, which art in heaven, and heaven is here. The All-ness
of God is here. Our Father which art in Heaven; the All-ness of God is here. Keep that
hallowed. Keep that sacred. The All-ness of God is here. And that is the whole substance of
the Lord’s prayer. Here is God. Now is God. Every power of God is here and now. Rest in
this, for it is the Word. Integrity to that simple Truth will overcome anything. There are no
exceptions. It will overcome anything, for you’re overcoming the belief that there is a place
here where God is not. When you overcome that belief, you cannot externalize that belief
anymore. The knowledge of God's Presence where you are will always externalize as the
fruits of the Spirit.
Take everything that you think is wrong with you here, and see for yourself if that is
not a denial that God is here. And there you have your conflict––the belief that God is not
here. Reverse it, which is repenting. Turn ye. Awaken. God is here. Isn't that simple? Now by
your deeds ye shall prove you believe God is here, for only by your deeds can you accept that
God is here. And therefore, your next step in the acceptance is––because God is here, this that
says I have a discord has no Truth––and therefore, I can stand omnipotent in the All-ness of
my Being here, now, and come over the belief of the discord. People who have never done
that before are finding it quite easy to know that every discord is nothing more than a figment
of the world imagination coming into time and space where I stand. It has nothing to do with
Me. I am released from it. Here God is, and I surrender to that Self which is God.
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[Silence]
In this kind of a meditation, there is a place where to some the Word reveals Itself,
and to others the Word is not revealed during the meditation, but if you have attained the
vacuum, it makes no difference if the Word is revealed to you during or not during the
meditation. The vacuum, in itself, of no thought is sowing to the Spirit. And in that moment of
no thought, you may be sure you are preparing the way for many tomorrows which will be
supported by the All-ness of Being.
You are sowing tomorrow in that moment of no thought, and all the work that is
taking place invisibly behind the veils will manifest in due time in divine sequence in the
visible world, for the All-ness of your Being throughout eternity is being called into play
when you do this. There are no limitations in this kind of meditation. You need not pinpoint
anything to any need whatsoever. You need not enter into any mental formations of your own
mind. You need not manipulate. You need not direct. Merely to rest in that vacuum will fulfill
every need in its due time, and if something is a now need, it will be filled now.
You are putting yourself in the hands of your own Spirit as a preparation for the day
when you will walk consciously only in the Kingdom of God. You can play a little game with
yourself from time to time and drop out of this mental universe and walk consciously in the
Kingdom of God on earth now, for that is all that is here. The more often you do it, the more
often you will be saying, “Father, Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in
Heaven. Right now I walk consciously in Thy Kingdom behind the veils of form.” And this is
the re-generation. This is the re-birth.
This is the doing rather than the speaking, and if by chance the Word does come in the
meditation, at that moment you will know I and the Infinite have become one. We are One’d,
and no matter what was wrong before in appearance, It is done. The Infinite has spoken, and
the Infinite speaks with power. When the Infinite says, "I am here now,” there's nothing more
to be done. The time-space world will show forth that hereness which you have heard. Your
work is finished. You can rest in the Word. Don’t deny yourself this priceless privilege of
living often behind the veils.
Let's have a little recess now and see what Spirit brings us after the recess.
I'd like you to see the birth of Jesus in another way, perhaps, than you have seen it. We
have this invisible universe which is perfect. We have the fullness of our own being which is
perfect. We have perfect law governed by the perfect will of the Father. We have perfect Life
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which has no beginning or end, and yet all of the perfection of Being is not experienced or
seen or touched or known by the visible form that we call our human self.
And so we have Isaiah making this very important prophecy to show us that out of the
invisible will come something, something to make us aware of the presence of the Invisible,
and the way he phrases it is this, “Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign.” And that
means you will become aware that there is an Invisible that is present, and there will be a sign
of that living Invisible, not an invisible hidden somewhere behind a cloud, but an Invisible
which is present here, now, always.
“Behold, a virgin shall conceive.” A virgin––one who is in a pure state of

Consciousness––shall conceive, shall bring forth from the Invisible that which was invisible
to those not in the virgin or pure state of Consciousness. But if you were in that pure state of
Consciousness, you would conceive as the virgin does. “ . . . a virgin will conceive, and bear a
son, and shall call his name . . .” what? Why is the name to be called Immanuel? Derivatively,
it means: Here is God. God is here––Immanuel. The evidence, the sign that God is here
invisibly is the name that will be given to the child, Immanuel, God with us––not God with
that child alone––God with us.
And so the child is born, and we go over to Matthew from Isaiah. “ . . . she shall bring
forth a son, and [thou] shalt call his name JESUS: . . . .” But over here it said his name would
be Immanuel. God with us, then, and Jesus––Immanuel and Jesus––are one and the same
name. Isaiah told us the child would be called Immanuel, and here we are told the child will
be called Jesus. Immanuel means God with us. Jesus, then, is the sign of God with us, for
Jesus is going to become aware of God with us, and because Jesus becomes aware of God
with us, Jesus goes forth to do the works of God. As you become aware of God with you, you
go forth to do the works of God.
“Now all this was done that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken of the Lord by the
prophet saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall
call his name Immanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” And so we are being given
this great knowledge of our true heritage that God is with us: I can never leave thee or forsake
thee. Now let’s see what some of the great prophets have done with this.
Let's go to Galatians. Let’s see what Paul has to say about Immanuel. What we're
trying to find is the thread of meaning in Immanuel to show that it relates not to the birth of
Jesus, but to the evidence given through the birth of Jesus and through his ultimate acceptance
of God with him, that we are being given the knowledge that God with us is the Christ of our
own Being. Now in Galatians, chapter 4: 4-7, “ . . .when the fullness of the time was come,
God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, To redeem them that were
under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.”
And so there quickly, Paul is pointing out that we are under karmic law, but the Christ
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is born in Jesus to show us there is a Christ waiting to be born in us, “that we might receive
the adoption of sons. And because ye are Sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into
your hearts, crying Abba, Father. Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a
son, then an heir of God through Christ.” Of course, it's very clear that we're being told to
recognize Christ in us as Jesus recognized Christ in Jesus.
Again, we go to John in one of his epistles, and this is the First John, third chapter and
the second verse, “Behold, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we
shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear,”—And who is he?—“we shall be like him;
for we shall see him as he is.” We shall be like Him. We shall be like the one whom Isaiah
predicted would be called Immanuel and was called Jesus. How could we be like him unless
we are Christ-ed? And then you’ll know that Christ-ing does not take place in time or in space
or in a mortal body, in a physical being.
You get behind the veil, and what do you find? The Christ-ing is simply your
acceptance that Christ I am. Always you are being brought right into the here, now––
Immanuel. God is with us as my invisible Self, Christ. Is there any doubt of it? We come to
Romans, the eighth chapter, the 28th verse. Always there is a re-affirmation of the identity of
every man on earth, not just you, not just me, but all who walk in a mortal form are being
clarified to our Consciousness as the invisible Christ here and now, and they don't have to
attain it.
Romans 8:28-29: “[And] we know that all things work together for good to them that
love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” Not according to their purpose,
but called according to his purpose. “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to
be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
The firstborn among many brethren. We are the brethren, are we not? And to be brothers in
Christ, we must be Christ. Now then, Immanuel is taking form in Consciousness as a fact that
is already established. God with you is the nature of your Being. Not tomorrow only. It has
ever been so.
In the first book of John, the 11th verse, we find this: “He came unto his own, and his
own received him not.” Now then, Christ has come unto you, and you have either received
Christ or not, for Christ is this he, and Christ has come to every individual on the earth; and
the sheep receive the Christ, and the goat says, “no.” “But as many as received him, to them
gave he power to become the sons of God.” The acceptance of Christ in me as the fact of my
Being, the acceptance of Immanuel, to them gave he power to become the sons of God.
And so the moment you have accepted spiritual identity, then though you appear in
the flesh, you have accepted the invisible body of God as your body, the mind of God as your
mind, and the government of God as your only government. You are no longer in the
government of the flesh, in the government of men, in the government of the physical senses
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called Pharaoh, the lord of Egypt. “As many as accept, to them gave he power to be the Sons
of God, even to them that believe on His name.”
Do you see that unless your name and his name are the same name, you are in
duality? Unless you accept his name, you are in duality? And his name must be your name
now. Scripture, which is the Word of the Father, says continue in my words. Jesus says if you
believe on Me, greater works will you do. But you can’t believe on me unless you believe in
my words, and so you are being christened the Christ. You are being christened the Christ
Body. You are being christened an eternal Being. And until you accept your eternal Being
now, you are not in my Name, for my Name is the Eternal One. Do you see how the fullness
of your Being is brought to your attention scripturally? And that fullness is merely functioning
through this visible self, and as the visible self steps back and accepts the fullness of Itself,
you’re in Grace.
Now Isaiah brought us the birth of Immanuel, but he also brought us the knowledge
that it would be a universal fact, and this is how he said it, to show that Christhood was not
limited to Jesus the Christ but had to embrace everyone who walks the earth, or else the will
of the Father in them would not be done. Now we're in Isaiah 8, and this follows directly after
the virgin was giving birth to Immanuel: “Now therefore, behold, the Lord bringeth upon
them the waters of the river, strong and many, even the King of Assyria, and all his glory: and
he shall come up over all his channels, and go over all his banks:”—Begin to get the
symbology “over all his channels and over all his banks:”—“And he shall pass through Judah;
he shall overflow and go over, he shall reach even to the neck; and the stretching out of his
wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.” How clearly God with us is a universal
fact. That brings you right up to John: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.” Now
that Word that is made flesh and dwells among us is Christ, Immanuel, God with you, God
with everyone you know.
Now when you're in mortal thought, not in Christ thought, it could be likened to being
on a party line. Somebody rings you. There’s somebody on the line, so they can't get you.
There's a busy signal. Or you might even be talking yourself to someone else on your line,
and still there's a busy signal. The party who wants to reach you cannot get you. Now what
happens when God dials you but finds a busy line? The Voice is trying to come through, but
your line is busy. Now when you're in mortal thought, your line is busy. And there's just no
way for a busy line to receive the Father, and so you have to keep your line open.
There's a passage in Isaiah that explains this. I think I have it set aside, and we’ll look
at it in a moment. Keeping the line open is going behind the veil of the senses so that the
activity of God functioning as Christ in you can live Itself as you. Not having to blast its way
through the physical senses, but rather, directing you in such a way that every action of your
day is an ordained event. That every thought passing through your mind is an ordained
thought. That you literally are walking the earth while living in the Kingdom of God through
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the knowledge of Immanuel. Never setting up a barricade so that God cannot dial you and
speak directly through you to the world around you or act through you in such a way that you
are functioning in the rhythm of the universe, literally making you a servant of the Father.
After you have analyzed the writings of Paul, I think you can break them down this
simply, as I have tried to do here. This is called Paul’s creed and I think it briefly expresses
what happens to you when you become aware of Immanuel. Paul’s creed can thusly be
summed up in five simple points. First, sacrifice your will to God and your heart, for your
heart is your Consciousness. Without this, nothing else can happen. God being real to you, the
sacrifice of your will and of your heart is done right where you are. You literally step out of
your shoes into the invisible and let the Father step into your shoes, so that all that is walking
this earth is your invisible Father in your shoes. That's the sacrifice of the will.
The second point of Paul's creed is to always obey the direction of the Father's will.
And, of course, this means that you're in a state of receiving inner revelation. The first part of
the creed, the acceptance of Christ in you, was your reconciliation, and the second is the
revelation that comes through because you are reconciled with Christ as your identity. The
Father and the Son are one. The prodigal is no more. Revelation becomes the blood of your
Life. “Drink of my blood.” How do you drink of my blood if you're not in My Will? And
when you're in My Will, then My Revelation is your blood. The blood of the lamb is the inner
Revelation of the Spirit functioning through your Being.
How powerful is it? In the days of Exodus, when they were teaching Spirit in a
material way, the Hebrews who had gone with Moses were told to sacrifice a lamb; and the
blood of the lamb, they daubed it on the doorposts, the two side doorposts and the doorposts
overhead. And then it said the Eternal One would come through the streets, even at night, and
wherever the lintel and the doorposts were not daubed in the lamb's blood, there the firstborn
of every family would die. That grotesque picture has been accepted by many orthodox
people as the Truth about what God did.
Can you imagine such a grotesque thing for God to do, the Eternal One going through
the streets bringing death to the firstborn of every Egyptian, when what was being taught, of
course, was that the blood of the lamb is Christ in you accepted and that the doorposts were
nothing more than the front, the forefront of your Consciousness? You go through the
doorpost into the house, and not only the two side doorposts, but the overhead doorpost, the
lentil. In other words, the three-dimensional consciousness had to be Christ-ed with the blood
of the lamb. And then the Father would go by, and the firstborn of the Egyptians would die.
What would that be in spiritual terminology? The Egyptians, being the senses, and then all
sense thought could not enter their house, and so you were being led out of the senses. And in
front of that house was the Christ Consciousness, which was its protection against the false
evidence of the senses.
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There was no God killing anyone. There were no Israelites protected by the blood of a
physical lamb over their doorposts. There was an allegory that whenever you are living in
Immanuel, the world of good and evil––the non-world––does not enter your Consciousness. It
is protected by the wisdom, the power of the Christ. You have made your exodus from the
false universe, and so this was a prerequisite to receiving inner revelation. How could you
receive revelation from the inner Christ unless you had accepted the presence of that Christ,
which is drinking the blood of the Lamb? And now you're out of the three-dimensional
consciousness into the higher, and this is only the second part of Paul's creed, being willing to
obey what comes now from within, knowing I am being guided. I am living in the
government of God.
The desire to receive only this in a Word continually, to be obedient only unto it, was
his third creed, the third portion, to live only by that inner Self; and so he took us out of
human authorities. There was no person Paul saluted, not even Peter. He lived by the Christ
within, desiring only to serve the Christ in whatever way It wished to live . . . . Immanuel.
Now, there comes a temptation, which was the fourth part of his creed, to lead that
Christ, to say, “Let's go that way, or let's do this. It's a good thing to do. Let's do this.” And
know never to be leading the Christ, but only to be led by It. Never to designate to the Christ
what you would like done. Being willing to subjugate all sense of personal glory in the glory
of whatever the Christ is doing where you stand, a true servant of Christ. And from this comes
a trust. Who is this Christ that I'm serving? It's God expressing in me as me, and therefore, I
trust the presence of Christ with what I have called my life, for the only Life I have is the Life
of Christ, and from this comes the total absence of fear.
Whom shall I fear if Christ is my only Life? And that is the acceptance of Immanuel,
God with us. I fear no person, no condition, no thing, nothing in time or space, in matter or
form. Why? Because Christ is my Life, and to fear would be a denial that Christ is my Life, a
denial of Immanuel, a return to the primitive days before Christ was born in your
Consciousness. Now, of course, that's cutting it rather fine to say this was Paul’s creed, but it
more or less sums up all of his epistles, all of his work; the final, total, complete acceptance of
Christ in himself to the best of his ability.
And then when God dials you on the line on the infinite telephone, you’re home. It
rings. You hear it. You receive, and revelation continues to pour forth, not just His Word, but
His thought as idea, as expression, as love, as harmony, as Truth, as intuition. And it manifests
in the outer in ways that the human mind could never even conceive, they're so diversified.
Who knows what God has in store, other than the Christ? What human mind can anticipate
God? So you're wide open for Immanuel to show forth any glory It feels at the moment is
necessary. You’re open for Immanuel to part any river, to ford any stream, to show you that
there are loaves and fishes everywhere, that there are no hungry in the world.
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There are those who have not found Christ within. There are no starving. There are no
sick. There are no diseased. There are those who have not found Christ within, and to the
measure that you have, you will not hold them in bondage to the picture they present to you
because Christ within you is Christ within them. Immanuel is the universal fact of Life. And
only when, in your consciousness, Immanuel is universal and not confined to him or her or
any one or ten or twenty, or any group; when you are free of the belief that Christ is missing
somewhere, then Christ in you will function in the Divine plan. Always it is there awaiting
your universal acceptance of it.
And that's the reason we are told never to guide or manipulate or tell the Christ what
to do, for the minute we do that we have stepped out of the knowledge that Christ is all there
is. We have been caught in the images of the mind. We have been caught in the appearances
called starvation, pollution, disease. Where are they if Christ is with us? So these drop from
your belief. You cannot accept Immanuel and accept its opposite, too. You cannot walk in the
invisible Kingdom and also walk in the visible.
So Isaiah’s story about fasting is the way you continue to accept Immanuel. Now, this
story of fasting is found in chapter 58 of Isaiah. And, of course, it doesn't mean fasting in
food. It never did. It means fasting from the belief that God is not with us, accepting that God
with us is all that is here. We're in 58. I think that we’ll look at all of it for the moment: “Cry
aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, [and] shew my people their transgression,
and the house of Jacob their sins.” And let us interpret “their people” and “the house of Jacob
their sins” to be everybody. “Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation
that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the
ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God.” That's very contemporary,
isn't it? They even say, “Wherefore have we fasted, and thou seest not? They have kept food
from their lips, and God has done nothing for them.”
“Wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge?” But he
replies, “ . . . Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of
wickedness: . . .” In other words, why are they fasting? They're giving up food out of fear,
hopeful to manipulate, to encourage God to do them some good because they are fasting.
Now then, the word “fasting”: Stretch it out a little bit, and you see there are so many things
that people have done to encourage God to send them some good. But don't you see that if
they had accepted God with us, there's no need to influence God to do good? It’s the
accepting of God there, where you are, which is all that is necessary. And as long as you’re
striving in any way to influence God, you’re denying God's presence, and that's what is being
pointed out here by Isaiah.
You fast for strife and debate. “Is it such a fast that I have chosen? . . . is it to bow
down his head . . . to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an
acceptable day to the Lord?” How old-fashioned that seems to us now. It doesn't seem like
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yesterday. It seems like another world. “Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the
bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, [and] to let the oppressed go free, [and] that
ye may break every yoke?” Now what are these heavy burdens and the oppressed? That's our
false concepts. That's the fast, fasting from our false concepts; and every false concept is born
of the belief that this isn't the place where Christ is.
I'm sick. I’m not fasting. I'm believing in I'm sick, but if I fast when I am sick, it will
be because I know I can't be sick; Christ is my name. And so, here's Isaiah, 750 years before
Jesus, breaking ground for us, showing us there will be a day there will be Immanuel on earth
realized, and people will fast from the false concepts of the human mind. “Then shall thy light
break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness
shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward. Then shalt thou call, and the
Lord shall answer; . . . and he shall say, Here I am.” You see, we have thrown out the
concepts. We have accepted Christ here, and then the Spirit of your own Being, having been
accepted, says, “Yes, here I am.”
You must have that experience of the Spirit within you saying, “Yes, here I am.” It is
the beginning of the real anointing, the baptism of the Spirit. When “Here I am.” is spoken
within you, it is because you have accepted it first. “Here I am.” Then like Hezekiah, you can
say, “They have only the arm of flesh. We have the Lord God Almighty.” And you can rest in
the Word, “Here I am.” You can really rest in it because all of the power of God is in “Here I
am.” when It speaks within you, not when you say it with your lips. And it does speak when
you have fasted from the belief in mortality, corporeality, all of the humanisms, which are the
denial of Christ here, I am.
Alright. “And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul;
then shall thy light rise . . . and thy darkness be as the noon day: And the Lord shall guide thee
continually . . .” Now then, he's inviting us to receive continuous revelation from the Spirit
within: “the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul . . . make fat thy bones:
[and] Thou shalt be like a watered garden, [and] like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.”
This is what happened, before Jesus, in a man called Isaiah, who had learned the acceptance
of Christ I am. It happened, after Jesus, to a man called Paul.
It is spoken of throughout the Bible as a universal fact. The fasting from the belief in
mortality is a must if you would experience here I am in you. If you will not acknowledge my
Presence, how can I acknowledge yours? And from this comes the miracle of resurrection,
regeneration, rebirth, walking in the Kingdom here and now. Father, who art in Heaven: The
Christ of God is always in heaven, and the Christ of God is in me. Therefore, when I walk in
the knowledge of Christ, I walk in heaven, and this is keeping Thy Name hallowed, walking
in heaven through Christ. And I assure you walking in heaven is the destiny of each of us, not
tomorrow: Now are we the Sons of God.
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Everything that denies your Presence in heaven now is a lie about identity. You must
bring Heaven into daily experience and see that Heaven is the absence of two wills, the
absence of two bodies, the absence of two of anything, the absence of two lives, the absence
of Christ and me, for when I accept Christ, me is no more. You must fast from me to accept
Immanuel. We come, then, to the conscious awareness that I can approach my remaining
experience on this earth with the All-ness of my Being; and as I do this, letting my awareness
of Christ in me rise, whatever I do will be the Word made flesh instead of the human mind
made flesh. Whatever I do will be an ordainment instead of a personal will expressing.
Whatever I do will be under infinite Grace. This is the way to transition.
More and more you'll feel a great freedom, a willingness to relax. Father’s work is
being done always. Ten thousand invisible hands are always doing your work when you can
keep your hands away. Fear not. I am here. Love thy neighbor, for I am there. And, always,
using the fulcrum of I am here and I am there as the way you begin everything, you find that
great miracle which Solomon was trying to give to his workers. The minute you touch I am
here, you have touched Infinity everywhere, for that which I am here, I am everywhere, and
every door is unlocked for the one who lives in I am here. There is no place throughout
infinity and eternity that you are not touching when you touch I am here right where you are.
That is the secret of harmony, accepting I am here right where you are, and that same
I am that is here where you are is everywhere, and so you are touching everywhere when you
touch here I am. Tarry here. Abide here. The place whereon thou standest, right here I am, and
when you touch here you are touching all there is in the universe. There’s nothing more to do
but behold the salvation of the Lord. Don’t go outside of here. Don’t heal someone over there.
Heal them here in your Consciousness, and over there will conform to what you know here
where you are. All of the love you want to pour forth to others, pour it forth here, not there.
You can never get God there until you have touched God here.
You don’t dial a radio program there. You dial it here. Everything is here, and this
here is the infinite here, the eternal here. And the secret of your perfect Self is here, now, here.
So many times we have found the error of trying to heal someone there. You can't do it,
because there is no there. The God that is here is the God that is here everywhere, and to God
everything is here. If you try to heal someone there, you're finding you're walking into that
which has no existence. There is no there to heal. There is only here. All of this is here to
God, and God within you is here. The minute you change and abide in the here, you'll find
that all of the theres call up and say, “Thank you very much.” The daughter you want to help
there, find her here, in God in you; and watch what happens there. Make that change. I think
that's going to be our message today.
Something interesting happened I'd like to tell you about. I was led to it after the
class. In fact, only yesterday, I think. Maybe today. I think it was yesterday. We started last
week this knowing only the will of the Father in you. The date was the 14th of the month, and
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I was led to a passage in Exodus, and the feast of the unleavened bread starts on the 14th of
the month, and unleavened bread, you know, is the Word of God. The leavened bread is the
word of this world. And so we actually, without realizing it, started the feast of the unleavened
bread on the 14th when they were told to do it in Exodus. But one thing troubled me. It said
start it on the 14th of the first month, and I thought, “Oh, here we did it in February and not in
January.” And I turned back to something in Exodus, and I ought to find this. It was just a
funny coincidence. It’s chapter 12, somewhere at the beginning of chapter 12 in Exodus. I was
concerned about that first month. And here’s what it said to answer that question. How
strangely this worked. “And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt,
saying, ‘This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of
the year to you.’ [Everyone laughs.] So I said, “Thank you.”
And incidentally, in that chapter 12 is all of the symbology about the doorposts, which
are the three-dimensional consciousness of mankind, and the feast of the unleavened bread
begins on the 14th of the first month and ends on the 21st, which would be yesterday. So all
of you who have worked for a week have been in the feast of the unleavened bread. We’re
going to do it thirty days anyway, and if you have gone seven or eight today, we still have
twenty-two more days in which we are standing, watching our will and saying, “No, the only
will in me is the will of the Father,” and that is our feast of the unleavened bread.
Well, have a pleasant journey. Thank you.
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Class 8
Remnants Of The Seventh World
Herb: There is a passage in the Psalms which says, This is “[Thou art] my Son; this
day have I begotten thee.” And we find in the Acts that Paul repeats this, not only repeats it,
but says that there is a time in all those who seek the Christ when they shall hear within
themselves: This is “[Thou art] my Son. This day have I begotten thee.” You might say that in
those words Paul has summed up the very purpose of this parenthesis: Christ realization. And
yet, try as we will and willing as we may be, we find that Christ realization is the most
evasive quality that a man can seek. It’s even more evasive than the Holy Grail, which man
never found––and yet, the Kingdom of God is within you.
Now let’s look at a few things here in the Bible. First off, a very strange statement by
the Master: “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words [shall not pass away]” will
never die. “Heaven and earth [shall] will pass away!” And yet, in the first book of Genesis, it
says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” And here, the Master says,
“Heaven and earth [shall] will pass away.” How can that be? How can God’s creation pass
away? Why haven’t we questioned it? And let’s look at that passage and see if it gives us a
clue.
It’s in Mark 13:31. “Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words [shall] will not
pass away. “My words.” The words of Jesus? Isaiah tells us they are the words of God that are
meant here, for in another passage in Isaiah, he says grass dies––matter dissolves, but the
word of God does not pass away. [Isaiah 40:8] And here we find Jesus the Christ saying: But
My words will not pass away. Why? Because My words are the words of God coming to you
through Jesus the Christ. My words will not pass away. The words of God are permanent,
eternal, infinite, ever present.
And then, we might at this moment go a step further and see that just as Jesus in the
body said to his disciples, “ . . . if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; . . . ”
we can now see that the words of Jesus in the flesh, appearing visibly to man, being the Word
of God, when he went away how would you receive those words? The same way that you
would receive the Comforter when he went away. If the Comforter is to come unto you, the
Comforter is to bring the words, and so there is the key to inner revelation. You will receive
those words within yourself. Within your very Being the Kingdom of God brings you the
Word, and because you receive the Word, It becomes the experience or the flesh.
Class 8 : Remnants Of The Seventh World
Heaven will pass away. The earth will pass away, but the Word of God within you will
never pass away. How do we receive that Word? What is the meaning of it? How can we
describe it? Of that day, and of that hour, knoweth no man. No man knows when heaven and
earth will pass away. No, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. The
Father knoweth. So take ye heed. Watch. Pray. For ye know not when the time is. What time?
The time when heaven and earth will pass away. The time when the Word within will
announce Itself and say, “This day have I begotten thee.”
And perhaps for you, on the day that this happens, the heaven and the earth will pass
away. And behold, there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth, for the Christ-ing is the
moment when heaven and earth passes away. And when that heaven and earth passes away,
you are in the Heaven and Earth that is announced in the first book of Genesis. That Heaven
and Earth is Reality. This heaven and earth that passes away must be the imitation of Reality,
and only the Word within can cognize the Reality.
“ . . . Son of man is as a man making a far journey, who left his house, and gave
authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch.
Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at
midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in the morning: Lest coming suddenly he find you
sleeping. [And] what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch.” So, we have a very specific
command: Watch. And we say: How shall I watch? Where shall I watch? What faculty shall I
use to watch? What does it mean to me? [Mark 13: 34-37]
Suppose we look at the Heaven and Earth that will not pass away. Suppose we learn
the secrets of the six days. Even a measure of Truth gleaned from them will show us what we
must watch. Now, you know that the world is confused about those six days, or those six
thousand days. What do they mean to us? Are they really days? It even says, “In the
beginning.” What beginning? And right there we have the great clue, “In the beginning.”
Before the world was, it means. That’s the meaning of “in the beginning”: Before there was a
world. And so it isn’t speaking about our world at all. This is not the six days of the creation
of this world.
It has nothing to do with this world at all. Before this world was, in the original, in the
genuine, in the Kingdom, in Reality: That’s the meaning of “in the beginning.” In the
beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, the high and the low. Do you think that
Heaven and Earth is going to pass away? No, only the heaven and earth that has been created
by the human mind will pass away.
Now, what is wrong with this statement? Ye shall think the Truth and the Truth will
make you free. Another statement: Ye shall think God aright, for to think God aright is life
eternal. What is wrong with those statements? The word “think” is not there in scripture. We
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cannot think God aright. We must know God aright. There is a difference then. We cannot
think the Truth and the Truth will make us free, although we try.
You must know the Truth and the Truth will make you free, and the difference, then,
between knowing and thinking becomes the difference between living and not living, for you
think with a human mind. You know with the Christ Mind. You think, and you are not
watching. You cannot watch with the human mind. You can only watch with the Christ Mind;
and if we are told to watch, we must learn the difference between knowing and thinking. If
the only way we can find Life eternal is to know God aright, then what’s the point of thinking
only about God and never reaching the stage of knowing?
Now, let’s look at those two and see the difference. We look all through the six days of
creation, and everywhere we go we find the same phrase repeated: God saw what he had
created, and it was good. And on the sixth day, there is a repetition. God saw what he created,
and it was good. In fact, not only was it good, “God saw every thing that he had made, and,
behold, it was very good.” “And” then “on the seventh day, God ended his work which he had
made; and he rested on the seventh day . . . .” And “Thus, the heavens and the earth were
finished, and all the host of them.” There’s nothing been left out: “All of the host of them.”
So complete is the creation that God now rests. There’s nothing more to create, and it is all
pronounced “good.”
Now, with your thinking mind, you don’t agree with God. With the thinking mind, we
don’t agree that all is good, because we have our concept of what good ought to be. We are
looking not out of the Mind that knows this creation, but out of the mind that forms a concept
about this creation. And it is in that concept that we have lived our human lives. But while we
are forming concept, this creation in the first chapter of Genesis is present. And the best way
that I know of, at the moment, for us to understand it so well that we can never be fooled, is to
take these seven days and look at them as you would seven mixing bowls, placing them one
within the other, the smaller one, then the larger one, all the way up to the seventh bowl, or
the seventh day. And you’ll find that the seventh day embraces all of the other six.
Now instead of days, let us change those to worlds––seven worlds. And the one
seventh world comprises the other six, so that we have one complete world, and within it six
other worlds. And yet, these six other worlds within are not really worlds. They are levels of
consciousness, each one being a higher level, a higher consciousness about the one world,
about the seventh. But always, the one, the seventh is present in each of the other six, so that
you might call the six worlds the six veils, the six wombs of creation through which we will
pass to become aware of the fullness of the one, the seventh.
But always, good is present. Always good is all that is present. And for the reason that
God rested on the seventh day, it is because that goodness pronounced by God was not about
a material, changing world. But God was saying, Spirit was saying, “This is good because it
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fulfills the Divine intention. It meets all the Divine specifications. It is enduring Truth,
enduring Existence, enduring Reality.” “Good” to the Father means eternal, infinite, finished,
complete, ever self-fulfilling, without fault, eternally immaculate and unblemished. And we
who do not see or live or experience that eternally immaculate Universe are not knowing. We
are thinking. But when we are knowing, that is all we can know, for that is all there is.
The perfect universe is the seventh day, and if you were in the one, the first day, you
would still be in the perfect Universe, but only in that veil. And as you come up and up and
up, lifting the veils of consciousness, you are always in the perfect Universe, even though to
the thinking mind it is not apparent. And so the prophet was showing us that we walk now in
the perfect Universe, regardless of the womb of creation in which we stand. When we were
nothing but a mineral, we were in the fullness of God but didn’t know it. And now, as we
stand in the human state, the creature, if we are renewed by the renewing of the mind, lifting
the veil of the senses, we will behold that we are in the perfect seventh day Universe where all
is good. And this is the nature of watching.
To watch is to know that here where I stand is the full, perfect Universe of the Father,
and the six days are the six levels of consciousness through which we all pass to arrive at the
seventh day––the realization of the fullness of Being. But always, the fullness of Being is
present. There was a mystic in about the eleventh century, a Spanish mystic, Maimonides. He
made a great remark, and he made it long before man discovered evolution. He said God
never created an ape so that it could evolve into a man. What God has created Is. It doesn’t
become something else. God’s creation Is, finished, complete, Being what It Is. God’s creation
is Being, not becoming.
And so we find that this first chapter of Genesis is telling us that the Garden of Eden is
where you stand in the knowledge of Truth, not in thought about it, but in the knowledge of It.
And Joel has told us what knowing means. Your mind can never know. Your Consciousness
knows, and therefore, the mind must become a servant of the Consciousness. Your
Consciousness is your Soul. And your mind becoming a servant of the Soul knows, for the
Soul does the knowing. The mind does the thinking. And the Soul feeds Its knowing to the
mind, which receives, and that is watching. And when your mind is a servant of your Soul,
you know that what is called the seventh day of creation is your Self, the one and only Self
that is being Itself. But not tomorrow, not remotely, but here and now, the One is.
You will be shocked to find that many people on this earth who think they have
accepted the presence of God have not. It might shock you to discover that you, too, have not
accepted the presence of God. There is a subtle way in which we are fooled. The mind accepts
the presence of God, and you think, “I believe God is present.” But you’re believing with the
mind which doesn’t know, but which thinks; and that mind will pass away with the heaven
and the earth. That mind does not know. You cannot know with that mind that God is present.
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You can only think you know, and you discover that you didn’t really know when the power
of the presence of God does not make itself manifest in your experience.
A good friend of mine the other day said, “I haven’t been able to accept that I do not
have a physical form. I’m trying to. I want to. Sometimes I think I do, but I haven’t been able
to accept it.” The more I thought about that, the more I realized that wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t
that the individual wasn’t able to accept it. It’s that the mind of that individual which is trying
to accept it, even when it does accept it, is only the world thought deceiving us into believing
that we have accepted the presence of God.
And a little more meditation on the subject brought this knowledge: That until you are
certain that where you stand God is—and you are not—you have not accepted the presence of
God, and you’re not in Christhood, because Christ is where God is accepted as the only
Presence. When you, where you are, accept the presence of God fully, without reservation,
you cannot also accept a mortal form. You can’t have both. You can’t have God and mammon.
You can’t have knowing and thinking. You can’t serve the two masters. You might try going
into meditation about that, and you’ll find that you have reservations about God’s presence
where you are.
And this being the fundamental fact of life, if we turn away from it, what are we
watching? We’re not watching. We’re thinking. We’re affirming. We’re declaring. We’re
hoping. We’re praying humanly, but we’re not watching, for to watch is to know that I and the
Father are one Self. Only one. Where I stand is the Father. How many of us dare to accept
that? The moment we do, we must reject everything that denies it, and we haven’t come to
that level of Consciousness which can turn to the world and say, “I have overcome you
because the Father stands here, not me.”
Now, as we go through these six days of creation, the six wombs of consciousness,
veil after veil is ripped away. We come to a very strange place, the sixth day. We find the
divine Image, but God has no hands, no face. God has no physical form. The divine Image,
therefore, is not a physical form, is it? It isn’t a hand and a face. It isn’t a physical body
because God has none. How can you image something that isn’t there? And so we have to see
that the divine Image is not this mortal creation.
The creature has erroneously assumed that he is the divine Image. Look again and see
if you can find any place in the six days of creation that speaks of a hospital, of a mortuary, of
a disease, of a death, of an evil, of an error, of an earthquake, of a volcano. Where are they in
the creation? If this is the creation in the six days of creation, where are all the errors and the
evils and the discords and the wars? We don’t find them there. That is because these six days
are not about our world.
The first chapter, then, is not about this world. It is about My Kingdom––My Kingdom
which is not of this world. And the difference between My Kingdom and this world, the
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difference between the first and second chapter, must be seen as this: One is the spiritual
Universe in Eternity. The other is the material universe in time. Adam and Eve living in the
material universe in time, unaware of the presence of the spiritual Universe that is eternal
surrounding them, which is there called the Garden of Eden.
Now, we are watching, which means we are walking consciously in our Consciousness
in the eternal, invisible, spiritual Universe around us. And we do that by accepting here where
I stand, God is, for the Kingdom of God within me is the Consciousness of God unfolding as
my Consciousness. Only as the unfolding Consciousness of God in me is accepted as the only
Consciousness I have, am I watching. And only then am I receiving, for that unfolding is what
the Bible calls revelation.
That unfolding is what the Bible calls the Word made flesh. That unfolding of the
divine Consciousness in me is what the Bible calls Grace. And that unfolding unfolds the six
days of creation into manifestation as the seventh expressing the fullness, the All-ness of God
where I stand, but only because I have accepted that where I stand is divine Holy Ground
because God is this Ground. God is this Substance. This is the knowing which brings the
Substance––instead of the thinking––which brings only the form without the Substance.
Now, please try now with me to accept the presence of God where you are, not with
your mind but with something higher––with the absence of your mind––to reach an
awareness that God is here. For the miracle is that the complete, full seven days of Creation in
the first chapter of Genesis are the Kingdom of God within you now. There is nothing in those
seven days of Creation that is missing from your divine Consciousness now. It is all in there.
“All that I have is Thine” in the Kingdom of God within you now, and to watch means to
draw out from that Kingdom into tangible, visible expression the fullness of God Being where
you are, so that wherever you are, Omniscience is governing your Life. Omnipotence is
governing everything you do. Omnipresence is the accepted fact of his Grace in you.
Why? Because where thou art, I Am. Before the world was, I Am. Before Abraham
was, I Am. Now where you are, I Am, and I Am the seven days of Genesis. I Am the Father
within you, the beauty, the perfection, the All-ness that I Am. The perfect, spiritual Creation is
within you now to be drawn upon. It is the living waters of Life Itself. To know God within
you now is Life eternal. And this is how we step out of the passing parade. This is how we are
anointed. This is how we hear the Father say, “ . . . this day have I begotten thee.” For you are
knowing Me aright. Accept Me. Not two, not Me and you, one. One. For I, the Father, am
your Self. I am not blind. I am not deaf. I am not sick. I am not diseased. I will never die. Are
we one or are we two? You make your decision and you live or die by it.
The moment you accept God, your acceptance is not complete until you have
unaccepted what is not God. That which is not God cannot be where God is. Only God is
where God is. And if you’re not accepting God, what are you accepting? Separation. That’s
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why the devil appears in the Bible, the symbol of separation from God. The creature receiveth
not the things of God. The creature thinks but does not know.
When you have accepted God, you can never experience fear of any nature. Fear is the
belief that God is not where you are. God is the expulsion of fear unto eternity. What shall I
fear if God is my Substance? What shall I lack if God is my Substance? The Host of creation
is very good, complete, eternal, infinite, present where I am. I’m no longer in the six mixing
bowls. I am the fullness. The veils are lifted. I’m out of the womb. I am born of the Father. I
am begotten. I Am the spiritual Creation.
When you work with this consistently, not being soft on yourself, the presence of God
will be realized, and the absence of anything unlike God will be realized. And the error of
world thought presenting itself to you at any time will be recognized as a nothingness––
without conscious effort, without a lot of words, without any thought––because I the Father
accepted as your Being become the Christ walking the earth where you stand. Divine, infinite
Consciousness becomes infinite, individual Consciousness, and you are One.
When you have made the first feeble efforts to accept that only God is where you
stand, even though you may think you have attained some measure of awareness of it, you
have another test that follows immediately. Your neighbor is doing the same, and if God
stands where your neighbor appears and God stands where you appear, there’s only one. You
are never separated from your neighbor. In fact, there are not two. There are not two of
anything. There are not four billion. There is only One, and that One I am.
When you have taken the trouble to consciously look out upon the world and know
that isn’t Jane over there, and that isn’t Mary over there. Those are the forms. Those are the
outer picturizations of the inner Consciousness, but all that is there is God. There is only One
there, and that One that is there is the same One that is where I stand. No matter how many
people are in the room, but One is there. You cannot do it with the thinking mind. And unless
you do it, you cannot know, for God will never be divided into little pieces for the thinking
mind. God will always be the One, and the One will only function where there is a conscious
Awareness of the One, for that is where the miracles occur.
I am here. You are there, but God is in both places. The One is our identity here and
there, and now you have the pieces put together. You can never see a person in this Universe
separate from yourself if you would be the One. If you would experience the Grace of the
One, there is nobody in this Universe separated from you. It is that simple and that complex.
There is One, and you must be true to that One. And when you are, you are under the law of
Spirit. You are out of karma. You are out of all material cause and effect. For I, the One, am
the only power.
You cannot accept Me there unless you accept Me where you are. And you cannot
accept Me where you are until you are willing to crucify the sense of me, the sense of him, the
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sense of her. You cannot have human judgments praising one and not the other. You must love
your enemy because the only One there is I. You cannot make distinctions of any kind, for I
am the only One, and every distinction is a denial that I am the One. And so we think, “Yes,
I’ve accepted God,” but when we put ourselves to the test, we discover we have only thought
we accepted God.
Now suppose we accept God as a universal Being, the invisible Self that is the
Universe spoken of in the first chapter of Genesis. That’s why God rested on the seventh day,
meaning when you come to the realization of Self, you too will rest, that there is only I, the
one Self. In form, I have many colors, many shapes, many sizes, many nationalities, but I am
only the One. There is none but I. If you go up to Heaven or down to hell, there is only I, and
all else is your concept.
Wherever an individual makes the effort to discard the illusions of sense, the illusions
of thought, the illusions of mental judgment––and relax, resting in One––that is coming unto
Me, and that is watching. And to such a One, although heaven and earth will pass away, to
that One, the Heaven and Earth which is enduring, which is pronounced “very good” by the
Father, will never pass away. You step out of time into the eternal, and where is that eternal?
When we are told, “Before Abraham was, I Am,”––when is that time before Abraham was? It
is now. Now is before Abraham was. Abraham was world thought. Before world thought was,
I am. And now, I am. I am in the Now of Being, and that’s where God is.
Think back a moment. Think of a pencil. You take it, and you write something on
paper: “I hate John,” or you write “I love John.” Now, whatever you’ve written on the paper
had nothing to say about it. It was an effect. It couldn’t say, “Don’t write me.” It had no will
of its own. It had to be done that way. There it is. It’s on the paper. It says, “I love John” or “I
hate John.” Now, who wrote that? The pencil? The hand? Neither. The mind that moved the
hand that moved the pencil wrote it. The mind had to conceive the idea.
This Bible is telling us that as human creatures, we are not the mind. We are not the
pencil. We are not the hand. We are the scribbling on the paper. We are the final effect. We
only have the illusion of thinking we have something to say. Something writes us on a sheet
of paper, and whatever it writes, we are; and that something, that pencil, is the thought of the
cosmic mind. And as long as you let yourself be a thought of the cosmic mind, you go on
being an effect, something which has nothing to say about itself. But . . . thought is what
writes a human form. Human consciousness is human thought, and it makes a human form.
We are told to go beyond words and thoughts. And Joel tells us to go above thought.
Now, I’d like you to change one word. When you say “beyond thought” or “above thought,”
I’d like you to change it, for the moment, to “before thought.” Before thought, before
Abraham was––not beyond Abraham––before Abraham, because you must come to that place
which is before thought. And knowing comes before thought. After thought is finished, there’s
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nothing you can do about it. It’s written down on the paper. But if knowing precedes thinking,
then divine Thought enters the picture.
And so we must take our consciousness, not in thought, but bring it to the moment
before thought. Before the mind thinks, we must come to that place where the Soul knows.
We go above mind, and that is before thought, before Abraham, and that’s now. Right now,
before thought is the knowing realm, and when you live in the knowing, you’re living in that
which is before thought, and then the thought becomes the servant of the knowing. And lo and
behold, the Word of the Father, which is the knowing, becomes the Holy Ghost activity which
is the final, visible effect or the divine Image made visible. Then, you’re in that sixth world
where the divine Image is.
Until then, we’re still in the fifth day. We’re not in the sixth day until we realize the
divine Image by knowing. In the fifth day we’re only thinking. We must come out of the shell
of thought into the freedom of knowing, and that is why between the fifth and the sixth day
there is an evening and a morning, as there is between every other day. In the evening we
come into the darkness that precedes the dawn. We step out of one level of consciousness
walking on Spirit like a child would walk, and we are blind. We are in the evening. But we
then emerge into the dawn of understanding, which is called the day; and that brings us into
the next world. Until finally, we pass through each evening and each day, through each level
of consciousness, through each veil, through each womb––up, up, up––realizing Christ in the
sixth world.
And now, we are taught of the Father so that we can soon rest in the seventh, which is
the beginning of Life eternal. Free of all the concepts, the six worlds behind us, everything
functioning in its place in the Father’s will––above thought, before thought, beyond
thought––in knowing, for then you know the Truth, and It does make you free. Then you
know God aright as the very Spirit of your own Being, and that is Life eternal. And then,
we’re out of the Adam dream of the fifth world, of the fifth veil, of the fifth womb, and we’re
not frightened anymore.
Now, these seven days of Genesis, then, are a secret code telling us that we must be
willing not to cling to the form, but to pass through many forms––of which this is one––into
the formless, to pass out of time into the timeless, out of space into the spaceless, into
infinity––for God is Infinity. And Jesus discovered Infinity, God, the Infinite One, as the Only,
the Only Being, not the supreme, but the Only. Therefore we are, said Paul, all joint heirs in
the Only, joint heirs in Christ, One. Please practice that––the acceptance of God where you
stand––until something in you rings with the knowledge. Yes, of course, all that can be here is
God, and that which is not God is not here. It is the appearance made visible by a
consciousness, but it is not God, and, therefore, it cannot be here, for only God is here.
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“Now,” says John, “are we the sons of God.” “The place whereon thou standest is
holy . . . because God is there.” Accept, then, the power of God with that Presence, the all-
knowing of God with that Presence, the all-love of God with that Presence, and draw upon it.
Go to the well. Watch. Listen. Wait. Be patient. Be confident, for God is there. God is ever
where you are, being God. God is never absent where you are, and all that denies it is the
tempter of a mind that is not, of a mind that lives outside, not in the seven days of creation,
but in the false sense of self. Slowly you find your roots, and with those roots each new level
of Consciousness becomes another seed sprouting, opening new Life, new awareness, a new
acceptance of your own Being on all its levels, for every level of You is present now. You can
accept it. Your Self is now present and is omnipotent and omniscient. Whatever denies it is a
lie.
When we were told to multiply, the mistake was made in thinking it meant multiply by
having more children. It didn’t. Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes. We multiply the Lord. We
multiply by the acceptance of the fullness of God where we are, and this multiplies the Lord.
We accept that the complete creation outlined in the seven days is nothing more than Reality
ever present where I stand, perfect as my Father, without blemish. That makes you the living
Child of God. Now we watch as One. And whatever denies our divine Identity is not accepted
as a present Reality. Wherever we shall gaze with human eyes, we accept the same invisible
Reality there that we have accepted where we stand. We walk consciously in the invisible
Kingdom of God on earth. This is how we accept divine Presence.
The miracle of oneness functions in the Consciousness that accepts it, faithfully. The
law of karma functions in the one who does not accept it or is ignorant of it. And so, it is said
that the Light appeared, but the darkness comprehendeth it not, for the darkness is the creature
in the human mind who knows not that the very Light of his Being is God.
From those who make this their way, a remnant is formed which Isaiah called “mine
elect,” which the Bible refers to as the children of Israel. This remnant are those who have
discovered God in their midst, who have rejected all else, who live under the law of God by
the acceptance of divine Identity. And they pass from the fifth world into the sixth, and this
remnant becomes the seed of the sixth world. This remnant becomes the new Consciousness.
This remnant becomes the divine Image and Likeness manifest, and that will be when
we have entered through the fifth veil into the sixth world, living as one with the Father
faithfully, completely in the will of the Father with absolutely no will of our own. We will not
even enter that Realm until the will we have now has been crucified, that we may be
resurrected in Self, ascended then above world thought into my Father’s House, living as the
Christ. For I can assure you, nobody lives in the sixth world but the Christ of God.
That is the return to the Father’s House. It is the purpose of this experience, this
incarnation, for many who walk the earth today. They will walk as the Christ in the sixth
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world, and when the heaven and the earth passes away, the Word that will not pass away is
your Being, for you are the Word of God.
We’ll take a little intermission now, and then we’ll see what the second half has in
store for us.
Actually, we’re none of us trying to be smarter than the other in this. We rest in One,
and we let the one Mind feed us. The one Mind knoweth Its own needs, and having accepted
Identity, we are the One of which It knows Its own needs. It’s only when we have taken
ourselves out of that Identity that we think of ourselves as having to fend for ourselves. But
because I and the Father are the One, I can depend on the one Mind to function Its Life. And
Its Life being the only Life I have and am, I prove my willingness to accept Identity by letting
that one Mind live Itself, and I am watching. I am letting. I don’t tell It what to do. I don’t
guide It. I don’t make any suggestions. I let.
Now, as we let, we are the Infinite making Itself visibly, tangibly active right where
the world sees our so-called form. Only the Infinite functions where you are when you are the
One, for the One is the Infinite. And as you remove all traces of a second mind, a second self,
a second body, a second being, a second law, a second power, and are the One in all things,
then all that I, the Infinite One, have, manifests as thine. There’s no need to ask; I know.
There’s no need to seek; I have. There’s no need to knock. Before you knock, I shall answer.
Before you ask, I shall answer. Before you seek, I shall answer because the seven days are
completed. The Kingdom is finished. It is all present. It is all functioning as your Kingdom of
God within your Being.
That’s a fairly good starting point for us. The world has missed it because the words of
the Bible to the world have not been accepted. The world has selected the ones it wants and
the ones it doesn’t want, “but My words will never pass away.” You must accept My words,
for My words come from the Father. And when he said this, he gave us the key to all that we
had been seeking––not a comfortable little 70 or 80 years span in the flesh––the key to all that
Life is forever in the now. Unfortunately, we have divided his garment in many ways. We
have indulged in all forms of atheism while thinking we were worshipping the Father.
One of the classic examples is the way in which we have misinterpreted the meaning
of the remnant. There are no chosen people on this earth. If there were chosen people, then
Christ would not be the universal fact of the teaching that is contained in the Bible. In fact,
some of the disciples were unaware of that, and by teaching Jesus instead of the Christ, we
had this messiah complex instead of the universal nature of God. And so, we had a chosen
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people.
Now, everyone on earth is chosen, and that is the point. The moment you make a
selection and say this group is chosen or that group is chosen, you are denying the universal
nature of Christ, and you are losing that Christ. And that which you cast upon the water by
your division of the garment of Christ is what comes back to you. The moment any group
says, “I am chosen, and you are not,” that group has missed the boat. That group has missed
the very purpose and mission of Christ Jesus on earth.
Now, let’s trace this through so that to all those who come to us, believing this group is
chosen or that group—anyone who says the Catholics are chosen, the Hebrews are chosen, the
Protestants are chosen, or the Hindus are chosen—they’re wrong. Any group who says this
nation is chosen over that or this race over that is wrong. I, Christ am the Substance of all
Being, and that is not a fact subject to change. Now, that is the meaning of the remnant.
As you practice that only God stands where the world sees you and your neighbor, you
will be guided by an inner intelligence and an inner law. And you will be living in a path that
cannot be lived by those who are believing in a chosen group, nationality, race, section; for
they are those who did not understand if you do this unto the least of these my brethren, you
do it unto me. If you do not know your neighbor as the invisible Self, you do not know your
Self. If you think you are chosen and your neighbor is not, you have made the mistake of
thinking you’re something you are not, and many fall by the wayside accordingly.
Now, let’s look at Isaiah. We find in 11:11 the original remark about the chosen. “It
shall come to pass in that day, that the Lord shall set his hand again the second time to recover
the remnant of his people, which shall be left, from Assyria, [and from] Egypt, and [from]
Pathros, [and from] Cush, [and from] Elam, [and from] Shinar, and from Hamath, and from
the islands of the sea. And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the
outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the
earth.” Now to the unlettered, literal mind this is meant a chosen people called Israelites.
Unfortunately, that has been seen to be unrealistic. You can never select a chosen few.
Now we’ll see this remnant repeated again in Joel, in the first or second chapter of
Joel. I don’t mean Joel Goldsmith. I mean the prophet Joel in the Bible, 2:32. And you’ll find
the same repetition in Micah, Jeremiah, and other prophets: Namely, there is a remnant. But
Joel here now will carry it just a touch further. “And it shall come to pass, that whosoever
shall call on the name of the Lord shall be delivered: for in mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall
be deliverance, as the Lord hath said, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call.” Now,
that’s in Mt. Zion shall be deliverance, and that’s going to be a key, and also in Jerusalem
shall be a key, for later you’ll find in the Revelation of St. John the New Jerusalem which
descends from above, and you’ll discover the nature of Mt. Zion to be high Consciousness.
Now, Paul makes it clearer because in the ninth chapter of Romans, he gives us a
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furtherance of this understanding about the remnant, 9:24: “Even us, whom he hath called, not
of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?” Now, this is important because Paul, a Pharisee, is
now going out to speak to the Gentile, and not the Jew. And so you see that Israel, where
deliverance will be, is not going to be limited to any one group. And this beginning of
speaking not only to the Jew, but to the Gentile is very important because it continues to
encompass the four corners of the earth. This is the beginning of the Christ message
beginning to reach through the consciousness of all nations and all religions, and this is why
we must trace the meaning of “the remnant.”
Now, this is first beginning to show us there is a universal nature to Christ, and that is
why Paul says, “Even us, whom” you “[he hath] called, not of the Jews only, but also of the
Gentiles.” And then in 11:13: “For I speak to you Gentiles, inasmuch as I am the apostle of
the Gentiles, I magnify mine office:” He is making a point that he is now bringing the Christ
message wherever he goes, right in the heart of Rome, if necessary.
And then again, in 12:1, [2, 5]: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of
God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, . . . acceptable unto God, which is your
reasonable service. Be not conformed to the world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of
your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”
“So we, being many, are one body in Christ . . .:” “We, being many are one body in Christ,
and every one, members . . . of another.” Is that clear, that there is no chosen few? “We, being
many, are one body in Christ, and every one members . . . of another.”
And so, if you think you have accepted the presence of God where you are, and you
still think there is any chosen few, you have not accepted the presence of God where you are.
You have been deceived by a mind. It is only when you can look out upon the world, seeing
neighbor where enemy appears, seeing friend where foe appears—seeing the invisible Christ
of all as the only one Presence—no chosen few, no place where the sun shines and another
place where it doesn’t, no place where love of God is and another place where it isn’t. You
cannot accept the presence of God where you are and also divide his garment. This is
important to know.
Now, let’s further clarify in the Acts, in the thirteenth chapter, the forty-seventh verse,
we see here again the universal nature of the Christ: “For so hath the Lord commanded us,
saying, I have set thee to be a light of the Gentiles, that thou shouldest be for salvation unto
the ends of the earth.” Bringing it right up into the New Testament gospels, not just the Acts
and Romans, we find something in Mark about the remnant, and this is the thirteenth chapter
of Mark, verses 26 and 27: “And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with
great glory and great power. And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his
elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of
heaven.”
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Now, we can go right back to Joel again to get the full meaning of this because it was
clouded, obscured by the very nature in which it was written. This is the meaning, then, of the
elect or the remnant in Joel chapter two, starting verse fifteen. “Blow the trumpet in Zion,
sanctify a fast, [call] a solemn assembly. Gather the people, sanctify the congregation,
assemble the elders, gather the children, and those that suck the breasts: let the bridegroom go
forth of his chamber, and the bride out of her closet.”
Let’s look at that esoterically. “Blow the trumpet in Zion,”––a place or a realm in
Consciousness. So we find that Zion is where you watch, the high mountain of spiritual
Consciousness. “Sanctify a fast.” You’re resting from the word of this world. You’re fasting
from thought. You’re calling a solemn assembly because in your receptivity to the Word of
God, you’re only attended by the angels of the Father, His divine thought. We said salvation
would be in Zion. Well, here it is, in the Kingdom of God within you. That is Zion. Is there
not a Kingdom of God within every person on the earth? Then who is the chosen? The chosen
is the one who enters into that Kingdom, and that is the remnant. Those are the elect.
Unfortunately, the world read it this way. You found it again in Isaiah, toward the end. It said
out of Judah I would raise my seed, and the world has not accepted that in the nature it was
written.
Isaiah says in 65:9: “I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an
inheritor of my mountains: and mine elect shall inherit it, and my servants should dwell
there.” And so we have interpreted “out of Judah” to mean Jesus, and “out of Judah” means
shall come one who, being Jesus, shall learn himself to be the Begotten, the Christ of God,
and that One will do his miracles on both sides of the sea. He will multiply loaves and fishes
for the Jew. He will multiply loaves and fishes for the Gentile. For it is the message of Christ
to the four winds of the earth to prepare man, that when the heaven and the earth passes away,
he stands in Christ, free—the Son, living, never dying, never passing away—but permanent, a
permanent dispensation, a living Soul.
Now then, we have a choice to be the remnant or not to be the remnant, to be the elect
or not to be the elect. And if we are the One, we are prepared so that when the heaven and
earth passes away, we stand on holy ground. If we are not the One, we are that which passes
away.
There was a leper. He fell on his face before Jesus and said you have the power to
cleanse me. And the hand of Jesus reached forth and touched him. Everything that we must
learn was expressed in that gesture, everything. In fact, I’d like to make it a class assignment
to look up that incident. You’ll find it’s just two or three verses. It’s in Matthew. It’s in Mark.
It’s in Luke. It’s in all three: The cleansing of the leper. I don’t mean the ten lepers, when only
one was cleansed, and nine couldn’t be cleansed. This one you’ll find in Matthew 8, right at
the beginning. Read it in 2 to 4, verses 2, 3 and 4, and you’ll see it’s just that. The leper falls
on his face, asks for cleansing. Jesus cleanses him and tells him, “. . . tell no man; ” but go
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and tell the priest these things that thou hast seen.
I’d like to make that a class effort that we each take that into consciousness at home
and see what comes into your consciousness about the various shades of meaning there. Is it
just a man touching another man? What levels of consciousness can you reach that you can
depend on from that incident to make part of your daily life? Can you within your
consciousness reach out your hand to anyone on this earth? You don’t have to touch them
physically. Can you, from that incident, distill the real meaning of oneness?
And another lesson for next week would be the beginning now of the book
Contemplative Life. The first chapter should be nailed down in your consciousness. And so if
you will, Matthew, chapter eight verses two to four, or do it in Luke or Mark––you’ll find the
cross references––and the first chapter of Contemplative Life, much of which will touch on
things you already know, and yet things that have not crystallized themselves as permanent
Consciousness.
Now also, to make this an interesting week, if you will do this, you will discover a
new and interesting way of opening yourself to Grace. We’re not overlooking that now you’re
in the second week, beginning the third, of crucifying the will so that the will of the Father in
you is done. But as I pursued this with you, I was told, “Now wait. You’ve asked for My Will.
Here it is: I want you to look out and accept nothing present but the One. That is My Will, that
you go forth knowing wherever you go, only the One is there. And that One, being the Father,
you must go forth seeing not form as the naked eye sees, but essence, Substance, invisible
Light as the Soul sees. And you must accept that in preference to what the naked senses depict
before your very eyes.”
You must crucify everything that appears to the human brain and accept only what you
know is in the Soul, and you cannot do this if you wait until you come into a place where
there are people. You must prepare in advance. You must, in the sanctity of your own solitude,
know that wherever you go, only I, the One, will be there. You must prepare for that, and you
must in your meditation crucify all mortal form, resurrecting right there where the mortal
form seems to be that invisible Christ form.
And you say, “How can I do it?” Well, you cannot do it. You can simply rest in the
Word and let the Word do it. I think I once mentioned to you a case in Reno where a woman
was in bed suffering for four days, and there were three of us standing around the bedside.
Nobody knew what was wrong with the woman. For four days the hospital couldn’t diagnose
it, and she was in terrible pain. Well, we just watched and watched, and in the meditation
nothing seemed to happen.
And then the nurse came in to treat the woman. We had to leave. We were allowed to
come back within the hour, and we did. And now a second meditation began, and now we
were all looking at this woman who was suffering, and as we looked, there was a need to not
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see her as she appeared, but as she is. And so you sort of reach the place where you’re
looking, but not really looking. You’re looking through instead of at; and it was like a slide
had been changed in my mind. You know the way you drop a slide in the projector. It shows
something. You take it out and put another one. This slide just moved one out and another one
in.
And in an instant, almost imperceptible so quick it was, the woman’s form

changed. And I saw a luminous, white form, and it wasn’t a female form at all. In a second
you could have missed it, and then it was gone, but in that second she had been seen, and I
can assure you, I didn’t see her as a human being or seeing anyone. I wasn’t even looking
through a mind. Something else in me did it. Not I. Something did it. But there had to be the
willingness––not to look through human eyes, but to not look through human eyes––to look
without looking. To wait upon the Lord. And then the slide is changed.
Well, what happened after that? I can’t tell you what happened, but I found myself
saying you’ll go home tonight, and I didn’t really know it myself. I didn’t even say it, but
something was saying it. And the woman went home that night because someone had seen her
as the Christ, and it wasn’t me. But something through me saw her as the Christ, and she went
home that night recovered.
The strangeness of it is that the Truth of her can never be seen by a human mind, and
it’s only through practicing oneness that you enable the bridegroom to come, who sees for
you. That is the renewing of the mind, when you provide the vacuum for the bridegroom, for
the Christ to marry your Soul. And in that mystical marriage of the Christ with your Soul, you
see through different eyes that are not your human eyes at all. And because––because what
you are conscious of must by spiritual law externalize––the conscious Awareness of the
invisible Christ there must externalize as harmony and did, but no human being does it. It’s
the absence of a human being, that second when you think not, and the bridegroom cometh to
magnify the Lord.
Now these instances only happen as signposts along the way. We’re not always going
to come in and go out. We’re going to remain in the Consciousness, and someday we’ll find
that the various forms of error that appear to us will be no more than a leper appearing to the
Master because, having done our inner work, we will un-look at the leper. We will know only
the One is there. We will un-look at the conditions of the world, knowing only the One is
there; and if only the One is there, how can another one be there? And so that Consciousness
which knows there is no other one there but thee, Father, is the Consciousness that is
practicing the presence of God where I stand and where my neighbor stands daily.
Please read the verse, then, on the leper and jot down your thoughts if that helps, so
that when we have discussed the leper fully, all of us will not only have an understanding of
it, but we will have an understanding of principles that apply practically to every kind of
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healing that occurs in the Bible. What’s the difference if on the other side we have a woman
who has a flow of blood, if over here we have a leper and there a rush of blood, and
somewhere else we have a cripple? Isn’t the One the only Presence? Isn’t knowing the Truth
that which establishes the Reality as an external fact, because that which is within must show
forth without? And so let’s do that. And to refresh yourself, gaze again at the first chapter of
Contemplative Life. It will give you many clues.
Oneness accepted here and there is our work for this week. God’s identity where I
seem to be is part of that work. God’s identity where my neighbor seems to be is part of that
work. It is the fulfillment of the two commandments. No one will do it with a human mind.
You will only do it by coming up to the level of knowing, Consciousness. And that
Consciousness of knowing will unfold in the divine Image and Likeness on this earth, the
Word made flesh as you, perfect as your Father which is in Heaven. This is how you cast
bread upon the water, which will come back to you.
Again I repeat, if there are questions, they should be placed on the lectern here at the
beginning of the class, and they will be answered probably during that class. So far, in the last
three classes, we’ve had no written questions, but they’re perfectly welcome, and you may
have some questions on this chapter one in Contemplative. You may have some questions on
the healing of the leper or on the establishing of oneness where you are and where your
neighbor is. Feel free to ask them. It is important now because this class is for the remnant.
This class is for mine elect, those who will not go and pass with the heaven and the earth that
passes away. And the only way you can do that is to be unblemished, the Child of the Lamb.
We’ll finish with a meditation. We are not evolving creatures. Christ does not evolve.
We are not becoming. Christ is. We are not changing. Christ is ever the same. If I believe I am
evolving or becoming or changing, I have not found my permanent Self, and I am not
accepting God where I stand. God where you stand, accepted, is called Christ. You cannot
accept God and not be Christ. And if you are becoming, you are not Christ now in your
Consciousness, and that is division. That is separation. That is a gap, and it becomes a
“shadow of turning,” as James called it. There must come a time when there is no “shadow of
turning.” When you face it four-square, Christ I am.
Here now, God is, and that God which is here I am, and that is Christ. God, the infinite
Father, individualized as my infinite Being, is Christ––accepted, lived in, experienced. With
this we work and rest. I have no daughter. I have no mother. I have no father. I have no wife. I
have no husband. I have no friend. The Christ that stands where the world sees me is the
Christ that stands where the world sees my mother.
We are sowing to the invisible Spirit and not to the flesh. We are banishing the mental
discriminations, the mental judgments, the mental divisions. We are accepting His Words
which will never die. I and the Father are One, and that I, I accept for every form on the earth.
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We are consciously walking in the invisible Kingdom of God. That is where the law of God
is, in the Kingdom where I walk. I walk in that Kingdom in Consciousness, and I am no
longer fed only by the bread of this world.
Speak Father. Let your infinite Self express where the world sees me. I will not stand
in the way with the human mind, with human beliefs. I am the place where the Father is
glorified. His name, His essence, His glory is My Being. I am the Light. But I cannot be the
darkness, too. I cannot be the flesh, the mortal, the finite, and be the Light. I will no longer
make my bed in hell, in the shadow of the dead, but in the quickened universe of Spirit, in the
Truth. I, being the Light, am the supply. I, being the Light, am the health. I am the power. I
am all that the Father is, and It is all now. This must be knowing, not saying.
We find the greatest, most priceless privilege on earth is to defend the presence of God
where you are. No, you will not convince me of sin. There is no sin here. There is only God
here. You cannot convince me of sickness or suffering or pain here. Only God is here. You
cannot show me x-ray charts and viruses. Only God is here, and no other.
And as the within, so will be the without. It is no longer what do you believe, what do
you think? No, it is what do you know? What do you accept of the finished Kingdom on earth
where you stand? That is what you will experience, for knowing is experiencing. Watching is
experiencing. To experience God, you must accept God.
Now your Consciousness is in God and remains in God, untempted by that which the
world demands. In God we stand and let the power of the invisible be the only power you
recognize. This breaks the hypnosis. It shows you that karma was never real. It was only in
the mortal mind. It shows you there is no need for power, for all power is in your own Being,
when accepted.
[Silence]
This day have I begotten thee is the reward that we’re moving toward. That will be
Self realization.
Thanks for being here today. See you again.
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Class 9
Your Healing Consciousness
Herb: Today we’re going to try to do something we’ve wanted to do for a long time,
and that is to touch a place in each of us where the healing Consciousness becomes a very
potent, practical daily way of Life, not just something we hope to discover in the future. The
healing Consciousness is not just to heal a backache. It’s to glorify the Father in you in every
possible way. And really, if you cannot develop a healing Consciousness, then Jesus was not
teaching the Truth. Because he said that if you learned his Identity––which is the meaning of
“If you believe [on] me,”––if you learn his Identity, the very miracles that were attributed to
him on earth, you would do.
Each of us should have this not as our only goal, but we should never be satisfied until
the healing grace is part of our being. And the reason for that is because, although we suspect
that we know Truth, until you find yourself able to demonstrate the Truth you know, you
might as well face it––you don’t really know it. And healing, therefore, becomes the way in
which you prove to yourself that you know what you think you know. That’s the only reason
for healing on the spiritual path. And you’ll find that within you is this capacity. It isn’t
reserved for what is called a practitioner. It is your natural dispensation by virtue of being a
joint heir in Christ.
Now, we’ve spent seven years discussing the Infinite Way, and that’s been seven years
discussing the various precepts in the Bible. And always, we have discussed this in one place
so that we could develop, grow the Consciousness. Today, perhaps these seven years will in
some way yield to you that quality which Jesus called Christ in you realized.
Now, it has been thought that the healing Consciousness is something special,
something you receive by dint of some special privileges or because you learned a magic
formula. And it isn’t that way at all. The healing Consciousness is your Truth realized, your
Identity realized, the Identity of your neighbor realized. The healing Consciousness is the
enactment in you of the two commandments: Acknowledging His Presence always in yourself
and in your neighbor.
And when you do this in the way prescribed, you discover, to your pleasure and
amazement, that right where you stand is holy ground. Right where your friends stand is holy
ground. Right where the world appears is the invisible Kingdom of your Father. It has ever
been there awaiting your spiritual recognition. And in your capacity to see it––not through
Class 9 : Your Healing Consciousness
human eyes but through the Christ vision––lo and behold, there stands the perfection which
the world has been seeking all these immeasurable centuries.
For that reason, today we’re studying the leper. It’s only two or three verses, but you’ll
find it is a perfect summary of what constitutes the healing Consciousness. We’re going to go
over it two or three or maybe four times, and each time a shade deeper, until we can stand
back and say, “That I understand, and that I can make my Consciousness.”
Now, what we have here in Matthew 8 is a little scene. Now, if you have read that, you
may have been creative enough in your initiative to say, “Now let’s see. Where does that fit
into the Bible? When did it happen?” And you would have discovered that it happened
immediately following the Sermon on the Mount. Immediately following the Sermon on the
Mount in which the Spirit of God, speaking through Jesus Christ says, “You must purify your
consciousness.” All of these things you learned of old, but today this moment, I, the Spirit say
unto you, “Do this. Do that. Do the other,” meaning cleanse your house until all that is there is
the divine Self.
And after he is finished giving the world these three chapters, five, six, and seven of
Matthew––which we should all know like the palm of our own hand––it is said that the
multitudes followed him, and the very first instance of healing that followed the delivery of
the Sermon on the Mount was this leper case. Suddenly, out of nowhere, as if to test the very
teaching itself, there was this creature. If we had lived in those times, we would have said, as
they did then, “This is the curse of God upon this man,” for leprosy was considered not only
incurable, but it was considered to be the punishment of God. A little more research shows us
that leprosy has nothing to do with the punishment of God at all. It is not the curse of God,
but it is the accumulated karma of an individual.
And now, standing before the Master, with his disciples around him, is this loathsome
creature all bandaged up, disfigured, corroded, the first test of the Sermon on the Mount. It
takes three verses, and this loathsome creature is no longer a leper. And then, one after
another, the multitudes appeared for healing of all kinds. Unfortunately, this has been used as
a prototype of the way to heal, for in there it is said he laid his hands upon the leper.
And so all over this globe we find those who lay their hands upon the victim of
disease, the victim of pain, the victim of suffering. Why not? Jesus did it. Why not? Paul
baptized with laying on of the hands. Deuteronomy tells us that Moses laid his hands upon
Joshua. The Acts tell us that the apostles went through the land laying hands, and all manners
of diverse ailments were healed. And when we try it, nothing happens.
Why, we thought it was that easy. You lay your hands on somebody and you say, “Be
thou well. Be thou clean.” But it doesn’t work. Then we start to try to dissect the meaning of
laying on the hands, and we find, as usual, that we have taken a literal viewpoint; and the
laying on of the hands was something completely different than the religions of the world had
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suspected. But in––in dissecting what really did happen––we discover principles, principles
that we can utilize. Principles that we can put into practice in our daily life and actually do
that degree of healing which even one who is not completely versed in the healing art can do.
Now, let’s look at our leper and see just what happened that day and what can happen
in every day of our lives. “Behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if
thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I
will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. And Jesus saith unto him, See
thou tell no man; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses
commanded, for a testimony unto them.” There it is, three verses.
Now, let’s look at it closely. “Behold, there came a leper and worshipped him.” Now,
in Luke and in Mark that word “worshipped” is amplified, and not only is he worshipping
him, but it says in one place, “he kneeled down before him, beseeching;” and another, it says,
“he fell on his face.” And so, we can equate worshipping, kneeling down before him, and
beseeching and falling on his face pretty much meaning the same thing. But notice here the
first requisite of healing: worshipping him.
Now, what is a leper? To a doctor, it’s one thing. But what is the leper to the Christ?
We have learned through our studies that every physical image is nothing more than mental
energy, world thought appearing as. And so we say here now that the leper represents world
thought, the time-space illusion of matter. Rather than the belief that God is punishing this
individual, we learn spiritually that God did not create the leper or leprosy. We learn further
that God did not create matter, and therefore, what have we? Punishment? Or do we have an
image not created by God? We have the darkness of a mortal consciousness out-picturing
itself.
And so Christ is not looking at that which is Divine, but at that which is the
externalization of human thought, and man has labeled it “leprosy.” Man could have labeled it
cancer. Man could have labeled it a heart attack. Whatever the label, it would have nothing to
do with the creation of God which is ever perfect, and so we’re looking at that which, being
imperfect, is not of the Father, therefore unreal. And what are we looking at it with if we see
it? Do we see it with the divine Mind which is too pure to behold iniquity? Is there another
mind than the One? And so, only darkness perceives the darkness, and Light perceives the
Light. Christ sees no leper. Then how could he touch him, and why would he touch him? And
that is the paradox, and also the secret of healing the leper.
Now this leper represents, then, not just this particular leper, but all world error. It is a
symbol of human thought as opposed to Divine Thought. And so you can make any
substitution at this point of any ailment or any problem or any evil or any error, and know that
whatever it is that you are placing in place of the leper, it is made of the same non-substance
which was not created by God. We’re looking at the symbol of human error.
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Now, you can say a leper is one who is the result of carnal thought or some deeper
sense of sense perversion or carnal desire. You can use all of these labels, but the simple fact
is that we’re looking at material substance which is mental energy, and the right things are in
the wrong places. Mental energy cannot bring forth the divine Image, and yet right where the
leper appears is the perfect spiritual Reality of Being. And this, of course, is what the Christ
sees.
Now, the leper worships Him, falls on his feet before Him, kneels before Him, and this
is the turning from world thought, from human thought to divine Thought. This is the
beginning, the prerequisite to the change of consciousness, so that if we were in the leper’s
place, we in our worshipping Him would actually be turning to Christ within ourselves,
accepting that there is such a Presence within ourselves called the Christ. Here it’s outwardly
turning to Jesus Christ. But this is the recognition of the lower consciousness that there is a
higher Consciousness, and unless there is that recognition, we are not worshipping, falling on
our face or kneeling or turning to the higher. So, step number one is to turn to the higher away
from the lower. This is the opening of consciousness to the possibility of perfection.
And so it is said, the leper worshipped him saying, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst
make me clean.” “If thou wilt”: Now, this is the recognition that there is a power which can
remove error. And when you study it deeply, you’ll recognize it is the statement that this is the
recognition of one power without opposite. This is a deep faith now, turning to that one power
and saying, “You can make me clean.” And you remember the prodigal son, the moment he
turned home? Before he arrived, the father rushed out to meet him. This will be the same
expression now, the turning of the lower consciousness to the higher. Recognizing one power
as the only power brings the Father rushing out to greet you. So Jesus replies, and Jesus put
forth his hand and touched him saying, “I will; be thou clean.” The moment you recognize the
one power, it recognizes you.
Now, we have Jesus putting forth his hand and touching the leper. In that touch, we
have set a chain reaction throughout the world of healings that never come off, all trying to
emulate that laying on of the hands. Now, let’s see what it really means, and let’s bring it
together with “ . . . love is the fulfilling of the law.” Let’s see that behind the visible, there is
the Christ of Jesus recognizing the Christ of the leper, and this Self recognition brings forth
divine Love.
The Oneness, the divine Love expressing is an unseparated Self, an indivisible Self, a
One Self, and in this inner recognition of One, in the outer must appear a One so that the hand
of One reaches to the other, and there is no longer a separation. The outer laying on of the
hands is nothing more than the reflex action of the inner realization of One. And without it, of
course, the laying on of the hands is futile, meaningless, nothing more than material flesh
touching material flesh with no power.
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But behind this laying on of the hands is divine Love, and you see here the practice of
the two commandments. First, Jesus the Christ knowing Self, being Self, knowing spiritual
Identity. And that spiritual Identity within recognizing Itself in the leper, so that we are loving
our neighbor while we are acknowledging the One spiritual Identity of both. And that One
manifests as the laying on of the hands. It was ever so when Moses laid hands upon Joshua,
when Paul baptized by the laying on of the hands, when the apostles went forth and healed.
There was always the recognition of the one Self in the within appearing as the One
unseparated in the without. In other words, you must touch God in the Inner, and when you
touch God in the Inner, the hand reaches out to touch the other individual in the outer. The
inner Consciousness externalizes as the laying on of hands. There is no power in the hands.
The power is in the inner realization of One.
I’ve checked off a few passages you may never have heard before, which show you
how easily man has been fooled by this and has lost the healing art because of it. We’ll go to
Exodus 9:3. It’s so simple you’ll wonder why we walk by it. In Exodus 9:3: “Behold, the
hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, . . . .” Now, you
know the hand of God isn’t reaching down and patting those cattle, but it’s the laying on of
hands divinely, you see. “ . . . the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle . . . .” And this is the
same kind of laying on of hands. It’s a symbolism. The laying on of hands of the Lord upon
the cattle means they’re under divine protection, and the laying on of hands by Jesus the
Christ or anyone who is in the Spirit means spiritual recognition of the spiritual Identity of the
individual upon whom you are laying hands.
You remember that phrase: We can say: “Abba, Father”? That’s pronounced Ah-vah,
but it’s spelled Abba. Again, that was to mean that we are beholding Christ in you. When you
say, “Abba, Father” about an individual, you are recognizing the spiritual Identity of that
individual, and you are also recognizing something else. The “Abba” means God is here. You
are recognizing the nearness, the closeness of God. And again, the laying on of hands is
recognizing the divine Identity, the closeness of God. You’re not healing with those hands.
They are expressing your inner recognition.
Now again, in Exodus 15:6, to show you how easily these phrases are used: “Thy right
hand, O Lord, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the
enemy.” You see how “hand” is used symbolically, not meaning the Lord’s hand came down
to dash the enemy.
Again, in Exodus 31:18: “And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of
communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with
the finger of God.” Again, God didn’t take God’s finger and put them on those tablets. It was
rather the mind of God through Moses expressing what was on the tablets. That means the
finger of God.
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Now, in the Psalms we find it perhaps a little more dramatic. The hundred and thirty-
ninth Psalm, first starting at verse five: “Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine
hand upon me.” When God lays God’s hand upon you, that’s the same as Christ Jesus laying
his hands upon the leper––divine recognition of your Identity. “Such knowledge is too
wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.” And then follows, “Whither shall I go
from thy spirit? . . . whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art
there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I take the wings of the morning, and
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand
shall hold me.” God lays God’s hands upon the leper through Christ Jesus. Do you see that?
Finally in Isaiah 53:1: “Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the
Lord revealed?” Now then, it should be clear that hand, arm, finger, even mouth are all
symbolisms. First of all, God doesn’t have a hand or a mouth or an arm. They are symbols of
being touched by the Holy Spirit. And so, whenever you find that you have tried to heal by
laying on the hands and it has not worked, it is because you have put your faith in the material
method instead of in the divine recognition which needs no hands. Just how many healings
were done in the Bible by Jesus by laying on of hands? Five at the outermost. And how in the
world would you heal absently by laying on hands? How would he heal the Centurion’s son?
How would he bring Lazarus out of the tomb? And did the woman rush up to him and lay her
hands upon his robe?
You know, there was someone in the Bible who thought he would do this laying on of
hands. His name was Simon. He was a sorcerer at one time in a previous life, and Simon saw
the disciples doing this; and he rushed up and he said, “Teach me how to do that.” And Peter
said to him, “The laying on of the hands is not for you, Simon. You’ll first have to purify your
heart.” No one has ever healed another person by laying on of hands. It is a fraud. It has some
use, but not to heal. It is a normal action. When you love someone, you touch them. You can’t
restrain yourself. You reach out to touch them. Jesus reached out to the daughter of Jairus
when she lay in a coma. He reached out to those he loved.
And if you were to place your faith in this physical method, all would be lost. There
would have been no healings whatsoever. All absent healing would be out the window. But
just as God has his hand on the cattle, so does the Spirit of you have Its hand on the Spirit of
every individual on this earth, no matter where they may be. When you are conscious of
spiritual Identity, then you are laying hands on the world around you in your conscious
Awareness of spiritual Selfhood. Now that is the meaning, then, of laying on of hands. But
there’s even more, and we’ll come to it.
“Jesus put forth his hand and touched him.” And so now we know he was recognizing
spiritual Identity––not a leper––for God made no leper. He was recognizing the spiritual
Selfhood that stood before him. Separated from God was this human consciousness out-
picturing itself as a leper, and there was no sin there. There was no crime. There was no
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punishment. This was impersonal error manifest through the world mind functioning through
what appeared to be a leper. There was no one to blame, to censure or condemn. Had there
been such censure, you may be sure there would not have been a pure Consciousness in Jesus
to heal this man.
There was nothing but the pure acceptance that only God is present, not a leper and
not even Jesus. Only God is present. And so the touching represents the recognition of the All-
ness of Spirit. No words were really necessary, but Spirit says, “I wilt; be thou clean.” The
recognition of the All-ness of Spirit is the healing agent. What does it heal? Nothing
whatsoever. It merely reveals Itself as the only Presence, and this is called a healing.
The illusion of leprosy dissolves in the recognition of spiritual Selfhood by a pure

Consciousness. Even those little atoms that God didn’t create begin to act differently, for in
the touching of an individual’s spiritual Selfhood, you are rearranging the atoms of that
individual. You are quickening them. You are causing them to rotate differently. You are
giving them different qualities in a different direction. You are improving the material image
by touching the divine Image in your Consciousness.
The leper turning by saying, “Thou canst make me clean, if thou wilt,” is answered by
the Spirit which says, “I will.” And hasn’t Jesus said many times, “Thy faith has made thee
whole”? What is this faith but the acceptance of the Spirit of God ever present? Now, so far
we’re merely seeing it more or less externally. We’re going to get it within ourselves shortly.
“And Jesus saith unto him,” immediately after his leprosy was cleansed, “See thou tell
no man.” “. . . immediately his leprosy was cleansed.” Now if you look at Mark or Luke, one
of the two, you’ll find another word put in there: “Immediately” after he had spoken, his
leprosy was cleansed.” In other words, not immediately after he touched him, but immediately
after Spirit spoke, because when Spirit speaks the material world melts. After the Word is
spoken, after spiritual recognition, the leper is cleansed.
And now, “ . . . tell no man.” You’d think he’d say, “Go out and tell the world. Show
them what has happened to you. Let them all know.” And this is for those of us who want to
do just that. What was his reason? We can find many reasons in “tell no man.” We know he
had said that we should not speak of the innermost, sacred secrets to those of unprepared
thought.
Well, in those days, leprosy was incurable. Suppose you ran out and told somebody or
told multitudes, “Look what’s happened to me. I’m cured of leprosy.” Could you tell them the
method whereby you were healed? And so, you’d create all this excitement, and then they’d
all run to be healed, and nothing would happen because what made this leper healed was very
special, something that all of us must know. He had turned to the Christ, not to a man out
there. This was an inner Something.
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That’s the meaning of this esoteric series of verses. He was worshipping the Christ. He
had reached the place in karma where it was ready to be obliterated. But you come to Jesus
with ages of karma and think that this miracle man can touch you, and it will disappear—and
it won’t work. You remember later there were ten, and nine couldn’t be healed for that very
reason.
And so, why create all this confusion in the city when they weren’t prepared to be
healed. They hadn’t fulfilled the inner requirements. They hadn’t brought themselves to
Christ. They couldn’t say, “I wilt.” They couldn’t say, “If thou wilt, thou [couldest] make me
clean.” They hadn’t reached the level of Consciousness that could have faith in the invisible
Self. And so you’d create a riot for no good reason, and everybody would run home
disappointed and muttering under their breath, “This is a faker.” Their time would come, but
they weren’t ready.
And so, “tell no man” these things that ye have seen today, but instead, go to the
Priest, he said, and make the sacrifice to him “that Moses commanded.” There were many
motives in that statement. Who is this priest? It’s the Priest in you. The Priest in you is the one
who receives the Word of God. That’s what a Priest should be, One who receives direct Word
from God. Go to the Priest within yourself, and there make the sacrifice “that Moses
commanded."
Well, you can read all about that in Leviticus. There are 59 verses, and after you finish
reading it, you’ll say, “What in the world does he want me to do? I can’t understand it because
the priest is supposed to take the garments of the leper and do this with him. Oh, it’s just one
little piece of ceremonial after another. And that’s the second meaning here: In the Old
Testament, that’s how you treated the incurable disease called leprosy. And here’s Jesus, the
Master, and in his time, 1,500 years after Moses, they’re still doing it the same way. They’re
still in the law of karma. They’re still burning the garments of the leper. They’re still making
all kinds of physical, material sacrifices.
Go to the priest and show him that I didn’t do a single thing in all of those 59 verses of
Leviticus, but you’re cured. Show him it has nothing to do with ceremonial and ritual. Show
him that healing is completely different than the world suspects. Show that to the priest. And
for us, he was saying the Old Testament had its place, but I am taking you from the law of
karma. I am breaking the law of karma for you and taking you into the meaning of inner
Grace, into the recognition that whatever God did not make can never be real and present,
except in a false consciousness out-picturing itself.
There’s something that we have never quite seen before which may help you at this
point. It’s more fact than fiction, if you can see it. If you look at a television image and
remove the cabinet, so that it’s invisible, and then remove the screen, so that it’s invisible, and
just see the figures dancing, walking, talking, they would look as if they’re just placed out in
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space, wouldn’t they? Now, these forms that we call our human forms are like those television
images, except for one thing. We don’t have a visible cabinet or a visible screen. But if you
could see the invisible cabinet, it might appear to you pretty much like a human eye enlarged,
bigger than the human form. You may discover someday that you see it that way. You may see
this human form in an invisible cabinet, larger than the human form, and you may think
you’re actually looking at this form on television.
Now, you might compare it to your eye. There’s a transparency over the eye, and
under it is a uvea, and it has a hole in it. The light goes in and out of that hole of the uvea. The
transparency protects it; and that’s where the image is, and so you see an image in that eye.
You call that image something out there. But you’re looking at it in your own eye, and
everything you’re seeing in this world is your thought. You’re seeing your thought and calling
it the forms of this world, and everyone else is doing the same. But those forms that appear
there are nothing more than what this leper was––an externalized image of an invisible
consciousness––and that invisible consciousness is kind of like the eye of a human form.
Take an eye bigger than your form, and you’ll see that this image is in that eye. And
that invisible larger eye is looking out at an image in itself, and that image is its own
manufacture. Your consciousness, like an invisible eye, is making a visible form. And that
visible form has no knowledge that it is within this invisible consciousness. So everywhere
you look, that’s what you’re looking at.
You’re looking at invisible consciousness putting forth visible form, and these forms
are the images that we all see and accept. Some of them are good, and some are bad. And all
of their variations have nothing to do with God’s creation. For behind this image of form, this
body image, is the invisible consciousness that puts it forth. And that consciousness has
nothing to do with God. That is our human sense of consciousness. And behind that is the
world or cosmic consciousness pouring its imitation into your consciousness, coming through
as the image that you show forth––all of this a denial of the perfect Self that you are in the
divine Image, which is totally invisible to the naked senses.
So the five-sense image, the form, may show a defect, but where is the defect? In the
consciousness that externalizes as that image. And because that consciousness is a captive
audience to the world consciousness, it has no personal error. It’s not at fault for anything it
does. It’s a captive, a prisoner in a tomb. To come out of the tomb, to come out of the prison,
was part of the meaning of touching the leper. As he touched the leper, he was saying, “This
image is the tomb. Rise from the tomb of form.”
Do you think Jesus could change that leper if that were Divine? In that touch, Jesus
repudiated completely every religion on the face of the earth, every prayer that has ever been
uttered, every drug that has ever been manufactured, every medical device that has ever been
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invented to improve a human form. He was saying, “This form that I am touching can be
changed because it is not God’s creation.”
So you’re going to find as you sit back and look at spiritual living and religious living
that there’s a vast gap between the two. You see, in religious living we identified as mortal
beings, of the flesh, and we try to improve the flesh. We prayed even while we were withering
away. In spiritual living you do not identify as mortal being of the flesh. You put on the
garment of immortality. You accept yourself to be the essence of God. So religious living and
spiritual living are completely different. You’re no longer praying to improve. You’re
accepting the perfection of the essence of God where you stand as your Being. Spiritual living
is a repudiation of religious living, just as touching the leper was a repudiation of the validity
or reality of every mortal error and every mortal condition.
He could touch that which he was demonstrating was not of God and, therefore, in
reality there was no touching of the leper at all. This is how it appears to human eyes. There
was only Love expressing, Truth revealing Itself, and all of the material forms that appeared
in this act are part of the human illusion. The invisible Self, being the only Presence, there
was no leper to touch and no person to touch it. But that is what we see.
Now as we climb in consciousness, we take this whole incident and we now convert it
into practical use for ourselves. We can look at it two ways. There was a man named Jesus
healing a leper. Or all of this took place within the consciousness of the individual so that the
leper is the false consciousness, and Jesus visible represents the inner true Consciousness.
And this is the true Consciousness dissolving the false, bringing forth that which is called the
healing.
For ourselves, it would go this way. If you were trying to heal someone else, you
would have to see, number one: There’s no leper. There’s no material you. There’s no material
condition. That’s your three-way impersonalization right here. There can be no leper because
God created none. There can be no material condition called leprosy. And there can be no
material you. That puts you into the pure or virgin Consciousness. And this is the removal of
dualism––of two minds, of two wills, of two levels of thought. All that remains is now to rest
in the knowledge that One is here––One, one Self; one pure, perfect, divine Being––only One.
And in that resting in the One, you find the inner peace which releases the illusion of the
error.
Now, if you were to heal yourself, it would be somewhat similar. You simply wouldn’t
have to impersonalize yourself twice. You would know there is no human condition. There is
no human. There is no physical self. There is only divine Essence, divine Being. And
therefore, there can be no condition in divine Being, no separate will. And the will of the
Father being perfection, all that is present is perfection in spite of the appearance. You’re
almost, you might say, laying hands upon yourself through inner recognition.
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Now, all of this is still a procedure, and it must go beyond procedure. But let’s dwell
on the procedure a moment. We are accepting the primary method of reaching what may be
called the end of discord or the appearance of perfection is the knowledge that only Spirit is
here. You cannot heal a flea without that knowledge. Only Spirit is here. And therefore, the
victim isn’t here, and the healer isn’t here. Only Spirit is here. And you must dwell with that
quite a while until it means something to you. I don’t mean just for a minute or two during
your work. I mean day in and day out until this is a normal knowledge to you. Only Spirit is
here.
Certainly the leper was healed instantaneously, but think of the years of dedication to
the Truth that Jesus had to put in before that instantaneous healing could occur. And so, we’re
not just going to pronounce the words. If you’re not living in the knowledge that only Spirit is
here, all of your saying so won’t mean anything. And so this is what you’re doing within
yourself. You’re developing the Consciousness that only Spirit is here. Then it won’t make
any difference if it’s an earthquake or an avalanche or a leper. Only Spirit is here. And you
may have to do that a hundred or two times before you can quiet this mind which insists––but
there’s a problem out here, too.
If only Spirit is here, there’s not a problem out here, too. There’s an appearance which
is denying that only Spirit is here. And try as you will, your mind will go out to that problem,
and you’ll find it hard to cast it off. Practice and practice and practice. And still, if it’s a dear
one––oh, how you’ll rush out to help because maybe only Spirit is here, but this dear one is
sick or dying, and you’ve got to do something you think––until one day only Spirit is here is
your undivided Consciousness. It must come to that place where who “. . . convinceth me of
sin?” is something that is meaningful to you. When whatever error is presented, you recognize
it instantly as a denial of the All-ness of perfect Spirit, and you will have none of it. You will
stand firm. Only Spirit is here.
I am looking at an image projected by a false state of Consciousness. Only Spirit is

here. You’ll find a peace. And until that peace comes, until something inside says, “That’s
right”; until something inside you confirms your belief, you don’t break the barrier of karma.
You don’t break the continuity of world mind. It goes right on independent of all your
affirmation. But when something in you says, “That’s right. That’s right,” something
quickens. Something gives you that awareness that only Spirit is here. Now you can call that
“the click” if you want to, or the inner turning or the quickening or whatever you wish to give
it as a name. You will come into the assurance at that moment that you have touched the
Father. You have touched the Father within, and now the Father within will show you the
Truth of His all Presence where you are and where your dear one is.
We have all searched for labels and formulas. If we could only find a simple way to
remember this. Well, no matter what I tell you, no matter what you read, no matter what
anyone tells you, it must ultimately come to you in your own special way. It must feel right
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for you. Your shoe won’t fit another foot the way it fits you. For instance, we’ve all used the
word omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience. And yet to most of us it’s really a mouthful
without any real meaning, without teeth in it. And then, of course, the world uses the word
God or Light or Spirit. Still, no power.
Somewhere, something falls into the right groove for you and says it all. I’ll tell you
what fell into the groove for me, and it may be valuable to you. “God” somehow leaves
something missing, even though you say, “God is all”; even though you say, “God is the only
power.” You can’t figure it out, but something seems to be missing. Perhaps it’s the
experience behind those words that’s missing. And then you try to say, “There’s no ‘me’ here.
There’s only God here.” And yet again, it just doesn’t quite add up to that perfect inner peace.
We use the word infinite or infinity, and even though we seem on the threshold of something,
always there seems to be that little something that just doesn’t fall into place.
Now here’s what falls into place, and it may be your place, it may not be; but take
these words, “Infinite Force.” The Spirit is Infinite, yes; and the Spirit is Power, yes––and
therefore––Infinite Power or Infinite Force. And see that what you’re really looking for when
you look for God is Infinite Force. That’s what you’re looking for. You see, that’s what Jesus
revealed is present everywhere, Infinite Force. Not just the name, “God” or the word “God,”
but the Infinite Force of God is all around you Being Itself. There’s no place where the
Infinite Force of God is not.
Whither can I flee from your Infinite Force? But we in our mortal sense are separated
from that Infinite Force because we have not come into the realization that that Infinite Force
is our name. That Infinite Force is You, and as long as there is a mortal being where you are,
you are not realizing that the Infinite Force is You; and so you are told, “Awake thou that
sleepest.” “… choose . . . ye this day:” Are you the Infinite Force or are you the mortal
creature? Are you God or mammon? Are you Christ or creature?”
And when this infinite Force becomes real to you, when you can in a sense feel it and
know it, be sure of it, you will be willing to let go of this body image, this personality, this
human self, this mythical mortal. And you will say, “But the Infinite Force, being all, it is I.
The I Am that I am is the Infinite Force right here, right now. And whatever denies it is a lie.”
The I Am that you are there is the Infinite Force because that’s all there is, and right where the
leper stands is the invisible but Infinite Force being Itself. Infinite Force is the living God. But
better still, this Infinite Force that is you contains every quality of God right where It is, right
where you are. And so you’re never looking for health anymore. You’re never looking for
supply. You’re never looking for anything because the Infinite Force is all things.
The moment you have accepted your Self to be the Infinite Force, You have accepted
your Identity, and then I don’t have to look for health. The Infinite Force that I am is health. It
has ever been present, invisible, right where the leper appeared. The Infinite Force that I am is
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Truth. Why defend against a lie? The Infinite Force that I am is Beauty, Harmony, Truth. All
that God is, is the Infinite Force where I am.
Now your healing takes another turn. Is the leper there or the Infinite Force? The
Infinite Force, because only God can be present. But the Infinite Force where the leper is and
the Infinite Force where I am are One and the same. Only the Infinite Force is present. And if
you are present too, you are creating a second life, a second person, a second substance, a
second will, a second something where only One is. And that second something has got to be
separated from the One. Crucifixion is the acceptance that I am the Infinite Force and nothing
else.
All that the Father hath is the Infinite Force that I am, and therefore, where you appear
the Infinite Force that I am must be functioning perfectly now. Whoever walks this earth is
invisibly that Infinite Force. The moment you touch it in your Self, you’ve touched it in the
Universe. You can never be separated because it is One Infinite Force, and it is the Power all
around us every moment. Jesus was the living embodiment of that Power, recognizing it
everywhere. And it is that Power recognized, that Power which someone else reaches out to
you for, even though they know it not. And all you’re doing is recognizing that Power as
present where they are. It is their natural true Being as the Spirit of God. Then you have a
healing Consciousness.
“I and [the] Father are one” is a very uplifting and inspirational phrase that many of us
have used. The Master said it, but the Master didn’t just say it. The Master lived it. The
Master practiced it, and the Master demonstrated the meaning of it by showing that Oneness
always externalizes as harmony, perfection.
Now, when you say “I and [the] Father are one,” you might as well go the rest of the
way if you want that phrase to be meaningful for you: The Father is invisible. The Father is
nonphysical. And so I and the nonphysical Father are One. I and the invisible Father are One.
What does that make me, this I that I’m supposed to be? Am I physical and visible while the
Father is invisible and nonphysical, and yet we are One? No, I’m saying we are One, while I
am accepting that I am not One with the Father at all if I still believe that I am a visible being
in a physical form.
When Jesus said, “I and [the] Father are One,” he was revealing that he was living in
the Soul Body, which is invisible, and he was not a visible Being, and he was not a physical
Being. That was the revelation of “I and [the] Father are One.”
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Now we know Life begins in God. If It doesn’t, we don’t have Life. But God is the
beginning and the end. The Life that begins in God never gets outside of God. Your Life
begins in God, but it never gets outside of God. It’s always invisible and nonphysical. And
therefore, in order to experience the healing Grace, you must be that Life of God which never
gets outside of God, which is invisible and nonphysical. And that acceptance of your Self is
Christ Consciousness.
I am invisible Being. The Father is invisible Being, and I and the Father are that One
invisible Being. God never becomes less than God. The Life of God never becomes less or
other than Itself, and for the law of Spirit to function in your Being, you must be spiritual
Being. We’ve all looked for the Power, the Presence and the Mind of God, but you won’t find
it in the world. You will only find it in Spirit. You will only find it in that Universe which is
made of the Spirit of God, for there is no other.
We have all, in some measure, made up our own teaching. We haven’t quite approved
of the Christ teaching. And we haven’t––if you get down to facts––we haven’t really had faith
in God. We have been able to make statements, but to have faith in God means to accept that
God is what the Bible tells us God is. And to have faith in God, then, must mean that I have
faith that wherever God is, the Power of God is functioning. Wherever God is, the Mind of
God is functioning. And therefore, if God is where I stand, the Power of God must be here
functioning. And the moment I accept the power of evil, the power of error, the power of
anything other than the Power of God, I am not having faith in God at all.
I am not even believing in God’s presence, and I am falling into the error of believing
that God is almighty only upstairs, but not downstairs. I have faith in a God far away, but I
have no faith in the God on earth. I have no faith that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness
thereof. And yet, if I did have such faith, I would have to say, “God being everywhere
present––right here––God’s presence means God’s living power, and there is nothing to push
that power aside. This error must be the same mental illusion that shows forth a leper or a
storm at sea or a lack or limitation. They cannot exist here because the power of God alone is
here.” And then, you see, you’re accepting the invisible power of God as being present.
You’re accepting the Infinite Force.
Now suppose somebody says to you, “Your child is drowning in Herbert Fitch’s
swimming pool.” If you know I don’t have a swimming pool, you know your child is safe.
You don’t have to worry about that child drowning in Herbert Fitch’s swimming pool. He
doesn’t have one. Now, when someone tells you there’s an error, they’re telling you the same
kind of thing. They’re telling you that someone is making a mistake in God’s kingdom. There
can’t be a mistake in God’s kingdom, and therefore, no mistake is possible. There can’t be a
mistake where God is present, and God is present everywhere. And therefore, there can be no
mistake.
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There can’t be an error or an evil where God is, and God is everywhere. And therefore,
the error or the evil cannot be there. You don’t have to worry about the nature of it. It is the
denial of the presence of God. And if you have accepted the Infinite Force of God
everywhere, what’s the difference how many denials appear in the world? They’re nothing to
you. The Infinite Force of God is everywhere. And its opposite cannot be there because that
Infinite Force is the only Power, and nothing can stop it from maintaining its perfection
everywhere.
So you can finally rest back in the Infinite Force. It is your Self. It is everywhere. It is
invisible, but It is the only Presence, and It is being Itself everywhere now. Something in you
turns, changes. And this is the change of consciousness that you saw in the leper. He first
worshipped. He then said, “. . . if thou wilt, thou canst . . .” And this change of consciousness
brought forth “I will; be thou [cleansed].” So it is in us. As we accept the presence of the
invisible Father, we accept the qualities of the invisible Father, and now we have omnipotence
as one of the qualities of the invisible Force. Our function is to hold in consciousness to this,
no matter what we see.
Now, all of you who have called me from time to time and have said I hurt or I this or
I that, if you could have called me with the knowledge that in spite of the fact that you hurt,
God is where you are, this would be the opening that the leper gave to Christ Jesus. When the
leper said––when it is said that he worshipped Him, that is the same as you recognizing that
where you are is God. Even though you’re suffering, you’re willing to accept that God is
where you are. Then I can assure you, even before you pick up the telephone sometimes,
you’ll find you are feeling better because it’s the acceptance of God where you are which is
opening your consciousness to the Presence and its power where you are.
When we call a man or a woman to help us without the knowledge that we are really
seeking the presence of God, and that It is right where we are, we may get our healing. Some
of you have. But you’ll find that your karma still remains, and sometimes the accumulated
karma of centuries just doesn’t give way until there is a total turning of consciousness to the
acceptance that it matters not what I suffer from. Here where I stand God has to Be! And all
I’m really suffering from is my inability to reach the knowledge that God is where I stand.
That’s all we can suffer from, the separation from that presence of God which never goes
away.
You see how we can help each other in the healing work when we are open to the
knowledge that even this pain will not convince me that God has gone somewhere. It is my
consciousness that still has a sense of mortality, still has a belief that I am visible, physical
being. I am still living in the external effects. I have not yet accepted God. I have not yet
accepted that God’s Universe is all Spirit. And you see, that’s lack of faith in God. We all have
it. There is something in us that still does not accept God on God’s terms; that I am Spirit, and
beside Me there is no other.
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All of Judaism was completely unaware that God is Spirit, and beside God there is no
other. While they were boasting there is one God, they didn’t know that only God is. And all
of the New Testament is to repair that error. There’s not only one God. Only God is. And
therefore, who’s hurting? In the acceptance of a hurt, you’re saying that there’s another
besides God, you. And you’re not accepting spiritual Identity.
Now, the halfway place is where you accept spiritual Identity, even though you hurt,
and that is how you turn and fall on your knees before Spirit, before Christ in you. You’re like
Jacob––the intruder, the idea of hurting, the mortal mind which says to you, “God isn’t here.
You have a problem,”––you must wrestle with it. You must face it and not let it go until it
blesses you. Until you can by knowing I, Spirit, am. And the Infinite Force of Spirit is always
present where I am. There is no one in the universe can push it away. It is omnipresent.
That Infinite Force which is omnipresent is here. And this is where I will find It, right
here, now. Where is it? It is I. It is my Being. That’s where I will find It. Now, you’re out of
duality. There’s not a human finding It. There’s a human discovering there’s no human there.
There’s only I, the Infinite Force, and now the Father is glorifying the Father where you stand.
Christ liveth your Life. That’s the purpose of this class, to come to the realization that the
Infinite Force I am, and there is no other. For It is that realization that builds the invisible
body of the Soul. It is that realization that single-handedly removes the thorns in the side.
Those thorns remain for quite a while. They remain until the shadow of turning called “mortal
self” is dropped from your belief.
I and the Father are invisible, nonphysical Being. And finally, the Father being the
Infinite Force, the Infinite Force and I are One and the same. Where is love? It’s in the Infinite
Force right where you are. Where is security? In the Infinite Force. Where is Life eternal? In
the Infinite Force right where you are. There is nothing external to the Infinite Force right
where you are. It is Self-contained, Self-fulfilling, Self-expressing unto Eternity, and all Law
is in the Law of the Infinite Force that You are. You don’t seek It. You don’t knock for It. You
don’t ask for It. You are It.
The other day, I felt a draft at the window. I’d often wondered, “Where do you really
feel that draft? Where you are, or is there something in you external to yourself that feels that
draft right at the window?” And after a bit of work on this, especially after having thought
about it for a number of years, you realize that you are picking up the draft at the window.
You have a mind right there which picks it up and then transmits to this brain here what the
mind is experiencing at the window. It’s as if the body were inside a larger mind, and you’ll
find your mind is larger than your body and not encased within it. That same mind is picking
up things all around the universe that you think are happening to you here, but that mind is
picking them up there and relaying them to the brain here.
When you start building this way out into that mind, you will feel a different level of
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consciousness which is not contained within the form. It won’t be a little brain looking out. It
will be a you that is that mind out there picking up your data, your impressions in the world,
sending them back to this. And as you rest out there, the meaning of “Be still and know that I
am God” takes a different significance. Be still out there, and as you’re still in the mind out
there, there’s no place for world thought to go.
And so as I practice this, not being still here alone, but out there, you find that this
inner Self here is insulated against world thought. It’s like you took a glass dome and put it
over you, and nothing could touch you. This outer mind becomes the place where you’re still,
not here in the brain alone, and that takes you out of the senses for a while. It’s a step toward
being even released from the outer mind into the Infinite, but it does take you out of the body.
And you’ll find that just as you rest in that outer mind, knowing that whatever it receives it
sends to this body––if you could turn it around and reverse it––just as it brings you the moon,
it can take you to the moon. Just as it takes distant places into you, it can take you to those
distant places when you turn ye.
Now, this isn’t words anymore. It’s something, though, that must be practiced, and the
way I found to practice it is this. You’re sitting in a room, and you’re realizing that whatever
happens in that room is happening in your mind. And your mind is as large as that room, and
all of the room is in your mind. When you hear a person speak, you’re not hearing them in
your ears first. You’re right there where their mouth seems to be. That’s where your mind is,
and that’s where you hear it and relay it to the ear. And I had an immediate opportunity to
practice this in a strange way. I want to tell you how it fell into place so you can see the
advantage of knowing that what you experience where the form is, is experienced first by
your mind outside of your form and almost instantaneously right in the body where the brain
is.
Playing with this a while, you feel a strange freedom, an unattachment, because you’re
lifted out of the physical self into the mental self. And you rest in that mental self, knowing
whatever I see, I don’t see from where I stand. I see it where it happens and then transmit that
which I see where it happens to where I’m standing. My mind is out there experiencing it
right where it happens and sending it back home to this form. And therefore, if I see error out
there, the place to deny it is not here where the body is, but out there where the mind is
receiving it. A very strange way to heal isn’t it?
And so your call comes, and it’s someone far away. Now, up to that moment, you may
have been practicing that somebody was phoning you. But you see, nobody is really phoning
you at all. Your mind is picking that up right where the individual is, and your mind is
contacting you here. Then, if you will shut your mind there on the scene of the error, not
where your body is, but where the error is taking place—it is only an error in your mind there
—and if you will not let your mind there believe it, you can release the error instantly. Try it.
If you get the feel of it, you’ll be quite amazed.
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So this particular night, that’s what happened. It just fell into place that, “Why, that
isn’t somebody phoning at all. That’s my mind there calling me here.” “Be still” meant the
mind there be still, and It was. That was it. There wasn’t anything else to do. Now try it.
You’ll find that the deeper you go into the healing work, the more amazed you are by the
things that come to you.
Build this outer insulation knowing that if my outer mind—which is everywhere,

which is picking up things like an antenna—can be still, then world mind has no place in me,
no place. Because the only error that’s visible to you is through the mind that God didn’t
create. And if that mind is still out there, you’ll discover that world mind has no place in you.
Your vacuum isn’t just the vacuum in the skull. It’s a vacuum much, much larger than you
would ever estimate it. It becomes a cosmic vacuum, and that awakens you from the cosmic
sleep which Jesus revealed.
Now we may have one foot out of the visible pretty well now. Those of you who can
practice these things will find that Infinite Force is Omnipresent, Omniscient, Omnipotent,
and that is the name we have been giving to God. God is that Infinite Force. That Infinite
Force is God. And because it is that from which all things are imagined, if you rest in It in
your Consciousness, firmly turning away all external belief, you will find that Infinite Force
will express Itself as the full harmony of Being.
There is not an Infinite Force and your friend. There is not an Infinite Force and you.
There is Infinite Force, and there is nothing else. And the one who accepts himself to be that
Infinite Force rejects everything else that is finite, limited, temporary, transient, subject to
change. That Infinite Force never changes, and it is the only Reality of this Universe. When
you identify with It, you have found Christ.
I’d like to feel that people can come to you, and you will identify them as the Infinite
Force in your Consciousness, having lived in that awareness long before they come to you.
And that you can go anywhere in the world as that living Infinite Force, knowing that no
matter where you go, that is all that exists and is all that ever has existed and all that ever will
exist. Its name is God. Its name is any name you care to give it. But if it’s your
Consciousness, then you have nothing more to ask because that is asking in My name.
If it’s in your Consciousness, then you are fulfilling the very meaning of this first
chapter of Joel’s in Contemplative Life. What good is God, what good is the Infinite Force,
what good is Omnipotence, Omnipresence and Omniscience if you have no conscious
awareness of them? They are all around us, but they can only function in the Consciousness
that is aware of them. Day in, day out, without ceasing to be conscious that the Infinite Force
is all there is will bring to you its activity.
Now, when you read this first chapter, and some of you probably did, you saw that the
purpose of all this work is to build the consciousness of Spirit. Spirit is that Infinite Force, and
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you were told to acknowledge It, to praise It, to consciously be aware of It at all times, to do
everything within your power to keep the Word of Consciousness alive within you. You may
have seen in the Orientals how they seem to be just praising God without rhyme or reason all
the time. Well, the reason is that you’ve got to keep conscious of the presence of God for the
presence of God to be functioning in your experience.
You may start inventing all kinds of little ways to remain conscious of the presence of
God because that’s the lifeline to the Infinite. Praise and thanksgiving unto the Father. Break
out in song. Rejoice. Always, every moment in which you are conscious of God’s presence as
the Infinite Force of your very Being is a dedication to your own eternal Life. And the
moment you can be persuaded to drop that, then you are not praying without ceasing. You are
breaking the lifeline of Reality. You are stepping into another personality at that moment, and
you are inviting the karma of the world to make you a target once more.
Now, there have been a number of things said in this meeting, then, that should take us
a little deeper, free us a little more. And they all depend on things falling into your individual
groove of understanding. When you do, change the words if you wish. It doesn’t matter what
the words are, but build that place which is so holy that no matter what the world tempts you
to believe, you cannot be drawn out of that holy place, where the only Reality for you is the
perfect Infinite Force that the world calls God.
Then ten thousand can fall at your right and a thousand at your left. It cannot come
nigh your Consciousness, and what cannot enter your Consciousness cannot express as your
experience. You build your own Spiritual Universe by knowing the Truth that makes you free.
Now this Infinite Force I am opens like a flower. You’ll find there’s nothing that you’re not.
Please work with it. It’ll be very rewarding.
Next week we’ll have two Infinite Way classes. There’ll be one in Santa Cruz. You can
ask Muriel West about it next Sunday, and there’ll be one here. Those of you who are near
there will be happy to know there’s a tape group going to be up there, too, and again, you can
ask Muriel West about that. If any of you hear of other tape groups that you want me to
mention, please tell me. Thanks very much for being here.
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Class 10
Miracle Of The Holy Ghost
Herb: Today we want to begin our study of the Holy Ghost to understand that there is
no possible demonstration on this earth for anyone unless that individual has learned to
receive the Ghost. Now, you’ll find very strangely that if you go through the Old Testament,
you won’t find the word at all. The Holy Ghost was not given to the world in the Old
Testament. It was veiled. Such words like “Samuel did not . . . know the Lord” meant he had
not received the Holy Ghost.
There was the word “Holy breath” and people had visions of God off somewhere
breathing into them a new life. Just how it was accomplished, nobody seemed to know.
There’s a statement that Moses married Shekinah, and that is as veiled as a statement can get
because Shekinah was this Spirit, this Presence, this Light in the holy arc between the
cherubim over the arc, and the marriage of Moses to Shekinah really meant that he had
received the Holy Ghost.
Always, man not being ready to receive the Ghost, a foundation had to be laid instead.
And so people had no idea why they could never really come to God. They gave away
pigeons and bullocks and doves and all kinds of sacrifices, but this was all a preparation to
make them know that they had to begin giving something of themselves. This was to lay a
foundation in the consciousness of man which later would be called: “Deny thyself. Pick up
thy cross. Follow me.” And these words have often meant to the world to chase after the
prophets or to follow the spiritual personalities. But always the veil was deny your human
ego, deny your human selfhood, accept the Christ or Light of your Being––which is picking
up your cross––and then follow me, the Holy Ghost, all of which is done within your
consciousness. To become aware of the Holy Ghost is the way.
When you become aware of Christ in you, then the activity of Christ, which is the
Holy Ghost, becomes your way of life, and all human demonstration is impossible without the
Holy Ghost. And so in the New Testament we find reference to it many times, but what we do
not find is the appreciation of the world that the man called Jesus walking the earth was the
Holy Ghost. And so, when we try to follow the man, we lose sight of the fact that the Holy
Ghost is doing the miracle work. And when we hear that if you believe on Me, the works I do
you shall do, if we’re thinking of the man, we do not realize the Holy Ghost is saying, “If you
believe on Me, the works I do, you shall do.”
And where am I? You can’t find me in somebody else. You’ve got to find Me in
yourself. And then you become conscious that where you are is that Holy Ghost. You can’t
walk away from it. I will never leave you. You can ignore it. You can pretend it doesn’t exist.
You can pretend it’s just a word in the Bible, or you can do as those have done who are called
illumined. You can say this Holy Ghost is the activity of God on earth; it’s the activity of the
Infinite. It’s the miracle worker who doeth the works. The Holy Ghost is the Father within,
and I of mine own self can do nothing without the Father within. The “Father worketh
hitherto.” The Holy Ghost is always where you are and your failure to recognize it separates
you in consciousness from your own Being.
And then, of course, your demonstration is a limited human selfhood walking in the
ways of the world, in the thought consciousness of the world, limited by the world’s thought,
unaware that in your true Self, in the acceptance of the Holy Ghost, every frontier of
limitation is pushed aside. It matters not if you were lacking supply yesterday. The moment
you have attained the recognition of the Holy Ghost, then “Behold, I,” the Holy Ghost “make
all things new.”
And so we find that our real limitation has been that we’re like those people back of
old when Paul walked the earth, and they believed in God. We stopped them and said to them,
“I hear that you believe, but have you received the Holy Ghost?” And they said, “Received it?
We never even heard of it.” And this, of course, is the purpose of the entire Christ
demonstration: To show you that without your awareness of the Holy Ghost where you stand,
you don’t stand a ghost of a chance to demonstrate anything beyond mortality. Because I go
unto the Father. I am the way. I am the Truth. I am the invisible activity of the Father on earth,
and unless you accept Me, you’re nothing but a mortal condemned to die.
So, we find references to sheep and goats. The sheep, of course, hear My Voice. The
sheep are aware of the Holy Ghost, and they are guided by it. The goats are stubborn. They’re
off in their own wills and their own egos. They may, for a time, seem to prosper, but without
the Ghost to guide them, they are really nothing. Their branch is cut off; that must be purged.
And we find many references to the quick and the dead. Now, quickening has always
seemed to most people to be a case in which the vibrations of the body are quickened. Now
that isn’t really accurate. That’s the way it appears to a human mind. Quickening means
something a little different. You know that the Infinite is unfolding as You, and as the Infinite
unfolds, it comes through the glass darkly of human senses, and so this rate of unfoldment is
rather slow. That’s why we all get so impatient. The Infinite through us unfolds so slowly
because of the density of our own thought.
Now, quickening speeds up the unfoldment of the Infinite through you so that the
Infinite becomes the accelerated activity of your Being made tangible and visible. This is the
quickening. And so to the enlightened, more of Infinity is unfolding at a quicker pace than to
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Class 10 : Miracle Of The Holy Ghost
the unenlightened, and this is the difference between the quick and the dead. The quick have
attained recognition of the Holy Ghost. The dead, unaware that the Holy Ghost is the Life of
God, are separated from the very Life they seek. They are the mortal beings, but the quick are
those who have attained a measure of their own immortality while walking on the earth.
And so when Paul sees these people and they have not heard of the Holy Ghost, he’s
quite amazed. How can they believe in God when we know that there are three who bear
witness of God: God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Ghost?
Now, let’s get it straight, then, that we seeking to find the Truth, seeking to live the
Life that is free, unhindered by human thought and human powers, unhindered by the diseases
and problems of the world, unhindered by the limitation called death; we seeking the life
eternal, the true life, the life that is lived in God showing forth the fullness of God’s
presence––we cannot come into this until we are willing to step out of the lower states of
consciousness which enslave the world around us. And there are two. There is the material
consciousness, a primitive state of consciousness, and there is the state of consciousness that
many have found ourselves in, the mental. And it is most unfortunate, but that is where we
have the most trouble.
We all like to understand, and we get a sort of mental indigestion while we’re doing it,
not realizing that until you come above the mental consciousness, you cannot be in the
mystical consciousness. You cannot be in both, and although we try to straddle the fence and
be in the mystical, we remain in the mental as long as we are trying to understand. You cannot
use the human mind as a creative force, as a thinking force. This is the trap, and this is the
trap that prevents us from receiving the mystical Consciousness of the Holy Ghost.
Now then, what is this barrier that we must overcome? What does the Ghost do when
you have It? How do you prepare to receive It? How do you receive It, and when you receive
It, what happens? How do you prevent It from coming to you, and what are the consequences
if you do not receive It?
You see, all of your spiritual life depends on that Holy Ghost. John gave us the clue
when he said, “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, . . . .” But we had to find out
how that Word was made flesh through the activity of the Holy Ghost.
Now, when you try mentally to understand how you can increase your supply simply
by knowing about God, you’ll find that you’re chasing your tail. You’re going around and
around in a circle, and even when you find something and think you know it, you don’t know
it because there is no Truth in the human mind.
You see, the entire teaching of Truth is not about people at all. If you stop and think,
you’ll see that Jesus was not teaching anything about people. Jesus was teaching about God,
Spirit, Light––not about people. Jesus wasn’t teaching people how to improve their lot in life
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or how to heal their wounds or how to be better, more comfortable, more successful people.
He was teaching them how to break the veil, how to walk out of the world of matter into my
Father’s Kingdom, which is “not from hence.” That’s a backward way of saying “which is
right here.”
When he said, “My Kingdom is not of this world,” he added, and my Father’s
Kingdom is “not from hence.” You don’t have to go anywhere. Open to the Holy Ghost.
Now, every miracle done on this earth was done by the Holy Ghost. Everything that
you’re trying to do must be done by the Holy Ghost. And if you keep on trying to do it, you’re
going to have alternate success and failure, and ultimate failure. You cannot do it. Only the
invisible Spirit can do it. God must run God’s Universe, not a mortal being. There must be a
surrender, an understanding that until I attain a recognition of the Holy Ghost, I am a limited
being. And if I have failure after failure or success and failure alternating, it is because I am
trying with my own mentality to encompass the Infinite, and it cannot be done.
You see, this brain is kind of like a nozzle of a long hose, and when you try to use the
nozzle, you’re not going to water the garden. You have to have the whole hose, all of it. And if
you try to think your way into Reality through this little nozzle of a brain, you’ll find you
don’t have any connection to the Infinite. You’re wasting time. It’s kind of like a painter who
might drive miles and miles and miles to find the perfect scene and finally arrives there and
sets up his canvas, and there it is, breathtakingly beautiful, ready to paint. He reaches for his
palette, and he finds all he has is two colors, black and white. What can he do? The essential
is missing. You cannot paint the Infinite with the human mind. Your palette is too limited. The
palette of the Infinite can only be painted by the Holy Ghost, comprehended and made flesh.
And so, let us erase the thought that I with my brilliant brain and my capacity to think
and to understand and to reason can walk in the spiritual universe. This is the perennial trap of
all those who are eager and dedicated, but refuse to see that “deny thyself” means precisely
what it says. That “pick up thy cross” means you must let the Christ mind do the work. You
must erase the human mind, and then the Holy Ghost will say, “Follow me. My Father
worketh hitherto. I will go before you. I will do the work. I will take you into the fulfillment
of everything that is called a promise in the Bible. I know where the land of milk and honey
is. I am omnipresent.”
And now, we’re ready to do what the Bible says. We’re ready to live the one Life.
There’s your second trap. You want to draw from the world to yourself, and it won’t work.
You’ve got to give to the world from yourself and that will work, and the reason is that you
must turn from the outer. Instead of pulling it in from the outer, you must let the Holy Ghost
give it out from the inner. That’s a completely different sense of supply and health and
everything else. If your supply has been dollars, dollars, dollars––you don’t have it. You’re
going to run out someday, no matter who you are.
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Your supply must be different than dollars. Your supply must be the Holy Ghost.
When you have the Holy Ghost, I have 12 baskets full. I can feed the multitudes. I am greater
than he who walks the earth. You must have a spiritual sense of supply, a spiritual sense of
health, a spiritual sense of living. For instance, if your spiritual sense of supply is present,
you’re not looking for dollars. It’s not on your mind. What you’re looking for is to accept and
receive the feeling of the Holy Ghost within you, and then the miracle of the Holy Ghost is
the Word made flesh. I, the Invisible, knoweth your needs. I, the Invisible will appear as that
which you seek.
And now you have a new dimension. Before, you were asking, seeking and knocking
for dollars. You asked God for dollars. You asked the Spirit for dollars. You knocked for
dollars. It doesn’t come that way. You accept the Holy Ghost, and then I, the Holy Ghost,
intercede for you with the Father. I, the Holy Ghost, ask and seek and knock. I, the Holy
Ghost, appear as. I am the miracle worker. Everything you do must come to that Holy Ghost.
So, let’s locate it. When you find it, you’ll discover that it has no partiality. It isn’t
going to favor Jim over Jack or Mary over Peter. The Holy Ghost is on this earth this minute,
not only in an individual, but in every individual and between every individual and above
every individual and below every individual. The Holy Ghost on earth today is ready to move
aside every mountain of problem that the world knows, but it must be accepted individually in
consciousness.
The great power to redeem and regenerate the earth is here and always has been, but
we have tried to draw some of it to ourself, to make it my personal property, and that’s
another trap. You cannot do it. You must leave the government of the invisible Kingdom in
the hands of the Ghost. You must give yourself to It in total confidence that It knoweth all
needs and that It is the living will of the Father on earth present here, even though the human
senses are unaware of it.
We turn and we surrender to the invisible Ghost, which is that creative force on earth
which is dynamic but invisible. We accept It in my consciousness, in my heart, and then we
confide in It. Then we trust It. Then we are guided by It, and It is the seamless garment. It is
the one, infinite, invisible Self. Its magic is beyond description. It is everywhere, and from the
depths of Itself, It produces Itself wherever It is needed in its quantities and qualities in just
the way you would have wanted It if you were writing out your own prescription.
But you cannot direct it or manipulate it. You cannot even seek or desire a
thing or an object or a condition. You must accept that It is all knowing, or else you are
entering in with a human mind, and you will fractionalize the Infinite again. And you will,
again, be in the glass darkly which sees only what is in your own thought.
Now, try and accept the Holy Ghost. Perhaps this will help you. God is not
unconscious, and God is not absent. God is present and conscious and running God’s
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universe. The Son of God, the Christ, is each individual Identity when realized. And when
realized, that Christ becomes the activity of the Ghost on earth. For you to receive the Ghost,
you must know yourself to be the Light of God, the Christ. You must accept this before the
Ghost will function where you are in your consciousness. If you have not made this
acceptance, you cannot expect the miracle of the Holy Ghost to guide you.
Now, watch closely and see that Jesus was demonstrating that the Holy Ghost is
everywhere on this earth. There is not a single place in time or space where the Holy Ghost is
not now in full strength. The complete and total activity of God is in that Holy Ghost, and it is
there where the Father says, “All that I have is thine.” Your supply, your health, your body,
your relationships wherever they may be; everything you seek; everything you have sought;
everything you will ever need unto eternity is now present and active as the Holy Ghost on
earth.
This is the living God. It’s like a tremendous power plant. You hook into It with your
conscious recognition of Its invisible Presence, and then you don’t try to run It. You let your
human selfhood be the nozzle through which this Infinite pours and let It pour at Its own pace,
at Its own quickened way to whatever level It feels necessary. And be grateful. Count your
blessings, for this is how the miracle of Life begins.
We learn little about the early Jesus because his life began with the receiving of the
Holy Ghost, and then every miracle poured forth. And after resurrection, we have the Acts.
The Acts mean something very important to all of us. The Acts mean the deeds that were
accomplished by those who received the Holy Ghost after Jesus walked from the earth. And
so, we have the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul, but before and between those Epistles and
the Gospels, we have the Acts.
We have the Holy Ghost received by the disciples. We have the tongues of flame. We
have them speaking in tongues, and we have everywhere a disciple now converted from a
normal human being into one who has power, into one who can do the works because he has
received the Ghost. And everywhere they go, they bestow the Ghost, meaning they lift those
around them into the realization of It. They raise the I within, and those who receive the
Ghost go forth and do the mighty works. All through the Acts, we see the result of what
happens when individuals turn from the mental consciousness, the material consciousness,
above even extrasensory perception and psychism, and open themselves carte blanche to the
Invisible God.
Take over Father. “Thy servant heareth.” I accept that the presence of the Spirit is right
here, functioning, bubbling over. I don’t have to make it so. I merely have to step out of the
thought of this world.
First, there’s a man, Jesus, and he promises: If you take this body away, “in three
days” you’re going to see it again. “I will raise it up.” Who’s saying that? The Holy Ghost. “I
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will raise it up." And then, there’s no Jesus. He’s gone, but I is still there to raise it up, the
Holy Ghost. Now that invisible Holy Ghost, which is still there to raise it up, is there when
Jesus appears there at the beginning. Where Jesus stands, the invisible Holy Ghost is saying,
“If you destroy this body, I will raise it up.” And then the body is gone, and that invisible
Holy Ghost then raises it up. But that Ghost is always present, before the resurrection, before
the crucifixion. Wherever Jesus stands, you’re looking at the Holy Ghost. I am the Light. I am
the way.
Then he looks at you and he says, “Ye are the Light.” Who’s saying it to you? The
Holy Ghost. But how can the Holy Ghost, which is invisible, say to you that you are the Light
when It just said It is the Light? It’s telling you that I, the Holy Ghost––which is here standing
behind Jesus as the Light of his Being, as the invisible Self of him––I am standing where you
are right now, and I am the Light of you, and I am the Holy Ghost of you. And unless you
know me, you cannot know the Father. If you know that I am the Holy Ghost of you now, you
know the Truth that will make you free. And if you do not know it and cannot accept it, you
are separated from the Truth that makes you free.
I, who walk the earth as Jesus Christ, who did the miracles as Jesus Christ, I am the
Holy Ghost of you now and have been since before your birth, and I will always be the Holy
Ghost of you. I will never leave you, and one of these fine days, you will know me as I am.
And that is when you will sit back and let go of this mortal self you’ve been carrying around
in your mind, for there never was such a one. I, the Holy Ghost, am your Being. There is I and
not you. There is one infinite Holy Ghost, and It is I and not you. And if you want to live in
the fraction, you must be purged. If you want to live in the Infinite Self, then you must follow
Me.
And you follow this Ghost as a sheep, not a goat, as one who is ready and willing to be
anointed, to receive the inner divinity, to trust, to know. And then you’re taken out of all
duality. You’re taken into the mystical Consciousness, and the mystical Consciousness is not
limited to a room or a place or a time. The mystical Consciousness is everywhere the Holy
Ghost is, and that is how the miracle begins.
Now, in your mystical Consciousness you are living in the Kingdom of God on earth.
You’re not under the law of this world. You’re not harassed by circumstances. You’re not
fooled by appearances, and you’re not separated from any being who walks this earth, no
matter what form they take, no matter how pleasant or how ugly. You know your Self to be
One Being, with no limitation in space or time. You see, if you want the Infinite to function
where this form appears, you must first accept that you are the Infinite.
Now, we all put up these barricades that prevent the Holy Ghost from entering our
experience. It cannot enter a human experience. The Holy Ghost can only enter the body of
Spirit. The Holy Ghost can only walk in the invisible Kingdom of God, and if you’re not
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living there in your Consciousness, you are not permitting the Holy Ghost to function your
Being. In your mystical Consciousness, you can say with Jesus, “Who seeth me seeth the
Father. I speak not my own words but the doctrine of the inner Self. I’m not living my life.
The Holy Ghost is living it here.”
All around you, you become alive, and that is the flames of fire that the disciples
received when they received the Ghost. You become alive. You speak with tongues because
you are raised up above human differences. It should read: You speak all tongues because you
are raised up above the belief that there are separate people and separate races and separate
nations. You are lifted up to that realm where there is only One, and so you speak all tongues.
In that One, you have found the Reality that you could not find as a separate individual. Only
in the Reality of One can you live the divine Life, and you can’t do that mentally. It’s
impossible. The only way you can do that is to surrender and let the Ghost do it for you. Now,
that’s where Grace must be, in the surrender to the Ghost, the feeling of its Presence.
And so let’s try now to recognize that all of the New Testament, every word of it, is to
teach you that where your body appears, the Holy Ghost is standing, doing a perfect job. That
means no matter what you are doing now in the flesh, that is only your mental interpretation,
and invisibly there stands the perfection of God’s activity. That Holy Ghost is the Divine
Image. Your concept of It is your human image, and as you receive more of It, It will change
the human image to the Divine.
Now we are but children learning to begin the process of regeneration. Regeneration
refines the body, refines the mind, refines the experience of this life, bringing it closer and
closer to the divine Image. Regeneration feeds you from the Infinite. It feeds you the fullness
of God. That’s how the Word, which is Christ, is made flesh and appears among us. The
firstborn who received the Word received the activity of the Word, which was the Ghost, and
then was reborn of the Spirit and the Truth and was able to walk among us in a body, not
subject to this world. We are to follow, and we follow by letting ourselves be regenerated by
the activity of the Infinite pouring Itself through the unmolested, the untouched Holy Ghost,
and this is your Immaculate Conception. This is how you must be reconceived of the Spirit.
This is not a teaching for people. It’s a teaching about God and God’s Word and God’s
Will and God’s Substance. This is a teaching for those who are ready to accept their
immortality on the earth and to live in the image of God under divine law, in the body of the
Soul under spiritual law. And as long as we cling to our yesterdays, to our cherished human
ideas, even the highest of these human ideas is a limitation. We’re breaking the shell, breaking
through the veil of time and space, of matter and form, of ego and will, and letting that which
is called the Way be the Way in our lives. We’ re no longer going to be goats, but sheep, and
the inner shepherd is that Ghost which goes directly to the Father.
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All around us, It is now functioning. You will not attain It. It is here. You will not
become It. It is here. You will not rise up to It. It is here. You don’t go to It. You withdraw
from the belief of a human selfhood. You withdraw from the belief in a human mind. You
withdraw from the belief that there are powers in this world, that there is power in human
thought and human muscles and human weapons. You withdraw from the belief that there is
power in things. You withdraw from the belief that there is power in money, drugs, medicine,
surgery. You withdraw from the belief that there is power in anything except the Holy Ghost.
All power is in the Ghost. It is the One power. It is omnipotent, and if you cannot
accept that, you have to work until you can. It will not share its omnipotence with you while
you still have an idol, a second self or belief in other powers. Because any belief you have in
a second power means that you’re in a second selfhood, and I repeat, the Ghost will only
function in Itself. It will not function in a mortal consciousness. The consciousness must
change.
Those of you who find that this appeals to you and hits a responsive chord in you are
ready to do that or have done it. And whoever says, “Well, this is not for me,” it would be
better that you realize that, because if it’s not for you, you shouldn’t be doing it. You should
seek an easier teaching because this is not an easy teaching. This is the most difficult teaching
on this earth. It is the narrow path, and it is for those who have exhausted every other
possibility for themselves and are looking for that which will take them into the Infinite on
earth. It is meant for those who are ready to throw away all of the fetters of the human mind,
for those who are not seeking human betterment, but have reached the place where they know
that if you are in the Spirit, you are self-contained in every possible way.
Now, what we’ve done so far today and maybe in the second half is really just a
meager beginning for our study of the Ghost. But unless all consciousness is centered on the
knowledge that the Ghost is all that is present here and all that is present in this universe, we
are not in the One Life. And how can you receive from the One Life if you’re not in It?
The All-ness of the Spirit cannot flow except within Itself. The withdrawal from
everything that is not your spiritual Self must be done, and so now I feel the Ghost is a
necessity for every day. It is the invisible Infinite. It is present. If you cannot acknowledge It
in all thy ways, It cannot direct thy path, and so you’ve got this job to do right where you are.
Can you let go? Can you release this human self? Can you fall back and relax upon the
infinite, Invisible Ghost of God, the activity of God, the knowledge of the presence of God?
Say, “It is here; I accept; I release all of my own activity”? If you can’t, don’t expect any
miracles. If you can, expect the greatest because the greater works will you do if you believe
on Me, on My Presence, on My Reality, on My nearness. So Paul says we live in God; “. . . in
Him we live, and move, and have our being; . . . .”
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The activity right now of the Holy Ghost can be realized as your Being. You’ll know
when you realize it because you’ll say, “Well, what am I fighting for? What am I striving for?
Everything that I have done in the way of striving was a denial of this Ghost. Instead of
resting in the Word, I have been striving.” But it says rest, rest. That means believe on Me. I
am infinite Mind right here, infinite body, infinite law, infinite principle, infinite purpose
fulfilled. Believe on Me, and then the only work you have is to continue believing on Me.
That’s how you rest. You rest in the knowledge that all this is true.
Here and now, the Spirit of God, the Christ of God, the Ghost of God are all My One
Being. That’s Who I am, and because of It my work is already done. I trust the Word to be the
flesh. I trust the Power to be the Power. I trust the Mind to be the Mind. I rest my second self,
the one who didn’t think that the Power was here. To you, the Holy Ghost becomes a living
Truth, not an abstraction. And you are really moving out of the visible into the invisible, out
of the world into the Kingdom, out of the speculation and doubt and confusion into the peace
of My Presence, My Love, My power, My Truth, My perfect Universe all around You.
The disciples could do that, and they stayed in that consciousness for a long time
faithfully, and then one day the sky broke open. Heavens descended to the son of man. One
day everything was magnified upon the earth to them, and they could walk forth now as Sons
of God realized. Each could say, “I live; yet not I. Christ liveth [my Life],” and that activity of
the Christ is the Father working hitherto as the Holy Ghost. Dollars will appear. Supply will
appear. Food will appear. Health will appear. But mostly the invisible body is being built that
walks through the fire, that needs no human help of any kind, that never stops at the grave but
continues right on walking in the invisible Kingdom. That is the body of the Holy Ghost, the
body of pure Consciousness.
Please let your efforts be concentrated on the acceptance of this invisible, living
activity of God all around you. If you could see It fizz, move, think, be, you would know how
real It is. It is the only Reality around you, and the moment you have withdrawn the belief
that the living forms you see are reality, you will feel this invisible Power. You will break the
veil of the glass darkly. You won’t be worrying about physical forms or human lives. You will
behold Him face to face. And then instead of saying, "I do not know the Lord,” you, like
Moses, will be married to Shekinah. And like Jesus, you could say, “The Father and I are
One.”
There’s a new meaning to: “If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you.”
Before, it meant if Jesus went not away, the disciples would not find the Comforter, the Holy
Ghost. But that I is the human I, the personal I, and he was telling each of us, “If the personal
I of you does not go away, the Comforter will not come to you.” If the personal I go not away,
the Comforter cannot come because the Comforter must come to that house which is the
Consciousness of God, not to a personal ego seeking betterment. If ego goes not away, if self
will goes not away, if personal sense of me goes not away, if my humanhood is still held here
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as a fact––then for you there is no Holy Ghost to live your infinite, perfect Life. Choose ye
this day.
Maybe this is something of what Paul said to those men when they had not heard of
the Ghost. He had to prepare them to know that God didn’t create a Universe and then walk
out of it and leave it to someone else to run. God is present in every inch of God’s Universe as
the only Being, and that activity of God being the only Being is the Holy Ghost. When you
know It is the real activity of you, you will say, “Father, how could I have doubted that You
were somewhere else? You are the activity of Me now.” And all God being invisible, all that
activity is invisible. And that’s where you accept it, in the invisible. Otherwise, you’ll never
see it in the visible.
Now, we’ll just rest a moment.
[Silence]
All around us is activity. Be aware of it, even though your senses do not know this. All
around us is activity. It is Life being Itself. It is all-knowing Life, all powerful Life, all Being.
It is all around us constantly, 24 hours a day. There’s no more of It over here and no less of It
over there. Everywhere is invisible, perfect Life being Itself. The only way you lose it is to try
to be a second life, and so you start doing with your mind, with your body, with your hopes,
with your emotions, and now you have broken the continuity of the Infinite. You’re in the
finite of your own conscious thought. You’re walking with the world, and in this separation,
all that the Father is, is knocking at your door, but you have no way to open that door. You
keep it outside of your experience.
Conversely, if you are willing to be still, to rest, to abide, to accept and to let, you
simply stand knowing, and in your knowing you are accepting with a two-edged sword. You
are accepting on this side that all around me is action, perfect action of perfect God in every
possible way. Not one single thing is missing. You must know this. And on the other side,
whatever comes at you to deny this, that’s where you use the other side of your sword.
Whatever comes at you to deny this, you cut away. You refuse to accept any visible denial of
the Truth that perfection is all around you bubbling over. You don’t try to make anything
happen. You don’t seek anything. You accept the infinite perfection all around you as a living
fact, and anything that denies this cannot be true if this is true.
Somebody says, “You’ve got a cancer.” Well that’s a denial of the fact that the infinite,
invisible activity of God is present doing Its job. And so if it is, the cancer must be a lie. If
you accept the cancer, you are denying the Holy Ghost as being present, and as you deny It,
obviously you lose It. As you accept It, you must reject the belief that there is a cancer. You
say, “Will that remove it?” It will appear to you as if it removes it because it cannot be there
in the first place. It can only seem to be. All that is there is the perfect activity of the Holy
Ghost and no other.
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That is the Truth everywhere you are. All that is there is the perfect activity of the
Holy Ghost, and It isn’t the Holy Ghost of somebody else or some other being. It’s the Holy
Ghost of You. It is your Being that you’re accepting as the perfect activity of God. You see,
that’s not two anymore. That’s One I am. That activity of the Holy Ghost, I am, and what’s
this thing saying “cancer?” What’s this thing saying “rheumatism?” What’s this thing saying
“lack of dollars?" Perfect activity of the Holy Ghost, I am.
If I am and because I am, these denials that appear in the world cannot be true. If they
are true in my consciousness, then I am saying that I am not, and this is how we all lose
Identity. We’re all declaring every day, “I am not. I have this wrong and that wrong.” And
therefore, the activity of God standing here as the Ghost is not here. We deny the Ghost. We
deny the Presence. We deny our Identity. We deny our spiritual Reality, and then we bemoan
the fact that we don’t see the activity of God in our lives.
Deny thyself. And so your double-edged sword is one side, to accept what is, and the
other side, to reject or cut away what is not. You don’t have to resist it. Recognize it as a
nothingness. You don’t have to kill the snake that isn’t there. Recognize it as not there. The
recognition of what is not there, even though it seems to be, is the end of the hypnosis.
Whenever you recognize the non-reality of what seems to be there, you will find that it
disappears, because only the Holy Ghost is there. And the more you work with that until you
know it to be true, until every fiber of your being shouts, “Here stands the Son of God, the
living activity of God, and only that”––when that happens, you’re ready to begin walking, not
in a limited place but everywhere. You’re ready to explore the invisible Kingdom.
We should all feel this out-of-the-body experience, because when you feel it you will
have enough food to continue in that direction. You won’t be concentrating on a little me
standing in a little form, but the very atmosphere all around you will be charged with a
different kind of excitement. That’s how you’ll recognize the quickening which makes the
invisible Word flesh.
Nothing should surprise you, then, because the miracles that pour forth are not
miracles at all. They’re merely Reality becoming visible because you’ve accepted It. There
are no miracles in God. Perfection is the law, the rule, the permanent dispensation. As this
perfection appears, we call it miracles, but it’s always present, and that’s all that is present. I
and the Holy Ghost are One and the same.
∞∞∞∞∞ END OS SIDE ONE ∞∞∞∞∞
Paul had attained the awareness that there was a new way to live. The way we live
today normally is the light of the sun sustains this earth, it would appear. Our heat, our light,
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the way nature grows through that heat and light––everything depends on the activity of the
sun. We all draw sustenance from it. Now, the new way to step out of the world into the
invisible Reality, into that which is never dying, is to draw your sustenance from the Holy
Ghost where you are, just as the world draws its sustenance from the sun. Everything this
earth needs comes from that sun, every little insect, every fowl, every fish. Without the sun,
it’s gone.
Now, that is all a symbol of the way we will draw from the inner sun of our own
Being, which is the Holy Ghost. When you learn to put your trust in It, you are turning. You
are awakening, and you are quickened, and you find that the Holy Ghost does exactly that
which the world depends on the sun for. Joel, in the Old Testament, has this to say in the third
chapter, the eighteenth verse: “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the mountains shall
drop down new wine, . . . .” You see how they veiled the Holy Ghost: “shall drop down new
wine, and the hills shall flow with milk, and all the rivers of Judah shall flow with waters, and
a fountain shall come forth of the House of the Lord, and shall water the valley . . . .”
All of this is taking place in your Consciousness the moment you accept that you are
not flesh, you are not mortality. You are not even man or woman, for the secret of the Bible is
that you are the living Holy Ghost now. Seen through a glass darkly, you appear as man or
woman in the flesh. Remove the veil and there stands the activity of God, the Holy Ghost. But
it is here now, seen through the veil, appearing as what you call my form, my life, my being.
And all the while the vast invisible, present where you are, is saying, “We are one.” Now
that’s the new wine, the living fountain.
When we go to Paul, we find something in Hebrews which traces fairly well some of
the things we’ve talked about: the barriers, the gifts of the Spirit, the inner purification
necessary to accept and receive it. These will be the passages we’ll go to. They’ll be all in
Hebrews: chapter 2, verse 4; chapter 3, verse 7; chapter 4, verse 7; chapter 3, verse 11 again;
and then chapter 6, verses 4 thru 8; chapter 9:8.
We’re going to just touch these to show the continuity that Paul was establishing about
the Holy Spirit starting with 2:4: “God also bearing them witness, both with signs and
wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his . . . will.”
Now, “the gifts of the Holy Ghost,” we have other words for those. We call them the
fruits of the Spirit. And so, the gifts of the Holy Ghost are those outer, added things that
appear in your life when you are not looking for the Holy Ghost, not trying to attain it, not
trying to receive it. Don’t make those mistakes. But accepting I am the Holy Ghost. Then,
there is no duality. There is no separation. And the acceptance cannot be up here in the head
or down here in the mouth or in the region of the stomach or the heart. The acceptance is the
way you live, believing on, abiding in. Rejecting all else that denies you to be–– I am the
Holy Ghost. That is the acceptance, and then the gifts of the Spirit pour forth.
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Now, in 3:7, we have this: “Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear
his voice, . . . .” You see the “hear his voice” means to accept. The Holy Ghost doesn’t have to
come there and ring a bell. It’s present. The acceptance is the hearing of Its Voice. So, if you
will hear Its Voice means you will accept that it is where you are. And then, in 4:7, “Again, he
limiteth a certain day, saying in David, “To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye
will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” Again, pressing for the acceptance of the Holy
Ghost.
And then, a very interesting phrase by Paul. He says, “ . . . I was grieved with that
generation, and said, “They do alway err in their heart;”––meaning they’re living in duality,
not accepting themselves to be the invisible Spirit of God––“and they have not known my
ways. [And] So I sware in my wrath, [that] They shall not enter into my rest.)”
Now, that’s the very thing we’re talking about. You, in accepting the Spirit, must copy
this firmness of Paul who swears––even though he’s mad, even though he’s angry––he will
not let them enter his rest. He is resting in the knowledge that here I, Paul, am the living Holy
Ghost, and I will not let them enter into that and deprive me of that Truth. They will not enter
my rest, my acceptance.
And so you see, when the Bible tells you not to be resentful but to turn the other
cheek, not to resist and so forth, not to condemn––it’s telling you don’t let the world enter
your rest. Don’t let the world pierce the armor of Truth in which you stand, that you are the
invisible Holy Ghost. But why can’t you go a step further? You must recognize that where
your enemy is appearing to be, where the bill collector is, where the ingratitude is, where the
harshness is, where everything else appears to be, there too stands the invisible Holy Ghost
and not the person. Not the person! Only the invisible Holy Ghost stands before you
everywhere. Do not let the world enter your rest.
Now don’t you see then, you’ve got the seamless garment, the one invisible Holy
Ghost everywhere? You’re in the power. There’s nothing more to do, then, but rest in the
knowledge that there is not a bill collector. There is not an irate friend or an irate employer or
an irate husband or wife. There is the invisible Holy Ghost, and here is the invisible Holy
Ghost. They are One Being, and then the power of that Ghost becomes manifest in the flesh
as harmony, as peace, as fulfillment, as helpfulness, as cooperation, as beauty, as the activity
of the Ghost made visible, the Word made flesh. And all of you who have done this know it is
true, but to do it continuously is praying without ceasing. Even Paul in his wrath was
determined they will not enter my rest. He was resting in the Word.
Some of you have had the experience of becoming very high in the Truth and then
hitting the bottom. Maybe Paul had you in mind with this in 6:4[-6]. “. . . it is impossible for
those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made
partakers of the . . . Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the
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world to come, . . .” (“the world to come"––right here) “If they shall fall away, to renew them
again unto repentance; seeing that they crucify to themselves the son of God afresh, . . . .”
Now then, you who have received the Word, have experienced the Word and have
been lifted by the Word, more is expected of you, and when you turn from that Word, you feel
the crash more than one who hadn’t received the Word. You have further to fall. And so, we
have a greater responsibility once we come into the awareness of Truth. We have to be faithful
to It, or else it’s very difficult to be restored to that grace once you have abridged your faith,
once you have broken faith with the Spirit of your own being. Once you have received the
Word and have become disobedient to it, you’re asking for trouble.
Now, having accepted yourself to be the living Spirit, when you do that, when you
know that this living Spirit that I am is everywhere as the invisible Holy Ghost, then you have
an obligation to abide by Its will: To love where hate appears, to pray for the one who appears
to be guilty, to forgive––because your forgiveness is the recognition that right where there is
one who appears in need of forgiveness––that one isn’t there. I, the invisible Holy Ghost, the
One Self am there. And if you cannot do that after you have received the Word, then for you
there is much gnashing of teeth because this is a sacred responsibility.
In 9:8, Paul says, “The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all
was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing:”––and that’s the
reference to the time when, in the Hebrews, the holy priest alone was able to go into the arc of
the covenant. All others had to go in the second tabernacle. It was not time for the intelligence
or wisdom or spiritual preparation of man to receive this great eternal secret that even those
slaves who were being led out of Egypt by Moses, they were the living Holy Ghost, but there
was no way for them to know it at the time. We who are slaves to a different level of
consciousness, there is a way for us to know it.
Now, there you have a great secret, then, that everything must be drawn from within
your own Being, and your own Being is the infinite Invisible. That infinite Invisible is what
you must learn to wake up to. And if I have said this a dozen times or more, or a hundred or a
thousand, I still know that it’s a difficult thing to wake up to the infinite Invisible. And even
though we determine to do it and go to sleep with the infinite Invisible in our consciousness,
somehow we just hear the words and pass it by, and that passing it by keeps us outside of all
of the things we are striving to attain.
Don’t pass it by. Accept that the Holy Ghost of your Being does not begin where your
body is. It does not begin in the room. It does not end in the room. The Holy Ghost of your
Being is out touring the Infinite and will send right to where the form appears all that is
necessary instantly. Accept the infinity of the Holy Ghost. Please don’t limit It to you or to me
or to him or to her. God is infinite Being. The Holy Ghost is the infinite Activity of God. It is
your infinite Activity.
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You remember last week we talked about the consciousness of feeling a draft at the
window. Now watch how you can magnify that idea. There’s the draft at the window, and you
feel it, and now realize that you feel it at the window before your body feels it here. There’s
something of you at the window feeling that draft, and we’ll call that your mind, or your
human consciousness, which instantly relays that expression or that experience to your brain
here.
You see the moon, but where do you see it? Do you see it from down here, or are you
there? Is your consciousness there experiencing the moon and relaying that expression, that
experience to your brain here? You’ll find it so. You’ll find that everything on this earth is
within your consciousness, and your consciousness must be bigger than this earth in order for
these things to be in your consciousness. You are experiencing these things first in your
consciousness and then almost instantaneously in your brain.
Your Consciousness is everywhere, and everything that you experience can be

controlled by the knowledge that my Consciousness is the activity of God. So that gradually
you will stand in that place, which is called the secret place, where whatever comes into your
Consciousness that is not of God, you will instantly recognize as not being of God. You will
call it a tare or chaff, not wheat; and you will recognize it as a denial of your being, and you
will not accept it. You will not accept the evils of the world, the lacks and limitations, for they
are not the Consciousness of God expressing. And you will separate them until your
consciousness is purified of all other belief than that which God is. And you’ll find you’re
living in the infinite Consciousness.
And then, while there is a moon to this world and a sun to this world and stars to this
world and earth and water to this world, you’ll be living behind them––because certainly God
is not in this world. You’ll be living behind them in the invisible Kingdom of God, and all
these things will only appear in your consciousness. What you experience in the form will
depend on that.
You take a vacuum cleaner, and you put the nose of the vacuum cleaner on the ground
and you start vacuuming, and it picks up dirt, and then what do you have in the vacuum
cleaner bag? You have dirt. Whatever you pick up with the vacuum cleaner goes into the bag.
Now, your mind works the same way. It picks up experience, and if it picks up the untruth,
that goes into your bag of memories, and they become conditioned reflexes. They become
part of what you experience and what you show forth. Your mind is like the vacuum cleaner.
But suppose you have the capacity to reject what the mind picks up and to only accept what
God is sending through? Then the law of externalization works in your favor. What God is
sending through is the purity of his Consciousness, and that shows forth in your world
instead.
And so we are controlling world thought. We are standing still in Truth, and because
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the Truth is that you are the infinite Consciousness of God made visible here through the glass
darkly, you eliminate the glass darkly in your Consciousness, standing in the Truth of being
the Holy Ghost. And this becomes the way in which the world’s evils, errors––the dirt that
goes into the vacuum cleaner––comes to your attention. But your Truth becomes a filter for it
and separates the wheat from the tares automatically, so that into your bag of Consciousness
comes only that which is the Truth. And that is all that can go forth, and that Truth, being
infinite and invisible, you exhibit in your daily experience the infinite, invisible qualities of
God. The Truth must be the place where you stand.
Now there are many ways to heal that we’ve learned, and here’s another one. Last
week we discussed some, and we’re going to have many of these suggestions as we go along,
and this one is probably best to start with healing someone else so you can see it clearly. This
someone else has a problem without a name, we’ll say at the moment, or let’s give it a name,
if you will. Let’s go back to some physical ailment. And now, you’re the healer. Ask yourself:
Are you the healer or are you the Holy Ghost? When you’re the healer, you might as well be a
dead stone for that person who has called you, but are you the Holy Ghost? Can you accept
that you are? Can you live that way? Can you try?
Well, let’s say you reach the place where you can accept you are the Holy Ghost. But
you are One! There’s not a Holy Ghost everywhere broken up into little pieces. The Holy
Ghost is the one, invisible activity of God, without any separation from Itself anywhere.
Therefore, you can say to yourself, “I, the Holy Ghost––I do not have a physical pain.” And
that’s the Truth. But I am the one Holy Ghost; there is no other. And therefore, the Holy Ghost
that I am here, I am there right where that victim of a pain is. But I don’t have a pain there
anymore than I have it here. Can you do that? You know what you have to do after that?
Nothing. Absolutely nothing! You simply rest in that knowledge: I, the Holy Ghost, here have
no pain, and I, the Holy Ghost, there have no pain, and rest in the Word.
Now, isn’t that cutting it down to a simple way? You’ll find it works, but only when
you have attained the maturity of knowing that you are the Holy Ghost. Then you will
discover anyone in the world can call you, but they aren’t there. The Holy Ghost is. And the
Holy Ghost that is where they are is the same Holy Ghost where you are. And if you where
you are realize the Truth, It will be realized by the Holy Ghost of you where the individual
appears, and show forth. And where there is an opening, a receptivity to Truth, it will be
almost instantaneous.
But you’re going to find many levels of consciousness coming to you, and they won’t
all be receptive to Truth. And so you’ll have to be pretty patient, and even when the patient
says to you, “I don’t feel any better,” you’ll have to go right back and do it all over again, just
as you did the first time, because it’s still the Truth. And if it happens a hundred times, it’s still
the Truth, and you must stand in the Truth.
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Now, suppose the problem is you and not the patient. Suppose you’re the patient. Well,
that’s simplified, isn’t it? The only reason you have the problem is because you do not know
you’re the Holy Ghost. The activity of God has no problem. If you cannot accept that you are,
why should the problem go away? It’s only world thought, and it will stay as long as you’re in
the world thought. If you can’t transfer to Divine Thought, the problem can’t disappear. But
when you’re in Divine Thought, it automatically erases world thought, just as if you could
walk right over this tape with another message. It erases what’s below it. World thought is
always erased by Divine Thought. And so, when you are in no thought about this world,
Divine Thought erases the tape of this world that has been playing in your mind.
Now, you might say, “Well, how many years does it take to reach the place where I
can be that way?” You’d be wrong in asking that question because it doesn’t take years. It
takes lifetimes, and that’s what you’ve been doing all your lifetimes. You’ve been coming to
the place where you can accept yourself to be perfect as your Father, and maybe you’re so
close to it now that all it takes is a reminder, a little nudge, a few jolts and jars thrown in. And
then one day we’re going to say, “I’m through with those jolts and jars. I’m going to stand in
my Self, for I know there’s no jolting and jarring the Ghost, only a mortal sense of things.”
And then you’ll see that no one has ever walked this earth who is not now the invisible
Holy Ghost, no matter where they may be, for there is no other life in the entire universe of
God. We only delay and prolong our despairs and distresses because we won’t take ourselves
in hand and face the flat truth that me is a lie. The Holy Ghost of God alone stands
everywhere. There is no place that I can flee from the Spirit of God. To a child, we would take
them by the neck or by the seat of the pants, and we would drill it unto them. We have to
sometimes do that to ourselves until we know, until we can stand, until they can come and
crucify us, and we can say, “What of it? How do you crucify the Holy Ghost?”
If they destroy this temple, in three days I will raise it up again. And while those three
days are going on, I will be right here being what I am, even though the world does not see
me. That’s what you must be saying in yourself until you know your invisible Self so well that
nobody can make you a finite, visible person again.
Now that’s the beginning of our study of the Holy Ghost. It is said that Mary was the
bride of the Holy Ghost and, therefore, could bring forth that child which the world called
Jesus the Christ, but we must all be a bride of the Holy Ghost. And then when ye think not,
when you’re out of world thought, the Holy Ghost cometh because that is Who comes. That is
the Bridegroom, and we are married and we are one. And every activity of the Ghost then
becomes a living, divine experience under divine law in that Life which knows no end.
I know we’re studying The Contemplative Life, and yet I’m going to recommend that
for next week you read another chapter in another book––in fact, two different books. One of
them is The Thunder of Silence. I’d like you to read again, seriously, until you can put it into
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practice, the ninth chapter, “This is a Spiritual Universe,” and if you will, in God the
Substance of All Form, also, I think, chapter nine, yes, chapter nine. I don’t remember the
title, but chapter nine in both books, God the Substance of All Form and The Thunder of
Silence. And you’ll find that when you put them together, you may be persuaded that if you’re
not the Holy Ghost, you’re a walking corpse because God made no material man. God made
no material universe.
Another suggestion is this: That when you read your New Testament, wherever the
word “I say unto you” or the word “I” is used, please try to know that in most cases, that I is
standing right where you are, and it is saying to you, “I say unto you.” That is not a dream,
and that is not a symbolism. That is a pure and simple fact. “I am the Truth” stands by you
and says it all the time, and this is the Holy Ghost of your true Being saying, “I am the Truth.
You out there––you’re a shadow of Me. You’re but the world concept about what I am. Come
unto Me. Turn ye. Erase that outer sense of self, for I am come. I am knocking at the door of
your Consciousness, and if you will open up, I will lift you into eternal, infinite Being here
and now.”
Try to recognize that every “I say,” “I am,” is not in the book. It is in the invisible,
present now as your Being, trying to persuade your human sense of consciousness that it is a
prodigal unless it turns and gives up its false sense of self. Until you get so aware of the
infinite, invisible activity of your own Being all around you, that you know that my whole
universe is my Being, and my Being is my whole Universe, and there is no other. I don’t have
to fear the shadows anymore. I don’t have to reach out to cling to the shadows. I am all there
is. Let’s get this living Experience and rest with It. And you’ll get It to a large degree out of
those two chapters, if you’re faithful to them. Then next week we can go into other levels of
the Holy Ghost. We might have our work done before Easter.
We acknowledge now, one invisible Self. Your name is Life, not physical form, and
the activity of that Life that you are is the Holy Ghost. Your Life is the only Life there is in
this universe. There is no other. Your Life is forever. Your Life is perfect now and functioning
now everywhere. It is the Life of every person who walks the earth. When you’re in It
knowingly, you’re in the oneness, you’re in the power. That is where the glory is made
manifest. Whoever is in the One Life, to him I come, and I bring with me the gifts of the
Magi––Omnipotence, Omnipresence, Omniscience––the myrrh and the frankincense and the
gold.
Whenever you are in the One, knowingly, and there is no other on the earth or in the
sky or in the sea, there I Am, the living God, and we are One. It was John, who in one of his
epistles said to his disciples, “[Dear ones, accept no] idols.” And on that we shall end today’s
little talk. You know what you are. Accept no idols.
Thanks very much.
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Class 11
Enoch
Herb: We find something very strange in that the Old Testament ends with the
prophecies of Malachi, who wrote in 450 BC, and the New Testament begins with the Book
of Matthew, which was written in the middle of the first century. We have approximately 500
years unaccounted for, and in these 500 years certain things transpired which can well change
the course of Christianity. If you remember the old family Bibles when your grandfather
carted it out from the attic, in between the Old and New Testament they used to print the
Apocrypha.
This was originally the way it was done, and then throughout the years, throughout the
centuries, the Apocrypha began to disappear in the Bibles. And so you came directly from
Malachi to Matthew, and those 500 years were meaningless to the average person who was
studying Christianity. Now the books in the Apocrypha were the following: There was the
Maccabee Brothers, Susanna, Esther, Judith, Esdras, Baruch, Tobit, Manasseh, the Wise
Sayings of Solomon, Jesus the son of Sirach, and a book called, not Ecclesiastes, but
Ecclesiasticus. Now, of course they're available. Some of you have read them. Some have
taken the trouble to find them and see what they say.
But there was another group of books, and these were grouped under a different name,
and these never were printed between Malachi and Matthew, although they had the same
scriptural authority. These groups for some strange reason sort of disappeared. Many of them
would seem to be lost, and even rather serious students of Christianity really never heard of
them or knew of their existence. And these books were called the following: There was the
Book of Jubilees. There was the Epistles of Aristeas. There was the Books of Adam and Eve,
the Martyrdom of Isaiah, the First and Second Enoch, the Fourth Ezra, the Sibylline Oracles,
the Assumption of Moses, the Second and Third Baruch, the Psalms of Solomon, the Fourth
Maccabees, the Sayings of the Father, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Book of Barnabas, the
Story of Ahikar, the fragments of a Zadokite work, and later, 40 years later by another
authority, were added the following: the Third Maccabees, the Testament of Job, the Lives of
the Prophets, and the Apocalypse of Abraham.
Now all of these writings existed under the name of Pseudepigrapha to distinguish
them from Apocrypha, but they were all the Word of God expressing through prophets. Now
these Pseudepigrapha contained the First and Second Books of Enoch. And inasmuch as here
in Genesis it says, “. . . Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him,” we learn
that Enoch was translated. “[He] walked with God: and [then] he was not; for God took him,”
Class 11 : Enoch
and our friend Paul thought enough of that to make a remark of his own.
And so in Hebrews 11:5, Paul picks it up from Genesis, and he says, “By faith Enoch
was translated that he should not see death; and was not found, because God had translated
him: for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.” Paul is telling us
that Enoch had found the way to walk in oneness with God, and because of this he was able to
walk from the earth not experiencing death, losing body consciousness––and translating into
the spiritual world without the apprehension of what we call the experience of death. Genesis
made the point. Paul made the point. You would think a man that important, why we'd have
chapters and chapters on him in the Bible. But no, the First Book of Enoch and the Second
Book of Enoch were buried in the Pseudepigrapha, and the Pseudepigrapha containing all
these other books disappeared.
The first time the English-speaking world ever heard of the Books of Enoch was in
about 1832. There was a man named James Bruce who went from Scotland into Ethiopia in
the 18th century, and he brought back an Ethiopian copy of the Book of Enoch. It took many
years to translate it, and finally, it came out in English through a professor at Oxford who
could translate it, and it was the Book of Enoch presented in English for the first time ever. It
didn't make much of a stir because, after all, who was Enoch? Just a little name in the Bible.
Nobody really cared about Enoch. They were all interested in Christianity as they knew it.
And then in about 1853 the book was translated into German, and still it caused no stir. Even
the scholars didn't make much of a fuss about it.
There was a fellow named R. H. Charles, and R. H. Charles was the Canon of
Westminster, and in the early 1900's he got hold of the original Greek manuscripts of
Enoch––not the Ethiopian, which would be sort of difficult for anyone except the most erudite
scholar to understand. He got hold of the Greek, and he found four original Greek
manuscripts which were copies of the Enoch document. And so he translated them into
English, and these became quite sensational in the religious world, and that's how the
Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha incidentally came into the Bible. Charles followed all the
way through and accumulated all of the translations of these various works into the
Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha.
Now the reason he did this is because he was aware that there had been a systematic
method inaugurated way back in the earliest days to eliminate Enoch from the Bible. And the
reason Enoch had to be eliminated from the Bible is because, in spite of the fact that he lived
many, many centuries before Jesus Christ, it seems that everything we read in the Bible about
what Jesus Christ said was said by Enoch. And it raises many not only embarrassing
questions, but it threatens to remove the basic foundation of many of our beliefs as propagated
by formalized Christian religion.
Now we find that although Enoch is not mentioned in the New Testament, in spite of
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the fact that Enoch prophesied the coming of Christ to earth, that Enoch was highly regarded
by his contemporaries and those who later followed him, and so we find many references to
him. We find in this Book of Ecclesiasticus in the Apocrypha that Enoch is referred to as
“unlike any other man.” We find a historian named Tertullianus 200 years after Jesus saying
that the Book of Enoch was divinely inspired. We find great church luminaries of the earliest
days like Clement of Alexandria and Origen and the historian, Josephus, all saying that the
Book of Enoch was a work that was given to Enoch by God.
And then we begin to see that Enoch, not appearing in our Bible, represents some
invisible activity unknown to human beings who are taking the Bible for granted. And as we
investigate it, we discover that this period between Malachi in 450 BC, and more directly
about 100 to 200 BC to 100 AD––in those 200 or 300 years, there was a great transition in
Judaism, a transition so sensational that there were created two camps: Jews and Christians.
And this is before Jesus.
The Judaism was being changed into another kind of thinking, a thinking which knew
about a Messiah as Christ, the messenger who would come and bring to the earth Christ
Consciousness. A message that spoke about a spiritual Resurrection. A message that said
many things that are in the Sermon on the Mount. It also spoke about the Ten Commandments
and told us that God is the invisible Reality of every man. This message of Enoch was
accepted by the early Christian church. They even referred to it. Here is a statement of
Barnabas, and he quotes from the Second Book of Enoch, and this quote says, “And it shall
come to pass in the last days, that the LORD shall deliver the sheep of his pasture and the
sheepfold, and their tower to destruction.”
So you see in the Book of Enoch, just as Jesus taught in the fourth chapter of Matthew,
the Book of Enoch teaches about the end of the world. And in other places Barnabas, who, as
you know, was a companion of Paul, Barnabas says: “As Enoch said . . . ” and so, you see,
you can't find a book of Barnabas in the Bible because he referred to Enoch.
Now, why would it be so important to eliminate Enoch? The story of the virgin birth of
Jesus Christ is based upon the fact that suddenly God placed upon the earth His Son and that
through new revelation of His Son, the following things were said, and this is the basis of how
we must live. And then the doctrine of the Holy Ghost, namely the Trinity and various forms
of purgatory, and all of the doctrines that we know as contemporary orthodox Christianity
depended on the appearance of the Son of God immaculately conceived, born of a virgin,
appearing on earth as Jesus Christ. But Enoch had said most of the things that Jesus later said.
He said, “The elect shall inherit the earth.” How did Jesus come to say that centuries later, if it
was new revelation? How did Jesus come to refer to the “Son of Man” appearing as a cloud
from heaven if Enoch had said it centuries before? This is not new revelation.
So we find that systematically everything that had anything to do with Enoch had to be
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Class 11 : Enoch
removed from the Bible, because you had to have a new dispensation exemplified by Jesus
Christ. And there were many other embarrassing statements by Enoch, all of which tended to
show that the teaching of Jesus Christ and the teaching of Enoch were very parallel––so that
Christianity actually did not begin with Jesus Christ, but began with Enoch––and the true
Father of Christianity would have to be Enoch.
Now in order to do this, there had to be changes in the actual words of the Bible. And
they're rather alarming when you see them because other scholars of high repute, of integrity
which can never be reproached, have discovered these changes and brought them to our
attention. And I'd like you to see some of them today because it will enlarge your scope about
the real message of Christ. The most infamous is in Peter, in the first Epistle of Peter: In the
third chapter, in the verses 18 to 20 we find a most unusual kind of statement. It is the basis of
the purgatory which was established in Catholicism, and it has no validity.
In Peter 3:18 we find this: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the
unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the
Spirit: By which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; Which sometime were
disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, . . .” (Now you
see that “Christ” and “in the days of Noah”—You’re beginning to see that something is funny
there.) “while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”
Now this hasn't made sense to scholars for a long time. It says, “Christ . . . once
suffered for sins, . . . Which sometimes were disobedient, . . . [in] the longsuffering of
God . . . in the days of Noah.” And fortunately we have a couple of Bibles here, not opinions
anymore of historians, but Bibles, and this is a Goodspeed. And watch how he changes that to
something else. Where here it says, “For Christ also [had] once suffered,” in Goodspeed we
say, “For Enoch also [had] once suffered.” Now “Enoch” was changed in the King James
Testament to “Christ” to eliminate the fact that Enoch is the one who went into the prisons
and Enoch was on the earth. The same is true in the book in the Bible by Moffatt, and the
same is true in the Bible by Schonfield. Each uses in place of “Christ also hath once
suffered”––“For Enoch hath also once suffered.” And you see Christ Enoch and Christ Jesus
is the point. Enoch had been Christed as Jesus later was Christed.
Now in the Acts, in the eighth chapter, thirty-seventh verse, we find another strange
thing. We find this statement. There was a eunuch who had wanted baptism, and Philip says to
him in the thirty-seventh verse, “And Philip said, “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou
mayest.” (In other words, be baptized). “And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ
is the Son of God.” Now when I looked this up in Moffatt and Goodspeed, I find something
most irregular, and it is this: In Goodspeed you go from 36 to 38; 37 is omitted. The
line––“And Philip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered
and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”––is omitted. Similarly in Moffatt.
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Now, of course, the reason it's omitted is because it never was in there, and there's a
note about it in one of these Bibles. There’s a note about it in the Schonfield book, I think, and
it says that this line never was actually in the original Greek translations. In other words,
somebody was trying to sell the idea that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is where you worship.
Now, you may find that this omission is in other Bibles. I have only found it in these three:
Moffatt, Goodspeed, and the Authentic New Testament of Schonfield. But I have read much
about it in commentaries. Now then, the elimination of Enoch and the substitution of the word
“Christ” was to give the impression that [before] Jesus Christ, and here again,—“I believe that
Jesus Christ is the Son of God”—is to give the impression that before Jesus Christ there was
no Christ on earth.
However, we find that Jude 14 (fourteenth verse of Jude), recognizes Enoch as

divinely inspired, and so we find in the fourteenth verse of Jude the following statement,
which is just a brief recognition: “. . . Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of
these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints.” Now Jude is one of
the disciples of Jesus. He’s the brother of James, and he is using Enoch as an authority.
“Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying . . . .” Now that statement,
"Seventh from Adam" means that Enoch had reached the Seventh Heaven.
Now you're going to say, “Well, what about all this?” And this is what it's all about.
The Books of Enoch 1 and 2 have some fantastic things that are almost identical to the
teaching of Jesus Christ, and they are written before Jesus Christ appeared on the earth. The
one that I have is called the First Book of Enoch, and there's no question about it, but the
things in it are in our New Testament. And this is from R. H. Charles, the Canon of
Westminster, in the early 1900's.
When Charles brought out his revelations about the Books of Enoch and how they
predated our Bible, and yet they had the facts in it that our New Testament has, again, it was a
book this big, the Pseudepigrapha, and no normal church man could even afford to buy one,
when it finally did come out in English, and so it ran unnoticed. But Charles had preceded the
findings in the caves, and in 1952, lo and behold, eight more Books of Enoch turn up in the
library of––guess who?––the Essenes. And they discovered that all of the Pseudepigrapha that
Charles had listed and had translated, this was the Bible of the Essenes, and prominent among
them were the Books of Enoch.
They discovered, too, that the Essenes in the period between Malachi and Matthew
were a different religion than normal Judaism. You know what they were practicing? The
Infinite Way. That's what the Essenes were practicing in those centuries. They were practicing
spiritual resurrection through conscious union with God and the knowledge that God is the
Substance of the invisible form of man. And they were practicing because their teacher was
Enoch, who had translated, and later among them was the mother of Jesus, studying as her
mother had and as her husband Joseph did, all studying the Books of Enoch. And it was
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discovered that Jesus, too, lived among them, studying the Books of Enoch. Paul said, “I
never go anywhere without a Book of Enoch.” The disciples and Jesus used the Books of
Enoch as their Bible.
Now, you see the hate between the Jews and the Christians in these early days, when
Christianity formalized, was such that the Jews would not admit that there was an Essenic
movement, which is really Christianity, which taught not a Messiah come to deliver a nation
from bondage, but a universal Christ. The Jews could not stomach this because it differed
from their teaching. And so every reference to Enoch was taboo with them, and they cut it out
of their Bibles. And the Christian couldn't stand Enoch because Enoch had said the same
things that the Christians were trying to sell the world as original with Jesus Christ. And so
you had both sides determined to keep the Books of Enoch out of the Bible. And that's why
Pseudepigrapha, which would naturally mention Enoch in many places because they, too,
worshipped the teachings of Enoch—all of this became unknown until the great work of R. H.
Charles.
And we, today, largely ignorant even when we get the book of Pseudepigrapha and see
it, we're not aware that this is Christianity predating the teaching of Jesus Christ on the earth.
And then we find that the teaching of Jesus Christ, which was pure Essenic doctrine as taught
by Enoch, was corrupted in the fourth century, totally corrupted so that no longer was the
teaching of Jesus Christ taught at all. Instead it was all corrupted into the virgin birth, the fall
of man, baptism by the laying on of hands. You see, it has no place to take mankind. The most
incredible thing is that our Bible teaches us as you sow, so shall ye reap, and religion has
sown to the lie. Religion, itself, must reap corruption for that reason. The teaching of Jesus
Christ is a true one, but it isn't being taught. The teaching of Enoch was a true one, but it is
not being taught.
Now Enoch and the Book of Revelation are very similar. You'll find that the
apocalypse, attributed to John, speaks of the seven heavens, and so does Enoch. Now here's
what you learn in Enoch, and you begin to see why we are coming into a broader base about
Truth. Enoch teaches six different things in his book. Actually the Books of Enoch, the eight
discovered in cave four at Qumran, which is the Essene library, have not been translated, and
there are all kinds of reasons given. The fact is, they have been translated.
They simply are not released because they completely repudiate everything that we
have been taught about the false virgin birth. They repudiate the idea of God being the Father
of one individual, and they teach, instead, that everyone who receives the Holy Ghost is born
of the Spirit, which is God, and that immaculate conception is possible to every person on the
earth and is, in fact, the plan of God, that each be immaculately conceived by the reception of
the Spirit. Baptism, the Essenic baptism, was the baptism which Jesus Christ taught. Water
alone will not do it, and so they taught the Truth and the Spirit, which Jesus adopted because
that's what he studied.
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Now, in the Book of Enoch we learn about fallen angels and giants; travels through
Heaven, earth, and hell. The second vision is a vision of angels and the Christ coming to
earth. Then there is the vision of the sun, the moon, the stars, and the four winds; two more
visions about the Kingdom of Messiah. There are admonitions. And then there are wonders
connected with birth of Noah and the future of the just and the unjust.
Now something has fallen into my hand, which is very interesting. There are seven
heavens in one of the Books of Enoch, and it's rather long, so I'm only going to read to you
“The Seventh Heaven” from his book, and it reveals what orthodox Christianity has not
wished to reveal. Reads as follows:
Then he raised me into the Seventh Heaven,

Where I saw Spirits in a paradise of splendor.
They were all the Holy Ones of God,
Spirit unclothed in flesh.
I viewed them in their celestial garments,
Assembled in splendor and divineness.
And while gazing upon them,
One of the beautiful Spirits who was a-nigh
Came unto me and shewed me Books,
But they were not as the books of men.
And he opened the books before me
And they contained writings,
But unlike the writings of earth.
And he read the Institutes of Heavenly Truth,
And the records of holy things.
Then I beheld One standing,
Whose glory exceeded the glory of all others;
And all the saints and spirits of the place
Advanced toward this One with reverent awe.
—You can see the similarity to John's Book of Revelations written centuries later.—
Then this One became changed and appeared like a Divine Being.
And the angel said, Venerate!
And I venerated, and beheld the type
Of many wonderful things revealed.
And while I venerated the Spirit,
Behold, I saw another Glorious Being,
More beautiful and divine than the first,
Whose glory suffered no transfiguration.
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—That means he had reached the ultimate. He was the Light. He couldn't be
transfigured into Light.—
And all the Angels approached and worshipped,

And venerated not the first Spirit, when the Lord was nigh.
A Cloud of Radiance was interposed,
Through which my dazzled eyes beheld:
Had I seen the Lord of Brightness.
My spirit itself had been consumed.
—That’s like the blindness of Paul. Incidentally, one of the books in the
Pseudepigrapha is a fragment of a Zadokite work, and this Zadokite work is those sons of
Zadok. And there is reason to believe that when Paul was blinded in Damascus, that
Damascus is a symbolized name for the community of the Essenes, that Paul was blinded in
the community of the Essenes. This is not definite; there's reason to believe that Damascus
implies that.—
Then on my face, I fell, and worshipped, For this was the Supreme.
Seventy-thousand Veils He wore,
To hide the brightness of seventy-thousand suns.
And lo, an Ocean of Light:
And the Angel said to me, Who is this That sitteth on the right of God?
And I answered, Sir, thou knowest.
—You’ll find the very same words in John, "Sir thou knowest.”—
[Then he spake,] This is the Beloved,

This is the Holy Spirit,
Who speaks in the Prophets,
Queen of the Ocean of Light.
But on the left stood a Spirit,
Clothed as the Son of Thunders:
And I said, unto the Angel, and who is he?
And he said, it is the MESSENGER.
Then mine eyes were opened,
And I beheld a Mysterious Glory.
Darkness from excessive Light
Seized me and drowned my understanding.
And I heard the tongue, the tongues of thousand thousands Glorifying.
—And this will be later in the Acts, you see when they speak with tongues.—
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I heard the tongues of thousand thousands.

Glorifying, venerating, and chanting Him,
Whose presence was too bright for me to behold,
Whose effulgence had stricken me blind.
And the hymns ascend from six Heavens
Into the Seventh Heaven, of the Most High;
And I knew then why they sang around the Thrones,
Whose splendor was an invisible Mystery.
—And then here comes his prophecy about Christ on earth: —
And the Angel said, This Messenger of God Hath received great exaltation;
He is clothed by the Holy Spirit,
And proclaimed through the mouths of the Divine Ones.
And I heard a Voice of music say unto this Messenger;
Go, descend through the Heavens,
Through the firmament of the spheres descend.
Assimilate thyself in appearance unto all
Who abide in the Heavens and the Circles,
And go down upon the earth,
And free it from the fetters of darkness.
And thus the Voice spake.
Immediately we descended into the sixth Heaven,
And to the fifth heaven, and the fourth, and to all the others,
And so downward through a multitude of Circles.

But whithersoever we came, the dwellers in the place
Recognized not the Messenger of God;
They believed him to be as one with themselves,
For he assumed the forms that belong to the various spheres;
And he passed into the Elemental Circles,
And into the firmament, and so upon the earth;
And he took the appearance of a Man upon him,
And was believed by man to be one with themselves.
And he lived upon the earth, and announced the Message;
And he passed away from earth and ascended;
Then the Spirits of the Firmaments and the Elemental Circles
Saw him pass, but with unchanged aspect.
And they venerated him saying: -
How hath he descended, and we saw him not?
And how hath he passed, and we discovered not the splendour
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With which the Lord clothed him?

And he ascended through the innumerable Spheres,
And through the various Heavens of Paradise;
And they wondered, saying, How hath he ascended?
And how knew we not the Messenger of Heaven?
And when he ascended into the Seventh Heaven,
He came into the Great Glory,
And of the Holy Spirit was received with great gladness,
For he hath done the message of the Most High.
And to me the Angel said, Great are these things
Which now have been manifest in thee.
Thou hast seen and known secrets
Which have been kept from the children of men.
In Paul we find the following: Paul is explaining who Jesus Christ is, and to explain it,
he first explains about Melchizedek, and that's Hebrews 1:5. He explains that Jesus Christ is
the authority because: “For [who] unto [who] which of the angels [has God] said . . . at any
time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee?” And then in 5:5, to be sure we
understand that he is going contrary to what men will believe, he repeats, “So also Christ
[meaning Jesus Christ] glorified not himself to be made an high priest; [saying in other words:
Don't glorify me, Jesus Christ. So also Christ not himself, “glorified not himself to be made a
high priest”] but he that said unto him, [in other words: Glorify not me, but the Father who
said unto me.] Thou art my Son, to day have I begotten thee.”
“Today have I begotten thee.” Paul is telling us that Jesus was not virgin born, as told
in the gospels, but rather that when the dove descended, it didn't say: This day Thou pleasest
me. It said, “This day have I begotten thee.”
He's making it a point, just as Enoch had, that Christ coming to a man would be the
birth of man in God. Now unfortunately, this little passage of Paul, officialdom forgot to take
out, and so it contradicts Luke 3:22, you know. Luke 3:22 tells us this isn't what God said at
all when the dove came down. And then a strange thing happened. I brought this up in class
some time ago, and at that time certain documents were not in my possession. They are now.
Luke 3:22 says, “And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and
a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.”
Paul says, “That isn't what it said.” It said, “Thou art my son; [today] have I begotten
thee.” Quite a difference that when the dove descended, Jesus was born as the Son of God
then. Now how important is that? Here's Luke 3:22 saying, “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee
I am well pleased.” And we go again to Goodspeed. It says something else. I’m going to have
to find it. “You are my Son, my Beloved! You are my chosen!” Well, how can you have such
an important phrase over here saying, “In thee I am well pleased,” and here it says, “You are
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[chosen] my chosen?” This is far too important to be satisfied with a change at that point. But
it is conspicuously noticeable that Goodspeed has changed it.
Moffatt goes a little further. Moffatt in 3:22 says as follows, “Thou art my son, the
Beloved,”––and listen to this!––“to-day have I become thy Father.” We're talking about
millions and millions and millions of people who have not heard that “Today I am well
pleased” is not the Truth, but that “Today have I begotten thee; today have I become thy
Father.” Because you have received the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God in you, I am now
thy Father. Oh, what a difference this makes in the complete direction of our work when we
have the authority of scripture itself behind us.
Now, you see all of these things systematically had been removed from the Bible for
one reason: That in the fourth century, the Pope named Damasus the First had authorized the
scholar Jerome, and Jerome had prepared the new addition of the Bible, eliminating
everything that our friend, Mr. Pope Damasus, didn't want. And he had others working with
him. And so out goes the Pseudepigrapha, out goes the Apocrypha, out goes the references to
Enoch, and out goes the references to the Essenes.
Where do you find it in the New Testament, and why don't you find it? Because
Christianity taught by the Essenes was the Christianity taught by he who called himself Jesus,
and was Christed when the Holy Ghost became his realized Self. So the Books of Enoch
become vital, and they will not be put on the market. I can assure you that there are powerful
forces that will not permit them to be put on the market. You see your Generals in the PX's,
how they can be bribed. I can assure you no stone will be left unturned to keep these books
from being in your hands where you can see the message of Jesus Christ as he taught it to his
disciples, saying that you must receive the Spirit of God as your Self.
You know, there's a story told by Enoch, and it's how he was brought up to a high
mountain, and in this high mountain he saw a radiant triangle, and in it was the Word, the
great Word of the Father. And then he went down below the sea. He was taken by an angel
into subterranean areas, and he had to go through nine arches. And down there after he passed
through the ninth arch, he saw the same radiant triangle and in it the same Word. And the
teaching has been given to mean: “As above, so below.”
And then his son was commissioned to help him build another temple, and so Enoch
had his son build this temple, which was called the Temple of Enoch. And there were nine
pillars, and under the ninth pillar under a piece of marble on a gold plate he put, engraved, the
Word––the magic Word. Even his son, Methuselah, knew not the Word. Solomon discovered
the Word. And you know, the Word is not “I Am” at all. Moses, when he pronounced “I am
that I Am,” was only hinting at the Word that he knew was there. It is said that you cannot
even pronounce this Word and can never know it until you are fully Christed.
Now, your identity was being taught by Enoch as the Christ of God. Enoch taught that
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every man is the Christ; every man is the Word; every man is God invisible. And it was
because of his ability to sacrifice his humanhood, his physicality, his mentality, and to
sacrifice himself totally to the will of God that he was able to move into transition, out of the
world. Jesus did the same and returned. Mary was prepared to receive this Consciousness and
to help make it manifest as Jesus. There are very few people on this earth who would venture
this, but it has been suggested that Enoch and Jesus Christ were one and the same, occurring
at different intervals.
You will find that even Enoch learned from other sources, and you can go back into
Zoroaster, into the Persians. You will find that the teaching of Christ is infinite, universal; that
only Christ is on the earth. And it is necessary for each individual to reach that place in
Consciousness where he turns from worshipping Jesus Christ as taught by Christianity, or
from worshipping Allah as taught by the Muslims, or from worshipping any external God––to
worshipping the only God there is, and that is your Soul.
When you make your mind a servant of your Soul and let your mind get on its hands
and knees and worship your own Soul, you are worshipping God as Enoch taught it and as
Jesus Christ taught it. And you're not worshipping the corrupted form of religion which says
worship Jesus Christ. Worship this church, this dogma, this creed. The realization that your
Soul is God tells you why Christ Jesus said, “I can never leave you.” The entire Bible is the
expression of your Soul, and when It says turn the other cheek: “. . . I say unto you, . . .
turn . . . other [cheek],” that is the Christ Soul of you saying, “Now here, turn the other
cheek.”
Always, when you learn to turn your mind within to your Soul, you've found God, for
the Soul of you is God. God is the Soul of the Universe, and that is the Kingdom of God
within. This is what Enoch taught. This is what Jesus taught. This is what we are learning, and
it is the only religion there can ever be in this world which can find God. It is not a religion at
all. It is the recognition that my Soul is ever present, and my Soul is always God expressing.
If you are unable to release your mind from captivity to the outer world, you can never
find God with that mind. It is only when you can turn from the outer world, obedient only to
your own Soul––totally, fully, without equivocation. Then you are in prayer without ceasing,
and you are in the universal Christ. Then you are prepared for the mystic marriage. All this
Paul knew, and all this Paul taught.
Now, the secret of the Temple of Solomon, the secret of Enoch's teaching, the secret of
Jesus' teaching, the secret of Enoch’s translation and Jesus' translation is a new body temple,
which only comes through the mind being a servant of the Soul. The new body Temple is the
foundation stone of immortality realized. Enoch, who translated, is the expression of God's
plan for each individual: Translation through the mind in the will of the Soul forming the new
body Temple, which is the foundation, the cornerstone of Christianity which the builders of
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Christianity rejected. This new body temple walks invisibly where you are.
Another thing Enoch taught, which the world has not been ready for, is that the only
way you can accept God as the All-ness is to see everyone you know and realize all that is
there is the invisible perfect body Temple of Christ. That new Consciousness is the basic
teaching behind Christ teaching that here now present is the infinite expression of God. And
you are looking at God every day of your life but seeing man; looking at God and seeing tree.
You can see nothing but God because that's all that is here. You don't worship God. You come
out of the mind, which cannot see God, into the Soul which knows him face to face. I am
Soul. God is my Soul. I and God are my Soul. I and the Father are One, and that One is my
Soul. God is on earth as your Soul. This is the new Consciousness, which Joel calls infinite
Consciousness, because your Soul is infinitely conscious. Soul and infinite Consciousness are
One and the same.
Now, we're going to take a breather in a minute, but we want to see that just as we
come out of the limited human consciousness, so must religion come out of the limited belief
that only at a certain time and place Christ came to earth. This is pure denial of the Reality of
the All-ness of God, present everywhere, always, and realized by many before Christ Jesus.
Christ has not only been on this earth forever, but only Christ is on the earth. Someday we're
going to go in all the religions of the world, and you'll see that very clearly.
Now we want to come to a realization of this body temple, which is going to be a

change from the present physical body temple, because the time of translation draws near. It
isn't a teaching in a Bible. It's a living Force working. Enoch was sent to prepare this world to
receive the Christ of their own Being. Jesus showed how you do it. The disciples and apostles
proved that his method worked, for they did it. The opening of Christianity has to be into its
universal nature that God created neither race nor nation nor color, but only Christ is,
appearing in infinite variety to human sense. And you see, until we release these finite
boundaries of concept, we are not in the infinite and are not recognizing our infinite Identity.
You will try it with your mind, and you will fail. You cannot, you cannot squeeze
infinite Truth into a finite mind, no matter how you try. You must expand beyond the
understanding of the mind. You must make your mind a servant of your Soul, and this is the
way into the universality of Christ. Your Soul knows all that is. The mind must become a
receptacle, a clear transparency for your own Soul. Enoch accomplished this. The Essenes, a
thriving community of some 5,000, lived this every day of their lives. It was this that made
possible the activity of Jesus on earth.
We are finally coming to the base where we realize that what the Essenes were living,
every person on earth must learn to live. Jesus was their foremost exponent within the last
2,000 years. And later you will discover that much of what you have thought was written by
certain names in the Bible was written by scholars under Essene instruction. It was their
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function to release the Truth of Spirit, for Spirit can never be buried or crucified.
Each of us has a background in the Essenes. We are that missing link between the
formalized orthodoxy of Christianity in the fourth century and the mistaken belief that God is
one God separate from people, as expressed by Judaism. You'll find Infinite Way and the
teachings of Enoch and Christ Jesus are identical.
Your Identity becomes the focal point of your experience. If you're a human being
trying to learn Truth, you're not in your Identity, and you never will be until you are no longer
that human being seeking the Truth. Identity is the Truth. When you seek the Truth, you deny
your Identity. I am God Self, invisible to human sense.
I myself haven't yet accepted that Damascus may mean the Essene community fully,
but the probability of it comes to me. Because, after all, there’s Paul, and he certainly knows
that they're there, living there. He must have been very curious about what they're doing. And
if the letter to the Hebrews is written by Paul, listen to this. Here's the Chapter 7 from this
Melchizedek, son of Salem, Prince of the Most High: “Without father, without mother,
without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son
of God; abideth a priest continually.” Alright, these are the qualities of Melchizedek.
Then in Chapter 8, “Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum: We have
such an high priest [too], who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the
heavens; . . . .” Now he's speaking about Christ. Well, Christ in you is without father, without
mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but made like unto
the Son of God, abiding a priest continually. That's not what you're taught in normal religions.
Your Soul is where every promise in the Bible is already true. The so-called promises are not
made to the human mind or the human body, and they are not even promises. They are
statements made by your Soul. “All that I have is thine.”
Now the greatest stumbling block I know to the inability to experience the Reality of
Being––the expression of the Bible promises as a present fact––is caused by the belief that
Christ and me are two separate entities. So there's me wanting Christ, or me wanting Light, or
me wanting Spirit. And therefore, me is the second or false image, not the Divine. And that
me is perpetuated and fed and maintained by my human mind––that human mind which
automatically by existing separates me from my Soul. And so as long as I have started today
with a thought, any kind of thought, that means my mind is working. And as long as I have a
thought, my mind being alive in me, there's no place for my Soul to enter.
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We learn to start a day in a different way than everyone in this whole world. You
cannot start a day with a concept. You cannot bring yesterday into today, unless you do it with
your mind, and that's your separation from your Soul. Your mind perpetuates the illusion of
yesterday and today.
Now, when you don't come into today with a thought, with a concept, that is really the
meaning of dying. When you begin a day with nothing from yesterday, you have died to
mortality. You have died to every belief. You have died to every idea. You have died to the
belief that you have walked this earth as a separate entity from God. And everything
associated with a you of yesterday is as much a lie as that you. Unless you're willing to wake
up, completely cleansed of the belief in a yesterday and a you in that yesterday, you're still
carrying concepts, and you're keeping the mind alive. That mind which is still alive with
yesterday's concepts is not a servant of your Soul, because your Soul is only the perfect
infinite Now. Your Soul has no memories of your human yesterdays, and your Soul is the
government of God where you stand.
But nobody seems to be totally willing to live in their Soul. It seems like too grotesque
an effort to totally die to yesterday, and yet in spite of it, there are forces at work which are
making you do that, even against your human will. The word “inertia” is probably not strong
enough. If you're not forced to abandon your human mind, you probably will not do it. From
personal experience, I can tell you that I find it very hard to abandon my human mind and
usually do not do it until I have no choice. The ones who really attain are those who do it even
though there is a choice. They give up their free will. They don't wait until their back is to the
wall and there's nothing else to do.
They learn from the experience of the Masters who have gone before that it's only the
total abandonment of the will and the mind and the concept of self which is the cleansing of
the temple. To bring it into clear viewing for you, let's presume your sister is dying. No doctor
knows what to do. Only you do, and so your sister turns to you. And what is called her human
life depends totally upon you and your ability to stand in the Truth. But suppose you discover
that you're not in the Truth. You have strayed into the sense of a mortal being, and to your
dismay and alarm, you cannot extend Christ Consciousness to your sister. You’re not in the
place where you can know her aright because you do not know yourself aright.
Well, if you had a few sisters and it happened to each of them, one in turn, and finally
you're coming to the fifth sister, you'd find you have four dead ones. And you reach the
conclusion that you've got to do something about it! And ultimately you would realize the
only thing you can do about it, if you want to prevent her so-called death, you must learn to
die first. That unless you die to yourself, you cannot help her live in her Self. Only the living
Christ can help her, and if you are not that, you are useless to her. Then you are forced to
abandon your mind.
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Class 11 : Enoch
And then you discover what all will discover, that you must abandon your mind, dying
to human selfhood completely––which means dying to that mind and everything it knows––
and coming in totally unknowing, bereft of all knowing, so that you are now not knowing
anything in your mind. But rather, you are obedient only to infinite knowledge.
And then you see that just as you did that, and your sister now begins to talk and then
to walk––because you have died to yourself, she has become alive to herself in Christ––then
you realize, well, you can't just do that when somebody is about to die. You’ve got to do it all
the time, and then you see why inertia holds us back. It takes a great deal of understanding
and effort to die to self, and you may not think it's necessary. The only time you'll do it is at
the farthermost extremity when there's no other way to turn. And then you're willing to die to
self, and then you see the miracle of it. And only then. And even after that, somehow the mind
finds excuses about “We'll do it tomorrow.”
Now, Enoch is important because Enoch did it. Enoch lived in God power because
there was no Enoch. And if you want God power in your life, you've got to die. You really die
in Christ, and you don't wait until there's an extremity or a tragedy or some kind of great
demand upon you because usually when you wait that long, at that moment you're not going
to summon the great capacity to relinquish your human mind.
We're coming to Easter. We're going talk about the risen Christ, which we talk about
every year. But there was no Easter for Enoch. There was no Easter for Jesus. You know what
Passover meant to him? It meant passing over, transition from human selfhood to spiritual
Identity. We must pass over from human identity to spiritual Identity. You can't have both.
While you have humanhood, you’re not dying to it, and so you cannot accept spiritual
Identity.
Now, you won't know where you're failing until you have built the vacuum in which,
at the moment of awakening, you go to work on releasing every concept in your mind, and
you spend the time and the effort to do it. You might feel like there's a lot of air in the balloon,
and you wish you can get it out because you feel like you're going to burst. But it must be
done. You must release the human idea and the human memory and the human plan, the
human ambition, the human desire, the human hope to improve anything. And strangely, you
must release the desire—and this must be underscored—you must release the desire to
improve appearances.
You won't remember that at the time of a problem unless you have practiced it. But
look at it this way. If you want to improve the appearance, for you it exists, and if it exists for
you, then you're not in the Christ Mind. And so by trying to improve the appearance, you are
denying the Christ Mind as the only Mind. You’re in the mind that wants to improve
something, whereas the Christ Mind accepts perfection and does not try to improve an
appearance. Every time you are trying to improve an appearance, you are denying the
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universality of Christ. You are pushing away your Soul. You are living in your mind. The
proper attitude is, instead, to regard the appearance as a warning to turn you on your hands
and knees in your mind up to your Soul.
I see it out there in this mind because this mind is not receiving from my Soul. And
now I'm in the Kingdom of God, the within of my Soul, looking up to my Soul alone.
Rejecting the possibility of every appearance. Not changing it, not wanting to. Not accepting
the validity or reality of it; otherwise, I'm in the human mind. And that is the separation from
the infinite Self. Every day that you're not trying to die to “me,” you are rejecting Christ.
And although it's easier to reject Christ than to die to “me,” it becomes more difficult
to get yourself out of the problems that are caused by the rejection of Christ and the
perpetuation of “me.” It's like an adhesive band on a wound. You've got to take it off; and if
you take it off slow, it hurts. If you take it off quick, it might hurt, but it doesn't hurt as long.
You've got to get to the rejection of “me” and the acceptance of Christ someday into the “Be
still,” meaning me be still, mind be still. Soul is God. I am God.
You've got to transpose everything in this whole universe to see that the only Reality is
the Universe of the Soul. That is spiritual Creation, and its imitation is the universe of the
mind. And you cannot bring forth the invisible Universe of the Soul if you're not in it
consciously. That's why Enoch becomes so important to us. We see that Truth didn't begin
with a magical birth of a boy in Bethlehem. Truth is ever present. If Jesus hadn't been born,
Truth would be here. The importance of Jesus Christ is that he was physical, just as Enoch
was physical. He showed you who you are. But to know who you are in words is not enough.
When you have learned who you are with the conviction that it's time to be who you are, then
your goal is simply to die to that which I am not, and that human mind is the key.
Now most of you know that you're still asking questions, and whenever you say, “But
don't I have to learn? How will I learn if I don't ask questions?”––that is true. But your Soul
has every question already answered. Your Soul is the infinite storehouse of God. And the
only mind there is is the Mind of God. And the Mind of God knows everything there is to
know.
When you say, “How will I learn if I don't learn by asking questions?”––you are not
learning the greater Truth––that intelligence, which is infinite, is omnipresent. And while you
are asking with a mind that says, “I do not know and want to know,” you are turning away
from your real Mind, which does know. And if you will be still in the mind that wants to
know, you will discover that is not your mind. The only mind is the Mind of God, and It
knows, and It expresses in your Soul.
Really, what we're doing when we ask questions is we haven't reached the level of
knowing that right here is God, and God knows. And the me that doesn't know has no
existence. There is no such a me. It’s the refusal of the mind to die, and it disguises its
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Class 11 : Enoch
unwillingness to die by asking questions that are very logical to itself. But the peace that
passeth understanding takes us out of the mind that understands. And so, ultimately, you find
you sacrifice your human understanding, and that's the hard thing that we don't want to do.
You sacrifice your human understanding for the peace that passeth understanding. You
die to “my” sense of knowing something. You decide that no deception of the mind is going to
fool you in letting it stay alive. When you seriously go about the business of dying to that
mind, you're quite shocked by the void that follows. But then the Soul takes over, and the
Soul can look out upon the perfect universe of God. And you find all of the so-called
appearances make no impression on the Soul. It is too pure. It doesn't respond to the lie. It
doesn't need any questions answered.
I am God. You see, your very Soul is the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient Father
within, the Kingdom of God within you. A teacher wants to answer questions, but there comes
a point where the teacher must say, “Now go to the Master within.” Because to be your real
teacher, a teacher must say, “You must find your Identity within your Self.” The longer you
put it off, the more you are saying to this world, “I believe in you as a reality,” and you are
putting off the glory of Grace.
Now make no mistake about it. When we talk about translation like Enoch, we mean
that this is what we must do. We cannot do it as long as there is even a tremor of thought in
the human mind which originates from the outer world, because this human mind reaction
must stop. The Soul must take over, and that builds the body Temple, the white stone, the
foundation of your translation experience.
If I thought we could not accomplish this or I could not, I think I would go back into
the business world, or I would try to find some way to just make life a gay glorious spree. But
there is an inner Teacher that says, “As others have found It by finding Me where they stand,
so will you.”And whenever that happens in an individual, whenever they feel this inner Voice,
this inner Self, this inner Intelligence saying, “I am the way,” then they know that all that has
ever happened to the great Masters of the world is happening to them.
They know that they can do what Enoch taught: View death without sorrow, for I
come quickly. And they will see that there has never been any physical creation in the
universe of Reality. Life you are, free of physical creation. You are not a physical being
learning to be something else. You are Life, recognizing nothing but your Life as your Being.
You're not changing from physicality, but recognizing the appearance of physicality has no
validity. You do not translate. You are awakened from the hypnosis of that which never was,
and only by your Soul. Only by your Soul.
For next week I hope you can read the second chapter in The Contemplative Life. It
will reinforce some of our understandings. And I would like to suggest now, that for those of
you who have not seriously taken my suggestion made in the first class, that for 30 days you
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study the chapter “Losing ‘I’-ness in I” in Joel's A Parenthesis in Eternity. That you do it at
least up to Easter. And take one or two paragraphs a day and make it yours, until every
morning it is a ritual with you to die to “I” until you can actually feel I have lost concept. I
have lost human beliefs. I am something else now. I am I. That is the rising Christ. If you will
do that, you'll discover that you will go to your office, you'll go about your day at home, and
you'll find the guidance of your Soul ever at hand, always perfectly bringing forth the Divine
expression where before your mind had been in the way.
The death to mind and the birth to Soul does not rob you of a mind. It simply opens
you to the Infinite expression that is ever invisibly present where you are. If you do this
seriously, you will discover another Universe all around you. And you will see that translation
is the discovery of the new Universe, all around you perfect, with nothing to change, only to
live in. And your Soul alone lives in that Universe.
Let us put away our crutches. Let us put away our quotations. Let us put away all of
the things we're trying to remember and memorize. Let us die to the mind which perpetuates
the illusion of a self that never was, of a physical image that never was, and let the Soul show
you the spiritual Self that ever Is. Then you will see that you are now perfect as your Father,
for your Soul and your Father are One and the same. I think it might help us later to look into
the Essenes a little more because that was the cradle of Christianity for this hemisphere.
Chapter two, The Contemplative Life: That’s the new one, the new chapter to study. If
you have not seriously given the 30 days to “Losing ‘I’-ness in I” out of A Parenthesis in
Eternity, then, you see, you haven't gone into the wilderness, and the only time you can come
out is when “me” has died. That's when the 40 days are over, when “me” has died. And if
you're not working at it, you're not going into the wilderness, which means leaving the mind.
Leaving the mind so that you may be living as a Soul expression. If you die properly, you'll
like it so well that you'll want to die three or four times a day. You'll find that it's a reborning,
which is quite miraculous.
You didn't know how smart you really were. Everything becomes possible because
nothing is impossible to your Soul. And you can look quickly at any appearance that comes
your way and turn away into your Soul. And behold, the shadow can quickly disappear in the
sunlight of your Soul as if it never were there. You'll find these are not suppositions, but
actual living fact, for all power is in your Soul.
I think we have two classes until Easter. By Easter, those of us who've been practicing
the death of the mind, coming into each day without a concept of any kind, will definitely find
ourselves in a new state of Consciousness than the one with which we started this year.
Any of these books up here that you want to look at or make references out of,
you're welcome to look at them. Jot down anything you want. Thank you very much.
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Class 12
Erasing Concepts
Herb: We’re going to see today if we can prepare ourselves for the God experience by
releasing some of the concepts that have been standing in the way. Some of these concepts we
don't even know we have, but we accept the world concepts unknowingly, and then, lo and
behold, our lives are showing forth some kind of discord. And we know we've been good,
we've been dedicated, we've been loving and devoted. We've been doing all the things we're
supposed to do, to our knowledge, but there is this monstrosity that we can't remove for some
reason or other. We want to see that when we are not accepting God's presence, we are really
rejecting God's presence. And so the moment that you cease to accept, in that moment you
unconsciously reject. And so rejecting God's presence becomes the basic cause of every form
of discord that appears in our life. That rejection, by not consciously accepting, must be
stopped.
Now, we have all looked at form and said, “This is a handsome form. This is not.” But
we have to go a step further, now, and face a few facts that are very disturbing, facts that we
are more apt to really want to ignore because we don't want to face them. We don't want to be
forced to make a change in ourselves, and so we find ourselves doing a very weird thing.
We're really trying to change God instead of ourselves. We’re trying to remake God in our
own image according to our own concepts and beliefs, according to our own purposes, and we
can't do it.
We might as well stand and face the fact that God is never going to be in a human
form. You can look around this world at the people who consider themselves old. They have
old and tired bodies. They are suffering. They are in pain. Now ask yourself if God is in an
old, tired body. You’ll see that God is not in such a body, and then you can look at that body
when it wasn't old and tired and ask yourself if God was in that one. And if so, did God walk
out, or was God never in that body in the first place?
Then you’ll find that all over the universe, the problem of old age is really quite
different than we have recognized. It has nothing to do with lack and limitation. It has nothing
to do with suffering. It has to do with the rejection of the Truth about God, and in the rejection
of the Truth about God, that which is not under the law of God begins to show that it has no
divine safety, no divine protection, no divine maintenance. And so we have what is probably
one of the greatest diseases in the world, old age and suffering, infirmity, all kinds of health
plans to cover it. And not one of those bodies was made by God.
God isn't in one of those bodies, and as long as you think God is in a body, you are
rejecting and insulting the Truth about God. Certainly, when there is a body that has a disease,
you must know that God cannot be in that body. A million people die every year of cancer. Is
God in that body? And you can go down the list. Now we must face this. God is not in the
diseased body, in the aged body, or the infirm body. Neither is God in the newborn baby's
body. God never leaves the body because God is never in the body. Now God is not in any
body on this earth, and that should give you a clue about the nature of the body.
Once you face the fact, instead of ignoring it, and accept, “God, I couldn't possibly try
to encompass you within a mortal body. You're not in one,” and therefore, if you live in the
sense of body, knowing God is not in that body, you must see that that body cannot be under
the law or protection or sustenance of God. And as long as you maintain the belief that that
body which God does not inhabit is your body, then you can see that you're living outside of
the Kingdom of God. Now this is a hard fact to face: God is not in my body, and therefore,
God is not sustaining this body. God is not in my friend's body, and God is not sustaining that
body.
I have a concept of body, and God is not in my concept at all. Now, go back to your
six-year-old body. At that time you looked a certain way and that was you, to your sense of
things. And then you became 20 years old, and you had a new kind of body, a 20-year-old
body, and then 40, and then 60. Some day 85, 95. And what will your body be then? Which
body is your body? You have a new body every day. Which one is yours? Are you that
changing body?
If you are the changing body, you are rejecting God because God is not changing, and
God is all. Now very subtly, then, you see that we have accepted a changing body as my body
while trying to accept the Truth that God is all there is. The divine Image does not change, but
your concept changes all the time. Today's concept is not the same as the concept 10 years
ago, and 10 years from now, you’ll have a new concept of yourself, and you’ll say, “This is
me.”
Now while you're doing that, take yourself at your present level, right where you are,
and see this: I, for example, can look at you and see you one way. A six-year-old child can
look at you and see you in a completely different way. A foreign person, someone who's not
acquainted with your customs, your traditions, will look at you and see you in a completely
different way. A person older than yourself will look at you and see you in a different way.
And you, yourself, will see yourself in a different way than all of the other persons see you.
Now which one is you?
You're always the same, but the baby sees you this way. The six-year-old sees you that
way. The husband or wife sees you this way. The friend sees you that way. The employer or
employee sees you another way. Which one are you? And you'll find that nobody sees you at
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Class 12 : Erasing Concepts
all. Each is seeing its concept about you, and you are seeing your concept about yourself, and
even that concept will change every day. And so you never really live in yourself. You live in
your changing concept about yourself, and because of it, you find when you look at other
people, you cannot really know them.
Now look at someone you know and consider that you see them a certain way, but
everyone else sees them another way. A six-year-old will see that person another way. A 20-
year-old will see that person another way. Are you right and they are wrong? Each of you has
a concept about that other person, and you not being in your Self, you are really a concept
forming a concept about a concept.
And so we find that we are all moving in a very superficial surface existence, never
finding the Self. Assuming things. Letting facts go by and ignoring them. Because it's much
easier to do that than to stand still and realize God is not in that form I'm looking at, and
therefore, that which is not a God form cannot have Reality. That form that I can go up to and
punch in the eye; that form doesn't contain God. That form that a bomb can kill; that doesn't
contain God. That form subject to the ills of this world does not contain God.
The finite cannot contain the infinite. And so, finally, you're willing to face the fact
that that form, which is not containing God, does not contain Life because God is Life. And as
difficult as it is for a person to come to this mountaintop where the forms before us do not
contain Life, that must be done. Until you do this, you're rejecting God because you're
accepting a second, a substitute. And the imagined form you see and the imagined form that is
looking at it must live a dream existence. God is not in the form, and God is Life. Life is not
in the form of your neighbor. Life is not in the form of yourself, and in order to know Life,
you must come to a different place within yourself to realize Reality.
Now, a woman who is not even in this work told me about something and wanted me
to explain it to her. She said that she had gone to the hairdresser and that when sitting beneath
the dryer, she suddenly found that she was in a strange state that she had never known about,
and wondered about it. Could I tell her what it was? She said she wasn't thinking at all, and
yet she wasn't herself, and so suddenly she had found this river of peace without knowing
why or how, and it was very weird to her. Now there is that level, then, in which you rise out
of the thinking mind which beholds form and accepts life in form or God in form, and you
begin to accept the Reality of God from the level of the mind without concept.
Now, without the mind that has no concept, you're always in the non-God universe,
which isn’t really a universe at all. It’s an imagined multiverse of forms manufactured by the
mind. And we all have lived in this multiverse while we have sought the Universe. Now let's
get out of the concepts and see that only when the mind is completely free of concept do we
know God aright. Now the idea of relinquishing concept is very tricky. You want to in some
way be there to know what you're doing, and that is going to make it necessary for you to be
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there in a form. So you can't do that.
You have to lose the concept of form, the concept of me, the concept of God, the
concept of everything. You have to yield yourself to the Spirit of the Universe. You have to
de-individualize yourself. You have to lose the concept of place, of body, of time, of the
world, of a room––a complete absence of concept. And if you stand in that absence of
concept, you're on your way to accepting the All-ness of God.
Now comes a very subtle awareness of a Life that you could not possibly know when
you are in the darkness of concept. As in a dark room where nothing is visible, no objects are
delineated. Nothing can be coming into your consciousness from that dark room. Suddenly
you put on the light, and there are the objects, all clearly delineated. They were there all the
time in the dark, but unseen.
So it is that when you are in concept of any kind, you are in the dark, and all around
you is the invisible activity of God, but your concept is the darkness, preventing you from
seeing what is there in God. And then when you release concept and find your vacuum, the
light illuminates that which had been dark, and the expression of God becomes an experience
that always was possible, was always waiting for you, but your thought was in the way. This
total eclipse of concept ends in the eclipse of me.
The willingness from me to completely be removed from all thought, and in the
absence of the concept of me, you find your river of peace, beyond understanding, and there
comes the awareness of a Life called the Presence. It's palpable. It’s right there beside you,
maybe within you, but It's so close that you suddenly become aware of that which, for you,
had been in the dark before. But now It lives, and you're realizing something far greater than
your former human concept of self. In the presence of this Spirit, all the freedoms that you
had sought become instantly possible. Everything that you had asked for, everything you had
hoped for and wanted is now available through Grace, because concept is no longer
separating you from the flow of Reality.
This exercise of release from concept is not possible to one who will not face facts. It
is really a temporary death, and without it there is no reborning. It must be done frequently,
two, three times a day. The constant repetition of this enables you to go out into the world
with no prior belief, with no prior judgment, with no anticipation, with no concept. And you
face the entire activity of the world around you with a perfectly clean blackboard in which
everything that happens bounces up against that which is not a concept, and so there's no
conflict of any kind, and you find you’re walking in God. You’re walking in the Kingdom of
God because all that ever took you out of It was the activity of the thinking mind.
All that ever made you a victim of the problems of the world was this invisible
channel called mind, which you had forgotten to empty of concept. And these concepts
became visible in your life, even though you weren't aware of having them. Now you're not
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making the mistake of any kind of judgment. You’re not making the mistake of letting a
concept live in you. All of yesterday is gone, every memory of the past. You are living on the
brink of Now in God. You are not making the concepts anymore. God does the thinking.
Now, in this chapter Joel is telling us there are three words, three levels of concept that
clutter our lives and prevent the demonstration of Christ Self: The concept we entertain of
God and of prayer and of grace. You know, of course, that Grace is always present, and while
you are seeking things of this world, you are rejecting His Grace. While you are outlining the
way you would like things to be, you are rejecting His Grace. While you are asking, you are
rejecting His Grace. While you are judging, you are rejecting His Grace. Always, even though
the Grace of the Father is present and is operating, it can only enter into the experience of the
Son of God. The Grace can never enter into a person, and as long as you are in a form, in the
concept of form, you are that person in whom Grace cannot enter.
Now another way we limit our acceptance of Grace is the belief that if we specify
some desire, we are going correctly in the direction of fulfillment. This is what's wrong today,
or that is what's wrong, and the moment you start to specify, you are asking God not to be
God. You are again re-making God according to your idea of what God ought to be like. You
are asking God to stop running a perfect Universe for a moment and to divide Himself into
various parts, and just give you a little of something over here to take care of this momentary
problem. Now you can't bring God into a finite problem. The moment you finitize, you lose
God. And so we learn that the secret is not to try to have God do something in our lives
according to our concept of how it ought to be done or how we would like it to be done.
We do not make a hoop and say, “God, come through the hoop.” We do not outline.
We do not request, we do not ask, we do not seek, and we do not knock. We do not
acknowledge the claim of the problem as the world does, but rather, we use the claim to alert
us to the fact that we have momentarily accepted that God is withholding harmony or that
God is withholding health or that God is withholding supply. We have made that acceptance
unconsciously the moment we accepted the problem. And by accepting the problem, we are
rejecting the presence of God.
Now then, the beginning of your foundation of Truth must always be the presence of
God. There’s no Truth until you have accepted the presence of God, and once you've accepted
the presence of God, then all that denies the Presence must be removed from your concept.
Now, where is God at this moment? Each of us, if we are in Truth are going to say, “Why,
God is right here and everywhere.” Now, if we will face that God is right here and
everywhere, what else is there for us to do?
Can you run the Universe better? Can you do anything better than God? Can you run
this form better than God? Can you run the world or your business better than God? Can you
do anything in the world that God cannot do better than you? And if you have accepted God
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being here, then consistency says God being here, I will let God live God's Life here where
the world sees me. Now, we don't have to complicate our lives. We can really accept that God
being here, It is happening. It is. And we will create the vacuum of concept so that all that is
here now is God. You’re sweeping out all that is not God from your belief until your belief is
the inner assurance of God's presence.
Now, what shall I pray for, if God is here? The acknowledgment of God is my prayer.
The acknowledgment of the Presence is the only prayer necessary, and in the
acknowledgment of the Presence, you are accepting Grace. Now, if you still have a lingering
belief that a discord is present, then you really have not accepted that God is present, because
God cannot be in a cancerous body. If God is present, the cancerous body cannot be present.
So we're coming to that high place where you’re facing the facts, not ignoring them and
hoping for God to do something.
Now, last year a million people died of cancer, and you can be sure many of them
believed that God was going to heal their cancer, and they were wrong. God didn't heal their
cancer. And this year another million will do the same. It's been that way for years. God isn't
going to, as Joel said, “start the rain or stop the rain.” God isn’t going to heal a sick body. God
isn't going to do anything except what God is doing: Run a perfect Universe. And the only
way you can live in It is to get out of the concept of an imperfect one, because there isn't any
imperfect one around here. You’re merely in the darkness without the light switch, and you
cannot see what is here. But when you accept the presence of God––lo, I in the midst of you, I
make all things new. I am the Life, I am the Illumination, and I reveal Myself to You then.
And so we change our concept of prayer to the acceptance of the Presence, and that means the
rejection of the physical form.
The first objection comes in, “What am I going to do about it?” That is one of the
reasons why the Essenes were so important in history. Before you were in the inner Council
of the Essenes, you had to fulfill a very strange requirement. Something so strange that even
now, knowing God is not in the form, we wonder how can we do it. You had to leave your
body with a friend and go away for three days without it. I don’t mean sit in a corner and
meditate. You left your physical body with a friend for three days, and your friends took care
of it. And when you had passed that three-day initiation, you were in the High Council of the
Essenes.
When Jesus said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up [again],” that
was child’s play for him. He’d been doing it for years, just as the other Essenes had. When
Mary took the child in the early days down to Egypt, there were invisible Essenes appearing
to help all along the way. All through the expression of the first beginnings of a church after
Crucifixion when Jesus had gone, the Essenes were helping the early martyrs. You can read
all books about the Essenes, and you'll never find the Truth in those books about them,
because the Truth about them was the invisible nature of their Being.
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You'll find that all of the writers of books could only see the physical facts. They could
merely report these were a strange people. They were celibates. They adopted children. They
ate these things, and they dressed this way, and they were usually very quiet. But the inner
initiations had created a community, a community where the Spirit of God was the only
Being, the only Presence, the only Life that was honored. They had risen to a large degree
above mental concept. They were able, therefore, to bring forth into expression the very
background of spiritual energy which formed the beginning of the Holy Family, the
immaculate conception, the activity of Jesus. All of this was born among this group, and the
very core of their work was “absent from the body and present with the Lord.”
Now, in its basic fundamental origin, Christianity was born among the Essenes. When
you read the Bible today and wonder why the name “Essene” is not in the Bible even once,
you will realize the tremendous effort that was put forth to keep that name out of the Bible by
state politicians, who literally stole a religion. They took Essenism, took its chief known
Master, Jesus Christ, called it “Christianity,” and then proceeded to water down the very
teaching of Christianity that had come out of Essenism and which is still the complete New
Testament, for there wasn't a thing in Essenism that Jesus liked that he didn't take and use and
teach and practice and demonstrate.
And when you read the New Testament, you're really looking at the Essenic religion,
which the state completely absorbed and called Christianity without understanding the nature
of it. And so the world has been practicing the Essenic religion without the core of it, which is
“absent from the body and present with the Lord.” Spirit is your name. Spirit always was your
name. And for 1500 years, the illusion of form has persisted on the earth because the state had
no knowledge of what Jesus was teaching at all.
Now in this form which he had overcome, this body image in time and in space, we
find all of our problems. And the moment you overcome the sense of body and are in the true
body, you discover that old age is as much an illusion as anything could be. There never was
an old person in the whole universe. There never was an old body. There never was an old age
problem of any kind. There was a universal mesmerism about it, and then we find that
millions and millions and millions of old, tired, suffering bodies never were formed by God,
and their only problem was that at one point in their demonstration, they didn't know anything
about evolving spiritually. And as a consequence they walked away from the spiritual law of
Being that God is the Presence, the Law, the Principle, the Life, the Energy, the perfection of
Being.
You will discover that when you have applied the acceptance of God without a
physical form, that you will come to this level above the mind where you're not thinking. And
yet you're aware and alert in a different kind of alertness where the whole universe is
humming in its quietness. And there you stand, living in the Kingdom of God on earth, and
you're not a body, you’re not an age, you're not a sex, you're not a person. You’re a living,
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infinite Consciousness, and that which you externalize is going to be shaped in the divine
image and likeness of Truth. Out of the body is also out of the world. And because the Father
did not create this world, as long as you're in the physical form, you're going to be in the
world that is not divinely created.
Every material form is in a material universe. If I remember correctly, in The Thunder

of Silence, pages 102 and 103, the ninth chapter, that we were all supposed to have read many
times, “This Is a Spiritual Universe:” “There is no such thing as a material body: . . .There is
no such thing as a material universe.” We cannot ignore this Truth. If there is no material
body, you have none. If there is no material universe, you're not living in one, and until you
lift the cloud of belief that says you are in a material body, you are in a material universe,
you’re in a concept which is rejecting the Grace of God that is present where God is, right
where you stand.
And so Joel tells us our concept about God, our concept about prayer, our concept
about Grace must be lifted to know that there's no presence besides God. There’s no activity
besides Grace. There's no body besides a spiritual body. In the third proverb we have a
beautiful teaching about how to abide in the knowledge that God's presence is the only
Presence where you are. That you are not in a physical form, but God's presence is where you
are, and that the grace of God is functioning where that Presence is, and that there's nothing to
pray for. There is only the quiet, inner acknowledgment that, “Here is God.”
And so in this Proverb we’re told in the fifth verse, “Trust in the Lord with all thine
heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.” Now, isn't that what Joel is telling us about
have no concept? Remove your concept means “Lean not onto thine own understanding,” and
then you're not stuck with a mind that's wiggling around trying to figure it out. You might say,
if you wanted to know the time of the day, and if you were consistent the way we are about
God, why, we would look at a watch and say, “No, I don't want to know the time from that
watch until I understand how that watch works. I've got to take it apart first and look in every
little crevice, and then after I understand it, then I want to know the time.” Now, if you did
that every time you wanted to know the time, you'd never know the time.
And if you want to understand God, it's like trying to take a watch apart before it tells
you the time. God isn't to be understood, but to be accepted. Who is going to understand God?
Do you see the supreme ego of wanting to understand God? Who is there to understand God
if God is all? It's the yielding of the belief that my finite mind can understand God. “Lean not
unto thine own understanding,” but trust in God in all thy ways. Do you see how we try to be
giants when the little pigmy mind cannot understand God? It’s an impossibility, and we waste
all of these years trying to understand that which is not understandable and which we are told
again and again is not understandable. I cannot behold Infinity, but I can divest myself of
every concept and let Infinity flow through.
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So the illuminated are not trying to understand God at all. They’re letting God
understand God. They are removing the barrier of the human mind that wants to understand
the Infinite. Tuning to the Infinite isn't understanding It. It’s making yourself a channel for It
until the channel is dissolved, and you find, “I am It.” And so if you're still mentalizing God,
trying to understand God, this very simple verse is being rejected. And if this is the Word of
God, by rejecting God's Word, leaning on thine own understanding, the only one you're
hurting is your false sense of self.
There are many things in this proverb which, though simple, have been overlooked
and thence rejected by our ignorance of them. “In all thy ways acknowledge him.” Now, it's
awfully hard to acknowledge Him and the problem, and the mind will persist and say, “If I
don't acknowledge the problem, how will it get fixed up? How will it get repaired?" When
you acknowledge Him, you're acknowledging that there's no problem. Do you see that the
problem occurs to the person in the form, that the first error has to lead to every other error,
that the mind cannot remove the form? The mind has placed it there. The mind cannot solve
the illusion of form, and to try with the human mind to figure out how I can appear in a form
when I'm not in one, is another way of rejecting the words of wisdom of the Father, which
says,” Lean not [on] thine own understanding.”
Trust, acknowledge, abide, rest. And until you come to the place where you're willing
to trust, acknowledge, lean not on your own, but abide in the realization that God is here—
acknowledge Him in all thy ways—He will not and cannot direct thy path because the Spirit
can only function in Itself, not in a person, not in a human form. And it's good to find out that
as long as your mind is on the things of the world, you’re rejecting God. You simply can't go
on rejecting God under the illusion that you're going to find God, because you won’t. God
made no thing, and every thing you're seeking is an image in mind. You cannot seek things
and expect God to help you find them, because you are finitizing God. You’re bringing God
down to assist you in a material venture, and there is no material thing.
Now, we're all going to turn out of this material universe, this material body, and we're
going to find that, like Mary's father and mother, they didn't live in a little hut. They had a
rather large estate, and yet they lived among the Essenes. They lived in the knowledge that
one doesn't live in a body. They weren't lacking for the things that we call important in this
world. Mary wasn't lacking for the things in this world, but she wasn't seeking the things in
this world. She was living in God, and the reward was quite momentous. Out of all of that, out
of this community that knew the infinite, invisible Universe came a great impulse which now
taught that if you learn to live out of the form, out of concept, out of the belief that God is in
physical forms, then the Spirit of God will direct your paths, and you will bear fruit richly.
And the complete demonstration of Jesus Christ was how this fruitage appears in your
Life when you're not living in a form. When you're willing to stand and face the forms of the
world, including your own, and not judge them from the temporary concept in which you
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happen to be. So that you're not in the changing concept of a world, but you're on the solid
ground of the unchanging Spirit, standing still while the forms change around you. Not
seeking the forms that are quicksilver, but resting in the knowledge that here God is living.
And there's nothing to do but know that whatever I am doing now and wherever I may be,
here God is living.
Acknowledge Him in all thy ways, and he will direct thy paths. [Proverbs 3:6] And if
you think you can make an exception, it catches you real quickly. “Be not wise in thine own
eyes.” [Proverbs 3:7] And then a line that I think is very important to all of us: “Honour the
LORD with thy substance.” Now that's a tell-tale line, “Honour the LORD with thy
substance.” That's the ninth verse, and a person could take that and walk through into Reality.
“Honour the LORD with thy substance.” Not with your mind, not with your concepts, but
with thy substance.
Thy substance is the Substance of God, and unless you're constantly aware of that,
you're always accepting problems. And when you're accepting problems, you're saying, “My
substance is not the Substance of God.” So you see, today's class is establishing a foundation,
an integrity that will face the fact that I am or I am not the Substance of God. God is or God is
not here. The problem is or is not here. What do I believe? For without the belief in Truth,
what else can I externalize, but the untruth?
The greatest sacrifice that Jesus made is quite different than we have thought. He lived
not in the form, and it was impervious to all evil. In order to be crucified, he had to come back
into a form. He had to release his belief in Truth, his knowledge of Truth and come into the
lie. That was his sacrifice. He had to remove the belief, the knowledge that he's not in form,
and momentarily believe that he was in a form. That was the only way he could demonstrate
what was happening in the world mind. It was crucifying Truth, Reality, Christ. But it couldn't
crucify Him because He knew his Self was not in form.
The only way he could show the Crucifixion visibly was to begin accepting himself in
form. That was his real sacrifice. It is only then that he began to doubt and say, “Father lift
this cup. Why hast thou forsaken me?” Because he was now coming into humanhood again
for the sake of revealing the externalized crucifixion of Christ that was taking place in the
world consciousness. It wasn't long, and then the Spirit took over again.
We would never have known that the world consciousness is externalizing as the
crucifixion unless he had permitted it. We must reverse that. We are that world consciousness
which is crucifying Christ every day in ourselves. And only by rising above that crucifixion
which knows not the Christ, by externalizing only the Truth of Being will we rise. We do that,
then, as he did. The Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Ascension are all in that Consciousness
which accepts only the Presence of God.
This becomes our internal Crucifixion, our internal Resurrection, our internal
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Ascension. We do it for the world, for our neighbor, for everyone we know. We do not accept
that God is in their form. We release God from the belief that God is in their form, and we
find that we are being reborn to a new understanding of who they are. Once the form is out of
concept, this invisible, palpable Presence begins to reveal to you who is there. You're out of
the multiverse. You’re in the Universe. You are unified into a One Presence. No form contains
God. God is not the tree. God is not the flower. God is not the animal. Everything is seen to be
is a mental image. These thought images are your concepts.
When you are free of these concepts of the thought images about form, then you
discover the form of which God is the Substance because you're discovering spiritual form.
The mental images are gone, and these new spiritual forms are not capable in any way of
bringing a problem to your door. They are all that is present, and there is no discord between
them and your Self. When you start people-ing this universe with the invisible spiritual forms,
you'll find you’re out of the concept of matter, and you can rest with the assurance that Grace
is the only law that is functioning your Being. Then you're living and honoring God with your
Substance.
When John says that we are to abide, and we must abide in the Christ and let the
Christ abide in us, his gospel is giving us the secret of rising out of the concept world, out of
the world in which forms become old, into the Universe where form is ever the perfect Image
and Likeness. Where old age is not even heard of. Where there is no corruption of the flesh.
Where the law is the perfection of divine Being, and that Universe is here when you are lifted
from the darkness of concept, illuminated by the Light of your own true Being, your own
Substance. This is hard work. This takes a great deal of effort. It takes understanding that
wants to live in the Silence, which opens the door to Reality.
While you are you doing it, you are following the path of the prophets. You are
becoming an Israelite. You are returning to that religion which was the religion of Jesus
Christ: The religion of knowing the presence of God––and never letting go––so that you are
in an unbroken Consciousness, One with that Presence, uninterrupted. Living 24 hours a day
in the unbroken Consciousness of Truth. Facing every problem that arises with the knowledge
that God is not in the problem. That which God has not ordained can never be real, but God is
your Being. And Silence alone, the Silence which is devoid of concept, releases you from the
false universe.
Someday we're going to take our initiation, and we'll find ourselves walking, not in a
body, but not because of any mental effort on our own part, but rather because we have
dismissed the concepts of that mind which was not of the Father, and in the void we will be
lifted. We’ll find the Reality of the angels. We'll find ourselves moving in a new land, where
Light instead of physical form is the only Reality. We will see that there are no conditions in
that Light, that we are free in that Light, that we are not confined or limited or lacking. We are
not subject to decay. We have no place where we end or begin. We are the living
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Consciousness of God. We’re finding our Substance.
In this world we have sought things in space, in time, in matter, in form, and these are
the things of the world. As long as you continue to seek these things in time, space, matter,
and form, you're rejecting God. Literally rejecting God. Where shall you go if you cannot
seek things in time, space, matter, and form? You must reach the place where you realize that
there has to be a change in your way of seeking things. That isn't the God way. That’s the
human way, and the human way can never receive the things of God. Every avenue in this
world is cut off to one who really wants the things of God. You cannot seek them in this
world. And as long as you continue to, you are rejecting the enduring Reality of Being.
There's only one place to seek them, and it's not in human dimensions.
Third chapter will be next week of The Contemplative Life, and if you want to read
ahead, we're going to do the fourth chapter the week after, and that is called “The Week
Before Easter.” It just happens to dovetail very nicely. The third chapter is next week, but
we're going to have to do a pretty thorough grounding next week on the marriage of Mary and
Joseph.
No matter what happens today, there is one thing you can be sure of, and that is: God
will be here. When you are aware of this with assurance, then you're not going to be
concerned what happens today. It’s only when you are not assured that God is here and will be
here that you're concerned, and most of us have not taken the time to abide in that Truth long
enough to know It in spite of what may appear. This day only the activity of God can happen
because God is all, and I can, therefore, look at that which is not the activity of God, realizing
that it is a changing concept seen by a changing concept, and I'm stepping out from under the
image of a changing concept.
Now, you may think you're expressing God qualities in some way. You may feel that
these are the qualities you are sending out. I have found it's necessary to see the image of
form in a different way. I have to see that all of the invisible qualities of God are forming the
appearance that I have. The concept that I have of myself is based on my incorrect perception
of all the qualities of God that are present. You might say that all of the universe is shining its
qualities through Itself, and out of It I form this feeling about me, and that appears as me. You
form your feeling about you, and that appears as you. But the infinite and perfect qualities are
all there, even though you have not the capacity to be aware of them. And so you form a
concept of those qualities, which now appears in form as you. That concept about the divine
qualities doesn't change the divine qualities. They are there, and they are perfect.
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It is your concept that must change, and the highest concept you can have is no
concept, because when that is out of the way the divine qualities express themselves where
you are without the interference of your concept, and then the image changes to conform to
the divine qualities, which is Self expressing. And so when you are willing to accept that only
divine qualities surround you, that God is those divine qualities, you will then back up your
awareness with resting in that Presence with the knowledge that all that I appear to be here
now is but a limited, mental concept I have entertained, and the Reality of me is the All-ness
of God, which is invisibly present.
All that the Father hath is mine here now, and I'll let that Grace perform. Stop trying to
live God's Life. Let God live God’s Life, and so step out from under the image you have
created of yourself, accepting God's presence as the true Identity of Being, accepting that
every quality of God is the true quality present. And then behold how those qualities, in the
absence of concept, become the expression of Being made visible, and you have the secret,
the miracle of the God experience continuing as a permanent dispensation. Nothing has been
withheld.
We have been accusing God of withholding my health, my supply. It isn't true. You
have no health. You have no supply. God has it all, and God is expressing it all as the All-ness
of your Being. And the only way you can have that health is to remove your concept of
human health that is both good and bad, or your concept of supply that is both good and bad,
and realize God is here, and God is my supply. God is here, and God is my health. God is
here, and God is my All-ness. Deny it, and lose it. Accept it, and watch It express. And so
more and more you're willing to release every concept about lack or limitation, health or
supply, relationships, conditions in the realization that those aren't the things that are really
here. Those are but my concepts about what is here. What is here doesn't change. God isn't
changing, and God is here. And nothing can change the expression of God here. I can merely
entertain a wrong concept about it.
There's no reason, then, why, when you have abandoned your concept of self––which
is the one remaining concept which contains all other concepts––when you abandon your
concept of self, then only one is left on the field, and that is God. And right where you are,
you discover living Grace, and you didn't have to take care of any problem at all. You had to
come over the belief, the concept you entertained about the absence of qualities of God,
which never were absent. Do you see why you're self-sustaining? Totally self-sustaining. This
form is but your concept, and right behind it are all of the perfect qualities of the infinite
Father expressing. Remove the concept in the Stillness, and watch the divine recipe manifest
Itself as a continuing flow of perfection. There's nobody who has travelled this far who can’t
find a way to do that.
And then, you see, we become Essenes. We’re able to walk with God. They were
called physicians and healers, and they weren’t. They were individuals who had dropped
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human concept so that God could reveal God where they stood. Now what quality can be
missing from God? You can't find any. Not one quality can be missing from God. Do you
have to pray for it if it's there? Isn’t that prayer a denial that it is there? If you're asking God to
bring it to you, you're saying it's not there. And so you're only suffering from your own
ignorance of the fact that God's qualities are there where you are, not to be prayed for or to.
Your supply––you don't pray for it. You don't ask for it. You accept that it is there. And it will
not come through a person. You might as well forget expecting it to come through a person.
Your health––it is there. It cannot come through a person.
Everything you have desired that is of God is there, but cannot come through the
person, for the person is making concepts, and the concepts can never be the expression of
God. Mary learned not to be a person. Jesus learned not to be a person. John learned not to be
a person. And there where they were, the expression of God made Itself manifest as the
fullness of their Being.
As long as you live in a human mind, you are a person. As long as you live in a human
mind, you will live in a human body and a human world. When you have graduated from the
belief that there is another mind beside God's mind, you will relinquish the human mind by
relinquishing its concepts. And so Joel’s chapter on relinquishing concepts, erasing concepts
is the way to relinquishing the false sense of the human mind.
God isn’t going to multiply your tax forms for you and tell you how much to pay or
not to pay. God isn't going to ring up your cash register and make change for your customers,
but you won't be doing that forever either, and God will still be here when that cash register is
in the junk pile and when there are no more income tax forms to make out. And you’ll
discover that the person making out the income tax form and the person ringing up the money
on the cash register isn't God's creation. There’s no need to be that individual.
In this world, you will not find God. In this body, you will not find God. With this
mind, you will not find God, and yet it is your destiny to find God right where you are. That
incredibly miraculous God experience is what we're here for. The experience of the infinite
Presence, which enables you to be a beholder of infinite Grace, can never come to you until
you are willing to accept God on God's terms and not to remake God in your own mental
image. God is not withholding your health, your supply, or anything that is necessary to your
existence. It is present.
Now, when you want to be independent of the conditions of the world, it follows that
you can only do this if you are independent of the form, which depends on the conditions of
the world. Everything you are doing as a human being is being done with the belief that this
form must be over there, or this form must be over here, or this form must wear such and such
a suit or such and such a dress. This form must have such and such a meal. And so we become
victims to the appetites of the form. So the form becomes drunk; the form becomes thin; the
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form becomes stout; the form becomes addicted to this, that, or the other thing. Every form of
addiction is our way of denying that we are the invisible Spirit.
We are letting the form, and the mind which runs that form, tell us that we are
separated from God. In other words, we're not facing facts. We want our cake, and we want to
eat it. We want God, but we want to be happy mortal beings, and you cannot. If you want
God, you must renounce the mortal self and then let the divine experience express as it will.
And then you will be walking in the invisible Kingdom while the world sees you in the flesh.
It would be rather foolhardy to come to a place in which we talk about the rising Christ, the
Infinite Way, the great achievements shown forth upon the earth by those who are liberated
from form, and then we back away and say, “I'm not going.”
The change is not in God. The change must be in us. And when we break the law of
mind, which cripples us, which makes us old, which makes us feeble, which makes us tired,
and see there's no mind there and no law at all, we break the world consciousness of old age,
of bodies not created by God growing older and dying. And we see, instead, that there was a
place where through spiritual evolution every person had an opportunity to rise into the form
that is never old and never dying, and we, having learned from the mistakes of others, are
ready to do that.
There were no old people among the Essenes. They were only old in years as humans
talk, but not in body, and the elders they healed were not within their own ranks, but for those
outside their ranks who needed help. They literally were the living Light of the Father. Having
cut them out of the Bible by a change here and a change there, the state, which tried to control
religion, then proceeded to sell its watered-down brand, and so we got the adulteration of
spiritual religion, of spiritual living. We got the literal, flat-footed interpretation about God,
and the world has suffered for it. And our biggest problem, probably, is because we've got to
unlearn all of the problem-conditioned things that have come into this world through that
great and monstrous blunder. We have become problem-conditioned. We wake up thinking,
“Now, what problem is there going to be today?” instead of knowing every problem is an
illusion.
We throw away the pages of history, and in the end of our consciousness we have
accepted the Christ. We let the Christ grow now till I'm identified as that Substance which is
the Essence of God. The Essence of God is the Essene. From this sprang Christ
Consciousness, which we are learning about. When you have reached the level where you
have nothing to defend against, you have accepted that only the Spirit of God is present. And
then in Its subtle ways, in Its miraculous ways, the outer picture is changed. That which was
stolen reappears. That which you were missing is no longer missing. That which you had
needed is either fulfilled or the need disappears. The moment you have accepted that all that
is here is God, in spite of every appearance, only God will express in your experience.
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We're reminded here, “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord; neither be
weary of His correction[s].” It takes time to develop this standing fast, and there must be the
chastening. Joel used to say he lost two fortunes. It built up again. He lost his health quite a
number of times. It came back again. Always, the initiation is to stand in your own Essence
and let It do all the work while you resolutely refrain from any concept about the good of it or
the bad of it, knowing the fullness of God is present doing Its job, and that is your
responsibility. From that the chastening takes effect. The spiritual muscles are built. You find
the power of Grace is dependable. “ . . .whom the Lord loveth He correcteth; even as a father
the son in whom he delighteth.”
So we are the children of the Father, willing to be corrected, and that correction is:
Accept my Presence as thy Presence. Abide in me. Let me abide in you. Fear not the
pestilence. Fear not any appearance or condition, for in that fear you deny everything that you
want. Out of those million cancer cases that go every year, whoever stands in the knowledge
that I, the Spirit, is the only Reality here, discovers that the mortal flesh is not subject to the
world in the presence of the realization of God.
Really, we do see some interesting and fascinating things in that direction where
terminal cases are nothing more than the judgment of the human mind denying the All-ness of
God, and that perpetuates conditions which are not there. When you see it in one or the other,
you’ll realize this is the Truth of every appearance: concept. Change your concepts by
emptying out. Acknowledging is the only prayer which discovers Grace is the only activity,
and God is the only Presence. No matter what happens today in the visible world, only God is
here, and only God will be here, and as I stand in that, only God for me will manifest.
One of the men who wrote about the Essenes was Philo (“P”, “h”, “i”, “l”, “o”). Philo
was considered one of the seven great Spirits of this world because he actually was a teacher
of Paul at one time. He did a lot to bring together all the ancient Hebrew writings, and in
studying Philo a little bit, I discovered something rather interesting to me. His book was
called The Contemplative Life, and if that coincidence wasn’t enough, he wrote a second one
called Every Virtuous Man Is Free, which to me is very much like a title by Joel Goldsmith
called Man Was Not Born To Cry. Every Virtuous Man Is Free. And then, of course, the third
interesting coincidence was that if Joel Goldsmith was Paul at one time, here’s Philo writing a
book, The Contemplative Life, back there among the Essenes. I haven't read his book because
I have not been able to locate it yet, but I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find some things in it
that are in this very book we're studying, The Contemplative Life. That’s approximately 1900
years apart.
Next time we'll see the marriage of Mary and Joseph and the child born of that
marriage, and the meaning of the immaculate conception. But it's necessary for us to look at
that immaculate conception, not from the standpoint of mortal beings, but from the vision of
those who dwell as spiritual Beings, so we can understand that we, too, are to be
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immaculately conceived in the Image and Likeness by our own release of concept.
If there are any questions on what we've discussed today or any difficulty in carrying
them out, let's have a little talk privately on it, because it's important for you to be able to
stand in that place where you're not questioning God's existence as the Only, where you’re not
fooled by the activities of the world around you, even by the close proximity of the things that
deny that Presence. There's a place where you can stand, and that's the only place where
Grace functions. Remember now, whatever happens, God will still be here.
Thanks very much.
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Class 13
Living Outside Your Body
Herb: We read the words, “Before Abraham was, I am,” and we know that the man,
Jesus, was not before Abraham, and therefore “I am” takes a great significance. We also
learned that “I am the way,” and that increases the significance of I. But still lifting I, being
raised to the level of that I which was before Abraham, even though it be the Way, is still a
very dark way for most of us. You might even say for all of us. But there was such a group
that knew the meaning of the Way, and they lived the Way, and they taught the Way, and they
prepared the Way for the rest of us to follow.
When Philo speaks of the Essenes, he says the following: “The Essenes would not
allow within their community at Qumran any maker of sorrows, any maker of spears or
swords, nor any manufacturer of engines of war, nor any man occupied with a military
avocation, or even with peaceful practices which might easily be converted into mischief.”
And so we find on earth, living right near the Roman Empire, a group of people numbering no
more than 4,000 to 5,000 who would permit no one to live among them who was capable of
any way becoming involved with things of war.
We can apply that to our thinking today to see the comparison, and so we find now a
very unusual thing, a sect among the Hebrews which does not practice Judaism in the same
way that the rest of the Hebrews do. The Sadducees, the Pharisees practiced their Judaism, but
the Essenes lived a quiet life apart. And no matter what words we read about them, the words
we hear generally are from historians, people who happened to live at that time or a little later,
usually living outside of the group and judging by what they saw. And so they would say this
was a quiet people, a very tranquil people, a people without servants. A people who had no
need for riches, for to them riches were the contentment of the mind. There were no slaves
among them. Every man was free. Every man was equal.
And so on, the historians would tell us wonderful things about these very unusual
people. But more than what we read and even what we hear, they knew the meaning of the
Way, the Way that I am, and being pledged to secrecy, they could not reveal the books they
read. They were even pledged not to reveal the names of the angels that they spoke to. But
you will find that a golden thread connected the Essenes to all of the past civilizations of the
world. A thread that began with the beginning of the world, continued through the
civilizations who taught spiritual living, right through the Essenes, preparing the way for the
birth of Mary and Joseph, and through them, the final fulfillment of the Light.
Class 13 : Living Outside Your Body
Now, Josephus, a historian, says, “They despised wealth. None among them could be
found richer than the other. It was their law that all who enter the sect must divide their
property among the members of the society with the result that there's never seen among them
either abject poverty nor great wealth. They all have, like brothers, one inheritance.” Again,
from the outside looking in, Josephus saw that they lived as One. He could not see that they
were actually recognizing that One is all there is, that they were living in the great unity with
the One spiritual essence of Being, and because they lived that way within, it appeared
visibly, physically, tangibly that way outside.
Now Eusebius, another historian, quoted Philo, and he says, “So enviable is the Essene
way of life that not only private citizens, but also mighty kings are filled with amazement and
admiration at them and have honored the fraternity by lavishing praise and honor upon these
respected and venerated men.” And Josephus now comes back and says, “They never spoke
about their human affairs before sunrise. The time before sunrise was devoted completely to
the Silence or to speaking about the things of the Father. They stopped their work every day at
11 AM to purify their thought, bake their own bread. They said grace before and after by
recognizing that God alone is the giver of Life. They allowed no noise, and the Silence that
they entertained around them was somewhat strange to visitors. They satisfied their basic
needs only.”
Pliny, a contemporary of theirs, wrote, “This is a race remarkably different from all
other men in the whole world. They live without women. They have renounced sexual love,
and they live without money, and for companionship they have palm trees. So strange to say
without any births among them, this race has lasted for thousands of years because so fruitful
for them is the life weariness of others.” And the meaning there, of course, was that others
becoming disenchanted with their normal human lives would then ask for admission to the
Essenes, and this is how the group kept growing and continuing in spite of no children. And
finally, Pliny again: “These God-guided men are so free that they inspire their neighbors with
a spirit of freedom. There aren't many of them, but that is not to be wondered at, for high
nobility of that degree is always rare. These men have attained it by separating themselves
from the common crowd to dedicate themselves to study the great truths of nature.”
Now, there was much more to the Essenes than these random comments from
contemporaries and later historians. The Essenes were like a mighty river into which flowed
the tributaries of the world because before the Essenes actually became a brotherhood––a
community, a series of colonies along the Nile and the Jordan extending into Egypt, into
Alexandria, around Judea––there was a great spiritual inflow upon the earth. We find the great
teachings of China, the great teachings of India, the great teachings of Chaldea, of Persia, of
Egypt, and the long line of succession among the Israelites themselves. All of this flowed into
the Essene community.
It received the highest teachings on the earth, absorbed them, and lived them. And in
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doing so, it became a channel through which West and East could ultimately meet, and the
spiritualization of the Eastern activity of the Western activity could be joined with the
activization of the spirituality of the Easterner, so that we could see a situation where the sun
would rise in the east and set in the west, but it would be one sun. The Essenes, you see, were
among the first world religions. Before Abraham was, I am, and this Christ that was before
Abraham was the guiding principle of life among the Essenes. Universal Christ, not confined
to geography, not confined to a race or a nation or a history, not confined to time or space.
They were teaching the universality of God. And this was before the Master said, “The
Kingdom of God is within you.”
Now, they had a great secret, and until their great secret is your secret and my secret,
we will discover that everything in the Bible to us represents a challenge that we cannot
fulfill, and to find the secret of the Essenes, it would be well to look at these tributaries of
spiritual wisdom that filtered into their community. So I'd like you to listen to a few things
that were said by the Master egos, the great Masters of the sixth century before Jesus Christ.
There was in that period from 650 BC to 350 BC at least five outstanding grand Masters on
the earth: Lao Tzu, Confucius, Zoroaster, Buddha, and we'll see who else comes along,
Pythagoras of Greece. Now mind you, this is 600 BC. The Essenes lived from approximately
200 BC to 300 AD, a 500-year period. And this is 400 years before the Essenes, 600 years
before the birth of Jesus Christ.
And here’s Lao Tzu. He is saying in the Upanishads, “I have heard that he who
possesses the secret of life, when traveling abroad, will not flee from rhinoceros or tiger;
when entering a hostile camp, he will not equip himself with sword or buckler. The rhinoceros
finds in him no place to insert its horn; the tiger has nowhere to fasten its claw; the soldier has
nowhere to thrust his blade. And why? Because he has no spot where death can enter.” Lao
Tzu is teaching that man is not living in his body, that he is divine Consciousness and must
come to know himself as divine Consciousness so that death cannot enter, for death can enter
the human body.
Then says Lao Tzu, “There is a thing inherent and natural which existed before heaven
and earth. Motionless and fathomless, It stands alone and never changes; It [is] everywhere
and [yet] never becomes exhausted. It may be regarded as the Mother of the universe. [And] I
do not know its name.” And so when we try to give the name “God,” we are expressing the
belief that we do know Its name. Joel gave it the name “the Infinite Invisible.” And along the
same line Lao Tzu continues, “[But] If I am forced to give It a name, I call it Tao, and I name
it as supreme. [But] The Tao [that] can be expressed is not the [natural] Tao; the name [that]
can be named is not the unchanging name.”
And so he's teaching us never to try to control or manipulate the Infinite with the mind,
but you must go beyond the mind, for you cannot name that which is infinite with a finite
mind. Out of the body and out of the mind was his teaching 600 years before Jesus Christ.
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And he finally said, “Discarding the body is the great liberation.” Now, this became part of
the way of life of the Essenes, living outside of the human body, and today we have to learn
what that involves.
They went about their day’s affairs, letting the infinite Self run Itself without human
interference. Each laid down his own personal sense of self. Each accepted the omnipresence
of the invisible Essence of God. Each accepted himself to be the Substance of God and to
know that that Substance is ever perfect. Each understood that Life exists before birth, in the
interval between birth and death, and after death, and that Life is always the immaculate
perfect Life of the Spirit. They even sought difficulties so that they could overcome them.
They felt that wisdom is crystallized pain.
One belief they had was that unless one became a fit instrument for the indwelling
Spirit, you were dead even though you walk the earth in a physical form, and so their
complete life span was spent to make themselves an instrument for the Holy Ghost. They
were without concept, without judgment, without condemnation. If there were criminals, they
blessed them.
There were two groups of Essenes, the marrieds and the unmarrieds, and the
unmarrieds took the vow of eternal virginity. They never married. They lived alone. They
completely lived by the Spirit. The marrieds went into the communities and demonstrated by
their purity and their way of life that they could attract to themselves those egos, who still
unborn, were seeking a higher way of life. And by their divine Consciousness they attracted to
themselves those unborn spirits seeking a way into mortality. This was the way they lived. In
short, they tried all to live as later Mary was taught to live.
And so the Essenes became an unusual factor not only in their own apartness, but even
when groups of Essenes would marry and go out into the communities, they brought with
them this way of life concerning the fidelity to the indwelling Spirit, the knowledge of
Substance as Essence of God. The knowledge that behind the visible changing world of the
senses was a permanent Essence unchanging, immovable, ever immaculate, ever present. And
this was the invisible Kingdom of God.
They walked in it consciously. All this seeped into them from the great ego, Lao Tzu.
Confucius, of course, was not as high. Confucius was like Moses. His teaching concerned
building a path of righteousness as a foundation, and so he taught the virtues. He taught
trustworthiness. He taught humility. He taught zeal for study, eagerness to learn, so that you'll
notice many Chinese are always very aware of the power of learning. The mark of Confucius
is upon them. There were some students who were capable of higher learning, and he taught
them about the Holy Spirit. Between the two, Lao Tzu and Confucius, we had the complete
teaching of Moses and Jesus Christ, from law to Spirit. This became part of the Essene
community.
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We have Krishna way back in the twelfth century before Christ. Krishna was teaching
one mind in the following manner. It stated, “As pure water poured into pure water remains
the same . . . , [this is] the Self of [a] thinker who knows . . . .” Why, only last week we read
about no concepts, and here it is 3,000 years after Master Krishna told us that pure water
poured into pure water remains pure water. And so if divine Mind pours Itself into your mind
with no concept, divine Mind will express through you as Grace.
“He who beholds all Being in the Self and the Self in all Being never turns away from
it.” Twelve hundred years before Jesus, “I and the Father are one” is said as one Self by
Krishna. And this becomes the understanding among Essenes, the knowledge that although
we see many forms, only one Self moves here. It is the divine Self, and we are all that one
Self. And so the Essene is stepping out of the illusion of form into the acceptance of I am He
who was before Abraham. I am that invisible Christ, the divine Man walking the earth.
Today it may seem new to us, but they lived it, and as they lived it, they were training
those among them who were going to bring the Light of Christ to its fulfillment. For among
them was the mother and father of Mary, Joachim, Hanna, and even Hanna’s mother, Fostina.
And they, being Essenes, were learning the principles of Lao Tzu, the principles of Confucius,
the principles of Krishna. They were learning one Self. They were learning that I am the
Light. They were learning that I am the Substance of which God is. And as a result, they
having a child were able to produce Mary. And it is said that because of Mary's radiance,
having been attracted to those who were living in the high Consciousness of the one Self,
before she even appeared, her radiance was shining through her mother.
Of course, many stories are built about these great sages and seers. The only way you
have any possibility of knowing the Truth is to receive them in your inner Self, for always
before Jesus every great Master was immaculately conceived. Unusual events always attended
their birth. They never had a human father. Always, God was the Father. And this became part
of the tradition that later appeared as the birth of Jesus Christ. It was among these Essenes that
Mary was trained, and although her parents died while she was still in her very early teens,
she learned all of the virtues of the great teachings of the world which had filtered into this
community. She learned secrets that the world does not even know today, and, of course, this
was what attracted the Soul of Jesus. This is what attracted that ego which now became her
child, and this Immaculate Conception was nothing more than the pure realization that all that
comes from the Father is of the Father.
Years of purification of living in the Oneness of Spirit, of being a fit instrument for the
Holy Ghost––all of this was necessary from the beginning of the world to the time of the birth
of Jesus, through the great prophets, through the great teachings of civilization, through the
Essenes to Mary and Joseph. This was the only child that Mary had that was able to show
forth the perfection of Being. She had eight more. None of them showed forth the perfection
of Jesus.
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The first was the complete culmination of that which was to learn everything that had
been taught through the Essenes to the parents and finally brought up to the pinnacle of
understanding when he could stand and say, “I am the Way.” The real birth was the change
from the human appearance of body to the divine appearance of body, both being
imperceptible to the human eye, so that you couldn't tell when the change occurred unless you
were highly spiritually attuned. Jesus, in turn, learned to live outside of the body, so that at an
early age he was practicing the principle of absent from the body, present with the Lord.
When he announced, “I am the Way,” the human Jesus was no longer there. Only I, for
it was I who announced, “I am the Way.”
Now, we could go on and on tracing these past civilizations, and you would find many
similarities in Gautama the Buddha, Pythagoras, all of the ancients, all culminating in the
final pure Consciousness, which is called the rending of the veil by Jesus Christ, making it
possible for everyone on this earth to receive initiation of the Spirit, for in the overcoming of
the world mind, the Christ Jesus opened the Way for each one to enter beyond the veil.
Now, you have found a great frustration in trying to fulfill the commands of the Bible.
It has told you to do many things, and although you have tried with devotion, there is always
many a barrier standing there as if to say somewhere along the line the teaching didn't provide
me with the method for doing this. But it did without your realizing it, because if you have
come to the place where you realize that you cannot do what the Bible is telling you to do,
you are in the right place.
It is only when you know that you cannot fulfill what the Bible is telling you to do that
you're ready to fulfill it. That is when you say, “Now I'm ready to give up the one thing I
haven't been willing to give up. I cannot fulfill the commandments of the Bible. I cannot
know the Truth. I cannot walk in His Will. I cannot turn the other cheek. I try, but I cannot. I
cannot enter the fourth dimension of Consciousness. I cannot love my neighbor. I cannot see
the Christ. I do judge. I do condemn, and I have that great fear that I am not adequate to the
task. I go up, and I go down.” And then, finally, we learn to give up concepts. We read
chapters on “Losing I-ness in I.” And while we’re striving to do it, we know we're not doing
it.
And then we find among the Essenes the answer. You cannot do it. That’s the secret. Of
all of the commands in the Bible, you cannot fulfill them. Only God can. And the only way
they'll be fulfilled is if you let God fulfill them in you, and that's why today is our turning.
From today on, when you live in a body, you are denying the presence of God. You cannot
live in a human body and say, “I worship God.” The very fact that you're living in the sense of
a human body is your denial of God.
We have had a 16-century detour from the Truth. When the state decided to start a
religion called Christianity excluding the Essenes and excluding the Christ and giving us but a
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shell, and when the state appropriated the writings of the Essenes, the understanding of the
Essenes, the teaching of the Essenes, and then emasculated it to suit their own convenience—
understanding nothing about what the Essenes were doing or why they were doing it or how
they were the great storehouse of ancient Wisdom come into fruition—that is when we all
took the detour, and we had a religion that had words without meaning. We were in the letter
of Truth without the Spirit.
From that moment on, man was unable to fulfill the Bible, even though he wanted to,
because the great Truth that only the Spirit of God can fulfill Itself was lost when the state
turned its back on the first world religion, the universal Christ teaching of the Essenes. As you
go deeper into their life, you discover that it took three years to be trained, and at the end of
those three years you were ready for the supreme test. That three-year apprenticeship led to
the time when you were able to walk out of the body, and when you could live outside of the
body, you were an Essene, not before.
They knew there were six heavens, meaning to them the six heavens are the levels of
consciousness leading to living as the divine Self. To them the Bible was not what it is to the
world today. They did not look at the Bible as a historical event or sequence of historical
events. They understood the Spirit behind it. They saw it as allegory. They understood that
Egypt was the human body. They understood that the march out of Egypt, which Moses led,
was the leading of man out of his sense of body. They understood that the promised land or
Jerusalem was the awareness of the one divine Consciousness as my Consciousness. So to
them, Egypt meant human body. Jerusalem meant one infinite, divine Consciousness
They were marching from Egypt to the New Jerusalem, out of body into Divinity. And
this was a broad panorama of what Moses was actually teaching. Much that we today take
literally, to the Essenes was allegory. And we'll discover later that practically nothing in the
Bible to them was a fact. Everything had a deeper, higher meaning. And the one thing they
could never accept, even later, was the belief that God was born, coming down from heaven
to earth and became the embryo in the womb of a virgin. They could never accept that.
They could never believe in a dying Deity who went through the ordeals of prenatal
birth, adolescence, suffering, cruelty, and then the final torture on the cross––all so that men
would see a resurrection of physical flesh and then believe that God's created world was all
right. The whole preposterous idea was blasphemy to the Essenes. They did not believe in a
physical resurrection or in a physical Christ. They knew Christ to be the Spirit. They knew the
Spirit to be all, and they did not accept the Christianity that we have been sold. They were
absorbed into the early Christian movement after the Ascension, and their work continues in
more ways than the world is aware of today.
Their work is always behind the scenes. On the march, the flight from Egypt, they had
helped Mary. When Jesus sent his disciples out, the 70 without script, little did they realize
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that they were helped by the Essenes. And always in your work, you will discover when
invisible hands seem to be helping you, there is a spiritual Reality, an Essene of yesterday
ever present to guide you, to teach you, to uplift you, to maintain you on the path, for these
men not only learned to live outside the body, but they were in the twentieth century before
you and I ever appeared here, for they walk in eternity. And with them, we are going to learn
how to walk.
Now, your problem is not how to fulfill the commandments in the Bible, but how to
learn that life in a human body is not the life of God. That is the counterfeit, and only when
you are consciously not living in the body will you find that every commandment in the Bible
is automatically fulfilled by the Spirit of God in you. This I Am which was before Abraham
fulfills Itself in you when you have learned that I, the Christ, am not in a human body, but I,
the Christ, am your Self. Now, when you face this, when you know that never again can your
life in a human body be lived without the knowledge that you are violating divine Law, then
you're at the place where you can say, “Do or die, I'm willing to pay the price.”
I'm willing to pay that which is beyond price to turn from all that I have been in a
human body, from all that the world has meant to me as a human being, from every concept of
a mortal self in the flesh that will die, and to live now, developing my awareness that that
which is the body is not me. It is a possession of the I that I am. Yes, I have dominion over
that body, but I'm not in it. In fact, it is that which is given to me to have dominion over, so
that I can know where my consciousness is. I can measure my divine Consciousness by the
dominion that I have over that body, and I will have no dominion over it while I am under the
belief that I am living within it.
When you face that, when you're determined that until you face it, studying The
Infinite Way, the Christ Way, the Way of the Light, the Way of Truth is just words. And that
there can be no real progress until it is faced and overcome. Then you're where you really
must be. And you’ll look at it and you'll say, “Why, this is insurmountable. How in the world
can I live outside of a human body? What am I going to do with it? I can't leave it home every
day. There’s a chair down at the office I have to sit in, and the boss pays a salary to that body.
If I'm not in it, who's going to take the money? Who drives the car, if not the person in this
body? Who eats three meals a day, if not the person in the body?” And, oh, your mind will
give you all kinds of reasons why you can't live outside of the body.
You don't know where to begin, but the Essenes found a place to begin. Their teachers
found a place to begin, and everything you ever tackled in your life that was difficult had no
place to begin, but you began somehow. You stumbled, you groped, you probed. But you
began! You started pouring from that little cruse of oil. One way or another, you did
something. James has a passage way back just before Revelation, before first John and first
Peter, in which he explains the meaning of the Way. Well, the Way is for those who know, first
of all, that you can't talk the Way. It has to be done. As Jesus, himself, had said, “By their
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deeds ye shall know them.” So talking the Way was nice. It was the way of learning the Truth.
But living the Way is the deed part, the doer, the action.
Living outside the body is not talking about being outside the body. This is a
conscious, continuous remembrance that the Spirit of God is not entombed. And when we
come to a day called the day of Resurrection when He is risen, we're not going to face that
day without the knowledge of its meaning: That the He which is risen is the I of my Being.
That I am risen; I am not entombed. That resurrection means I realize that I do not live
entombed in a physical form, condemned to decay. I am risen in Consciousness out of the
belief that I am entombed.
No body of clay for me, no life within that body of clay, and therefore, who am I if I
am not in that body of clay? If I am not in that mortal body, where am I? And you have no
alternative. There's no in-between. You're either in the body or not. When you accept that
you're not in it, that Christ is not confined to that body, you have the meaning of resurrection.
Because if you're in the body and Christ isn't in the body, you're denying Christhood, aren’t
you? If you're in the body and Spirit isn't in the body, you’re denying the spiritual Identity of
your Being. And so the moment you are living in a body, whereas Christ is not living in a
body, but Christ is risen, you are denying yourself to be the Child of God.
And so we have to face: Are we or are we not the child of God? If so, if I am, then I'm
not in a body. And I am, and therefore, I am not in a body, and I must know where I am. Who
am I? And I find that I am Consciousness without beginning or end because Christ has no
beginning or end, and then I am Christ Consciousness without beginning or end. But Christ
Consciousness is infinite, and you must accept that if you are not in the body, your name is
Infinite Consciousness. Now you have who you are and who you are not, where you are and
where you are not. You’re not in the body anymore. The body is in your infinite
Consciousness.
There’s one thing I'd like to clear up. Let's keep this body a little while. Let’s not toss
it on the shelf and call it an illusion. We don't have to do that. The illusion is the belief that
you live inside of it. You don’t. The body is there for the moment. Even though you don't live
inside of it, you now have a different Self to consider, your infinite Self. And now the problem
is how to correlate this body with your infinite Self. It’s like a big circle and a little circle.
You’ve been living in the little circle. You want to move into the big circle, but you don't want
to get rid of the little circle because you haven't yet made that transition from one to the other.
So what you're going to do is synchronize the two, and you learn, instead of living inside this
little circle, the body, you place your Consciousness in the larger circle, the Infinite, and you
dwell there. “Abide in Me and let Me abide in you.”
You abide in the Consciousness of the Infinite, releasing the consciousness of the
body. You’ll find, then, that every activity of the body will depend upon your Consciousness
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of your infinite Self first, and so when we say “going within,” we really mean, then, going to
your infinite Consciousness by releasing the consciousness of living in a body. Release it. Let
go. Be an Essene. Prepare yourself for the indwelling Spirit to be released. Now you’ll find
that it's a matter of persistence, discipline, and dedication. Your actual turning is to
consciously know that I do not live in this form. This form lives within me, and I am infinite
Consciousness.
Infinite Consciousness that I am has dominion over this form, and I dwell in that
infinite Consciousness, resting, letting the Father fulfill the Father's commandments in me,
letting the Father do all that I have been asked to do. He performeth. He perfecteth. He
quickeneth. He goes before me. I rest in my infinite Consciousness. I and the Father are the
infinite Consciousness. There are no longer two. And you do this for a few days, weeks,
months, and you find the familiarity of it increases, and you have really found your cross,
because this is picking up your cross.
As you dwell not in this form, but in your infinite Consciousness, it crosses out the
belief that you live in form, and it crosses out the concepts that you have entertained while in
the form, and the meaning of illusion becomes very clear then. The world around you was an
illusion to the self that lived in this form. But when you're not in the form, your infinite Self
takes a new view of the world around you, and that which had been illusion––meaning the
concept you entertained while in this form––is clarified, and now you're looking at the
creation, at the world as it is, instead of how it appeared to you in this form.
And you're looking, instead, now at the finished Kingdom without concept, and that
which had been illusion is shattered, revealing the Reality that ever was there but could not be
perceived by the changing human sense of self. And you are rising in Consciousness. Now,
this isn't something anyone's going to do for you, and it's not something you're going to read
in a book. It is the doing, which James was talking about, which brings you into the living
realization of Christ, the daily doing. And this is your daily prayer without ceasing. This is
where you establish your morning contact. Infinite Consciousness I am.
Now, we have to apply that, and this is where you can be inventive, if you wish. This
is where you can take thought, if you wish. This is where you can open yourself to divine
thought. You’ll discover that there are many, many things you learn about your infinite
Consciousness that nobody's going to teach you, but they'll come to you from the Witness
within. You might start out like this––and I know I can get you off in the right track, but I'm
counting on you to let the infinite Witness within keep you on that track. You will realize that
because you're not in the form, because you are infinite Consciousness, that you are
everywhere, and so wherever this form goes, you already are.
The form is walking through you. Wherever the form goes, it is going to meet Itself.
You begin to understand your everywhereness. You’re out of the body. You are able to move
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consciously in areas that the body cannot move into. You’re beginning to loosen up
spiritually. You're beginning to find that it wasn't the hard work that you did that was
important. What is more important is getting out of the way so that the spiritual Selfhood can
reveal Itself everywhere as Its own harmony, Its own Life, Its own Law, Its own protection,
Its own safety.
You're into the miracle of living, not confined by the consciousness that lived within
the form. You’re letting Grace be your sufficiency, and you find that your capacity to fulfill
the Bible’s wishes, to fulfill the will of the Father is being fulfilled without your doing it. That
the Father is fulfilling His own Will in the absence of the human shadow. You’re still in the
form, you still move, and people see you as you were. But you're under new law because your
new Consciousness is not in this body, but rather It embraces everybody on the earth. Now,
this is how we turn, and this is the time to turn. From this moment on, we must learn
consciously not to live in the body. You’re going to feel inadequate at times, but be sure that if
you do not make the starting point, the oil will not continue to pour from that little cruse.
Let your imagination run wild. There's no place in time that you’re not. There's no
place in space that you’re not. There’s no place that you ever can be in the future that you're
not in already, because Infinite Consciousness is your name. You’re in every tomorrow this
minute, and the knowledge of that changes every tomorrow, making it bring forth the activity
of the divine Image instead of the human. You’re really breaking the fetters. You are letting all
civilizations and their high teachings of Truth come to fruition in you. Now this is the
beginning, which can and should take you into the Easter Consciousness of the Resurrection. I
am the Resurrection. I am the Life. I and the Father are One.
And if you're looking for the way to do this, the way to accomplish this transition in
Consciousness, remember: I am the Way. No one cometh to the Father except through Me. I,
infinite Consciousness. I, the spiritual Kingdom within you. I, the fourth dimension called
Christ. I, the identity as Christ, as the infinite Consciousness, I am the Way to fulfillment of
every Bible promise. Absent from the body, we are present with the Infinite. And as long as
we maintain the effort necessary to reject everything on this earth that wants to put an anchor
on us and bring us back into the body, we will walk with the angels. Now on this we want to
meditate before we take an intermission.
I cannot recognize two selves. Christ is not mortal. I cannot accept Christ and
mortality in the same breath. I cannot be the Light and also be the human darkness. The only
Self that I can recognize is the only Self there is, the Self of God. Nobody’s ever going to
bury that Self. Nobody’s ever going to hurt it or harm it. No one is ever going to make it
lacking or limited. No one is going to ever give it arthritis or a pain in any part of the body.
The only Self there is is the Self of God, and I must claim that now. And I must be willing to
accept the responsibility of turning from all that disclaims the Truth of my Being, for you
know that no un-Truth can ever really happen. There is no possibility for un-Truth to happen.
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I must learn that whatever is untrue has no way to happen because God is the only
Self, and God is never untrue. Whatever is untrue is just another way of the world mind
denying the All-ness of the Selfhood of God. But that is my Self. It is the Self of everyone I
know. There is no other Self, and that Self never lives in a human body. It never has. It never
will. That Self is immortal forever. It is the only Self there is, and regardless of what concepts
men have been formed about that Self, they are still no more than concepts. I will not live in a
concept. My day is to be one with the Reality of Being, rising above the belief in concept
here, there, and everywhere. For that which is not the One Self is not here.
Consciously you walk in the one Self. That is the spiritual Kingdom of God within
you. It is the I which was before Abraham. It is the only Life there is. Now I have infinite
Consciousness, and I turn to It to let It guide that which is called the form. So whatever the
form does, it will be because it is led by my infinite Self, my infinite Consciousness. Every
action of the form is guided by the infinite Consciousness that I am. Always I turn to It before
I begin whatever I'm doing. Always I turn to It, refreshing. Always I turn to It so that the Lord
may build the house, until I no longer have to turn to It. It is I without opposite. It is here. It is
functioning. It is the only Self I recognize. It is Christ living Itself.
They say it took six or seven years to become a Master under the Buddha. It took three
years for the Essenes to accept one as a member of their community. We’ve been on this path
many years, haven't we? Are we not ready to be accepted in the community of God as the one
Self, the infinite Consciousness, so we’re out of the small circle into the Circle of Eternity?
Much has come about through a misinterpretation of one of the most important
phrases in the Bible: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” And by taking that
statement to apply to Jesus and not seeing the universal nature of it, we have taken billions of
people and not advised them that this statement is about them. “God so loved the world, that
he gave his only begotten Son,” the Christ, as your Identity.
“Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your father . . . .” God is the Father
of Christ, and if God is your Father, who are you? And so the only begotten, meaning Christ,
which is the I which goeth unto the Father, is your name. And it isn’t something to attain. It
isn't something to work to become. It is the acceptance that I, being the Christ, the only
begotten of the Father, and God being my Father, for I have no father upon the earth, I can no
longer identify as the mortal being I identified as before. So the secret of secrets is that I
cannot live in a human body without saying to these statements, “They do not apply to me. I
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cannot agree and accept to call no man my father upon the earth, for only God is my Father.
I'll stay in a human body.” And the world has done that and suffered from it.
Now we see that from the far ends of the earth, Spirit has prepared the chain of
command leading right to you. And so Spirit says, “I stand at the door and knock. From the
beginning of the world to this moment, I stand at the door and knock. Get out of that body.
Open the consciousness. Accept I, for I am the Way you've been seeking. I am the Way to the
rebirth from generation to regeneration, and that regeneration is through I in the midst of you,
which am mighty.”
Oh, how beautiful the Bible becomes when we know who we are, and we discover
every Word of the Spirit is the Word of my own Being, ever held before the false human
consciousness that was rejecting it. Somewhere in Proverbs we’re given the clue to this
regeneration. It's in the twenty-seventh proverb, line thirteen. I wonder how I keep doing this.
But that isn't it at all. It's the line about waiting on the Lord, and I can't give you the verse at
the moment. Waiting on the Lord. And this is the Son, which you are, waiting upon the Father.
And this is the regeneration.
As you accept being that Life which is not in body, as you accept being the spiritual
Son not limited to form, time, space, lack, bad health, bad digestive system, bad this and bad
that—none of this is you—as you accept this, you're accepting that spiritual Sonship, which is
waiting on the Lord and which is fed by the Infinite. You find yourself to be Self-fulfilling.
You find Grace is no longer something you read about. It’s your daily experience. It's Self
fulfilling Self.
You discover that I am the way to Grace, fulfilling Itself in you. In Hebrews—and this
time I hope I have the right one—we have our friend Paul anticipating our hesitations, where
we begin to say, “Well, tomorrow we'll get into that,” and Paul tells us “No, let's get into it
today.” It may sound like a very strange step, but in Hebrews, chapter 10, Paul begins to tell
us, “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, saith the Lord, I will put
my laws into their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and iniquities
will I remember no more.”
That's the end of karma, you see, breaking the law of karma. Their sins and iniquities
will I remember no longer. There’s no karma in the Spirit. It’s only when you're living in the
sense of physical self. Now, where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin.
“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, By a new
and living way,”—and that's what we've been talking about today: the new, the living way
—“which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh.”
So we have the flesh of the Christ, which is not the flesh of the mortal body. We have
the spiritual flesh of Christ, and that has ever been the Reality of our Being right where we
stand. Out of the body, listening to the inner Self, we watch the concepts change, and we can
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behold what we have been before the world was and what we are now.l I, too pure to behold
iniquity, will reveal to you the nature of your own Being. This is the transition in
consciousness, the renewing of the mind, which is the transforming agent for the
transfiguration.
Now, it's not immodest, then, to be immortal. It’s simply living in the Truth that God is
your Father, and God is not the Father of any mortal being. We have no dying Deity. We have
no dying Christ. We have no aging Christ. We have no sinning Christ. We have no unhealthy
Christ. We have no lacking or limited Christ. All of these problems are the denial of Identity,
and you know how subtly you deny Identity: “I have a problem.” Well, does Spirit have a
problem? “No, but I have.” And, therefore, you're saying, “I am not Spirit.” But Spirit is the
Son of God. “. . . call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your Father, which is in
heaven.”
Spirit is your Father. Spirit is your Substance. Spirit has no problem, and therefore,
you don't have to get rid of a problem. You haven't got one. That which you have called your
body has one, and as long as you're in that body, you have a problem or 10. But You have no
problem. Why don't you live in the You that You are and discover You have no problem? And
while you're making the transition of living in this You that You are, You can face the problem
and realize the problem exists only in the sense of body, which is not You. I am not in the
body.
At the Palace of Fine Arts there is an exhibit, and it's called the Exploratorium. Now,
in this exhibit it has the title, “Dedicated to Awareness,” and if you go in on the right side,
make that circle, halfway around the circle on the right side to the extreme right of it there'll
be a little door with a sign: “Exploratorium.” And it's open every day from one to five except
Monday and Tuesday. Now, these exhibits are all, strangely enough, dedicated to the illusion
of the senses. And one of the exhibits is the bust of a figure about eight inches tall, six inches,
something like that. It seems to be copper-toned. You see the perfect bust of this man, maybe
a Flemish or that period, and there's a sign that says, “Touch me.”
Well, you reach to touch this metal bust, and to your surprise it’s just air. You can't
touch it. It's only an image. And then you figure out, “Well, how did this happen?” And you
reach inside, and you find that there's a mirror inside, a convex mirror, a very large one, and
all of this is enclosed in a box. And all you see is this perfect, three-dimensional image which
you're sure is there, but it isn’t, just blank air. And so up somewhere or down somewhere there
is another bust which is shining into the mirror, and the mirror is catapulting an image out
here. But there is probably another mirror, and that mirror shines into the mirror and creates
the illusion of a mirror. And you don't see any of this because all of it's in the darkness. The
illusion of mirror creates the illusion of the figure.
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Well, this is all very primitive. The human sense of life, the cosmic mind does it in a
more subtle way, but the result is the same with one exception. Here we not only have the
image, but here in this human life we have the living senses with it. Now, if you were an
image like that image, but also had the sense of touch, you’d never know the difference.
You’d consider the physical image very real because you could touch it. And you see, this
being such a primitive reproduction of the illusion of the senses, it’s only when we put
together a few more sense illusions with it that we build a perfect illusion called the human
form, which has no birth in God.
It might pay some of you to get over there and look at some of the other exhibits.
There are optical illusions in sense of smell, olfactory illusions, and some others that I don't
recall. And then there are some movies about the laser light. It's from one to five, Wednesdays
through Sunday, and if you do nothing else, when you go in, go to the left and across the
wall––to the left and over to the right wall after you go to the left––and see this little bust and
reach in to touch it, and then go to some of the exhibits right next to it to find out just why the
illusions appear so real to you. And you'll be onto some of the tricks of the cosmic mind.
While we're on the subject of details like this, Joel's new book, The Mystical I, is
coming out; be out about the 18th of May. If you're near a library, get it there. If you want us
to order it for you, just leave your check and your name, and along about May 18th we’ll have
it, if it comes out on schedule. It’ll be $4.85 plus tax plus 25 cents for mailing and all of that.
Let's say $5.25 probably is the price of the book with the tax and add 25 cents for mailing.
But remember, all the metaphysical libraries will have it, no doubt. For those of you who find
it inconvenient, who are not near one, just tell us you want it, and we’ll order it for you.
Next week, by the way, the study will be the next chapter in The Contemplative Life, and
that is about the pre-Easter week, preparing for Easter, chapter four. But you are preparing for
Easter in a different way than even reading a book, because we're now at a place where we’re
going to find that we're not too interested in books. They’ll be nice to stimulate us. They’ll be
nice to give us a little start down the hill or up the hill or something like that. But ultimately
the only book we want is the Book of Life, that inner book which must become unsealed as
we live in the Truth of I. And that The Mystical I of Joel's new book will contain several of his
last talks in London, just before the transition. I can't tell you anymore. I haven't read it.
When you begin to enjoy your new weapon for living the Life eternal––the conscious
awareness that I am not entombed in anything that will die, that I am free Spirit; I'm
everywhere; I'm in every century right now; there’s no place where my Spirit is not––Then
you're living your Life eternal, and even though it's only a preliminary to the real experience,
it is the prenatal to this eternal Life. It is the new Womb for the new Man. And make no
mistake about it. You must enter that new Womb to be reborn.
And so Paul tells us it is a new living Way. It is a Way provided by the Father. It is the
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Way of being reborn to the Spirit, of the Spirit, and by the Spirit. In the Spirit until Spirit,
Christ Consciousness, Life eternal, Substance of God is the only Substance you recognize as a
living Substance. Can there be a problem in the Substance of God? If you have such a
problem, you are not that Substance in your consciousness, are you? And I have discovered,
to my satisfaction, that as long as I'm willing to accept my Self to be that Substance and have
the patience, I can look at that problem and say, “You are not in my Substance, and that which
is not in my Substance cannot continue to persecute me.”
It needs a mind that accepts it to work in. It needs a human mind, a human
consciousness. And because the Substance of God is the only Substance there is, every
physical disability on this earth is nothing more than the bust of a man that you can reach out
to touch, and you'll find it isn't there when you are in the consciousness of Substance. The
cosmic illusion is unveiled. You don't have to get rid of it. That isn’t the problem. Your only
problem is to accept the Substance that you are and stand in It in your Consciousness,
rejecting any other self. And then you'll find that there are no conditions in a Substance called
God.
There's no poor today and wealthy tomorrow. There's no 104-degree temperature today
and normal tomorrow. There’s no changing condition in the Substance, and therefore the
changing condition is telling you, you are wavering. You’re not living in the Substance. You're
not accepting the Substance. And, truly that's all you need do is accept the Substance as the
only, the One, the infinite Substance, and that is where your body is. That is your body, and it
is governed by the law of that Substance, which is the perfect law of Spirit. It is under the
principle of perfection, and because that Substance is all, the principle of perfection is all that
is here.
The imperfection is the belief that you are another substance. Don’t you see, then,
what separation means? The belief that you are another substance is separation from God, and
two powers means that you do not believe you are the one Substance, and so you have powers
of God in the one Substance that are perfect, but imperfect powers in the other substance
which you accept to be there. And it isn't there. You’ve got false powers that only exist
because you accept another substance that isn't there. You can live in the realization that the
one Substance of God is the only Substance that covers this earth. The Substance of God is
the earth and the fullness thereof.
And all that denies it is a cosmic mind seeking entrance, and if you permit that cosmic
mind to enter, you are denying identity. You can even get to look at that cosmic mind and say,
“You have no existence. Nothing you can say or do or make me feel is true because the One
Substance of God is all that is here, and the name of that Substance is I. It existed before
Adam and Eve. It has always existed. It is invisible. It is present. It is God. It is now. It is
forever. And as I dwell there, all the shadows are removed––the shadows of thought, the
shadows of memories, the shadows of experience and sensation. The shadows that never were
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more than my concepts as I lived out of my true Substance, in a separate substance with
separate powers in the world of dreams.
Come back. Do not be two. Do not be another self than I am. One. I and the Father,
One. And I accept divine Substance, which is incorporeal. And we'll come way back to Lao
Tzu, where there's no rhinoceros to put a horn in divine Substance. We'll build our little
community of I am, the divine Substance, the Essence, which was the very Essence of being
an Essene. And then the detour of 16 centuries caused by the watering down of the great Truth
into a personalized deity sent to suffer on earth, and all of that nonsense is cast out from the
belief of those who are enlightened to know the Truth that sets them free.
The substance of God is the only substance that ever was, is, and will be, and that is
Christianity universal. That is the teaching of the universal Christ, which has ever been on this
earth awaiting the recognition of those who wish to live as one with their Father. It has no
race. It has no religion. It has no history or geography. It has no divisions. Son of Man has no
place to lay his head, for we are the universal Spirit. This teaching will bear every test to
which you care to put it, and it will reveal to you the Truth that your Spirit is invincible. To
know I aright is to know God aright, for I and the Father are One. And to know I aright, then,
is to live now as the Substance, to now enjoy your Life eternal.
By next week many of you will have found ways. Perhaps some of you will have been
instructed by the Spirit in these ways to live with the conscious Awareness that that body you
see of me is something over which I entertain dominion, like I do of my automobile. It is
under my control. And the control I exercise over it is not by telling it what to do, but by
resting in the knowledge that I am the divine Substance which lives Itself through my Silence,
making me an instrument for that indwelling Spirit. And this divine Substance of my Being,
being ever perfect, maintains that body Image in perfection, with no effort on my part other
than obedience to the spontaneous spiritual impulse that never ceases to flow.
That is how your dominion is attained, by accepting its presence in the Spirit of your
Being, knowing that perfection is self-perpetuating. Grace needs nobody to turn the key and
make it run. It's running now, and you will find little tricks, little techniques, little ways to
keep you in that knowledge. So you'll be working at the office, working in the home, doing
something, and yet knowing I, the infinite Spirit, is my name. And I can almost stand aside
and watch this body perform what it is ordained to do now perfectly without effort, without
taking deep thought, without planning. Always it being responsive to that inner impulse which
I, the infinite Spirit, am sending through––without effort on my part. You are lining up the
infinite circle of Truth with that little circle of Truth which is your momentary Consciousness,
and the two are functioning as One.
You are living in the higher order of your Self, and the lower self, the Egypt, will be
guided by Jerusalem while you come out of her. This is a technique you'll have to develop
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within yourself to make you a doer and not a speaker, but you'll have friends in this work, and
there will always be this inter-communion between us in which we nudge each other along
the way with little ideas that have come, or we move certain obstacles out of the way.
But it is your experience, and it is just that livingness of it which brings to you those of
your own household, those necessary to your experience and to whom your experience is
necessary, and builds for you your own individual Essene community. As you are living the
Way, you will find those who must live that Way will find their way to your door. I in the
midst of you am the Way, and no one cometh to the Father except through Me. Enjoy it
because it is the most exciting thing you will ever know as it unfolds and unfolds into new
mansions continuously.
First thing in the morning, as often as you can remember during the day, and watch
how without any effort on your part beside that, It does the work. It performeth. That is the
miracle of I. Perhaps our Easter will be the experience of Easter before it arrives. Certainly,
we can come next week with that in mind, that I have been living not in the body, and I to
some degree understand the meaning of the rising Christ.
I don't really want to say good-bye because I'd like to just dwell here and enjoy the
warmth and love of Spirit. It has its own message, it's Peace. All the friction of the world goes
away, and that great Peace to descends. No human mind can ever invent such Peace.
[Silence]
Blessings and thank you.
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Class 14
A Real And Permanent Body
Herb: I want to address this first question to every woman who is present. I want you
to imagine, for the moment, that you are a 13-year-old girl called Mary and that the angel
Gabriel has come to you in Silence, advising you of this blessed event. Even your husband
knows nothing about it. And now, through some miraculous circumstance without knowing
your husband, as the Bible calls it, you give birth to this boy. You become a woman who in all
of the centuries is uniquely different than every other woman on earth because you, without a
man, have given birth to a boy. Now just what would that do to you as a person? How would
you feel? What kind of a life would you live after that event?
And then ask yourself this: If such an event had occurred in your life, do you really
believe you could ever be a physical woman again? Do you believe that you could have
normal physical relations with a man again, considering you had just given birth to a child
without a man? Could you possibly enter into normal marital relations and have children a
normal way after that? Would you even consent to it? Would you not be away on a cloud
somewhere living the glorious Life of knowing the Father in Oneness? Is it not ridiculous to
assume that a woman went through such an experience and then gave birth to children the
normal way, many children to be exact?
You know, sometimes the children of Mary are sort of swept under the rug. And we're
told that Jesus had only cousins, not brothers and sisters. There will be a day when all of us, in
the knowledge of the Truth of Being, will have access to a different kind of record. Some call
it the Akashic Record. It's a sort of a cosmic tape recorder, and those who can read the cosmic
tape recorder have much to say about the events in the life of the young Jesus, events that are
completely eliminated from the mass consciousness because they're not recorded in the Bible.
And in these records, which are an expansion of the known facts to man, it is indicated
that the first child that arrived to Mary after Jesus was the daughter, Miriam. And at that time
Jesus was five, and do you know from the age of five for Jesus to his fifteenth birthday, Mary
was having children one after another until he had five brothers and three sisters? And for
your records, these are the names, and this is the sequence: There was Miriam, and then there
was Joseph. Then there was James. Then there was Simon. Then came the second girl,
Martha. Then after Martha came, oh, I think it was Jude and Amos. Finally the youngest
daughter, the little child of the family, Ruth. Now these were the eight brothers and sisters of
Jesus, and although most people would at least give Mary four or five children, the Akashic
Records reveal eight.
Class 14 : A Real And Permanent Body
Now then, the importance of these children is this. They indicate that, first of all, what
we call the virgin birth was a spiritual way of designating a special kind of birth, and these
children, then, became an integral part of the living experience of the young Jesus because,
you see, at the age of 14 he had no father again. His father passed on, and the father of the
family became Jesus at the age of 14. And all of this early history in which he had to learn––
as you and I have had to learn––the patience, the forbearance, the tolerance; overcoming the
afflictions of the world one by one, day by day; building within the strength, the
understanding, and finally the awareness of Divinity. All of this was necessary to him as it has
been to you and to me. And you cannot take the children and put them away and pretend there
was one child, or even say, “This one came a special way, and the others came a different
way.”
We today are sophisticated enough not to need––not to need this strange kind of
exaggeration that tries to give authenticity to Truth by inventing supernatural events. The
events themselves as they were are quite supernatural enough without the imagination of man
or the superstition of religion. Significantly, you must remember that John completely
eliminates all reference not only to the virgin birth, but to the birth of Jesus at all.
Now, Jesus was an ordinary boy. He learned, of course, that the real Truth of his Being
was not that Mary was his mother or Joseph his father, but rather that he was the expression of
God. But let's look at his early life. We watch him grow up, and we find that in every respect
he is a normal boy with one difference. He’s rather sensitive to things that in some way deny
the holiness of God.
At an early age he's taken to Jerusalem by his father, and he's amazed. He can't believe
it. They won't let his mother in the temple. They segregate men and women, and he just
cannot believe it. He's infuriated. Why in the world do they do that? That was one of the
questions he was always asking his elders. Why do they separate mothers from the worshipers
in the temple, so that women and men are not one?
And he asked many other embarrassing questions. He’d say, “What’s behind the veil
of the Holy of Holies?” To everyone else that was sacred. You couldn't talk about it, but he
wanted to know what’s there. And then he’d have another embarrassing question for his
elders, “If God loves his children, why do we make all these sacrifices of blood and animals
to win God's favor? Isn't that denying that he loves us? And if the temple is so sacred, why do
we have all this trade and barter in the temple?” Question after question from a young boy,
and the elders try to brush it off.
Now, there were many times in his childhood when he became aware that he was
different. In fact, he became aware in his teens that he had a mission, and when at the age of
14 his father died, he was saved from something he didn't want to do. The plans had been for
him to go to the rabbinical schools in Jerusalem, and he had been there. He had seen the
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hypocrisy. He had seen priests who are political appointees. He had seen all kinds of life that
was a total denial of the presence of God, all under the name of religion. And at the age of 14
the last thing he wanted to do was to be guided into the channels of orthodoxy, learning all of
the pious phrases without the Spirit behind them, and even though his father's death was a
blow to the family, it prevented him from going to Jerusalem to study because he had now
stay and be father to eight. The last child came just shortly after the death of Joseph.
In his fifteenth year, as he was teaching his brothers and sisters, they kept asking him
how to pray. They wanted to learn certain prayers, formulas, you know, so that they could just
memorize something and pray by memorization. And he was trying to teach them another
way, a living way, and do you know he was only 15 when he gave them The Lord’s Prayer?
And its purpose was to teach them to pray spontaneously. God is here, and God is living, and
to the living God who is here, your prayer is; “Thy will be done, not mine.”
And all of us adults through the centuries who’ve tried to understand that prayer were
trying to understand the prayer of a fifteen-year-old who was teaching it to eight little brothers
and sisters. And not a memorized prayer, but a flexible prayer, a prayer that said, “Father,
your will for me yesterday and your will for me today and your will for me tomorrow is ever
to bring me into further understanding of You. To bring me closer to You. To to let me know
who I am in relation to You. And I, having a finite human sense of mind, I release that finite
sense of mind and let your infinite Mind guide me. Thy Will, Thy Kingdom, Thy Power.”
And always the boy was now becoming aware of preexistence, not only of his
ingrained Divinity, but of his Divinity before the form appeared. He was learning the secret
that you and I probably have not really learned to the full. He was learning that he had always
been alive. To the world, he was 15. To himself, he was an immortal Being. The mortal
human selfhood had become conscious of its immortality, and by the time he was 20, he knew
more about God than most of those who walked the earth, speaking the name of God in vain.
From the age of 20 to 30 he had an unusual problem. It was to stop the possibility that
he would be famous. He didn't want his personal self famous, for it would be a competition to
the message he was teaching. There were many in those 10 years who knew him to some
degree, but did not know that he was the same one who had appeared somewhere else. For
instance, there were those Hebrews in Alexandria who thought—even though he was quiet,
staying at home, his fame spread to them—this man knew the Bible! This man knew
something behind the Bible! And those who were closer to him had spread his fame in some
way, even though he performed not a single miracle.
And so he was offered many positions. As a matter of fact, the Alexandrians said to
him, “You know, Jerusalem is going to fall some day. We heard it prophesied. Why don't we
set you up here in Alexandria? You can be their competitor for a while, but you will
outdistance them, and you will take over when they are defunct.” He thanked them very
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courteously, and that's how he did not become the head of religion out of Alexandria in
Judaism.
And again, there was another offer from the Sadducees. He was given quite a number
of offers, usually from wealthy bankers, people with good intentions, but people who thought
they wanted to be near when the new regime came about. Just like his own disciples later felt
that in the new regime, they would sit on his left and on his right while he sat on the throne of
David. That throne of David, to him, was not where he planned to sit. He had already become
conscious that he was not the Messiah to a little group.
He knew about the Light of the world, and now his whole function was what you and I
are learning to do—to be patient. He knew the meaning of long suffering. He knew the
meaning of really surrendering to the Will. There was no temptation on the earth that could
pull him out of simply day by day releasing himself to the inner Presence until there was a
conscious Union, until there was a complete and total inner Crucifixion of all personal sense.
It's only when you become aware of his youthful trials that you can see him as Joel
saw him, that his entire life was devoted to overcoming personal sense, personal limitation,
personal needs, personal afflictions, even personal betrayal. Always the overcoming was
accomplished in the knowledge that the Spirit of God stands right here performing its perfect
work regardless of what the human mind sees or understands. He had learned not to deny the
ever-present perfection of Divinity within his own Being, within those around him. He never
denied the Omnipresence of God. He made no big public uproar about it, and so very few
people knew him other than the son of the carpenter who died, the boy who took care of his
mother's children so well, and he was quite good at it.
He was an excellent father. It was a fatherhood by proxy, and he was also good with
money. He knew how to make ends meet. And he worked well. His work was highly
regarded, but he knew his time was coming. Even though he kept saying to his mother, “My
hour has not yet come,” he knew it was coming, and so he prepared for that day. He said to
Joseph, “It’s going to be your turn now to take over. You’re the eldest after me, and so now
I’m putting the funds in your hands. They're not much. They’re meager, but when I go away, I
want you to know that I'll be sending some.” And so for two or three years he prepared Joseph
to run that house, and later Joseph prepared James.
And when he did leave in his twenties, he didn't go very far. He went to the city of
Capernaum, met a boat builder, a man named Zebedee who had two sons, John and James.
You know, the cabinet maker that Jesus had become now became a boat builder. He had a way
of building boats that were more safe than any boat in that area. And so the father of John and
James became quite wealthy through Jesus. They were partners, boat builders, and in that area
most of the boats on the lakes were built by Zebedee, designed by Jesus. And this is how he
earned his money, and this is the money he sent back to Joseph to take care of the family.
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And often he would take a trip, and always on his trips he would be waiting for “his
hour to come,” the time when he could be visibly about his Father’s business. And the time
came. When the time came, there was a new Jesus walking the earth. He had been in the
wilderness. He had been baptized by the Spirit. He walked in a celestial body, visible to men
as a body called Jesus Christ. No one knew he walked in that celestial body. No one knew
they, too, someday would walk in that celestial body. And now he had to show what would be
considered unshowable, teach what was unteachable. He had more to face than any of us in
this room.
He had the full ceremonial religion of Judaism with all its rituals, and he had the might
and power of Rome. And in between the two, completely surrounded by ignorance of what he
was doing and who he was and what he had learned and what he knew, he had to make
manifest the power of God. He had to glorify the Father. He had to open the heart of the world
to the fact that the Spirit of God not only indwells every mortal being on earth but is the living
Essence and Reality of that which we call the mortal being.
It wasn't enough for Jesus to say, “The Spirit of God indwells you.” He had to show
that the Spirit of God is You. And so we come to a moment when he's on his hands and knees
washing the feet of the disciples. He says, “You don't understand what I'm doing, but someday
you will.” Peter instantly shows he doesn't understand: “Oh, you can't wash my feet. I won't
let an important one like you wash my feet.” Now, what brings that to attention, of course, is
that the ritual of the washing of the feet happens on Maundy Thursday, and we have
discovered that throughout the ages this ritual has been repeated in all of the religions in some
way.
The Pope saw fit to repeat it, as usual, and a very interesting parallel must be drawn,
because after the Pope had washed the feet of 10 old men in a nursery home, he found a
reason to comment on those priests who had defected the church, and without calling them
“Judas,” he referred to Judas. The implication was quite clear, that just as Jesus had his
“Judas,” Catholicism today has its defecting priests. That incident would have been maybe a
bit insignificant, except for the fact that he had just washed the feet of these 10 old men. And
the question is: When he washed the feet of the 10 old men, was he doing what Jesus did
when he washed the feet of his disciples? Had the Pope understood?
And so we look at it, and we find that referring to the defectors as a Judas, as vile
creatures who’d gone back on their oath, is a little different than Jesus turning to Judas and
saying, “Here, take the sop and go about doing what you must do.” One is nonresistance; the
other is resistance. And wherever you see the difference between nonresistance and resistance,
you're catching the spiritual message. Now, much of the ritual of churchdom today is along
those lines. It does the outer things without the inner significance, without the inner
realization.
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And so just the same as people will lay hands on and think they're baptizing somebody
with the Holy Spirit, they will wash the feet, and it really never penetrates to the core of what
Jesus was doing. Having attained the awareness of Divinity as the Identity of every man, he
was washing the feet of his disciples in recognition of their spiritual Identity: I see you not as
mortal man, but as the immortal Self. I see you as the invisible Christ.
And he was going deeper. He was saying to them, symbolically, your feet I am
washing—not your head, not your ears, not your face, not your hands—but your feet, because
this is what you stand upon. This is the foundation of your physical self, and now I'm trying to
change your foundation. I'm trying to make you aware not of your physical being, because
certainly your feet don't need cleaning. I am making you aware of your invisible spiritual
Selfhood, and I want you to learn to stand on It. I want you to stand on your inner Divinity.
And so in recognizing the inner Divinity of his disciples by the washing of the feet, he
was telling the disciples, “Now go and do likewise. Wash the feet of your neighbor. Love thy
neighbor. Recognize the Christ of your neighbor. Recognize that each one who stands before
you is the invisible Christ.” And that is washing their feet. You don't have to get a basin of
water to do it. This is the outer symbolism. You wash the feet of the world every day with
your knowledge of the universal Christ. Therefore, when you do that, when you recognize the
universal Christ, you have caught the meaning of washing the feet.
Now, you cannot turn over here and wash the feet of these 10 and turn over there and
condemn. The washing of the feet must be a universal, or you haven't caught it. And so we
must compare the Pope’s way of washing the feet with the Jesus way and see that they're not
identical, and we must further see that this is a clue to the reason for the defection. The
understanding of the indwelling Christ as the Identity of mankind has not permeated through
the religious world into the consciousness of its practitioners. If a man knew himself to be the
Christ, would the issue be whether I get married or not?
Do you see, then, that if Catholicism cannot convince its own priests of the validity of
its teaching, that it cannot convince its own congregations? And this same washing of the feet
is going to occur in other religions than Catholicism, and I doubt if it will occur with the same
inner meaning of Jesus. I doubt that the President of the United States could understand
washing the feet and send boys out to kill. I doubt that nations of the world could learn to
wash the feet correctly and do what they do. I doubt that governments and religions and
politicians and educators and the peoples of the world are completely unaware that Jesus was
saying, “Thou art the Christ. As I am, thou art. As I have learned my Divinity, I advise you of
your Divinity.”
And I have to question this, too. If the priests who left the church because they're
unaware of the message of Christ did not have it, what about those who remained? Did they
not receive the same teaching as the ones who defected? What about the children who are
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learning from them? What are they learning? About the indwelling Christ or about man-made
ideas? You see, when Jesus kneeled and washed the feet of the disciples, he was also washing
the feet of every man on the earth. He was making it impossible for any religion on this earth
to be an interpreter of the Word of God. He was personally dying to all personal human sense.
This was absolute humility saying, “Follow me.” Your humility must be so great that
you reach that high level of Consciousness which says, “I cannot interpret the Word of God. I
cannot be a mediator between God and man.” That humility was Maundy Thursday. You're
watching the beginning, the preparation for Crucifixion, a Crucifixion that should have been
acknowledged on Good Friday, and every other day, because the Crucifixion is the capacity to
step out of the finite ties of a mind that is not the mind of God.
Who was that who kneeled before the disciples? Who said, “I am washing your feet?”
Who is this I? Was this not the inner Christ saying, “I, the inner Christ am washing your feet.
I, the inner Christ, am purifying you of the belief in a personal you. I, the inner Christ, am
cleansing you of all personal sense. I, the inner Christ, am building my own temple within
you, the temple of the Soul, the temple of the Father, where the will of the Father in you can
be done.”
The Crucifixion of personal sense on Good Friday was not just a day. It was, as Joel
reveals to us, another spiritual principle. And again, that spiritual principle, that inner
Crucifixion was the end product of a long line of inner Crucifixions within the man, Jesus, so
that there was no longer a human being there. There was the pure Christ unadulterated by
human sense, giving the pure Christ teaching that as long as there are two on the field, there is
one too many. The real washing of the feet is when you take this to your Self in your
innermost Silence and throw open the windows of the Soul and let the pure Light of the
Father dissolve all mortal sense. This is the acceptance of Divinity––not Divinity and a
human me––but Divinity, period. All of this, a prelude to Resurrection.
How could there be a resurrection unless the personal sense had been overcome?––
Because resurrection is arising from the crucified tomb of personal sense into Self realization.
We were looking not at a man teaching his disciples. We were looking at our own inner
experience before it happened. We were looking at the experience through which we are now
going, the preparation for the illumination through Christ realized. As we are crucifying
personal sense, accepting Divinity here and now, we are taking the words literally: “To live, to
move, to have your being in God.”
And how can you do that? How can you live in God, move in God, have your Being in
God and still say, “I have a problem”? Isn't that sort of a paradox? Can a problem be in God?
How can you say, “I have a mortal body”? Can a mortal body be in God? How can you have a
mortal life? And therefore, when we're told, “Live, move, have your being in God,” we’re not
being told that the Spirit of God indwells your mortal body. We’re being told that we are the
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Spirit of God. Live in that knowledge. Many people will say, “Oh, I know I'm the Spirit. I'm
the Spirit. Of course, I've known that.”
Yes, they know it, but they do not accept that they are the Love of God. They are the
infinite Life of God. They are the Self of God which has no problem. They are the Self of God
which never lacks supply. They are Self of God without beginning or end. They say, “Oh yes,
I'm the Spirit, and I have a problem. I'm the Spirit, and this is wrong over here. I'm the Spirit,
and I'm trying to become One with God.” But the Spirit is God, and so you cannot say, “I am
the Spirit.” You might just as well say, “I'm an automobile” and think you are one because
you said so. The Spirit isn't becoming anything.
When you are able to say, “I am the Spirit” because you are Being the Spirit, not
becoming, then you're closer to Easter Day, Resurrection Day, because you have come out of
the belief that you are that mortal self who has a lack or limitation. Mary always thought of
her child as a child of promise, but the world has never quite put the finger on something very
important about that child. It was a child of Divine Love, and that Love is Eternal Love, a
child of Eternal Love. And that awareness grew in the boy Jesus, that he was a child of
Eternal Love, so much so that he and his father had a discussion about it.
He was explaining his feeling about the love of God, and he compared it to the love of
his father, and so he said to his father, “I know you love me, and I find that you are never
really wrathful with me. Some things I do might disturb you, but I never raised you to the
point of wrath. Why then should my Father in heaven, who loves me, be raised to the point of
wrath? Does he love me less than you? I cannot believe that my Divine Father loves me less
than my father on this earth.” And Joseph had to say, “I see your point.”
Jesus had done something. He had reached that place where he not only had faith in
God, but he had faith in everything about God. He had faith in the Eternal Love of God as
being his dispensation. When you and I say, “We have faith in God,” it would be wise for us
to check out whether or not our faith includes every quality of God, and you'll find that our
faith is not a 100-percent faith. We think we can be separated from God, and that's not faith,
because God has said he couldn't be separated from us. Any time we feel any imperfection is
possible, that's not faith in God, because we are saying that we don't have faith in a perfect
God. A perfect God does not permit imperfection.
Now, one of the fundamental blunders of all religious dogma is this: It teaches that the
Spirit of God indwells a mortal man, and so you have mortal men going around saying, “The
Spirit of God is in me.” And if you ever confront one of these fellows with a problem like
this, he really doesn't know what to say to you. “The Spirit of God is in you. How interesting.
Where do you keep it?” “Well, it’s––it's in me. It's part of my being.” “All right. I understand
your brother has trouble with cancer right now.” “Yes, he's in the hospital. He has cancer.”
“Well, isn't the Spirit of God in him, too?” “Oh yes, It's there. It's in him.” “Well, what is it
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doing while he has cancer?” “Oh, oh––well, I couldn't say.” “How can the Spirit of God be in
this mortal body that has cancer? Impossible. You mean the Spirit of God is standing there
twiddling its thumbs while your brother suffers? Is that what you think of God?” And, of
course, there's no answer to it.
The Spirit of God does not indwell a single mortal body on this earth. The realization
of immortality is not that the Spirit of God indwells me. It doesn't indwell me at all. Paul may
have said that 2,000 years ago to those who are on their way up learning. He was teaching
them the grammar. He was teaching them basic arithmetic. He couldn't give them calculus in
one day. And we don't have to be stuck with his relative teaching at that point.
You cannot be a mortal being, a body of clay that encases the immortal Spirit. How
can immortal Spirit be in a mortal body? Well then, what about this thing? That's what this
friend of mine said to me the other day, “I am the Spirit, but this carrier,” he called it, a
“carrier.” He has every book of Joel’s on his shelf, every book. Of course, he's never studied
too hard. He can thumb through this Bible. He knows it well. He can recite passages you
didn't know were in there, and he knows he's the Spirit. But he also believes that he's a
“carrier” for the Spirit, and that “carrier” is having all kinds of trouble because there's duality.
Phrases like: Choose ye this day which ye shall serve, God or mammon––it means
nothing to this man at that point. He can't see it. Now, when you put the boy Jesus in the
womb of Mary and take away his human father and try to make him a virgin birth, then all of
the work he has done from the age of one up to twenty and then up to thirty in losing personal
sense, showing the way to Divinity realized, is erased from the Consciousness, from the
teaching, and the whole point of his teaching is missed.
When you show him as he was: Growing up as you and I grow up. Learning to divest
himself of every false concept. Crucifying the human mind which perceives iniquity that the
Divine Mind can never see. Crucifying the belief in a mortal body that contains a spirit, but
accepting that I and the Father are One. And then do not attribute that to one who is divinely
conceived alone, separate and apart from other people.––But say instead, “This is the one who
learned to do for all humanity what they must do and lived it.”
And finally, the greatest discovery that was ever made by Jesus has not been made by
the religions of the world. He discovered God, and how strange that they have never
discovered that that's what he did discover. If he was the Son of God, that discovery would
have been impossible. It would have been just––there it is––“Naturally, I'm God. God is my
Father.” But he discovered it, rising up out of human sense. Now, when you have accepted
your Immortality, you cannot also accept your mortality. That's like saying the Spirit of God is
in a mortal body. And as long as you try to live on both sides, the immortal and the mortal,
you'll find you get hurt in both places. You can’t split infinitives that well.
A woman had just learned that the Spirit of God was her Being. She had learned to
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some extent what she should do to overcome the belief in a personal self. All of this was
making a great impression on her. And after she had it, she thought, she then said, “Now,
about my husband. You know he’s getting older, and we have this great acreage and these
responsibilities, and he's not really quite able to do the things he used to. And he's kind of
worried about it and I am, and I'm wondering what I can do to, you know, cope with the
situation.”
And I said, “Well, you can do one of two things. You can meet the situation humanly,
or you can accept spiritual Identity for both of you. Now, I said, “Don't try to do both. Either
you are the child of God and he is, or you accept that you're not the child of God, but if you
try to be the child and act like a human, you're starting out in an impossible situation.” Now, I
said, “Suppose you decide that because he's getting older and all of that, as you see it, that you
really do want to do something for him. You say he doesn't have the energy. Now, what can
you do?"
And she thought about it, and she says, “There’s really nothing I can do, is there?”
There wasn't anything she could humanly do to give him energy. The only way she could
really help that family was to be a witness for Christ within. She had to learn how to wash her
feet and his, and while going about it, to wash the feet of the sheep on the ranch. The spiritual
way is not an extra something that you do. It’s not something you add to your human way. It’s
a departure, and you don't hold onto what you're departing from, and you don't turn back. The
embryo that is born isn't still an embryo, and though we come now to a place where we're just
infants, what about it? What's wrong with stumbling as an infant?
Haven’t we learned that long suffering is part of the way? Of course, it’s a suffering.
How could we possibly walk on spiritual feet in one minute? And so we are prepared for what
appears to be a struggle. What of it? At least in that struggle, nothing gets hurt. The only thing
that gets hurt is your sense of impatience and frustration, but there's no hurt. In this new
struggle as an infant in Spirit you are learning to do something that is breathtaking. You are
learning how to let God be your Life. You are learning it's possible to let God be your Life.
You're not reading about a Resurrection in the Bible. You’re not going to a ceremonial
and watching somebody wash somebody's feet and going home and saying, “Gee, that was
inspiring.” You are the Resurrection! You are going through the experience of Resurrection
from infancy and ultimately to full maturity in the Spirit. And the Jesus Christ Way is totally
different than even we know as we proceed along our spiritual sense of the Way, because
suddenly we come face to face with a new level: “I have meat. I can give you living waters.”
And you look, and you see you're a disciple, and there he has no meat whatsoever.
What's he talking about? Or you're at the well and you look, and here’s this man. He’s dusty
with the road. What kind of living waters can he give me? I've got the well, not him. And
there he is without meat to see for anyone, without wine to see for anyone, without bread to
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see for anyone. And he says, “I can give you anything you want,” but he has nothing. And
that's the beautiful thing that Joel has pointed out. He has nothing, but he can give everything.
Why? Where is it? In his nothingness, in his elimination of personal sense, in the
crucifixion of the man, in the removal of all humanhood, of all mortality, there stands the
infinite, immortal Self, which has all. And the man with nothing who knows I of mine own
self am nothing, who has crucified mortality, finds himself to be the Infinite Invisible
expressing Its fullness. And this that little boy knew in his twenties. He knew this was his
Way: Resurrection out of mortality, out of limitation, out of a brief lifespan. Out of all the
lacks, the needs, the wishes, the hopes, the ambitions into the acceptance of Being. Not God
to be discovered somewhere.
This is the story of Identity. Not God indwelling me, not the Spirit of God inside me,
not seeking the Presence of God, but recognizing your Being is the Presence of God. Your
Being is that Presence, and then you're in One. Then you're in union. Then you are casting no
shadow, and then you are ready to see that every word, thought, and deed in the life of Jesus
Christ was to bring you to the place where you and the Father are One and the same. That the
Presence of God is your Being.
I am is just a word until you know I am the Presence. I am Spirit is just a word until
you know that Spirit that you're saying you are is God Itself. And when you accept any
imperfection in your life, any lie, any untruth, any error, any evil, you are denying your
Identity. You are punishing yourself. You are being what you are not. You cannot have a
problem and be the Identity that Jesus taught you are. Do you see, then, that you are rejecting
Identity when you say: “I need, I lack, I want, this is wrong, that is wrong, I’m sick,” or "I
will die” or even that “I was born”?
Identity is your only name. Whatever you shall ask in My name, you shall receive. My
name is Spirit. And when you are asking in the name of Spirit, you don't even ask. The
acceptance of Identity is the asking. Resurrection is the realization of Identity. That one word
is the key to the immortal Self. You cannot be that immortal Self unless you have put off the
garment of belief in a mortal self. You cannot share the fruits of the Spirit with a neighbor
unless you are that immortal Self. And you cannot be that immortal Self and accept problems
in your life as a reality, nor can you accept problems in your life as a reality and say that you
are the immortal Self at the same breath. Isn't there a lot, then, behind washing the feet?
Isn't this what our religion should be teaching about Identity instead of poor, crawling,
mortal sinners? We say today, “He is risen.” Where? Where has he risen? Look around you
and see if he's risen. He hasn't risen in the consciousness of mankind where he should be
rising. Mankind is still a density, but he is rising in our consciousness. That’s where he's
rising. That’s where the Spirit of God ultimately reveals Itself as the Identity of every man,
where the Consciousness rejects all temptation to believe that I am not that one Identity to
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which the Father said, “All that I have is thine.”
You know he didn't give that All-ness to the mortal who dies. He gave it to that which
is his own Self, the Christ of Himself, which is called His Spirit in you, and then you get rid
of that “in you.” His Spirit I am. And in his Spirit is the All-ness of God, and wherever I
accept less than the All-ness of God as being present, I am denying Identity. I am denying His
Presence. And now, if I wash my feet correctly and know who I am, and wash your feet
correctly and know who you are, and wash the feet of the world and know who everyone is,
isn’t washing the feet the acceptance of the omnipresence of God?
Everywhere I am. Everywhere the Spirit of God is. Everywhere is the one Identity.
You dwell with this, and you find that something lifts you above the limitations of a human
intellect, and you come face to face with a wonderful paradox, which is very uplifting. If I
have a mortal mind, how can it know anything except a mortal body, a mortal life, a mortal
experience? Is God mortal? How can the mortal mind know the immortal Father? It cannot. It
receiveth not the things of God.
And so I am lifted above this mortal mind. And now, finally, I reach a place where I
for an instant glimpse the fact that the divine infinite Mind is the only Mind, and you live
there a while. You experience Its what might be called rapture, the knowledge that I've been
lifted above every human concept. I'm in the divine Mind, and it is my Mind.
“He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded
himself. After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to
wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and
Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I
do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt
never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.”
Now re-translate that, seeing that I, the Christ, which appeared as Jesus, am saying to
Peter, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part [of] me.” There must be a realization of the
presence of Christ somewhere beginning in a person. The little cruse of oil has to start to pour.
And though we are starting with the foot, this must take place. Maybe starting with the foot is
a little inn where the Christ is born in Peter. But something must be done to bring him an
awareness that I, Christ, stand here. And Peter, someday you won't be here. Only I will be
here, and you will know that you and I are One and the same. “Simon Peter saith unto him,
Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. Jesus saith to him, He that is washed
needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.”
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As this recognition of Christ Self grows, so does the acceptance of the Christ Mind,
and as you come into the awareness of the Christ Mind, superseding your former sense of a
finite, limited mind, you must accept a Christ Body. You cannot have a Christ Mind and a
human body. You cannot have an infinite Mind and a finite body. It’s impossible. And so you
come to that place where you can look out at the universe and say, “This is my Body.” The
universe is my Body, and not even the visible universe. Everything in this universe is
imitating my Body.
I have an Infinite Body because I cannot have another. There is only the one infinite
Mind, the one infinite Being, the one infinite Body, and there is no other. I do not have a piece
of it, a fragment of it. I must begin to respect the integrity of my infinite Body. You will stop
being concerned about five foot two when you become aware of your infinite Body, and you
won't run into the problem of how can I improve my physical body? Because the minute that
is the level of where you are aiming, you're denying Self again.
You cannot accept your immortal Self and not accept your immortal, infinite, universal
Body. You don't have a personal body to take care of, and the miracle of having nothing and
yet being able to give everything, as Jesus demonstrated, is the same with your Body. The
miracle of accepting and living in the knowledge of your infinite Body is what takes care of
what you have called your personal body.
Now, you can read the Bible from cover to cover, and you can read every book of
Joel’s from cover to cover, and you're still going to have to do it yourself. You have to come
into that secret place where you and you alone without mother, brother, father, or sister sit
down and dwell in the knowledge that my Body has no beginning and no ending. My Body is
everywhere. It is the Spirit of God without beginning and end, the Alpha and the Omega, and
because It is the Spirit of God, my Body is a perfect Body. And the instant you decide that
you do not have a perfect Body in some way, you are denying the Truth of your infinite Body,
which is the perfect Body of God.
Again, that's the trap which enables you to deny Identity: “Oh, I've got an aching
back.” How strange, when you are the immortal Being. And all you're saying is, “I'm a mortal
with an aching back.” How can you expect the power of the immortal Spirit to help an aching
back, when the immortal Spirit has no aching back?
When you have accepted God, then you accept God's intelligence. You accept God's
perfection. And therefore, you accept that before any error could occur in this world, God had
already eliminated the possibility of such an error to occur. Before any problem could be, God
had eliminated the possibility of a problem. Before any imperfection could happen, God had
eliminated that possibility. That is your faith in the perfection of God, not “I believe in
God.”––“I believe in the All-ness of God: the perfection of God, the totality of God without
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exception.” And your faith, then, is a faith that every quality of God in its fullness is ever
present and functioning to maintain a perfect, universal Self, which you are. As you put on the
garment of Immortality, you put on the garment of an immortal, infinite Body.
When Jesus spoke of adultery, he spoke of that spiritual adultery which steps out of the
immortal, infinite Body into a finite sense of body, and when you are not married to the
Infinite, you are in spiritual adultery. Now, I have seen that when an individual dwells in
contemplation on the infinite Body that I am, you’ll find that regardless of what happens in
the world anywhere, there will be in you an awareness that that cannot be true. The Body of
the Father is immaculate. The Body of the Child and the Father are One. There is nothing but
my immaculate Body everywhere. It is your function to maintain the integrity of that Body. If
you do, you’ll find the integrity of your human sense of body will be a perfect shadow of your
infinite integrity.
Now, we who have not accepted an immortal, infinite Body will always be accepting
our neighbors’ afflictions with a twinge of sympathy. But you see, when you do that you're
denying your infinite Body. You’re saying, “Over there where my neighbor is there's an
imperfection in body.” But over there where your neighbor is is your infinite Body. And so
you've got to overcome the personal sense which accepts the affliction, not only in your own
sense of body, but in your sense of your neighbor's body. We haven't been called upon to do
this in just these terms, but you'll find that unless you are doing this, you're at odds with your
Self, affirming an infinite Mind and yet a finite body. The moment you left that finite mind,
you left the finite body, and if there's any trace of belief in it as being your body, you're still in
the finite mind.
Now, I think one of the great principles that Jesus taught here about supply, about
having meat, about having bread, about having the wine, even though it was not visible, was
that in the nothingness of a human sense of things, infinity pours. And it isn't so much going
to get infinity. It’s, rather, you tune into infinity by tuning out finity. You tune out this world to
tune in the other. Tuning out this world is tuning in infinity, but you can't go to infinity and
tune it in unless you're willing to tune this out. And as you dwell upon these things, you find
that at the time of the birth of Jesus, it was Mary who had lost her sense of a finite body. She
had been lifted out of the sense of a personal self, and this was the virgin birth. To live in, to
move in and have your being in God means the complete relinquishing of everything that is
finite and everything that you think with the human mind.
Now, you must see that we are not ready for Resurrection until we have accepted the
need for Crucifixion of all that is finite. You must see that there's a lot of spade work left to
do. We can't say, “He is risen, or I am risen.” We have to do the work that must be done. The
eternal love of the Father is always where you are, and you cannot be separated from it. If we
have faith in that love, then we are willing to get on our material hands and knees and on our
spiritual hands and knees and spade away every mortal thought barrier, so that the love can
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shine through a transparent Self. And we will find that Grace really means that I, being
nothing, have become transparent to the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost shining through my
transparent Self is Grace, love, beauty, peace, harmony, and it matters not about the external
war-torn world or inflationary or deflationary world.
I am nothing in this world. Not because I declare it, but because I live, I move, I have
my Being, not in another god, but in Identity as the Spirit of God, which is infinite,
unlocalized. And you begin to test yourself. You see how the declaration means nothing until
you can answer the questions in the test. Are you in the twentieth century? Forget it then,
because the Christ isn't limited to that twentieth century this minute. Your infinite body is in
all that will be called “time” now. Are you in an airplane? Forget it, you're not. Your infinite
body can never be squeezed into a 747.
Your infinite body can never be squeezed into a shape or a size or a time or a place.
You must be conscious of your infinite Body. You must devote contemplation to the
awareness of it and to the perfection of It and to the spiritual law that maintains Its perfection.
And you will find all of this is the spade work that infiltrates your consciousness, as you do it,
and lifts you 30-fold, 60-fold. And you must come, then, eventually to the 100-fold realization
of Self. But never will you do it in the belief that you are in time, in a century, in a place, in a
country, even in a hemisphere. You are the Son of Man, nowhere to put your head.
When Jesus saw the Book of Enoch, he was still a young man; he was in his teens.
And there he saw it: The Son of Man, and he thought, “I've been wondering, what shall
people know me as?” And that was his title that he adopted. The importance of it was to show
that we must come out of mortality, out of manhood, and the Son of Man becomes the Son of
God by the realization of Self. Not by an immaculate birth, but by a realization that I who had
a mortal parent as a mother and a mortal parent as a father, I never was born that way at all.
The form that came forth is the form that I do not accept. The Life which is there expressing
as this image called form is the invisible Life that I do accept, and for that which was called
my mother and that which was called my father, I do not accept their visible forms. That
mental image called form, not being there, it could not give birth.
There is no more form for a Mary than there is for a Jesus or there is for a Tom, Dick,
or Harry. There is only the one Divine Image. The illusion of birth is as much an illusion for
Mary and Jesus as it is for you and your parents or you and your children. What is there is the
invisible Consciousness of three people, three Souls: The invisible Consciousness of the
mother, the invisible Consciousness of the father, and It is joined by the invisible
Consciousness of the child to be. And the three produce a new form, an image, but you’re
looking at three Souls combining. Maybe you have discovered the Holy Trinity––three Souls
combining to produce this new form––Soul of the unborn child, Soul of the mother, Soul of
the father. And they are one Soul in Spirit. Two Souls welcoming you, and a child is born, and
that's the immaculate conception.
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Now, when we realize it, even though years have passed as far as human time goes, we
are approaching the crucifixion of all that has intervened between that moment to this moment
and erasing the concepts that we have mistakenly accepted. And as they are erased one by
one, the Light of the Soul is coming through, resurrecting us to the Reality of Being. I and my
Mother are One. I and my Father are One. In the Invisible we find our Oneness. And this
being in the visible with a new law of the invisible functioning in our Consciousness is the
exaltation of walking through the world, but not of it. Accepting that I am walking in God,
moving in God, living in God. The invisible, infinite Self which I am. This physical form
moves within my invisible, infinite form. Everywhere this visible, physical form goes, my
infinite, invisible form is. This is the story of Jesus.
To give up the visible form, finally, is nothing more than the reflex action of having
given it up in the invisible first. The crucifixion that we see is but the outer appearance of that
which has transpired over the centuries, finally coming to take place in the visible, and so the
principle of a Maundy Thursday of humility, of a good Friday of Crucifixion, of a rising
called Easter.
So in the events of our lives, there are also these spiritual principles, and the spiritual
principle of Crucifixion, or losing of personal sense, is that which finally eventuates in the
dropping away of the physical form. It's all voluntary. And then the celestial Form[ which we
inhabit, which is the Infinite Self that we are accepting, is that which ascends. We come into
the Ascension over material ties. Now all of this illumination takes place before the grave.
The life of Jesus is only a crash course in what we must do before the grave.
And so when we look at his outer Crucifixion, when we read about his Resurrection
and his Ascension, we are reading about me today, here, now––what I must be doing to put on
the garment of Immortality here and now on the earth. Compressed into three years, visibly,
was a teaching of what my life must consist of in order for me to experience that Grace which
has meat the world knows not of, which has bread and wine, which has Life without end. And
all of this must be accepted without adulteration, without second-selfing. Without a self that
wants to leave the priesthood to get married, which is unaware of its Christ Self as the only
Self. Without a second self, a second mind, a second life. The key word will always be, “Have
I denied My Identity?”
When you find you’re not denying Identity, you might as well start saying goodbye to
your friends. You won't be here very long. Whoever reaches the point where he is not
identifying as anything but the infinite Self in every way is the Christ realized. The purple
robe is waiting, the philosopher’s stone, the celestial body. The infinite, eternal Life here and
now. We still haven't reached the end of a between Resurrection and Ascension, but we will.
I want to leave you today with that word “Identity,” which shatters the belief that the
Spirit of God indwells me, which shatters the belief that I am Spirit and physicality, which
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shatters belief that I am seeking the presence of God. Identity means the presence of God is
the only Being standing here, and all that is not that Presence is not here, but appears to be.
The only Presence here is My Being. The only Presence where you are is My Being. The only
Presence where anyone is is My Being, and the name of My Being is the only name that I can
answer to, truthfully, without committing spiritual adultery.
When you do that, when you deny My Being as the only Being, you have divided his
garment. To you God is not all, God is not One, God is not the only, and you are still in the
shadow of turning. Contemplation, meditation, not communion here on an altar out there, but
communion in the heart, within the Being, until Being is your name, not becoming. Identity.
Spirit, complete. The total Self with nothing missing, ever. This is the path to Resurrection.
Therefore, the answer to how do we live, move, and have our being in God? The
answer is we accept that Identity, which is the presence of God, to be the only Identity of all
who walk the earth. We are sowing to Identity, not to the flesh. You will not do it with a busy
intellect. When you stop to think about these things with that intellect, even if you reach the
pinnacle of acceptance, you still have to commit it to your Consciousness.
The mind will not be able to hold Truth. It will never hold Truth. The best the mind
can do is to be a clear crystal of still water without thought, without concept, without
movement, waiting on the Lord. And then you’ll find that great moment of equilibrium
between everything that moves in this Universe. You will be resting as a clear transparency
for the Word of Being. Then you will have meat the world knows not of. You will have wine
and water. You will be that which is expressing eternal Love.
I think we have all been blessed with the priceless opportunity to accept the Life of
God as our own. And to share this understanding with those in the world who are drawn to us
by that measure through which we can demonstrate the Presence as the living Self of all is
one of the most unexplainable joys there is. You have experienced it whenever you have been
able to be useful to someone who was floundering, who was reaching out and could touch the
Light of your Being, and you know what It is.
This minimal Light that we all have felt up to now is as nothing compared to the
fullness that surrounds us, unknown to the limited sense of self. The moment that limited
sense of self is crucified even for an instant, the floodlights are like a blinding experience of
Damascus. You realize what Infinity is, not as a word, but as an experience, and you know the
miracle of Infinity stands right outside the limited human consciousness, ever knocking.
If we could accept Identity now, we would all be accepting the same Identity, the
infinite Self. We would all be accepting the same Body, the infinite Body, and then we would
all be joint heirs in Christ, not because the Bible said so, but because we know that what it
said is so.
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[Silence]
So I thank all my immortal Friends for being here today. Blessings and love.
Thank you.
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Class 15
I Am Not A Prodigal
Herb: You will notice that throughout the Bible there is either man under the
dominion of the forces of the world or one who comes out of the forces of the world and takes
dominion over them. To bring it into our contemporary life, we might say that we either will
be controlled by our environment, or it will control us. We know, of course, that in the main
we are controlled by our environment. And so I was led to a very strange parable in the Bible.
The strangeness of it was that it was so familiar to all of us, a parable that we all feel we
understand, so much so that we take it for granted and go right by. And so I more or less said,
“Father, but I understand that parable, the Prodigal Son. Why, everybody knows about that.
We can’t go back to McGuffey’s Reader.” And yet for some reason the Prodigal Son kept
popping up, holding me there. And so we took a look at it.
There it was, the same old parable, but there were new eyes looking at it, and I think
you’ll agree that we have here in the Prodigal Son a story about ourselves, which up to this
moment we have not fully seen through the eyes of Christ. Really, it shouldn’t be called the
parable of the Prodigal Son, for we learn that it is impossible for the Father to have a prodigal
son. And then the word “parable” becomes quite meaningful. To the unlettered in the deeper
teaching, this is about a spendthrift. He simply squanders his father’s money, comes home,
and asks for forgiveness, gets it, and once more he’s in the household. And then
metaphysically we say, “Oh well, that’s for those who don’t see the deeper meaning. I do.”
And we say, “Why, the prodigal son is the one who wanders away from the will of the Father,
the one who lives in mortality, the human.” And that’s true enough.
And then, going deeper into esotericism, we find that the esoteric Truth of the parable
takes us away from the standard cliches. We have two brothers, not one, and even the second
brother has a complaint to register. What about him? Who is he? What’s he doing there?
What’s his purpose in the parable? And now we look at it very carefully. We see a father has
two sons, and something stops you and says, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You’re reading it
as a human being: A father has two sons. Who is writing this parable? Who is speaking it?”
And comes the great awakening: Why, these are the words of I. I within me is my Teacher. I is
speaking. I is telling me a story. Why? Because I is trying to awaken me. I is trying to tell me
that this so-called me has gone through many incarnations as a prodigal, many human
embodiments as a prodigal, away from I.
I is telling me that the human race is a prodigal, and then I begin to see the meaning of
the two brothers in a very different light. The father has two [sons]. The first book of Genesis
Class 15 : I Am Not A Prodigal
is the first brother, the perfect spiritual Self, and the younger brother who follows, but not
quite, and comes into incarnation, the second book of Genesis. And so we are really being
told about the Reality and the unreality. We are being told about the way in which man comes
into a second sense of self. Some call it the lower nature and the higher nature, but as you
dwell with it, you’ll find that it’s a story about cause and effect, and that none of the Prodigal
Son, not one whit of the story, takes place outside of your own Self. All of it is your inner
experience as a person finds himself, turns within himself, and returns to his own Self.
So we find this younger brother turning to the father, and that is the journey of the ego
into the flesh. To the father, we say, “Give me my inheritance. I’m leaving home.” And so
way back at the beginning of the world, your incarnation, your birth is the beginning of the
prodigal experience. The moment of appearing in flesh is the moment when the prodigal
begins. Mortality is the inception of the prodigal son. And now mortality wanders away from
immortality, and we have the divided consciousness, the sense of self which must struggle to
earn its own living. The sense of self which must feed itself. The sense of self which is
unaware of the ever available, present inner Self.
And so now we find a clearer definition. The older son, who remains at home, is the
inner Self, and the outer self is the human sense of self which wanders off into the far country,
taking its life substance with it. Now, we are told that he squanders his substance, and this,
then, takes us into the understanding of separation from Self. Now we are wandering off in
the flesh, in the human sense of things, in the human sense of what to do and when to do it.
We are the mortal, separated from the immortal Being, which we are, only by the hypnosis of
the senses, and now we are divided, separated, unaware of Identity. And we find that,
somehow, the world doesn’t satisfy us. More and more we lose our Substance. We get further
and further away from the Reality of our Being, and finally the husks of matter, of material
living, show us that we have followed a mirage.
There is a place where we lose all satisfaction in what the world can give us. We see
through the tinsel. We understand that even though we may crave a deeper sense of life, that
the complete, total human race can evolve no higher than it is. There is a place where human
evolution can go no further, and this is it. That is when the prodigal realizes that back home
the hired servants are eating better than he. He is so completely at a loss to sustain himself
that he now needs external help. He finds a citizen there and asks for help. In the midst of the
Garden of Eden we walk needing help, unaware where we are, who we are, for we are
prodigals from our own Self, and then we’re put to feeding the swine. We must live in the
outer self with outer selves because we have not yet come to the realization of an inner Self
with which we must be One’d. We’re not even half a self, and so we want to come home.
The realization of wanting to come home is the turning. It is the beginning of another
process called involution. We evolve out, incarnate. We involve in, back to the home of virgin
Spirit, back to that place we had inadvertently left at the moment of incarnation in our very
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first human birth. The complete and total journey of the flesh has now reached the point
where we are ready to find Self, and as we come home, although we are far away, the Father
greets us. And this is the story about the Omnipresence of the Father wherever you are. The
inner Self is always present, never absent from the outer self. And the instant there is a
realization of turning to the inner Self, there’s no place to go: “Here I am.” And the son
returns, and he is greeted with open arms. He’s given the robe. He’s given the ring. He’s even
given a new pair of shoes, and we find these shoes are no longer the shoes of the senses,
which he was told to go out without before. The shoes of the senses have been discarded.
Now the shoes of the Soul––the senses of the Soul––have replaced the senses of the brain.
Material man, mortal man is home again, but here’s this elder brother, and he’s quite
resentful. “What about me? I didn’t squander my money. I didn’t go out in riotous living.”
The father says, “Son, all that I have is thine. Thou art ever with me.” And we find something
very interesting in this statement, the blending of the inner and the outer. As the prodigal in
the outer, unwedded to the inner, whatever we do is unordained. It is form without content,
without Substance. The elder brother is the Substance.
If you look all through the East, you’ll see many who sit cross-legged living in the
self-indulgence of the inner Self. How glorious to be lost in the caves. Then they can get up
and walk away with rheumatism, arthritis, all kinds of physical ailments because they are the
elder brother resentful of the younger brother. They don’t want any part of the outer world any
more than the outer brother, the younger brother, wanted any part of the inner world.
And so the father says, “You must be content not only with your level of Self as Spirit;
you must manifest.” Just as the outer brother was a prodigal, so is the inner, for you must
spiritually manifest the Divine Image. The Content, the Substance of the inner brother, must
be wedded to the form of the outer brother. The outer and the inner must become one, so that
the form on the outer receives Substance from the inner, so that the Substance on the inner
takes form in the outer. And then we have the wedding of Substance and form. We have the
anointing. We have the mystical marriage, which in the book of Revelation is the marriage of
the bride and the lamb.
And we look at ourselves again, and we find that we have not wedded the inner, and
therefore, the outer forms of our lives are without Substance. And at times we have wanted to
retire within the inner, never letting our deeds shine forth, but hiding our Light, self-indulgent
to the point of saying, “Look how spiritual I am,” but not going forth to show the fruitage of
it.
And so now, the inner is the cause. The outer is the effect. But as a prodigal, as one
living only in the consciousness of matter, the outer effects have no Substance. They are not
sustained, and we find we must go to other citizens for help, and we find ourselves feeding
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the swine. When, through the acceptance of the inner, we let the inner Self give Substance to
the forms, then Divinity within us is manifested in our lives.
There can be no Substance without manifestation. There can be no cause without

effect. Our function is to combine Divine cause with Divine effect so that cause and effect are
truly the marriage of the two brothers as one and so that the Father no longer has two sons in
us, but one. Cause and effect are one’d, and that One you accept as your name. I am that One.
We can measure our progress along the straight path of initiation by whether or not we
are still a prodigal, whether or not we have surrendered this outer material consciousness to
the elder brother within, for the marriage of these two is the preparation for Christing. Until
the outer turns and says, “Let me serve the inner,” as the prodigal does in this parable, the
inner cannot function as the living will of God expressing in us. And so we say, “How do I
know if I am still a prodigal?” By their fruits you shall know if you’re still a prodigal or not.
Once the prodigal has returned, something in you is manifesting His Will. Something
in you is manifesting the Divine Image. Returned out of the mortal consciousness, we no
longer accept ourselves to be mortal being. Returned, we no longer accept ourselves to be
living in a human sense of self or in a human sense of body. Returned, we no longer have a
human sense of love or a human sense of life. Returned, we have no beginning. We have no
ending. We have no opposites. We have no pros and cons. We have no shadows of thought.
We are willing to abide in total trust without a concept to guide us. Returned, we find that we
are the center of a spiritual Universe.
It’s as if you were in a plane as a pilot and all around you is this big body of metal, and
it’s either going to go up or not, depending on you. The equipment is there. The instrument
panel is there. There are switches and knobs and buttons and lights, but they’re not going to
move themselves. There’s a relationship between them and you, and it’s up to you to move
that plane up. Everyone on board depends on you.
Now, we’re in the same position as that pilot. Our plane is a little different. It’s
invisible, and it’s not finite. The plane around you is your Universe, and you’re in the center
of it, and you’ve got to pilot that Universe. And you say, “I can’t do it.” And the Father says,
“I will do it.” If you’re going to try to do it, you’re the prodigal. You’re not wedded to your
inner Self. I in the midst of you, I’m the pilot. And so you learn to reach back deep inside.
You reach beyond your mind. You reach back into your Universe way, way back until you
have no concept about yourself.
You reach back into infinity, and until you have found that you are not aware of
yourself, you are not back where you belong. Your invisible plane is not going to take off
because there is no human mind that can work the panel of instruments for this plane, only I,
the Father within. If you want your universe to be a spiritual experience in God, you must be
wedded to the elder brother within. And so we’re not in this form at the moment. We’re
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reaching back until we’re out of it. We’re not in this human sense of mind. We’re reaching
back until we’re out of it, until there’s a feeling that there’s no person present. There’s no
human thinker present.
I reach back. All that is present is a spiritual Universe. That spiritual Universe is your
Identity. That is your infinite Self. That’s when you’ll know you’re not a prodigal. And now in
your infinite Self, you are living only by Divine Revelation. You are fed completely by the
Infinite, sustained, maintained, and every quality of the Infinite is right where you are. This is
how you know whether or not you’re still in a parable or you will come out into Self. And
then by your fruits, by the inner expression becoming manifest in the outer, you can see how
far the ego has progressed out of the sense of flesh into the realization that I, Spirit, stand
before the world.
I, Spirit, have never indwelled a mortal being. I, Spirit, do not need a human being as
an instrument for my work. I, Spirit, do not function through human beings. I, Spirit, do not
function in a prodigal. The prodigal is that sense of self which has never existed. Only I am
present, only the Father. If you stay out there as a human trying to come back home, you’re
still under a state of hypnosis. The Spirit of God has never left God. The Son of God has
never left home. There never was a prodigal. There was a self that we accepted which never
was there, and as long as that self has a trace, or even a lingering memory, you’re still under
the hypnosis of a second sense of self and living in separation. I never was a prodigal. I and
the Father have always been One, and we stand there, letting the living Spirit of our own
Being clear our vision. Clear away all the cobwebs until there’s no prodigal or human or
mortal trying to be. There is simply Being Itself.
You become aware of the radiant Invisible all around as your Being. I am the radiant
Invisible. I am Self. I am One. There never were two in my Father’s household. The illusion
of division is removed. You have really subtracted that which is not, and in doing so, you have
multiplied the Lord. You multiply by subtraction. As you remove the veil of illusion, you
multiply. And now the moment you lose this Identity, you go back into prodigality. You return
to the illusion of mortality and separation and open yourself to the good and the evil.
The outer sense of self, which lives in the world, is divorced from the inner sense of
Self, which lives in the Father. And in this inner divorce, we find the cause of much of the
outer divorce that takes place in this world. An individual, separated within, will discover that
outside separation occurs. One day he gets up and leaves or she gets up and leaves, and they
wonder why. And if you look inside, you’ll find that inside themselves they are separated, and
the inner separation externalizes as the outer separation. Always, when there is a One inside,
you find that Oneness is forever.
You can tell when you have been One’d within. Then you are complete, and you
understand the meaning of the Master’s words to the disciples, “We shall make my mother
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male.” We find that the elder son is the male. The younger son is the female. These are the
two aspects of an individual, the masculine and the feminine. As you come into matter, you’re
in the feminine, the negative. And always, there is this urge of the negative to find the
positive, of the feminine to find the masculine. There is this great driving urge, like gravity, of
the two to become one. But the unawareness of what that is, makes us two become one in
many different ways than the purpose behind the outer activity of physical oneness.
It is the urge to unite within yourself the male and the female, the positive and the
negative, the cause and the effect. The two that must become one are within our own Being,
and when this is done we are fulfilled. You can never do it in two human beings. Each must
unite the masculine and the feminine within that one individual. The positive and the negative
must become one. The elder brother and the younger brother must become one within you,
within me, within her, within him. Then we are whole Being. Then we can see that one, like
Jesus, who has become One, no longer seeks outside of his person for another one.
We find Eve coming out of Adam’s rib. This is the symbolic way of telling us that the
one has now, in the human sense of things, become two. This is the division of the elder
brother and the younger brother. And Eve must go back into Adam’s rib and become one
within each of us. You find that in a passage which I didn’t explain in the Revelations. When
Jesus returns as the Christ, meeting his disciples in the heavens, it is said that he is girded
about the loins and the paps with a golden girdle. And this is the statement that he has become
both male and female, One’d.
It is this necessity for wholeness of the male and female element of each individual
which causes many of the unusual circumstances we see in our outer world. The unawareness
of it makes us condemn. The unawareness of it makes us not even know that it must happen
within ourself, that the two––the inner and the outer, the positive and the negative, the cause
and the effect, the higher and the lower, the invisible and the visible, the infinite and the
finite––ultimately in us become One, and we are married to the Lamb. Then I am, and yet
before all this occurred, I am. Before Abraham was, I am. But finally, the acceptance, the
realization, the dissolution of the false personality which does not know that I am. And Mary
is made male, meaning whole, complete, one within oneself; not depending on an outer,
second self.
When two outer selves become complete within themselves, you do not find divorce
for the simple reason that they are already united in the Spirit. Always in our outer self, which
is never complete, mingling with other outer selves which are not complete, we find
everything out of focus. Our environment then controls us. We have no weapons against it
except human ones. We’re meeting everything on the level of effect. We’re not living in the
cause. And so we’re in the forms that have no content, shell among shell. This is the level of
exoteric religion. The complete human experience is the unawareness of this mystical
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marriage. These are fragments of ourselves trying to find fulfillment where it cannot be
discovered.
Now then, your dependence ceases to be on someone else, because no other person
can unite the fullness of your Being for you. It may seem so, but that is when we discover
what the prodigal discovered, that he had followed a mirage. He had wasted his Substance by
turning away from it unknowingly. Living, then, in cause is the mystical Way. Now, united to
the inner, wedded to the inner Self, we find that is the method whereby the will of the Father
functions in us, and then the Father, through our inner Self, manifests in what we call the
outer self, showing forth not the human image as others see it, but showing forth that Divine
Image as exemplified by he who was called Christ Jesus.
The Divine Image shows forth, and though it may be wheat, and though others may
appear the same, they are the tares, and you cannot tell the difference between the wheat and
the tares. One is shining forth the Divine Image, the other the human image, and they look
alike until the judgment, until harvest time, until you discover the Divine Image never stops at
the grave.
We are learning how to be that Divine Image by the inner wedding, the Oneness which
identifies as Spirit, and instead of a prodigal trying to find the inner Self, we have probably
come now to the place where we are the inner Self calling in the prodigal. And I would like
you to make that turning today, so that we are not the human trying to become immortal. We
are the Immortal convincing the mortal he has no real existence. You will discover this
method is the way you are true to Self. The other method is the mirage. The mortal can never
become immortal. The mortal can never find Reality.
Reality is a now. Immortality is a now. We do not stand in the unreal trying to find the
Real. We stand in the Real rejecting the unreality. And so your work is I, Spirit. And now how
do I live that way? How do I function, think, work, show forth my complete experience as the
Divine Spirit? How do I walk in Him? To say that I’m going to walk in this world and find
heaven is ridiculous. It cannot be done. You cannot identify as Spirit and walk in the world.
Spirit lives in heaven, and until you’re willing to live in heaven, you cannot identify as Spirit.
If you are Spirit, heaven is your home, and heaven is where you are. And, therefore, you must
accept that all that is in heaven is perfect. All that is in heaven is under spiritual law. All that is
in heaven is the actual God Life living Itself.
If you are not in that God Life experiencing Self, then you are the prodigal. If you are
in that God Life experiencing Self, then everything pertaining to the prodigal cannot be true
and cannot be accepted. I, Spirit, must now move and have my Being in the Spirit of Being
everywhere. You cannot have a mortal neighbor and call yourself Spirit. You cannot have any
problems in your Life and call yourself Spirit. You cannot have a physical form and call
yourself Spirit, nor can you have a physical form and be free of the karma of physical form.
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Either the ego has finally left the concept of flesh and has journeyed through incarnations to
the point where you see the illusion of that ego, or you still live in it, and for you the parable
of the prodigal is not McGuffey’s Reader. It’s still a fact of mortal existence. You’re either out
of it or in it.
This world opens up at a place and makes you visible as a physical self. The world
calls it your birth. It isn’t. It’s the invisible world made visible where you stand. Around you
is the garment of a universe, and that is your self, but that is your mortal self. The mortal
universe around your mortal flesh is your mortal self, and as you come out of that belief,
accepting your spiritual Self, then around you is the spiritual Universe, and that is your Self––
all of it. No part of It is not You, and your fidelity to that spiritual Universe is the opposite of
being a prodigal.
And that’s how you finally take your plane up into the air. All those instrument panels
of thought are no more. Spirit lives Itself where there is no prodigal. Spirit lives Itself where
there is no second self. You are reaching so far back into Self that all there is is Self to live
Itself, and you are learning to trust the Infinite Invisible to be Its own perfect Self everywhere
that you are concerned.
The plane goes up in the air without you touching any of the material instruments
around you. Spirit has dominion over air, over land, over sea. Why? Spirit is the cause, and
the cause is the only power. And you learn to live in spiritual Identity, which is cause, and you
never have to be concerned about effect. You never have to feed the swine. You never have to
go to an external being to give you sustenance. Spirit lives Itself in your spiritual
Identification. Your plane is your Universe. It is always flying well. It is always moving
through Itself. You are always letting It control Itself. You are no longer in and under the
dominion of your environment, for your environment is God’s Self.
The parable of The Prodigal has another meaning. It is not only a parable to teach the
literal mind of man as well as those who are ready to go higher. There are sides of the parable
that teach the outer of you and the inner of you, and the side that teaches the inner of you is
teaching the elder son within you, teaching the elder son within you that it must show forth
the deeds of Spirit in order to be a worthy son. It is teaching the elder son within you fidelity,
sincerity, trusting the omnipresent perfection of the Father in spite of what may appear out
there.
There are not two prodigals, one within and one without. There is only One realized
Son, and the male and the female of you are now combined in this into one Being. The form
no longer fools you by its appearance. We now have God the Father, and God the Son, and the
Holy Ghost. Joel gives us a perfect way to understand that. He says take the figure one, the
number one, and see that first behind the visible number one there is an Invisible; that’s God
the Father. And now see the visible number one, and that’s God the Son. And now see that
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that visible number One, God the Son, is maintained by the Father’s invisible activity, which
is the Holy Ghost.
Between the Son and the Father is the Holy Ghost maintaining the Son, and we who
accept I am Spirit, we learn that the Holy Ghost is maintaining my appearance as Spirit. I seek
no outer. I and the Father are One through the Holy Ghost. And, therefore, I am the Holy
Ghost. I am the Father. Thou seest Me, thou seest the Father. I am no longer a prodigal
wandering in the far country of mortality wasting my Divine Substance by ignorance of It, by
infidelity to It, by depending on outer circumstances, by letting the environment control me. I
am my environment. And the dominion given in Genesis is realized, accepted, and lived in,
only because I, Spirit, is accepted with total fidelity. This is the preparation for transition.
Our complete experience on the earth in this earth period is to attain this Oneness of
Consciousness. We are really here to establish what might be called the fifth Kingdom, to
move into the sixth, where only the will of the Father is done, as a preliminary to the total
Christing and the living in eternal Life. When the Master said this is a straight path, he meant
that straight––God the Father, the Holy Ghost, and the Son, One––and wherever you are seen
visibly, you must be all three in One appearing.
As you reach back further into loss of human selfhood, you find the everlasting arms.
You find a new level of Truth, a new order of Life. You find a Life that is little suspected by
the human mind. You find how small human life really is. You find how magnificent is the
Infinite Invisible awaiting our experience. God ceases to be a noun. The words “love” and
“life” cease to be nouns. We move into the new order of experience. We are no longer
metaphysicians.
We live the God experience. We live Life. We find the meaning of a living God, and
the word “God” exchanges Itself into something else. It is no longer a word. It is no longer a
mental concept, a mortal idea. God begins to be Life living Itself fully, joyously, rejoicingly,
exultantly because It is without opposite. It is the realm of pure perfection in all things.
Eternity becomes Reality. Infinity becomes the playground. We move into a different place, a
different time, a different space. We’re out of the illusion life. We’re into Reality.
Now, that experience tasted, lived in, opens us up to the meaning of the real bread of
Life. We see why we have come so far. The new Heaven and the new Earth is an experience
that you enter long before you make your transition. It becomes a now Reality. The Soul of
you yearns to move only in It. And the more you are able to live out of this inner, elder
brother instead of the outer self, the more you know your eternal Life has passed the stage of
words and hopes and plans––that you’re really living It. It is your Being now. It is your living
experience day by day. You find that Reality has a new ring to it. You find the meaning of
“Put up thy sword.” You find there’s nothing to defend against except an illusion. These are
some of the things that tell you the prodigal is dead and crucified.
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[Silence]
We set, then, a goal to live in the cause of things rather than in the effects, and this
becomes quite a discipline, quite a challenge to live in Cause because that’s the only way to
control environment. Cause is invisible, spiritual Substance, so whatever comes to you must
be seen through to its original Substance. There must be a conscious awareness that the
Substance is always present, functioning, being Itself, maintaining its perfect Substance right
there as invisible, perfect manifestation. And though the appearance may be different and is,
the Cause is there, and the Cause being perfect, its form must be perfect. And by living in this
knowledge of the presence of Cause, you’re living in the knowledge of the presence of perfect
manifestation. You’re weaving your garment of one piece, your wedding garment.
The moment you move out of Cause, you’re in karmic law. Spiritual Cause, and this
keeps you right on your toes, spiritually alert, watching. Your lamps are always trimmed this
way. You’ll find that you’re taking control over your environment. It externalizes to the level
of your awareness of spiritual Cause. Scripture has reached us to the point that we are put in
the understanding that when we are defending ourselves against anything, we are living in the
effect, whereas when we are living in the cause, that effect needs no defense anymore. You
can do it with your eyes shut or open.
Living in Spirit means living in Cause and beholding the added things which follow.
You move into a room, aware of spiritual Cause being present. Everything you see outside,
you approach from the level of spiritual Cause. Everything that you take into yourself, you
take in from the level of spiritual Cause, so that the traffic going out of you is Spirit; the
traffic coming into you is Spirit. You’re living in the conscious awareness of Spirit as the only
Presence. Only God is there, and only God is here, and so there’s nothing to be improved or
corrected, except to be revealed. You do not tame the tempest. You reveal I present.
Now, the reason we’re getting to the point of living in I am that Spirit is it’s the only
way that you’re not in duality. It’s the only way you’re not in effect. It’s the only way you’re
not in karma, the only way you’re not a second self. You’re going to have to practice that in
this coming half until instead of healing anybody, instead of improving anybody, instead of
improving any situation that you have, you are standing in the high ground of spiritual
Identity knowing that is Cause, infinite Cause, which can only cause infinite, perfect effect.
And there’s nothing more for you to do but trustingly, patiently abide in that knowledge, and
then you’re in the one without opposite, and you will not experience the opposite.
What is not in your consciousness will not externalize, and if opposites are in your
outer world, they will be dissolved when your consciousness has risen above the
consciousness of the opposites to I, Spirit. It gets narrower and narrower and narrower to the
point of nothing before it widens out and becomes the mustard tree with branches in which
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the birds, the divine thoughts, the divine impulses come to bring you Divine Bread. The little
seed grows.
Let’s pause a moment before we proceed.
I in the midst of you am He who spoke through what the world called Jesus. It is
always I, and when I speak through you, then I speak words of authority that you can trust. If
the words that you hear are not the words of I in the midst of you, there is no authority, and
you will be following false prophets. And so it's important now in this parable, as we review
it, to see that it is the Word of I in the midst of you to both the elder brother within you and
the younger brother who has gone out into a world of flesh.
A certain man had two sons. These two components are introduced to you at the
beginning of the parable, your inner and your outer, and the outer must become aware that
there is an inner. The younger of them, meaning the outer, said to the Father, “Father, give me
the portion of goods that falleth to me.” And he divided them unto his living. The division, the
belief that you have a portion of anything, is shown here to be untrue. You cannot have a
portion. The moment you want a portion, you are the younger brother. The moment you are
willing to settle for less than the infinite Substance of God, you are the younger brother. This
is the human mind forming its finite judgments that certain things belong to me. This is the
beginning of the prodigal experience.
Now let us, therefore, know that if we are to erase the errors that are made evident to
us here by I within ourselves, I in you is saying, “Do not divide my garment. All that I have is
thine. You cannot have less than all. I cannot divide my Self. You cannot have a portion of My
Love, a portion of My Truth. You cannot have a portion of Identity. You cannot walk the earth
as a fragment. Your name is Identity, Spirit.” The All-ness of God can never be less than
infinite where you appear. Never can you make infinite God finite by saying, “I have a portion
that belongs to me.” You are going into second selfhood. I am that Infinite Spirit, and the
moment I am willing to be less, I’ve fallen into the trap of humanhood. I'm no longer a
disciple of the Christ.
This is the first mistake, then, the division of the mind, which says, “I'm going out into
something finite.” It is the rejection of infinite Reality. “And not many days after the younger
son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country,”––And that is where we are,
the sense of humanhood. The complete human race, then, is this prodigal living in a sense of
humanhood. God, being Spirit, being All, all that is not that Spirit is the prodigal. All that
believes itself to be something other than the Spirit of God is the prodigal, living in a far
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country. There are about 86 of these far countries scattered around the hemispheres.––“and
there wasted his substance with riotous living.” We've all done that. We know all about it, and
in our ignorance of the infinite Self that we all are, we continue to do that. Wherever we have
a finite belief, we are wasting our Substance. “And when he had spent all, there arose a
mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.” Now this famine, then, is our
spiritual barrenness. Suddenly it's revealed. We're barren spiritually. That's why there's a
famine. And so we can look all over the world where there is a physical famine, and what is
our answer? Prodigal existence, unawareness of Self, barren within, and therefore, barren
without. And so the Bible tells us, “[I've] never seen a righteous [man] . . . begging bread.”
When you're spiritually righteous, that is your bread, and the absence of food or the
appearance of famine is the absence of spiritual content.
It cannot make itself visible because it isn't accepted as being present. There's no
Consciousness to manifest it. There is no famine in Heaven. There is no famine in Spirit, and
therefore, a famine is unreal, though it is real to a prodigal, a prodigal from Spirit. You cannot
be a prodigal from Spirit if you are Spirit. And therefore, the acceptance of spiritual Identity is
the end of the prodigal, and the shadow of turning is over.
“And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country;”––This is the need now
for external help. No longer fed from within, we have to be fed from without––“and he sent
him into his fields to feed swine.” So often you read in Joel's books that in the material world
we have to toil for a living, and we often scratch our heads and say, “Toil for a living. Well,
what else would you do?”And he's giving us the great secret of Grace. Spirit doesn't toil for a
living. The flowers do not spin, but they are fed. The birds do not store in barns, but they
have. All of this part of the inner teaching that when you have accepted Substance to be You,
there’s nothing to store. It's forever flowing.
That word “Substance” becomes more important than the added forms. With the
Substance, you'll have the forms. Having only the forms, you will not have the Substance.
You’ll have the oranges without the tree. Substance is the tree. In the material sense of life,
we waste our Substance. And so we re-Identify here all the way through, eliminating all the
prodigal ideas of living in form, living in matter, living on my wits. I must not remain
unplugged from spiritual Identity. That's where you plug in.
I, Spirit is where you keep standing in the face of every appearance and let Substance
reveal Itself. Let Substance not improve the cripple, but reveal the perfection of Being where
cripple appears. Let Substance not sell the house, but reveal that there is no buyer or seller
other than I, Substance. Let Substance show that there is no son who has taken up narcotics.
There is only I, Substance. Let Substance show there's no divorce in this family. There is only
I, Substance. Always, in the acceptance of Substance, Substance will reveal Itself in its infinite
perfection wherever a material need appears.
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I, Substance, Spirit, not just here, not just there. I, Infinite Substance is not a prodigal.
We hammer that into ourselves until every prodigal, every errant thought, every concept,
every human sense of belief is revealed as a shadow, and the sunshine of I, Substance reveals
there are no shadows present. Always I, Substance is the way you put up your sword.
“And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat:”––So
great was his famine; so empty was the world. But who are we speaking about, a prodigal in
the Bible? We're speaking about my mortal life. What is it going to get for us? You know what
it gets: a mirage of success, a mirage of this and a mirage of that without Substance. Why?
Because it's perishable. Mortally, you can succeed at nothing that is imperishable. Mortally,
your complete attainments are perishable, and that is the husk. It looks so great until you grab
it and hold it and find it's gone. The illusion of mortality without Substance becomes a husk,
and we are completely famished within because we're without our Substance.
And so this is about me, my mortal self and how foolish it’s been, how blind. How
willing to accept the unreal while the invisible Reality of Being is saying, “Come, be my
Infinite Son. Live in that which is imperishable. Live in that which is eternal now, here.”
“And when he came to himself,”–– That's when the mortal in you is recognized as the mortal
in you, and you see through the myth of mortality, the illusion of a mind that is not your own,
doing its thinking through you as you, making you believe that you're doing the thinking. You
find how cosmic mortal mind through you is thinking, and all these thoughts that have been
coming through were not your own, were not even your thought. You were not thinking at all.
You are merely receiving the thoughts of the world mind and saying, “I think. I think I
hurt. I think I lack. I think I want. I think I need.” And these things weren’t true at all. There
was a ventriloquist within you saying, “I think, I need, I want.” And that ventriloquist was the
world mind, posing as the individual mind and fooling every one of us. The Mind of God is
too pure to behold the iniquities that the ventriloquist beholds. And so the double-minded man
is uncovered here. He comes to Himself. Himself is the one Mind, the Divine Mind, the
knowledge of Reality. Suddenly it's clear, “I've been off in a far country called mortality.” But
there is no such place.
God is immortal, and God is all. I've been wandering in a dream of nothingness,
calling it real. Oh, it had so many pleasurable things in it and so many sad things, and neither
the good nor the bad were real. All that was present all the time was the perfect Reality of
God, and just think if I had stood still to enjoy that perfect Reality how I would have really
enjoyed the Truth of Being, the fullness of Being. I would have known the imperishable. But
it's not too late. I still can know the imperishable because that is why I'm on the earth: To
discover the difference between Heaven and earth, between Reality and concept. To see that
earth has no Reality. It is nothing but a mortal concept about the presence of Heaven.
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Heaven Is. Earth is the concept we entertain about the Isness of Heaven, and they're
both in the same place. He is coming to Himself. Something within himself is turning around.
He is beginning to know and glimpse there is a Reality that is unseen by the senses of the
prodigal. All of this is taking place in each of us to the degree that we have felt the Light. At
this point, he is feeling the Light. He is beginning to know that Spirit is his name.
I'd like to suggest an assignment, which I think can be very useful. It begins with I,
Spirit, and then you write down, not what you're thinking, but what Spirit tells you to write
down. You just take a sheet of paper and a pen, and you sit there and you say, “I, Spirit,” and
then you turn within to that Spirit and say, “Spirit, now tell me about Yourself. Tell me what I
am.” And then Spirit says, “I am not mortal,” or Spirit says, “I am the Holy Son of Israel.”
Spirit says, “I never know pain. I never know sickness. I know nothing about mortality.” And
you write these down as Spirit talks to you, and you're not in a hurry.
It might take you 20, 30 minutes, and then it might take you 20, 30 minutes again at
another time. And you might do it for an hour or two or three until Spirit tells you what I am,
and you find that Spirit, which is telling you what I am, is telling you what You are, for
“Spirit” is your name, and “I am” is your name, and that is who You are. The very things you
are writing as told you by Spirit is what You are, and to that You must learn to be true. “I can
never know sickness.” Well then, that's the Truth of your Being. Now who is going to know
the sickness? Only a false sense of You. I can never know sickness.
And you’ll find you have found your Teacher. Your Self is your Teacher, and your Self
teaches the outer prodigal how to come home. And then you see sickness, but now there's a
new You there which says, “Uh-uh. I can never know sickness.” Where did it go? And why
did it go? You're amazed to find that the Mind which refuses sickness dissolves it. And until
you've had that experience, you can't believe it. Why, it was just there a minute ago, but it isn't
now. And we see the double mind, the prodigal mind which sees it and experiences it, and the
real Mind which doesn't see it and doesn't experience it. And you'll find they’re right both in
the same place, one a shadow of the other.
You live in one or the other, and as you keep entrenching yourself in letting Spirit
teach you from within, and then accepting those words as the very Substance of Being, this is
the oil you work with. You’re living by Revelation. You’re living by the elder brother within,
and he's being wedded to the outer brother. It’s happening. You’re coming to your Self. You’re
turning. “And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s
have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger!” The word “servant” is coming in
here. The brother has hired servants, and he's beginning to want to be a servant. I am
beginning as a prodigal to want to serve. I want to serve someone. I want to serve the Spirit.
It's no longer a me running out to serve me, but to serve the Spirit. And so you find
service, the willingness to serve whatever Identity tells you to do, is the sign of a turning. You
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are yielding the human ego, the human desire for possession, for attention, for achievement.
You’re learning that if I want as a human to do this, and he wants as a human to do that, and
the other wants to do, there’s going to be conflicts. But now the elder brother and the younger
brother are going to become in one purpose. There will not be the conflict within ourselves,
the two orders of life, the inner knowing the Father and the outer not knowing the Father. The
separation is being annealed, and so I'm willing to serve the Inner. And this willingness to
serve the Inner brings you on the way home.
All through the teaching, you'll find the Master telling if you love me, serve my sheep,
feed my sheep, love my sheep: “[If you love me], feed my sheep.” Serve your fellow man.
How? By walking among your fellow man as a spiritual Being and recognizing your fellow
man as a spiritual Being, and recognizing that that spiritual Being that he is, and this that I
am, is my one spiritual Self. The service is spreading the Light of Being in Consciousness.
The prodigal doesn't do that. He's out for himself, his little finite ego.
The turning is the knowledge that I am going to shed my Light, let it shine, walk
among the sinners, walk among the publicans, walk among the winebibbers, walk among the
outcasts. Let the Pharisees rile at you. Your function is to be the Light, see the Light, speak
the Light. Not to see evil, not to speak evil, not to hear evil. But let your Light so shine that
those who are prodigal in their consciousness receive of the Light within their own Being
through your recognition of It. So we're turning. We’re learning the meaning of spiritual
service, which means that I, the outer self, serve my inner Self. That's the beginning of
service. Before I can serve my neighbor, I have to learn to let my outer serve my Inner, for my
Inner goes to the Father, and the Will comes through the Inner to the outer. The obedience to
let the outer serve the Inner is your turning.
[Now] “I will arise and go to my father,”––Now you’re ready. The Inner is ready to
serve as the focus of your Being because the outer is yielding to It. So you go to your Father
now. You see, the Inner goes to the Father. Until the outer will serve the Inner, it cannot arise
and go to the Father. You're finding the divine sequence of Being.––“and [I] will say unto
him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, And am no more worthy to be
called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants.”
This is surrender of self, isn't it? Willingness to be obedient unto the Father alone.
There's a spiritual Sonship accepted as I am the Spirit of God, having no will of my own, but
letting the Spirit Itself live me. This is the acceptance of Identity with trust and with
confidence that all that the Father doeth is perfect, regardless of every visible circumstance.
All mental concept is being laid aside. No second guessing, no doubts, no uncertainty. It's a
total trust in the perfection of the Omnipresence of God. “And he arose, and came to his
Father. But when he was yet a great way off, his Father saw him, and had compassion, and
ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” “When he was yet a great way off”––and so you
see, right where you are as you turn, as you accept, behold, there is the Father. I can never
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leave you. Thou art ever with me. The moment the outer turns, the Inner is there. The Inner
never went anywhere. The Self has never gone away. You're always the Self. Only the stray
personality thinks that the Self is somewhere else, but it's always there. You are always the
Self. In the moment the stray personality finds that and arises, it finds Self right there, and
forgiveness is instantaneous.
The Self does not condemn your outer personality. The Self is God, too pure to behold
iniquity. The Self is the Father within. And so there is always an instantaneous forgiveness
when you are ready to let the stray personality surrender, wherever you are. You don't have to
find a nearby church. You don't have to find your Bible. You don't have to wait till the right
time or place. Wherever you are, whenever the stray personality says, “I surrender, and I'm
willing to serve the Spirit,” that is when the Father embraces you, kisses you, falls on your
neck and says, “Welcome home.” That is when the prodigal is no more.
And this goes on until the elder brother complains. We must learn from that, that when
the Father says, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine,” that even the
complaining elder brother, that Inner Self of you is not sufficient. It must now go through into
the manifest world and make Itself visible by deeds. It must marry the outer brother. They
must be one, so that Inner and outer are the one expression of the Divine Father, like the inner
and the outer of the tumbler in Joel's story of the tumbler. Is it glass on the outer any different
than on the inner? He was teaching us that the brothers must be married. The two, the outer
and Inner self, must be one Self. This is the preparation. This One Self is the mystical
marriage, that wedding. And this prepares you to sit on the right hand of the throne of the
Father.
Now, all spiritual law functions in that One. There is no Grace until that One has been
attained. There’s a place here in Ephesians where Paul has some of this. Ephesians two,
twelfth verse goes on like this: “Then at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from
the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope,
and without God in the world:”. You see, the prodigal doesn't have God in the world. He says,
“I love God, I worship God,” but he's turning away from God within himself, which is his
Identity. And so his deeds are without the divine experience, divine safety, divine protection,
divine manifestation, and while he's professing God with his mouth, his very life is saying
that he is separate from God. You can go through all kinds of religious experience
worshipping God, and if you have not accepted I, the Spirit of my Being, is God, there's no
God in the world. It seems rather sad, doesn’t it, that we can have such real dedication on the
part of so many millions, and yet God is not in the world because God is not in the prodigal,
who is not in spiritual Identity.
And God is not in the prodigal for one simple reason. The prodigal is an image in the
mind. There is no such being, never having been created by the Father. “But now in Christ
Jesus, ye who sometimes were far off [like the prodigal, far off] are made nigh by the blood of
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Christ.” The acceptance of spiritual Identity is the blood of Christ. “For he is our peace, who
hath made both one”––the Inner and the outer, One. This is the Christing. And when the both
are made One, we are told that you feel closer to God than you do to your own mother. You
feel an ineffable peace, a rest, a warmth. You know that the Infinite is your home. You know
your name. You know your infinite Self. You know your eternal Life. You realize there is only
the Father, and the Father and I are One.
Now, the very experience that is recounted in the Prodigal Son becomes your living
experience. It ceases to be a parable. You can feel that wayward self within being wedded to
the true Self, dissolved out of its own false sense of existence, and you find that the parable
was not a parable at all. It was nothing more than the narrative of an inner experience that
each of us is going through, as Paul shows us here, when the two become one. “[And] Having
abolished in his flesh the enmity, [which is the conflict between inner and outer] even the law
of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain [one, to make of
two One] one new man, so making peace;”––and this is what we're going through, making of
twain one new Man to find that peace which passeth human understanding. Paul had well
experienced the prodigal experience.
In many ways the deeper you are able to read these parables into your consciousness,
the more you’ll discover that they are really outer verbal expressions of deep inner
experience. You can talk about leaven and three degrees of it, but you have to go through
mind, body and Soul before that becomes experience. You can talk about wheat and tares as a
parable, but you can go through the experience of the tares of human experience being
replaced by the pure wheat of divine illumination. You’ll find every parable is cut right out of
your Being to lead you right back into Self, until you have had the full experience of that
parable, and then, having lived through it, for you it is no longer parable. It is the pathway of
a disciple.
Now when you take your lesson to heart, I, Spirit, you are removing the twain, the
two, and you are making the outer listen to the Inner and then say, “Let me be your hired
servant.” You are taking the outer out of the husks of the material way of life and trusting the
Inner to yield to it the full, glorious purpose of God in every movement. You'll be surprised
with the things that you'll write down, and when you write them down, remember these are
the commandments given to you by your own Soul. They’re not little pieces of paper with
words. They are the living oil of the Soul. If you accept it in that Spirit, they will lead you,
and if you're not ready for that, you'll find the words will not come. The words will only come
from the within to one who invites them by reverent Silence. I come where I am invited by
your love, by your peace, by your Inner trust. I come where there is one who says, “I am poor
in Spirit. Make me pure at heart.” I come to the child of God who is faithful, obedient, true.
There I dwell.
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And when that is your Way, there I am. And so we prepare the Way for I to direct us.
And in this communion between the Inner and outer, union is attained, union through
communion. The Infinite becomes your living home, and you draw from It the complete
fullness of Its storehouse with no need of an outer citizen. But rather, you are like Paul,
supporting all of the seven churches. You are giving of your Light to those around you in
spiritual recognition, and that Light is coming from the Inner of you to the outer. You have
turned. You have repented. This is regeneration. This is transformation. This is the building of
the invisible Body of the Soul. Truly, that is the Body which you must come to realize, and
there is no other way than the way of discipleship to the Inner-ness of your own Being.
Now, the Father thought that the study of The Prodigal Son, at our level, would be
important to us. You'll find that its importance goes beyond your capacity to make it a Way.
You’ll find that it is something that you can use when others come to you. It seems to be a
universal language that everybody knows. It is a point of meeting, a common knowledge that
we can share. But you can take those who come to you with their knowledge of it and lift
them gently to understand more of the prodigal, more of the purpose behind it. To show them
that the parable is a parable in many, many ways, and that many levels of the parable are
teaching many levels of themselves.
This way you are given the weapons to educate spiritually those who are trying to
move out of materialism, out of mentalism into the discipleship, and the Father gives us this
unprovocative way of entering into their household. It doesn't frighten anyone. It's something
they're familiar with. And as you point it out to them, you’ll discover the subtle way in which
the Spirit extends its influence over the mind of man. To all persons the parables will have
different meanings, and two years from now you will go back to this very same parable and
discover things you never even knew, just because new eyes will look out at them.
The younger son is being eliminated from this earth. The second book of Genesis is
being swallowed up by the first, and in your Consciousness and mine, as this happens, we are
eating of the Flesh of the Christ. I, Spirit am Infinite. I, Spirit, am not finite. I, Spirit, am
perfect. I, Spirit, am not imperfect. Do you love Me? “Feed my sheep.” Feed them My Truth
with your heart, not your mind. The more you have of the inner Spirit, the more
compassionate you will find yourself. There will be the remembrance of the days when you
needed compassion. These are the measuring sticks to tell you whether or not you are moving
closer to the experience of your Divine Selfhood or still lingering in the remnants of
humanhood.
Another way to find where you really are is to take all of the parables in the Bible
about Heaven: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto. . . .” Well, if it's like unto this, are you
going through that experience or not? Because if you're not, you’re not in the Kingdom of
Heaven. And so we find that I really have gone before this mortal self, for I did say, “The
Kingdom of Heaven is like unto. . . .” I have placed before you a feast of Truth. All you need
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do is come, sit at the table to sup. I have told you what the Kingdom of Heaven is like unto. It
is in your Bible. It is placed there by I, and if you want to know what it's like to be sure that
your Inner experience is true, you'll find it out here in every parable that I in the midst of you
have placed before you.
So we might look at more of those: “The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto. . . .” The
whole chapter of Matthew 13 is full of them. We can use them as measuring sticks to see if I
am in that level where the Kingdom of Heaven is my experience, and our Bible is beginning
to be food and Substance, living experience instead of words in a book. We are in the living
experience of the Truth of Being, and everything that we read must be digested into
experience.
Your God is your Being, and your God is a living God. To experience God is to live in
the Kingdom of Heaven here and now, consciously. I, Spirit, can only live in the Kingdom of
Heaven. Where else can I, Spirit, live? And when the Inner tells you that, you know where
you are, and you know that you must be true to that in every possible way. I, Spirit, move in
the Kingdom of Heaven. Yes, those appear to be winebibbers to other people and outcasts to
others, but I, Spirit, recognize I, Spirit. There are no winebibbers in Heaven. There are no
outcasts in Heaven. This is Heaven. Everywhere is Heaven. And what is not in Heaven is not
here. It is an appearance. Whatever is not in the Kingdom of Heaven is not here.
If your name is I, Spirit, to this you must be true. This is part of our assignment. To be
true to I, Spirit, omnipresent is to accept Heaven here, now, and judge not by any appearance.
We must make this an experience and not a word teaching. The little child is turning, and the
little child will grow, and the little child will return from Egypt. But while we are little
children, let us be willing to be children in Heaven, not on earth, for we have been through the
earth experience.
It is now time for the involution, the experience as children in Heaven on earth, always
knowing the Father is not afar off, but here where I stand is my Father. The still small Voice
that Elija heard, that you hear, that I hear is ever present as the guide, the armor, the living
Word, the food, the Substance of Being. I, the still small Voice, I am your Substance, and I go
before you. Follow Me.
When you have finished your assignment, you’ll discover you’re writing with invisible
ink, with spiritual ink. You’re receiving the blood of Christ, and you're putting it on paper, and
this is a living ordinance of God. Treasure it. It is the Infinite teaching, that which is learning
It is Infinite, the Way to Christ.
Thanks very much. I want to tell you what a privilege it really is to share these
discoveries of truth together. There's no words to describe it. Thanks very much.
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Class 16
Oil From Your Soul Center
Herb: Good afternoon, everybody.
We’re striving now in this work for something slightly different than a knowledge of
Truth. Everything we're doing now is geared to the experience of the presence of God, which
is the source of all Truth that we can ever know. Now, if you have been slow in your progress,
if you find that you're still in a state of worry at times or fear or bad health, if there are
problems, be sure this is normal. There’s no one so unusual that he or she is without them, and
all of us become impatient. This is all very normal.
But now, Spirit plays a trick on us. It says, “Yes, you've gone through many things in
your pathway to Truth, and they were necessary.” And you even come to a place where you
think you know Truth, and then Spirit says to us, “The only reason you had to get to the place
where you think you know Truth is so you could just begin to glimpse what God already
knows. There is nothing you have learned on the way, not one single stitch, that God does not
already know.” And therefore, as you begin to feel that entrance into the third degree, you
discover that you're now told to know no truth whatsoever. God already knows It. What's the
point of you duplicating God?
Are you a different self than God? Are you unwilling to rest back and say, “Father, do
you know?” And so the real dying to self begins at a point where you can say to yourself, “I
have nothing. I am nothing.” And this will not come to an individual who has not been
touched by the Presence in some way so that the individual feels the vision, the courage, the
ultimate possibility is only there when the Spirit of God Itself is accepted as the Presence, the
Life, and the Identity of your own Being. You cannot want to know Truth with your mind and
still accept spiritual Identity, for one belies the other.
Now, in our way to discovering our own inadequacies, one of our major problems has
been that we have relied upon human wisdom. There was always my finger in the pie, and in
so doing we had used the mind not as an instrument to receive the Father, but as a thinking,
creative, even worrying mind; a mind that was going to find solutions. And we discover that
trap, that mind which wants to find solutions is not your mind.
Now every one of us who comes to the point where we're willing to give up our
mental knowledge of truth receives what may be called an anointing. That anointing is shown
to us in the Bible in many unusual ways, and it contains in itself probably one of the greatest
secrets of illumination. You see it in a scene where a woman, not identified in Matthew, a
sinner, comes and pours this oil over the Master from an alabaster vase. And you see it again
in John where this next pouring of oil from an alabaster vase is from a different woman
perhaps; one who now is identified as Mary.
We find Judas objecting because this is expensive oil, but the Master says, “No, the
poor you always have with you, but I will not always be with you.” We find in this a secret
teaching, a teaching that perhaps goes way back to Zechariah in the Old Testament. In fact,
it's interwoven throughout the Old Testament wherever you find the name of oil spoken
insome subtle way, like an olive tree, the olive tree symbolizing olive oil, and oil symbolizing
this secret.
We're going to look at Zechariah. We see that he, ordained by the Spirit, is aware that
within the invisible lies the Self, which is the Self of all men, and to convey this to us, he uses
the symbols which later appeared in Revelation:
“. . . the angel [who] talked with me came again, and waked me, as a man that is
wakened out of his sleep . . .”
This is Zechariah, fourth chapter. The complete fourth chapter is the secret of the Oil.
“. . . [he] said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick
all of gold, with a bowl upon the top of it, and his seven lamps thereon, and seven pipes to the
seven lamps, which are upon the top thereof:
And two olive trees by it, one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the
left side thereof. So I answered and spake to the angel that talked with me, saying, What are
these, my lord? Then the angel that talked with me answered and said unto me: Knowest thou
not what these be? And I said, No, my lord.
Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, “This is the word of the Lord unto
Zerubbabel,” saying, “Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of
hosts.”
Not might, not power, but by My Spirit. But what? What not by might? What not by
power? What by my Spirit? And a further clue:
“And I answered again, and said unto him, What be these two olive branches which
through the two golden pipes empty the golden oil out of themselves? And he answered me
and said, Knowest thou not what these be? And I said, No, my lord. Then said he, These are
the two anointed ones, that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.”
“. . . the two anointed ones that stand by the Lord of the whole earth.”
And therein is our clue to what we are striving to do. Our subject is oil, the symbol of
something else. Wherever you have found a problem, you have lacked that oil. Wherever
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Class 16 : Oil From Your Soul Center
some inner substance has come to dissolve the problem, it has been that oil. But hit or miss,
getting it by random, by accident, has to be substituted now by knowing where the oil is, what
it is, and how you open the Soul center to let it flow.
We see a flower. We know the oil of the flower becomes our perfumes, and we know
one little tincture of it is powerful. Just think of a tincture of divine oil and what a tincture of
divine oil received in consciousness does to release an individual from every pressing
problem. Then go a step further and see that the oil, being spiritual Substance, is here
presented as one of the deepest mystical secrets.
The oil is the spiritual Substance which forms the body of the Soul. All progress in the
path to absolute illumination is for the purpose of attaining that spiritual Body, which is
independent of the material world. And because this attainment is the destiny of every
individual, regardless of the level of consciousness they entertain at the moment, only the
highest initiates are even aware that divine Oil becomes their spiritual Body, their incorporeal
Self attained and realized and lived in.
And so, in our first and second degrees we were more concerned with other things. In
our first degree all we wanted to do is be a good human being. And after we got that far, we
began to take the mind and open it up, letting it become an instrument for the Father, an
instrument for the divine Mind. And always in these progressions, we discovered that we were
being made more comfortable, happier, more harmonious with all those around us, and we
were learning pet phrases, which we thought we could hide behind at times as a sort of an
armor against the world. We could smile while other people suffered and say, “If they only
knew the truth that I know. If I could only tell them.” But now, now in your third degree, you
come to a place where the Spirit demands more of you.
Whereas before you wanted to build your humanhood and you enjoyed the experience
of opening the mind to the invisible, now you are told all that must go. That the Oil of the
incorporeal body, that Oil which forms the Substance of your eternal body, can never flow
into a human being. To be awake to Christ and dead to self becomes the way in which the
Soul center opens to express the divine Oil, which takes us into the transitional experience.
And so our two olive branches, our two olive trees, which are the two witnesses of the
Father on earth, become the sentinels which we must pass through in order to receive the Oil.
And dying to self in order to become alive to Omnipresence becomes the single-minded
dedication of all of our time and thought. Our whole heart and our whole Soul is bent in the
direction of releasing that divine Oil, which makes the divine Body our living experience.
Now let's look at this woman who comes to anoint the Master. We find her in several
places. We find her in Matthew in the twenty-sixth chapter.
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“And it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings he said unto his
disciples, Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover and the Son of m a n is
betrayed to be crucified.
Then assembled together the chief priests, and the scribes, and the elders of the people,
unto the palace of the high priest, who was called Caiaphas, And consulted that they might
take Jesus by subtilty and kill him. But they said, [no] Not on the feast day, lest there be an
uproar among the people.”
Now, he knew in two days there would be a passover and he would be betrayed to be
crucified. We know now what they didn't know then, that he already had attained the Soul
Body, and that's why he could speak so evenly about crucifixion.
“Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, There came unto
him a woman having an alabaster box of very precious ointment, and poured it on his head, as
he sat at meat.”
Now, alabaster, the whiteness, the box is actually the vase, and it's a symbol of the
Soul. And so pouring this ointment over the Master, she was saying to him and to us, she was
expressing outwardly her inner Consciousness. She was telling him she had come into the
experience of the incorporeal Body of the Soul. Inasmuch as the woman in other parts is
described as a sinner, we may assume this was the adulterous Mary, Mary of Magdala, for the
moment.
“But when his disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To what purpose is this
waste?”
His disciples said, “To what purpose is this waste?” They had no knowledge of the
meaning of the alabaster vase and the oil she was pouring. But you see, she couldn't help
herself. That which is your Consciousness must externalize, and having attained the inner
Body, she showed it forth as the pouring of oil upon him. He, though, was the Christ. She was
revealing that the Christ of her Being was pouring Oil within her; that she had gone through
the first, second, and third degrees that we are going through. She had died to personal self.
She was no longer a human being. She was not mortal. She walked in what appeared to be a
form, but she was not in time and space.
Her life was lived external to her body. She knew the meaning of omnipresent Spirit.
The disciples did not. They said, “Why all the waste? That cost 300 pence. We could be
giving that money to the poor.” You see, the disciples were not the highest in ordainment at
that time. Lazarus was higher.
“For this ointment might have been sold for much, and given to the poor.” When Jesus
understood it, he said unto them, Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good
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work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you; but me, ye have not always. For in that
she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial.”
Having attained the Soul Body, she understood that he was in the Soul Body. She was
aware he would walk through death. All of this secret conversation, unknown to the readers of
the Bible, who merely see a woman pouring oil.
“Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world,
there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.”
Mary of Magdala was the second highest initiate, right under Mary, the mother of
Jesus.
Now, the understanding of this changes when we go to the Gospel of John. This is the
outer event. John, ever the symbolist, the esotericist, takes us even deeper. And you wonder if
they are speaking about the identical incidents, because here it said, you know that passover
will be in two days, and then we come to John in the twelfth chapter, and when we find it said
this way:
“Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which
had been dead,whom he raised from the dead.” If you’ve wondered about Lazarus, what
happened to him––well, here he is again. “There they made him a supper; and Martha served:
but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.” We have Jesus, the invisible
Christ appearing as Jesus, and now we have the invisible Christ appearing as Lazarus, both
having supper with Martha and Mary. “Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard,
very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was
filled with the odor of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon's
son, which should betray him, Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and
given to the poor?”
Now we have the odor, the fragrance of the ointment introduced, and this is because in
the Soul Body we are told there is a different fragrance. Some of you have noticed in deep
meditation that you're aware of fragrance. You may be aware of your own body of the Soul.
Now, Mary, the sister of Lazarus, is identified as having the body of the Soul. We find
here, through John's very significant purpose, an interesting revelation, not only about this
body, but about the resurrection of Lazarus. You recall that he had been buried four days. And
the purpose, or at least one of the purposes was to show that after three days the Soul does not
leave the body. In other words, the body and the Soul are not conjoined. The Soul is
completely independent of the body at all times.
But now we see that Lazarus represents something. This was not only the resurrection
of the man called Lazarus. Lazarus was dead for four days, meaning he was d-e-a-d, dead,
totally dead. And the point here that John wishes us to know is that you cannot awaken to
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Christ until you are totally dead to self. The four days represent the total human deadness of
Lazarus, and unless we are prepared not to hold out a remnant of humanhood, that Soul Body
which walks out of the tomb of mortality is not formed. And, strangely, that's only part of it,
and that's why Mary had to pour the oil.
You see, Mary and Lazarus constitute the inner and the outer, the male and the female,
the higher and the lower. And in each of us, Mary and Lazarus must be redeemed. The
positive and the negative, the higher and the lower, the inner and the outer must be redeemed.
Lazarus represents the elder son who stayed home. Mary represents the younger son who
wasted his Substance going out into the far country. And they both represent the inner Self of
Jesus, showing that the male and the female elements had been redeemed into Oneness. The
Soul Body was completed, and at this point, where Mary, the sister of Lazarus, reveals that
she, too, has become aware of and is living in her Soul Body, indicated by the fragrance of it
and the oil. This is the preparation, of course, for the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, for it is
the marriage of these two, which is the mystical marriage.
Now we're in a place where the human mind is of no value. There’s nothing it can do
for you. It has to surrender. You reach that place where this human mind, which would
observe, which would sort out the facts and catalog them, which would make inferences, has
no capacity to entertain the living Christ. It's as if in your mind, at the moment, you have
certain knowledge. Now, if your mind were also able to have the knowledge that is, let's say,
in the mind of a scientist, you would have your mind's knowledge and his mind's knowledge,
and you would have the knowledge of both minds, but his mind doesn't contain all
knowledge.
And so if you took another individual's mind and had the three minds, you would have
a wider basis of knowledge. And you could go on and on like that, but you reach the place
where all of the addition of human minds still cannot give you spiritual awareness. And you
have to come to the place, above the mind, where this mind is looking up at the Divine Mind
and saying, “This is as far as I can go. I have to turn to you. I have to relax my mental
attitudes, my mental probing.”
I have to come to that place now where I do absolutely nothing, simply look up to the
face of the Father and wait, because my mind does not have the capacity to experience
Omnipresence. You simply can't encompass Omnipresence with the human mind, and even
though you know the meaning of the word, can define it, can talk about it, and probably make
a good case about understanding it, you'll find that you have not accepted Omnipresence.
The human mind cannot accept Omnipresence, and to give you an idea of why not,
let's say you go into a cave, and it’s dark. And now what you're doing in the cave constitutes
the all-ness of your human selfhood. You’re only concerned about what you're doing there.
You're not concerned about anything else. Now when you go into your physical senses, it’s
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the same way. You’re only concerned about what's happening within your physical senses.
That’s your cave. Your mind is your cave. You’re only concerned about what's happening in
your mind.
And when you with that mind try to reach beyond your mind, there's no place to reach,
and you find that you have been relying on your own human wisdom to find out things. And
as a consequence, to you Omnipresence means one thing. To someone else's mind, it means
another, and every human mind will tell you a different meaning of Omnipresence. But no
human mind will tell you that You are Omnipresence, that your Identity is Omnipresence, and
that the acceptance of Omnipresence can never be made with a human mind.
In fact, the acceptance can only be made when the human mind, which knows not the
meaning of Omnipresence, has been rolled away. For when you have accepted Omnipresence,
you're in a very startling Universe. The things you understand would be quite shocking to the
individual you were before Omnipresence was your understanding. You would discover,
perhaps, that Omnipresence takes you right from this instant here straight through your
complete human past, mineral past, vegetable past, animal past, through every material past,
through every incarnation straight to the doorway of God without interruption. Right from
God to this instant is Omnipresence, and that is You: the one, continuous, uninterrupted Life
of Spirit.
And if you look back on that one, uninterrupted line of spiritual Life, it has no form in
a corporeal world, and so the acceptance of Omnipresence eliminates all that you have called
your human past in all incarnations. It eliminates mother, father, brother, sister. It eliminates
all your human attainments. It eliminates all your human possessions. It also eliminates all
your human fears, doubts, and worries. Omnipresence says, “Spirit is. Spirit I Am.” And
Spirit being All, there is no other Self. The mother who birthed me was my Self. How could
there be a second self there to birth me? If I am Spirit and mother was Spirit and one Self is
Spirit, was there a mother? Was there a son, or was there not just one Self being Self,
appearing outwardly as two?
And then you're coming into your third degree of accepting Omnipresence as your
Self, realizing that Omnipresence will do nothing of Itself unless It’s recognized. Just as if a
pencil were not going to get up and write: You'd have to pick it up and know it's a pencil and
that it can write. You then begin to recognize Omnipresence accepted. Live in it, rejecting all
else that is not Omnipresence, and you find the Oil is pouring. The Oil is forming that
invisible Body. The transmutation from physical sense to spiritual awareness is coming
through as a new Body, a Body that Mary, here, was showing the Master she had, for you
have found the two olive trees, Spirit, and its companion, Truth.
The two, Divine Truth and Divine Spirit, made One in you produce the Oil. The Oil
produces the Body of the Soul. The Body of the Soul is recognized as the one infinite body.
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And in your third degree, you rest in the quiet, conscious realization that the Body of the Soul
is the only Body I am. It knows no pain. It knows no lack. It knows no limitation. It knows no
need. And therefore, when I express a lack, a need, a limitation, I am rejecting my Body. I am
rejecting Omnipresence, even though my mind had known the Word and had been able to
pronounce It and speak about It. Omnipresence eliminates all that is not the Spirit of God as
Reality.
In your third degree, Omnipresence is the law of your Being, the nature of your Being,
and the activity of your Being, and therefore, you are not living, then, in a physical form. Your
Life doesn’t consist of the activity of that physical form. You have an external existence to the
Body made possible only because the Soul Center opening up yields the Oil, which becomes
your spiritual discernment, your spiritual Consciousness, your capacity to trust the Invisible.
Now, the reason the Bible tells us about Mary doing this and Lazarus is for the faint-
hearted who say, “Oh, Jesus did it, but of course he did it. Who else is Jesus?” The more you
study the Bible, the more you discover that many people did it, and that we are doing it, but
not with, as Joel puts it, “our spare time and our spare change.” No, he says, only when all of
you is dedicated to that which is greater than your human self. The anointing, the Oil carries
with it the ordainment; carries with it the Will, the power, the self-fulfillment.
And we find now we're becoming aware of our invisible bodies. We’re learning to rest
back, accepting not only is the outer body the temporary fleeting image, but there is, is an
inner Body of Light that is real. We know it will not come forth without our recognition of It.
We begin to rest in It consciously, letting the government of the Father do Its own work. In
the third degree, your patience is deepened. You’re willing to go through long periods of
seemingly outer inactivity. You’re letting that divine Seed take root. You know that all of the
frantic outer activity has nothing to do with a root of the Seed, and just like a seed in the
ground, you're letting It take root in the invisible Infinite. You do it consciously, quietly.
You meditate, not with a purpose of attaining something or receiving something, but
just to know quietly, as I do this, the root of my Christhood is becoming deeper and more
firmly entrenched into my consciousness. I simply rest in that knowledge, knowing this is
how my confidence in Omnipresence is strengthened. You merely rest, knowing that this is
the way for the Soul center to open to lead you to a mystical realm above human
consciousness. Not to receive something, but to be opened to that inner Vision. To be taken
out of all the psychic realms, the emotional realms, the mental realms. We are fasting from
personality, fasting from the mind that wants to know, fasting from everything that will not
give us that precious Oil, the Oil that ordains us, the Oil of the divine Son.
In this way we are preparing the way for the ultimate initiation. Quietly resting,
seeking nothing, but feeling the knitting within of Being Itself. Accepting the Spirit of God as
your invisible Body and letting the divine Mind act upon that Spirit to animate It, motivate It,
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guide It, direct It, feed It, sustain It, clothe It. Completely trusting that invisible Body to be
maintained by the invisible Father. Not seeking even outer signs. Resting in the work. That is
the I of your Being. And the me out here with its worries, its problems, its doubts, its needs,
its limitations––this me is revealed to you as a false side of yourself, without meaning,
without existence. And the more you are aware of this invisible Soul Self, the more you know
that any clinging to the outer man is a denial of the inner Self.
Once you reject the inner Self by being concerned about the outer self, you are
denying the All-ness of God. You are a prodigal from Omnipresence. You are outside of your
own Identity. And now all we're concerned about is being true to our Self. Every worry is
faced with the knowledge that I can only be worrying about a me that doesn't exist because
my name is Omnipresence.
My name is Spirit. I go back to the Father, all the way. I go all the way ahead to the Father, all
the way up and down and around to the Father. Wherever the Father is, I am with Him.
Spirit is my name. The only Body I have is made of pure Spirit. There is no other
substance. And as your inner integrity deepens, increases, it multiplies the Oil. It multiplies
the final moment when the Robe, that inner garment of the Soul, is bestowed upon you,
signifying your Soul Body is now ready for you to live in, independent of all karmic law.
You’ve earned your spurs. You can walk with Mary, with Lazarus, with all those who have
gone through the crucifixion of self to the inner Resurrection to the Ascension over material
law. You’re ready to make your triumphal entry into Selfhood.
The reason patience is stressed is because in the earlier degrees there were signs
following, signs following. Always there were signs. In the inner realm, there are no more
signs following. There is only the acceptance and the realization that that very Presence that
you were seeking is your name. You no longer are seeking the presence of God. That Presence
You are. It is the fact of your Being, and that is what is meant by moving, living, having your
Being in God. You move as the Presence, you live as the Presence, you have your Being as
the Presence, and you deny not the Presence, because it is Omnipresent.
What if you do not hold this 24 hours a day? If you hold it for three minutes a day, the
Oil pours, and that Oil increases your capacity to hold this Consciousness again and again and
again. And so the key word today is: Omnipresence is meaningless unless I consciously
recognize Omnipresence, not as a word, but as God active, not passive. And now watch this:
God is active. If you're not doing what God is doing, what are you doing—if God is All?
What can you possibly do that has any meaning, if it's not what God is doing?
And so the activity of God functioning as your Soul Body is the only way in which
you can be doing what God is doing. And that is why you must find that great capacity to
release all that is not your invisible Soul Body to live in It, because It alone is acting in the
Will of God. It is the living expression of God where you stand. The activity of God in your
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Soul Body is what Jesus was talking about when he said: “The Father worketh, and I work
hitherto. Thou seest me, thou seest the Father.”
He had come out of the dual sense of life, out of the fleshly sense of life into the Soul
Body, which is the activity of God, as we will do. Then I and the Father are one activity. The
Mind of the Father becomes the activity of my Soul Body, and what I do is because the Father
is doing it. And so you find God is living God's Life as your Soul Body. “. . . I live; yet not
I, . . . Christ liveth [my life].” This is the Soul Body activity, and until you are in the
conscious awareness of that Body through the realization and the conscious practice that
Spirit is all, Spirit is your name, Spirit is Omnipresent, and therefore, Omnipresence is your
name, you will still be finding fractions and patches and flaws in your life, whereas these
fractions, patches, and flaws are not your life at all.
Your Life is Omnipresence. Spirit, everywhere Being Itself, is your Life. And the
experience of going all the way back in time, through time, through space, and then out of
time and out of space to the throne of God; to establish in Consciousness the continuity of
your Life, and then to not leave that conscious Continuity, gives you a foundation which
enables you not to deny who you are and not to be concerned about where you are in the
physical form or what you are doing in the physical form. Because all that can be happening
is the activity invisible of Omnipresence. Your conscious knowledge of that brings that
invisible activity into visible manifestation as the fruits of Spirit.
If you are not wherever God is, you are not Omnipresent Spirit. If you are not
Omnipresent Spirit, what are you? Grass. Nothing! And so we don't wait to discover that
we're grass, that we’re nothing. We accept that now this human selfhood is laid aside in the
third degree. And in order to find that Resurrection experience of Lazarus, which is rebirth, I
go through what may be called the Ascension without Crucifixion while in the form––while
appearing mortal, while living in a mortal existence, the transmutation of Consciousness, the
conscious awareness that the Oil flows when I accept Spirit as my Identity. When I pursue
that Identity to see that It is everywhere, It is Omnipresent, It is I––then I learn to rest in that
and behold a power of my Omnipresent Self, behold how self-supporting Omnipresence is.
Only in our fidelity to omnipresent Self as your Self, my Self, his Self, and there being
no other Self––only then are we totally dying as was demonstrated through the so-called death
and resurrection of Lazarus. This is an inner activity of your Self. It was this dying and rebirth
which all had been completed before Jesus began his ministry. What we saw were only the
outer physical crucifixion, the outer physical resurrection.
You can tell when you're in that third degree when you have confidence in your own
Being. You’re not too easily shaken now by the world around you or the apparent disasters or
things that threaten from time to time. You don't wake up with a dread of today or even the
anxiety of what will today bring. You're waking up in Omnipresence. You’re going to sleep in
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Omnipresence, and it is the omnipresent Self that puts that physical form to sleep and wakes it
up again.
It is the omnipresent Self that maintains its perfect spiritual integrity 24 hours a day
without any human help, and it is that omnipresent Self, which you begin to know is your
eternal Life without beginning or end, never born, never dying. And now you have left
mother, father, brother, and sister, for they are your Self. If there is another on this earth who
is not your invisible Self, you have lost Omnipresence. Wherever you go, your invisible Self
is all that is there. You are the one Self of a one Universe. And there was a time on this earth
where the only Self here that was realized was in Christ Jesus. There was no one else on the
earth but his Self.
And every character in the Bible represents another facet of your human sense of self,
facets that have to slowly be dissolved: the Herods and the Caiaphases, even the Jameses and
the Johns. All must be slowly dissolved until all that stands in your Universe is Christ, the
living expression of God the Father, and it doesn't matter what form you see. That’s what
you're accepting because it is your invisible Self––one, undivided, invisible, spiritual Self
everywhere. This is Omnipresence, and as you live in it, you'll find that your Self, in any part
of what we call this world will never be harmful to your Self where your body stands. Your
Self in any part of this world will gladly give its last dollar or its last ounce of breath to your
Self here. Your Self everywhere will be in harmony with your Self where you stand. Nobody
is external to your Self.
When you have one Self, you have eliminated all human differences and all human
divisions and all human discords. Because in your acceptance of them, you are denying the
one invisible Self that You are, that They are, making your inner division which translates into
an outer division or discord. Omnipresence I am because I and the Father are One. Now, this
is given to us by the Bible as the way to the release of divine Oil to build that transitional
body which walks through the fire untouched, comes out of the tomb of mortality, and
ascends above every material limitation in the present, in the now, in the here. And then all of
the ecclesiastical promises about a heavenly hereafter no longer are the trap laid for the
gullible. We learn God is active here and now, and that activity is the activity of my Life now.
The last veils of fear and doubt should fall away. You should be able to look at all of
the activities around you with a detachment. They may seem to endanger your possessions,
your physical self, your future, but that is the belief of one who is separated from the real Self
of Being, who has not yet found that Soul center, but is living apart from it, and so accepts
other powers than the Omnipotence of the Spirit.
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There is an important sequence here. We find Jesus stepping out of the Jordan,
baptized by a man, suffering it to be so now, then the dove, the baptism of the Spirit. We
know now that the descent of the Ghost signaled that the human sense of body had completely
been overcome. Now there stood a man who was no longer a man of earth. In his
Consciousness there existed only the Omnipresent Self, the One. To human eyes it was the
same body they had seen, but it was not. It was the body of the Soul, indestructible. I'm quite
sure he needed no food. He lived on Light. He was Light. He moved as Light, and he’d
announced that I am the Light.
The mission of Jesus Christ could not begin until the Soul body had been formed,
completed, realized, and lived in, and this is the birth of the Christ. This is the moment of
being begotten of the Father, and only then did Christ walk the earth without human
interference from a man named Jesus. Only then could Christ move through the earth giving
the teaching, for now there was One, not two. The Christ Body and the Christ Mind lived and
walked, and this was identified by human sense as Jesus. And there were still remnants of
humanhood, and therefore, the wilderness experience had to follow. And after the wilderness
experience, which was the Ascension––the complete overcoming of material law––there had
to be the three temptations to show what Ascension means. Ascension meant that all personal
self had been destroyed.
There was no desire to wear a halo. No desire to be identified as the One who came
from God. No desire to own anything, not even the kingdoms of this world in all their power
and glory. No desire to possess. And no lack, no limitation, no need unfulfilled. I, Spirit, am
Self-supporting, complete. Nothing external to Self was needed, Self being the infinite Self.
This acceptance became the realized Christ now walking forth to demonstrate to mankind the
Identity that stands behind every form that walks the earth, saying, “When you reach back
into your Self, you’ll find I, and I am the Way. When you reach back into your Self, I will
pour the Oil. I will release you from all measures of iniquity that appear to your limited
human consciousness. I stand where you are. All that I have is thine, and I will never leave
you.”
This is who was now walking the earth called “Jesus,” but it is I, the infinite Invisible.
Because the man, Jesus, has died to the Lazarus within him, to the Mary within him, to the
Herod within him, to the Pilate within him, even to the Judas within him. The man, Jesus, is
no more. And it was only because all this had happened to purify that consciousness
completely of humanhood, of finitude, of a denial of omnipresent Self as the One and Only.
Now he could step forward, and now the Spirit could speak words of Truth that can be
depended upon, words that you never have to examine suspiciously and say, “I wonder if this
is true.” You can do that with people, but with the words of Spirit, you say, “Thank you.” This
is more true than anything ever divined by a human mind. This I can depend on. This is Life
Itself talking, and this Spirit steps forth and gives us the reason why it can now walk the earth
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doing the miracles. And the world sees Jesus saying this, but it is the omnipresent One behind
all of us saying, “I.”
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel
to the poor;”––And those poor are us. Those who are poor because they have not let the Oil
flow. Those who are poor because they have not accepted Identity. Those who are poor
because they are still clinging to a human concept of possession, who do not know that Spirit
possesses nothing, for Spirit is all.
“The Spirit of the Lord . . . hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath
sent me to heal the brokenhearted,”––In other words, as I within you is received, that which
was the broken heart is shown not even to be the heart itself. There is no separation in Spirit
to be broken up about. The broken heart is the denial of Omnipresence. When we say, “I have
lost my husband. I have lost my wife. I have lost my child,” we are denying Omnipresence.
We do not realize that the Self, which is my child, the Self which is myself, are One and the
same, never separated, no matter what the human picture may show. Never separated, and that
is how you heal the broken-hearted. The realization of the true Self reveals the absence of the
possibility of separation in Omnipresence.
“ . . . to preach deliverance to the captives,”––those who live in the caves of their own
mind, prisoners entombed––and “recovering of sight to the blind,”––those who are blind to
Christ––“to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”
Someone said this before the man Jesus said it, for the Christ in Jesus was the same Christ in
Isaiah, who had said it before. That same Christ in Isaiah, in Jesus, in you, in me, in Joel, in
whoever has accepted Omnipresent Spirit to be the only Self, finds the Christ giving you that
precious Oil to share.
Oh, how we want to accept that I am Omnipresent Spirit, but it's harder for a rich man
to get through the eye of a needle than a camel because even though we're willing to accept I
am Omnipresent Spirit, the habits of years are not discarded by a phrase. Is there pain in
Spirit? Is their property in Spirit? Are there problems in Spirit? Is there a physical form in
Spirit? Are there human conditions in Spirit? How can you have these things and accept
Omnipresent Spirit as your Name? Can you possess 10 cents and be Omnipresent Spirit? The
very fact of Omnipresent Spirit is the denial of the existence of matter. There cannot be
Omnipresent Spirit “and.” Omnipresent means there is no other. Only Spirit is.
And therefore, what about our possessions that we worked so hard for? We learned
that we are merely given the use of them, and we say, “Thank you.” I am their custodian
momentarily. They are not my permanent property. How can that be if my name is Spirit?
That which passes in front of me for my use is recognized as the activity of the world
consciousness, and only to the extent that I transmute world consciousness by the acceptance
of spiritual Consciousness do I find that those things that appear as mine are working in
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coordinated harmony with the fullness of my Being. Then they begin to have a relevancy to
what I am doing.
Then the activity of the Spirit, translating into these appearances called possessions, all
works in one direction. No one can take your spiritual possessions. They can only take your
mental, physical possessions. Your spiritual possessions are nailed down inside your
Consciousness. You don't have to protect them. Spirit is constantly pressing them forth in such
abundance that it's hard to keep up with it. And so you must learn how to practice in your
meditation periods the knowledge that I have nothing, I own nothing, and I am nothing. As
long as you think you have, you own, and you are something, you are saying you are not pure,
perfect, omnipresent Spirit.
Oh, the human mind begins to fear that if I think I have nothing, it'll disappear.
Somebody will take it away. What if somebody comes to rob it? I won't try to protect it. All of
these fears pass through the one who is not in the third degree, not even glimpsing the third
degree. You might get to the place where you want to make all kinds of foolish tests, and say,
“Well, I'll just pile all my things in the car, and I won't lock it.” You're just falling into the
tempter, who’s trying to make you jump off the roof to show that somebody will catch you.
You are Spirit, and there is no other. And there's no need to prove anything. There's no one to
prove it to, and if you want to prove it to your human selfhood, you're making a mistake.
And so we do not lose our sense of responsibility. If anything, we have a higher sense
of responsibility because we can see through the material appearance to the spiritual Reality.
And whatever Spirit places in your hands to be used is a treasure. But it's used in the manner
in which Spirit placed it in your hands to be used, so that the activity of whatever that appears
to be is released to the Spirit, which placed it before you. We are not setting up the mental
road blocks as to how things should be.
I have found that when there is a continuous effort to meditate on “I own nothing,”
that there comes to you a great release, and the release takes an unusual form in that you
become more aware of your spiritual Identity. It was only the physical sense of self which
clung to the idea of owning. And in giving up the sense of possession, you find that what you
are giving up mentally is almost zero compared to what you discover you do have. You give
up the transient sense of things, and you become the proud possessor of the infinite.
All of the Infinite can function through the one who has given up the sense of owning.
The minute you try to put a label on the Infinite or carve a piece of It for yourself, you lose it.
It has an innate awareness of whether or not you are letting It flow unmolested, uninterfered
with. And then it comes to you as a great dispensation that all that the Father hath is yours.
And when you are clinging to material possessions as your possessions, that is the denial that
all that the Father hath is yours. In our human sense of clinging, we are rejecting the fullness
that is available. You find everything is upside down.
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Another thing we have to learn to meditate upon is that “I am nothing,” and this I we
are speaking of is the human self who goes to work, the human self who has friends, the
human self who mingles with people. “I am nothing.” Why? Because right here where this
me appears, only the Spirit is, and when that sense of a me is gone, the Spirit that is realized
here appears as a me in harmony with my environment. But it is only the Jesus appearing
where the Christ is. It is the Mary appearing where the Christ is, the Lazarus appearing where
the Christ is.
One day the you is Mary resenting the fact that Jesus wasn't present when needed, and
the next day the you is Mary boasting, happily showing forth the Soul Body. Look how
quickly that transition took place within three years. When he sent forth the disciples two by
two, it is said that they not only healed, they anointed the victims with oil. What does that
mean? They opened the spiritual Consciousness of those people to their Identity. James says
in one of his epistles, “Is something wrong? Do you have a problem? Well, find the oil, find
the oil.” Opening up your spiritual Consciousness to the acceptance of Identity, you’ve found
the Oil.
Now, all of the tricks of the human mind will keep preventing you from accepting
Omnipresence. You’ll have a birthday in the Omnipresence of Spirit, and then you'll have a
death day in the Omnipresence of Spirit. You'll have human holidays. You’ll have all kinds of
human events while talking about the Omnipresence of Spirit, and you'll have all kinds of
adverse conditions in these human events, but they aren't there. The Omnipresence of Spirit is
there and ever has been there. And that Spirit is not in your physical form, and so you cannot
be living in that Spirit and in your physical form. You do not even possess a physical body
once you have accepted Omnipresent Spirit. You have a Soul Body, which appears to human
sense as a physical body.
And that Soul Body is the only one you acknowledge in all your ways as perfection
Itself, for it is your eternal Body. And it must be lived in, experienced, to become your
permanent realized Body. When you were given the assignment last week to write down to
yourself “I am Spirit” and then let Spirit tell you what you are, I’m sure some of you received
some inner knowledge. And maybe some of you received a sort of an inner demand, a
spiritual impulse which said to you something that is yours alone to tell no man. Now, this
must be realized that whenever you receive this inner demand from Spirit, every inner
revelation you receive is a demand.
Every true spiritual vision is a demand. Remember, spiritual vision––not psychic, not
emotional, not mental––and those spiritual visions always bring with them an understanding
of what they are, even if that understanding is merely that this vision was to tell you that I am
present, with no other meaning intended. But every inner revelation is a demand, and that
means that unless you live up to the level of that demand, you are saying to the Spirit, “Don’t
come back.” Because your Teacher is saying, “This is where I want you to be now. I am
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teaching you, for example, that you are the Omnipresent Spirit. Before Abraham was, you are
the Omnipresent Spirit.”
In the year three billion, you will be the Omnipresent Spirit, and you are that now, and
if this becomes your inner revelation, that is a demand for you to rest in the Word until you
can say, “I know it, I have it, I feel it, I accept it. I will live it.” And until you do this, you'll be
waiting a long time between inner revelations. Your inner Teacher says, “This is the level I've
established for you, and you cannot change the sequence. You can't mentally run ahead and
try to direct traffic. This is what I have ordained for you.” And it is as you follow these inner
ordainments to the level that they are requesting, demanding, that you one day will find the
Voice speaking that the Spirit of the Lord has ordained me, anointed me, for the anointing is
the ordainment.
Way back years ago we used to come out of a lecture and say, “That was great,” and
then come back next week and hear some more. Now we don't do it anymore. All the talk is is
a means of together sharing the spiritual impulse and letting that spiritual impulse establish its
invisible activity as our own Being all through the week––living in the God experience––in
the spiritual experience above the calculating mind, above the self-preserving mind, above
every human consideration.
And you’ll know when you have no human considerations and you're just up there
experiencing that the Oil is flowing. You’re being anointed, and that anointing is the
preparation for the entire fulfillment of the purpose of this lifespan, the realization of Self as
God Self. With our human minds, we are not capable of this realization. Only through the
Soul Center, and only through living throughout the day, alone, in that Soul Center while in
the midst of the world is that precious ointment flowing.
Next week our chapter will be the fifth in The Contemplative Life. Always, I'm
depending on you to supply that inner vision, to see that behind the words is always the intent
to lift you into omnipresent spiritual Identity. And between then and now you should be
working on the inner acceptance that Spirit, which you are, never has a problem. And the
acceptance of the problem, then, is the denial of your spiritual Self. That Spirit never has a
division, and the acceptance of a competitor or a husband or a wife or an enemy or a friend,
without the realization that “This is my invisible Spirit,” is making a false division in your
Consciousness.
And that Spirit does not end at the horizon or at the end of a year. It has no ending
anywhere, and therefore, you have no ending anywhere. And no matter what may appear in
the world, it is but the outer garment of the mind camouflaging that where it appears to be,
only You, your Spirit is. To accept your infinite spiritual Self is the only way you will ever
live in your infinite spiritual Body. This is what we must be working on. It does not come
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through Grace. It comes through effort, and then through Grace. It comes through application.
It comes through conscious knowing repeatedly. It comes through conscious experience.
And then when you have opened out a way, when you are receptive through the
continuous application of Truth in consciousness, then through Grace you will feel your
infinite spiritual Body as a living experience. And no one will be able to deny it to you by
word or deed. They won't have wars in your infinite spiritual Body. They won't have
pestilences or poverty or famine. Your invisible Consciousness will be maintaining a perfect
incorporeal Body everywhere, and you will know it. This is part of our third degree.
Let’s all do our homework, telling no man. For now the things we would tell any man
would be foolishness, indeed. Chapter five, The Contemplative Life, and whatever else the
Spirit has in Mind.
Thanks very much.
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Class 17
Has Goliath Fooled You
Herb: 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 The
Contemplative Life. I'm really anxious to get through with 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 mountaintop,
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, Jr., 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
Class 17 : Has Goliath Fooled You
through an insurmountable object without taking arms. Mr. Hearst says, “Today, the U.S.
bomber force is less than 600. Our sub-launched missiles have numbered 650 for 4 years, and
our land-based missiles have totaled 1,054 for 4 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 2 or 3 years. And meanwhile, a Soviet land-
based Inter-Continental force has risen to over 1,440 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 outpower him or perhaps outsmart him, or we need a great general to
outflank him. We must do something physically or mentally.” That would be the Bible version
if it meant us to outpower Russia or outpower other nations.
But the Bible version says, “Not by might, [not] by power, . . . by my spirit . . .” And
really, the greatest observation you will ever find on the David and Goliath story is in the fifth
chapter of The 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 slingshot 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.
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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’s 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.
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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 himself 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 Christhood, 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
himself, 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.
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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 himself 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 cliches.
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 slingshot 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 slingshot and the five stones become symbols to teach us. In fact, if he had gone out
with a 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, the
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 a 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.
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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 Russias 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 14-day period before you really know. So you wait.
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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 untalk 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.
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Spirit is, and the accident out there, the problem out there hitting your Consciousness
doesn't make a dent, doesn't cause a reaction. It isn't that you steel yourself and your great
willpower, 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 nonreactive 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 nonexistent, that only Spirit is. No
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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, and so you're up to the third step. You’re in that nonreactive 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 the
source of every other Goliath you're going to face––being dead––why, the source is gone. The
personal sense is crucified.
You’ve 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
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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 Christing.
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 the 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 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.
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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 yourself 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”––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 yourself 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 is here.” 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 slingshot,
before he let go, before it made contact. It all took place in that one little brief span of
Consciousness within himself. 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.
∞∞∞∞∞ END OF SIDE ONE ∞∞∞∞∞∞
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.
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“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 his 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 so the problem is forcing you to meet it. The problem says, “Come on, do
something.” 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.
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Now you go ahead and lick 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 the 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 and all Israel heard those words of the Philistine, they were dismayed,
and 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 Bethlehemjudah,”
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.
“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 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:
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[and the names of his three sons that went to the battle were Eliab the firstborn, and
next unto him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.”]
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 the 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 loaves, 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
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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.
And so we feel now that the Light of our own Being is revealing the non-reality of that
which is called the 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 your 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 he 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.”
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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; and this little upstart inside you says,
“I'll take care of this situation.” Saul, the king of your will, the king of your mind is listening
to the ray of spiritual vision called David:
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“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 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 slew a lion and a bear. Nobody knew that. 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 had overcome the power of the lion and the power of the bear. He had
overcome the belief in physical might and mental might. He had 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 armour, and he put an helmet of brass upon his head;
also he armed him with a coat of mail. And David girded his sword upon his armour, 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 slingshot.”
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“And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook,
and put them in a shepherd's bag which he had, even in a 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
slingshot.” 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. 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.
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 mind. It has completely disappeared as a force,
whereas before it was all 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:
“This day will the LORD deliver thee into mine hand; . . . that all the earth may know
that there is a God in Israel.”
“And all this assembly shall know that the LORD saveth not with sword and spear:”
for the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you unto our hands.”
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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.
“And David put his hand in his bag, and he took thence 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
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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.
“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 will be more and more
and more so-called evil until you reach that place. Then you can do what he did.
“And David took the head of the Philistine, and brought it to Jerusalem; but he put his
armour 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 and 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 10 minutes or
10 days or 10 months.
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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 sometime: 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. I’m going to call it
“Cosmic Television”: The method in which Goliath appears, problems appear, other forms of
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error appear. And 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 six, but I
assure you by the time our talk is finished next week, it will. And so chapter six in The
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.
For 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 nonexistent
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
Substance of your Being, when you know that you have come from Bethlehem, is revealed as
nonexistence.
Then we, too, can say to Saul, to the mind, “I’ve been born of Bethlehem.” I come from
Jesse of 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 lives 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’t be a condition if there’s no person or dog or whatever
there. And both of these are done by knowing that only Spirit is.
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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 10 cards, 20 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 The Contemplative Life.
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Class 18A
Three Measures Of Leaven
Herb: In the “Contemplative Meditation” chapter six of The 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 myself, 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 the 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
measure 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 cannot 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.
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Class 18A : Three Measures Of Leaven
Never will there be less than the 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––is 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 opposing to it as non-real. The power of
the Father, then, should be flowing, so much so that you can now sit back in 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 the 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
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acknowledge the One. And so we live and move and 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 myself out of the one infinite Identity; and I am
separating myself 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
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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 were no 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 a 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
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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 at 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 the apple tree. 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 yourself 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 yourself 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
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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 is 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.
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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 in 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 24 hours a day with your eyes open, but neither do you go to the
gasoline station and ask for gas 24 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, Muslims can have 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.
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Your pleasures are different, it’s true. They are the 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 come 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
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human mind. This is the joy: Being able to say, “Thank you, Father, for that incredible action,
that 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.”
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Class 18B
Cosmic Television
Herb: 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 experience 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 50 million people look at you, they are seeing 50 million
different mental images about you; and it's important to know this for several reasons. You
may think you're sick, and 50 million people looking at you will say, “She's sick,” or “He's
sick.” But one of those 50 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 yourself instead of accepting it and
making a mental image of it himself, 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 himself; and
that image of you in himself 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 I be 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 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
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Class 18B : Cosmic Television
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, and 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
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nothing.” When you're not in the one Self, this cosmic television is automatically taking place
24 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 switchover to the infinite Mind, and you are fed by the
Infinite instead of the cosmic.
You are one’d 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.
“For 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.
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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 the 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
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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 101 in the sixth chapter, “Contemplative Meditation”. 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 the
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
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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 for 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 2,000 years.
Well, Happy Mother's Day.
Thank you.
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Class 19
You Are Divine Life Now
Herb: Today’s chapter in The 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 action, 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 yourself 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,
Class 19 : You Are Divine Life Now
so that having accepted myself 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 900 and 800 and 700, and there’s nothing can stop it.
Nothing! And when you’re almost 100 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 besides 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.
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“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. Now you’ve got two
lacks, two disturbing persons, and two major problems. And 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
yourself 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,
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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 yourself 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.
And 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 nonexistent. God being All, only Divine Life is; and that must be the only Life I am.
But when I accept myself to be Divine Life, I cannot also accept myself 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
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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 myself. 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.
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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 a 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.
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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.
The 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
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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.
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Your Divine Selfhood is knocking at the door of your consciousness. Your Divine Life
is saying, “Accept Me, for I have come that ye 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’s 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 it.
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’ll 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 and measuring in terms of 20,
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30, 40 years. “I am the infinite Christ.” This doesn’t begin or end at a certain place. This is the
infinite Christ. Forget the mask of 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 20 or 30 or 40 percent of that, it’s 5 million
times what you had as a human being. Because we know you can’t attain 100 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 as 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, 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.
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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.
And 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’ve
dragged 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
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tremendous relief and release to feel yourself 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 yourself just to go through them
vicariously, to release yourself from the pre-concepts of the world. 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.
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 Christed and becomes the Christ, having died to a personal sense of self.
Having died to a sense of a personal form, so that a Christed 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 Wayshower, 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
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here; I’m 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 reestablished 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
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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 the 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
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doeth Its own work. It revealeth Itself. It will blossom forth and make the desert as the 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 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 20 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. And 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 the 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
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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 yourself 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 60, 70, 80 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.
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Now take those two lacks, those two problems, those two disturbing people; and after
you’ve completed this Identity chart for yourself, 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 can look out and crucify
that false sense of life, and watch your garden grow.
Next week we’ll do chapter eight in The 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 [the] 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
[the] 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; and 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 besides 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.
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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 shall 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 or
trying to improve, you are saying, “I am not the only Life.” And you are having other gods
before me.
Now, you can’t just make the 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; 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 a 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. Then 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 as 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.
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Class 20
Your Identity Already Walks On Water
Herb: Good afternoon. Before I forget it today, before you leave, pick up your gift
copy of The 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 Wayshower 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 Matthew 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 Matthew 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, 5,000 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
Class 20 : Your Identity Already Walks On Water
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 Matthew. 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 the 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 Matthew:
“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
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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 Matthew, 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 . . . [then] entered [the] ship, went over the sea toward Capernaum.
And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them.”
There’s a symbolism 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 6 p.m., three hours a piece. And so, this was between 3
and 6 a.m. 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.
“And 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, and drawing nigh unto
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 at the land
whither they went.”
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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 who follows me] whose shoe’s 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; and 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 of 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 a symbol of
the human birth. Each of us comes into this mortal sphere the same way––actually 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 had come out of
the little fish stage. He had 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
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
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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 have seen light shine
upon 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
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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 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 rising 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, clambored 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
outpictured one scene, which we have learned to call cosmic television; and the illuminated
Consciousness outpictured another scene, which we have called Infinite Mind television. That
is what happened. Two different scenes.
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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.
And 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 outpictures 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 Bekin’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 we won’t stop.”
Now, you see, there’s a better Way. We can’t all get into a Bekin’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?”
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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 besides 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 never 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 The 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.
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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 which can behold the raging sea and the whirlwind,
which can step out of time and space is part of the property of all who are 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 to 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’s bad. And so, you’ve got a duality, a double consciousness. You’ve got the belief that there
is 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 outpictures 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 a third party who isn’t
there. And 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
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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
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I can never leave you. The Spirit quickeneth, and for that reason Paul could say, “In spite of
all the infirmities that besiege 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 a 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 windstorm 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 are 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 nonexistence 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 says 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
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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 nonexistent.
Only I, the invisible Spirit, exists; and that is the difficulty of that teaching of walking
on water. They proved the nonexistence 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
waiver 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.
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.
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.
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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. And
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
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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 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.
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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.
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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 [emotional 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
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 through 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 the 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 with 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
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conflict, sometimes on a limited, human, personal scale; sometimes on a complete community

scale. But right there, the fields were 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
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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 the swirl 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 and feel 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’d be wonderful if you 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.
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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 reestablishes 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.
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Class 21
Total Re-Identification
Herb: We know that when Jesus walked upon 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 nonexistence 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 outpictured, 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”
Herb Fitch - Living In The 4th Dimension 1971
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 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. And 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 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 have 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 have located the mirage––and the mirage which is the source of the mirage. You’ve
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Class 21 : Total Re-Identification
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,
nonexistent; 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 a 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 had resurrected the
dead boy at Nain. 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 and all those who are so
eager to follow a man that his name was not man, Jesus. His name is never the head of a
religion. “You cannot follow the person,” he said to the 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.
“And 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
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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
saved 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.
“And 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 are 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. And, behold, there
arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he
was asleep.”
Now, the “tempest in the sea” is always an outpicturing of the inner consciousness of a
group of people. The whirlwind is the outpictured consciousness of that area. Always, the
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visible, material world is the inner level of consciousness that has been attained by individuals
collectively. And 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 nonexistence.
God is not in the whirlwind, and however 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 outpicturing a 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 outpictured of those who dwell
there. It is world mind fooling, with its cosmic hypnotism, those who still believe in a
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?”
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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 nonexistence 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 goods, and there are no bads. There is
only invisible Spirit, and the outpictured 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 as 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 dissolves the
world pictures. It is I who adjusts and brings 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 to 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.
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“Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm. But the
men marvelled, 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 outpictures 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 have turned them in about Identity. 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.
This student took quotations, and that was a very good choice.
“I and my Father are one.”
“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 except it were given thee from
above.”
“Ye are the temple of the living God.”
And that spells 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.
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“I can of mine own self do nothing.”
Trust.
Yesterday’s Identity marks tomorrow’s harvest.
You see, we have Substance here.
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 ye 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: Yea, “Be still and know that I am God.”
Now, these are all an experience for the persons who have done these, and there are
others; and they’re 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 is 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.
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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 germ, discord, distress, evil,
error, sin, 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
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.
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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 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,
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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 mountaintop 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
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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 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
nonexistent 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 a 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
nosebleed, no dizzy spell, no this, no that. Only I, I, I am present. There is no other. “The
Lord our God is one . . . .”
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
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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 then.
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 57 is he gone? Why at 53 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
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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 “Daily 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. 151. Acropolis Books,
Publisher]
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 besides 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 and 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?”
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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.
Now 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.
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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 the 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 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. Everything 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 am
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
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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 10, if you haven’t read The 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 absent-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
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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. 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 the 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 have
learned that matter is a mental obstruction with no Reality in God. We have learned that the
conditions of matter are purely hypothetical and hallucinatory. 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 the 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
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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. You did 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 crossword,
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.
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Class 22
Here Is Now
Herb: We’ll take a look at Burroughs’ poem in this chapter.
“Serene, I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea;
I rave no more ‘gainst time or fate,
For lo! my own shall come to me.”
Now those are very reassuring and comforting words to hear, and many have heard
them. They put us in a momentary sense of peace until the little mind begins to say, “Well,
how long do I wait for mine own to come to me? And is there something I can do in the
meantime? Where shall I look for it? Shall I prepare? Shall I make some plans?” And before
you know it, we are lured into the trap of what may be called the mental universe.
Now, we have today something new to do together. And in order to do it successfully,

we have to first get down into the jungle, the jungle of the mind. We have to know why. We
have to answer certain questions for the restless mind. You might say we have to go into the
lion’s den in order to really come face to face with the lion and overcome the belief that there
is power there over the Spirit of God.
Now, if you were to put your finger on one word that covers every problem in this
world, it would surprise you what that word is. And strangely, it was named so that it even
pronounces like “Adam” in Adam and Eve: “A” “T” “O” “M.” We’re going to put the finger
on the atom and say, “There is the cause of every problem.” Yes, we can read about Grace and
mine own will come to me; but we’re going to say that mine own will not come to me through
the atom. And as long as the atom stands there––as long as I have a belief in the material
world of which the atom is the basic ingredient––mine own is not going to come to me, and
Grace is going to continue to be a word in a book.
We want to look at this atom. We want to see how it has fooled us. How, because of
the atom, religion has been able to give us a God who cannot stop germs, a God who cannot
stop pain, a God who cannot stop war. All because of the atom and the mind which perceives
the atom and forms its own impressions, and then makes up its kind of God based on what it
Class 22 : Here Is Now
knows nothing about. We want to see how science, too, can find the cause of every problem in
the world and not even know that they have discovered it.
We have a universe today which is slightly different than it was 20 or 30 or 40

centuries ago. This universe was unknown at that time. We had a physical universe, and we
had it in three levels. We had a mineral universe; we had a vegetable universe; and we had an
animal universe. And out of it came a human universe. Always there was a progression on the
physical level. And so these four components of the physical world were unaware of the next
world, which became known to man as it came over the horizon; and man found himself in a
mental universe, a mental world. And today we live in that mental world, comprehending it as
a physical world, unaware that behind the mental world is still another one coming over the
horizon into consciousness. And so whereas we were given the right to be a king in our
Kingdom, we remain servants and slaves in a mental world.
Now, the components of the mental world have been discovered as the atom; and all
that an atom comprises itself to be in our world is the material substance that we have
mistakenly called our physical forms: the forests, the oceans, and the rivers and the
mountains, the sky, the air we breath. All that we have called matter is the invisible atom. And
so we reach out to grab a handful of this matter. We reach out for a handful of atoms. We
think our security lies in matter, and we’re reaching out for atoms.
Always, whatever we do is based upon that invisible atom. Even our senses––the eye,
the ear, the nose––made of the atom. And so you have eyes that are physical, and the
substance of them is the atom; and they look out upon a world made of atoms. And all you’ve
got is the inter-reaction of the atoms of the eyes with the atoms of the world––atom reacting
to atom––and from it comes human experience. Then we have bullets, and they’re made of
atoms. And we have bombs, and they’re made of atoms. And we have germs, and they’re
made of atoms. And soon you get the idea that God did not create the atom. Science discovers
the world is made of atoms. Truth discovers that God did not make the atoms that the world is
made of, and Jesus reveals it in “My kingdom is not of this world.”
You find your problem is that you are reaching for atoms. You are trying to preserve a
life among atoms. You are building security and safety and everything in life on the basis of
an atom that you have never seen. And all of the karma that we call the cause and effect of
this world is based upon the inter-reaction of the atoms of your physical form––your physical
brain, your physical eyes, your physical senses––with the atoms out there. And as you face
this situation, the Spirit within informs you that the world, which you have said is outside
there, is not there at all. You have built it by the inter-reaction of your atomic brain, your
atomic mind, your atomic senses to the atoms out there. Atom reacting to atom. But how can
an atom react to something if there is no atom?
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If God did not create an atom, what is your eye made of ? And then you face another
Truth: If the eye is made of atoms, and God did not make the atoms, I do not have a physical
eye. If the ear is made of atoms, and God did not make atoms, I do not have a physical ear. I
do not have physical senses because God did not make physical senses. God did not make the
atoms that are the substance of physical senses. And you go in and out of your body, and you
find your heart is made of atoms; but God did not make atoms.
There isn’t a bone or an organ in your body that is not made of atoms, and yet God did
not make them. And then you come where Jesus finally stood: I have no material body, and
the atoms of my senses which are reacting are an illusion. And what they are reacting to must
also be an illusion because that which is not here––the senses that I do not have––cannot
react. The reaction is illusion too. There is no world outside of me. There is no physical
universe outside. There is no external world. And finally, there is no physical me; and so I am
not on the earth.
And we reach that plateau, then, of consciousness where I physically am not on this
earth; and there is no material earth on which I can be. That which says I am is the sense
mind, the atom mind––that which reacts to what is not there and which itself is not here to do
any reacting. You’re in the lion’s den of Truth, and slowly your atomic universe dissolves. Its
only reality is in the atomic mind, in the atomic brain, in the atomic senses that God did not
create. There never was a world of atoms. And the whole material world which we have
worshipped is based upon atoms that are not there. The illusion isn’t the matter. That’s only a
secondary illusion. The illusion of matter is based upon a reaction of nonexistent senses to
nonexistent atoms.
And then, when you finally can accept that the world of atoms is not the Kingdom of
God, is not the creation of God; when you can divest yourself of every belief in a physical
you with physical senses in a physical world––then your only problem is how, then, can I
overcome the atom? And the mind will struggle with that for a long time. If it accepts that it
wants to overcome the atom, it will strive to do so; and it will set up all kinds of barriers to the
success of overcoming the atom. It will say, “God, help me. God, bring me this. God, I seek
your help to overcome the atom.”
And the mind will try to build an improved sense of mortality. The mind will try to
correct situations. The mind will think, “Well, I have all this karma behind me that I’ve got to
write off first,” unaware that karma is only in the atom, and that all an atom can control is
another atom. All the power of atoms lies in its power over atoms. And finally, it dawns upon
you there is only one way to overcome the atom; and that is to know it isn’t there. You cannot
overcome it if you believe it is there because that is the trap. Before, you were trying to
overcome matter, which is visible. Now you are trying to overcome the atom, which is the
basis of matter, which is invisible. And when you know the atom is not there, then all matter
based upon the presence of an atom is equally not there.
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The overcoming of the atom is the knowledge that there is no atom to overcome.
Science, which gave us the atom as the substance of the material world, gave us a substance
that is not there; but it is the invisible substance of matter. It proved the nonexistence of
matter when it gave us a nonexistent substance as the substance of matter. All of this to Jesus
was nothing. And so “I have no material body” was his final conclusion about himself and
about every person in the world. To him there was no person outside, no form outside, no
thing outside, and no human condition outside. He lived in an unobstructed universe without
atoms.
And now you’re in that place where to overcome the belief in the presence of an atom
and the secondary belief in the presence of matter––which is based upon the atom––you find
that you cannot reach the state of nonresistance as long as you strive to do it mentally. Now
think for a moment of the ramifications involved in this. You seek financial security, and that
takes the form of money. Money is matter. Matter is based on atoms. Atoms aren’t there.
What is money? It is a concept, but yet you’re seeking that concept. You seek a home. A home
is based on matter. Matter is based on atoms, but there are no atoms. What is a home? A
concept. You seek health. Health is based on good matter. Matter is based on atoms. Atoms
aren’t there.
Every physical problem is based on some kind of disruption in the relationship that we
entertain in mind between the atoms of our body and the external world. We don’t mind being
made of atoms as long as they’re harmonious. It’s only when the discord enters in, when the
ratio between one set and another set is discordant, that we’re concerned. Then we’re willing
to look at the ultimate Truth. The ultimate illusion, then, is that me which is made of atoms.
That is the basis of the dream world. That is the basis of every condition from which we
suffer. And as long as you try to overcome that condition with your mind, you find that you
fail; and there are many reasons that the mind fails.
We know for one thing that the mind you are trying to reason with has its own built-in
set of logic, which is not divine logic. The mind reasons, “This is a bad condition. Certainly,
God approves of a good condition.” And you’re wrong. God doesn’t approve or disapprove of
any human condition, good or bad. The mind is not the Mind of God. This is the mind that
identifies evil. The Mind of God does not identify evil. The human mind, which identifies
light and dark, good and bad, is in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It is a mind
separated from Reality. It is based on five senses which are based on invisible atoms, which
are based on nothing. All atomic thought is is cosmic thought. And you come right up to the
cosmic mind, which is creating the illusion of cosmic atoms; and you find there is no cosmic
mind there.
And so as long as you try through this individual human mind, you will try to channel,
to outline; to seek person, place, thing, improvement, correction; and it won’t work. Be still
and know. And there’s the paradox we come to. If I’m still, how can I know? If I’m not
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thinking, how can I know anything? What can I use to know with? And I know that’s the
paradox we all go through. They tell me to be still, and they tell me to know the Truth. Now,
which shall I do? If I know there’s no atom, I’m using my mind. If I know that everything is
illusion, I’m using my mind to know it. So I’m always in this paradox of trying to know the
Truth that makes me free and also trying to be still in the mind that is supposed to know the
Truth. That’s why today’s class is so important.
There’s only one way to get out of the dream of the atom world. Be still, yes, in the
mind; and know in the Soul. And the secret of Grace is when you touch the Soul realm in the
stillness of the mind. Then you are not in the atom universe. Until then, the mind, which itself
is an atomic creation, is trapping you into perpetuating the very conditions you’re so eagerly
striving to lose. Be still in the mind until you open the bud of the Soul. Until that Soul says,
“Now, you have been still sufficiently to touch the fourth dimension. Now, I in the midst of
you will reveal all that you were seeking in what you thought was an external world of
atoms.”
There is no external world of atoms, and everything you sought in that external exists
in the midst of you. The Kingdom of God is not external. It is within your Soul, not in your
mind. And every religion in the world that has God in their mind finds that it has a God with
no power. A God who cannot heal a flea. A God who has no concern about his so-called
children, even though they worship him. A God who will not stop an assassination. A God
who will let mothers die in childbirth. A God who is completely indifferent to this world.
Why? Because it’s not a God at all. It’s a mental image, and the world is worshipping that
mental image called God.
You cannot know God. You cannot know Spirit. You cannot know Reality. You cannot
know Truth with your mind. You can only know the mental universe, the world in which the
invisible atom has fooled the religions and the scientists of the world. And everyone is
running around trying to improve the world, and there is no world to improve. It is all based
on invisible atoms that aren’t there. And as long as you’re trying to find your security in the
world, in your mortal selfhood, you are in the illusion that you are going to improve
something; and even the improvement is illusion.
Always, we are chasing shadows. But when you touch that realm which the mind
cannot touch, which is the realm of the Soul, which is the fourth-dimensional Universe––then
you touch the infinite Essence, which is the Substance of all that you have been seeking. Then
the infinite Essence, touched through your Soul, pours through, flowing as the Grace that
forms Itself; and the law of Self-fulfillment is brought into your experience. There is no
karma. There is no being a servant to the cosmic mind. There is no chasing shadows. There is
only being a beholder of the Reality.
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“I have come to glorify the Father,” he said. “All thou hast given me, I have kept in
thy name.” We are never a witness to the invisible glory of God with our human minds. All of
the hosannas we sing, all of the words we speak, and all of the hopes within us are false
human logic––fooled by this invisible little fellow that has been fingered by science and
unknown to religion––the atom, which makes the atom man, the atom world, the atom
condition, the atom lack, and the atom limitation. From that little atom comes the heart attack.
From that little atom comes the belief in cancer. From that little atom comes every disease in
this world, all of them based on a change in a condition called matter. And none of it is there.
But to the mind it’s there.
We are brought now into the realm of Grace, the Soul. The fourth-dimensional
Essence which is not touched by the natural man who receiveth not the Essence, the things of
God. Our Grace never flows because we deserve it. You can fast or sacrifice or do good
things. That isn’t what brings Grace to you at all. The only thing that brings Grace to you is
like the overcoming of the false belief in the presence of the atom or matter: You overcome
the false belief that the Grace you seek isn’t here. It always is here. You never go out to attain
it or acquire it. You learn to be still in the mind, alive in the Soul so that Grace may reveal
Itself. You don’t pray for It any more than you pray for sunlight. You don’t seek It any more
than you seek sunlight. You rest in the knowledge that here Grace is.
Now, what we want to do today is establish a very firm foothold in Reality. We want to
recognize when we are in the mental universe and when we are in the Soul Universe, so that
we are not deceived into perpetuating the illusion while we think we’re coming out of it. We
want to know when we’re seeking what isn’t there. We want to know when we’re doing the
Divine or when we’re doing the human. You will discover that when you’re in the mental
universe, you’re always in a state of time. Somehow you are drawn out into hoping tomorrow
will be better.
When you’re in the mental universe, you’re always in a place. You’re in a chair.
You’re in a trolley. You’re in a car. You’re in a theater. You’re at a lecture. That’s still the
mental universe. Always, in the mental universe you go from here to there, and you return
from there to here. You go up or you go down, or you travel at a certain rate of speed. None of
this exists in the the Universe of Grace. And to say, “Mine own will come to me” is beautiful.
But it will only come into your experience when you have moved aside all of the mental
barriers which prohibit Grace from becoming active experience. If the shades are down, the
sun, which is ever there, cannot come through. If the shades are up, the sun shines in. If the
shades of your mind are pulled down, Grace can be present; but it will do you no good.
Now there are certain qualities, then, that are necessary to make a radical change so
that you are not just improving your mental concepts to improve your mortality, but walking
consciously in the Soul Universe. Living in God, moving in God, having your Being in God
through Soul realization, not mental realization. Ultimately, we want to come to a place where
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we’re doing something we never dreamed we would do. The first is to establish that level of
Consciousness which you recognize as a Soul level. Something that you can put into activity,
into action, and hold regardless of what appearances try to draw you away.
Now let’s get these four or five or six key ideas down. The word Here, the word Is,
the word Now, the word One, the word Perfection, the word Love. Now, these are all part of
your Soul Consciousness. In mind you have here and there. In mind you have was, is, and will
be. In mind you have yesterday, today, and tomorrow. In mind you have many; you have
multiples. But we are going to see that in Soul everything is Here; everything is Now;
everything Is; everything is One; everything is Perfect; and everything is Love.
Now, when you’re not in those understandings, you are in the mind; and you’re not in
the Soul. That’s how you will recognize that you have slipped into a mental universe. And the
moment you do that, you can be sure that your continuity of Grace has been interrupted. The
moment you slip into the mind, you are literally turning away from all that you are seeking.
God is Here. This never changes. And to the God of Hereness this earth is not broken
up into little places. This earth is Here to God. And therefore, this earth, which is Here to
God, is also Here to the Son of God. And by Here, I mean not there but Here. The word
“there” drops out of your vocabulary in the Soul. Every “there” ceases to exist because to God
everything is Here, and I and the Father are One. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness
thereof” Here and Now.
The significance of this will become apparent in a moment. You have identified your
Self as infinite Being. You have said: “I am the infinite Invisible. I am the Divine Child. I am
That I Am.” Fine. Now you’re going to be held to being what you said you are. God never
said, “There’s a rock here, and there’s a rock there” because everything is within God. And
therefore, everything within God is Here to God; and therefore, everything that is within the
infinite Invisible is Here to that which I am. The moment you have a there, not a Here, you
are denying Identity.
So it was very important on these little identification charts we’ve been making up not
to put down words, but to put down your proven Consciousness, something you can live by.
When you say, “I am the infinite Invisible; I am the infinite Christ,” that means to you
everything is Here. You can be sure if everything wasn’t Here to Jesus Christ, there would
have been no miracles. “Here I am,” said the Voice when Moses wondered why the bush was
not consumed, though it burned. “Here I am.”
Whenever there’s a laying on of hands in the Bible in the physical appearance, it is

because the one who is laying on hands is recognizing the invisible Identity of another. And
the invisible spiritual hands that are being laid upon the other is the recognition of Here I Am,
I which is in the midst of thee. I is in the midst of him and her. I am Here. I am Here. I am
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Here. I am in a thousand places. Here I am. The I in the midst of you is in the midst of
everyone else. Here I am.
One day you will hear that when you look out at another: “Here I am.” And this is the
secret of the ages when it’s understood. For that “Here I am” in another and the “Here I am”
in you are one and the same. You have thought of yourself as looking out of these two eyes
and living in this form while trying to become aware that you are the infinite Christ, and that
step must be taken now in Consciousness: “Here I am.” You see that bird on the tree? When it
says to you, “Here I am,” that is your Self where that bird appears. And when it says “Here I
am”; when you know that I in the midst of you is I in the midst of the bird, you will come to
another secret: That I in the midst of everyone on this earth is You, and that is the infinite
Christ. And that is how you will know you’re in the Soul realm.
To declare it in your mind is nothing. For It to declare Itself in your Soul is everything.
As we sit here now, I in the midst of you am the I in the midst of every individual on earth. It
is important to reach a plateau, which may never have occurred to most of us, to listen so
intently within that I in the midst of the bird, that I in the midst of the ocean, I in the midst of
the sky, I in the midst of everything on this earth declare that I am in the midst of you. And
where I am, I am one with the I in the midst of you because I am you. And therefore, I in the
midst of the bird am Here to you. When I am in the midst of the bird, I am no longer there to
you. I am Here. For the Hereness of the I in the midst of the bird is the Hereness of your own
Being. When you catch this, you have your Consciousness out of the trap of being in a body.
The Voice actually declares from the bird, “I am Here,” and that Here means Here to
the person who hears it even though there is distance between them. It shows you there is no
distance. “I am Here,” and that may come to you from another century. And that Here is also
Now. When I declares its Hereness and its Nowness to you, It is telling you about your Self. It
is removing the mask of matter, the mask of atoms, the mask of time and place.
It’s important to practice the knowledge that I am a hundred feet away, two hundred
feet away, five hundred feet away; and that five hundred feet away is Here. That thousand feet
away is Here. Every place in this world is Here because it is I. It is I who is in the midst of
you. And you’re catching the true mysticism when you know that I on every planet am Here. I
in every century am Here, and that I is the only I you will ever be.
That is why you can say, “I am not a person on this earth. I am I in the midst of all that
appears on this earth. I am not this fragment in the form. I am the infinite I everywhere.” And
everywhere is Here because everything in the Universe is Here to I. There is no place in the
Universe that ceases to be anything else except Here to you. Alaska is Here. New Zealand is
Here. Home is Here. Wherever you are the Universe is Here, and this is the turning. As you
dwell with this, as It registers, you find you’re not in mind. And that’s how you know it’s
registering. Because it begins to give you a sense of expansion, of immediacy.
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You begin to see why everything was Here to Jesus. There was no “there” in his
vocabulary or his Consciousness. “There” did not exist. I is everywhere. And everywhere,
therefore, is Here in I. There was never a second’s lapse of time. I is always Now. And before
there was a second of time to lapse––stretch forth thine hand, thine arm. Always there was a
Now and only Now. There wasn’t an instant hesitation.
Now is the perfection of I. Now is the perfection of love. Now is the power of the
Divine. And what comes forth? I do, for I realized is Grace. I is the Essence Now. I know thy
needs. I perform. I perfect. I am the bread. I am the Way. I am the bread out of the sky
because I am Here. I am the Divine manna. I am the Life. I am the Way. I am the
Resurrection.
Always it is I, and it is always I Here and Now, perfect. It is the Consciousness of I

Here––not just Here, but I of the Hereness of everywhere––which brings forth Grace. If you
think I is Here, only Here––No. Here is infinite. I is infinitely Here, and the distinction is the
difference between the manna that flows and the manna you hope for that never seems to
arrive.
As you sit in a room consciously aware that there is nothing in the Universe but I; that
I is the infinite Spirit of God and that is your name, and that I comprises within Itself all of the
Father; that the I within you and the I within everyone you know is the same I, all indivisible,
One Self, same I; then you know that the I within everyone you know is the only Being on the
earth. That I is who you are, not this me; and that I is One with the Father.
When that I is your Identity, then this Universe is Here to you; and this Universe is
Now to you; and everything is Is-ing Now Here to you. Then you’re in your Soul. Now this is
going to become standard Consciousness. Here, universal Here, is Here. Eternal time is Here
Now. There are no more tomorrows. There is nothing going to happen tomorrow that isn’t
Now Here in Spirit. You have your infinite Nowness, your infinite Hereness, your infinite
Isness; and that becomes the permanent Consciousness of your Soul. Whatever would draw
you out of It, you meet Now instantly with a recognition that I don’t have to wait till
tomorrow. It’s what I know Now in my Soul that is going to be the human tomorrow. It’s what
I know Here in my Soul as the Isness of God, not the future of God. Here is Now God perfect;
and there is no other power.
As long as this remains your Consciousness, you’re not separated back into mind,
which again separates you from Reality. The conscious Awareness of God is Here Now, and
the meaning of those words, “Here is Now,” includes the infinite Eternal. There is no action
on the face of the earth that to you is not Here because your invisible Spirit is where the
action seems to be, and your invisible Spirit, which is where the action seems to be, is Here as
well as to a human there. One Spirit, and that brings everything Here where you are; and
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when everything is Here where you are because your Spirit is everywhere, It must flow. It
flows only through that Consciousness.
We may not do it today, but we will have to look at every one of the healings of Jesus
and see that never once, never once did he move outside of God is Here Now. And that Here
didn’t mean where he stood. It meant where the fellow was 300 feet away or 300 miles away.
That was Here to the I of Spirit. And that’s why he said, “Now is your son well. Now sit down
and eat.” There’s no other time. The perfection of God is always Now Here. The moment you
have found some way to accept this, you’ll find yourself relaxing. That’s how you’ll know
you’re moving out of the mind universe. The moment you feel that, “Oh, oh, I can relax
then.” Then you’ll know your Soul is coming forth.
As man has progressed through the various universes into this mental one, still
unaware of a Soul Universe that is now coming over the horizon, he’s striving to improve his
situation; when all he needs do is stand still, and the Soul will reveal that there never was a
world of good and evil; that all lack is in an atom that isn’t there. All limitation is in an atom
that never existed. All hunger, all poverty, all war. All of these are atom images made into
visible images through the reaction of sense mind to the invisible, nonexistent atom. And as
we stand still, all of this action and reaction ceases to be. The Soul coming through the
horizon of the new Consciousness reveals the fourth-dimensional realm, swallows up the
third, and into your life pours Essence to fill the forms. Light to remove the darkness. Truth to
remove division and duality. The Hereness of you becomes manifest.
The Love of the Father becomes the Light of the world. This new Consciousness of
Soul, resting in Here is Now the fullness of God everywhere, is brought right into Here; and
you are truly a king in your Kingdom instead of a servant to the cosmic mind, instead of a
mortal trying to find solutions to problems that only exist in a mental universe. Then mine
own comes to me because mine own is realized as being Here Now. Here is love. Here is
friendship. Here is companionship. Not in atoms.
The moment you insert your mind to find out how to build a friendship in the atoms, a
friendship or companionship in atoms or security in atoms, you are trying to channel the
Infinite. And it would be marvelous if it worked, but it doesn’t. And if it worked, we would
only short-change ourselves. It doesn’t work, and we have to ultimately come to the higher
ground of Soul. Now you may still think that you’re going to enter Soul with your mind, and
you cannot. The crucifixion is there. The resurrection of Soul, bringing forth the infinite
Universe of Truth, depends completely upon the crucifixion of the mind which has falsely
conceived a world of atoms. Grace becomes the permanent dispensation of Reality made
visible.
The substructure of atoms is removed in our mentality, and with it goes the mentality
that gave it birth. Then the peace comes, the peace which says, “My Peace is evidence that I
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am come into your Consciousness. My Peace is evidence that you have died to the mental
realm. My Peace is evidence that you have found the meaning of spiritual righteousness.”
Your righteousness now exceeds all of the scribes and the Pharisees. It is the righteousness of
total mental surrender. Everything you seek, you put in one great big bag and throw it away.
Your Soul is seeking nothing, and if you are still seeking, you haven’t found your Soul. If you
are still seeking, you have not trusted Identity. I contain the seed of all that exists. I am the
Tree of Life, and I grow my own fruit. The external world gives you false fruit.
The Kingdom of God within you is God is Here Now, and Its fruit is the fruit of the
vine. The locusts cannot eat Its fruit, and all the lost years of the locusts are broken when you
grow the fruit from the vine of the Kingdom within so Jesus could say, “I have glorified
Thee.” We are learning how to say, “I am learning how to glorify Thee.” I am learning how to
be a witness––not in a human mind––not a false witness. As you stand in the Truth that God is
Here Now and that around the corner is Here to you, the accident around the corner means
that God is Here Now; and therefore, there is no accident around the corner except in the
mental world of atoms. When there are two or more who are not in the mental world of atoms,
the accident disappears.
When there is one who is not in the mental world of atoms, the manna falls from
heaven. When there is one who is in the Hereness and Nowness and the Isness of perfect
Love, in spite of every appearance to the contrary, you have the fourth dimension of Heaven
on earth. And so, ultimately, we can say when I am in the Isness, the Hereness, and Nowness
of God, earth for me is the earth spoken of when we are told that, “The earth is the Lord’s,
and the fullness thereof.”
The earth of man is the earth of atoms. The earth of God is the invisible Spirit which
to man appears as a world of atoms. That earth which is the world of atoms is not God’s. Its
fullness is deception, but the earth that is the Lord’s is Heaven. And man, looking at Heaven,
recreates it into his own mental image and calls it earth. Earth Divine is Heaven, and that
earth is the earth that is the fullness of God; and that earth is the earth you live in in the
Hereness, Nowness, and Isness of God. Then you experience the earth is the Lord’s and the
power of the Lord and the glory of the Lord; and the Kingdom is come into experience, into
living experience. We are then walking in a new Universe, the Universe of Reality; living in It
in the Soul, and we are not in a corporeal form. We are in a new form. We are in the Soul
body. We are not in a form made of atoms that perish.
Now, you cannot cling to the old and have the new. You cannot be around the corner
and call that Here and still be in a physical form. To be infinite, you must be out of a physical
form. To be infinite, you must be spiritual form. To live in the Soul Universe, you must be
Soul form. Be ye perfect as your Father, in that form, in that Soul which lives in the perfect
Universe of Grace.
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In these human years ahead, there are those who will be still struggling to step out of
the problems of the body. Their struggle is as much an illusion as the problems. Whoever will
accept the Word of the Father, that I am Here, as an infinite Truth, will find that neither the
problem nor the struggle is necessary. In your Soul Consciousness, you will be making your
transition out of the world that God did not create. You will find there is no need to seek any
improvement. In fact, it is a disaster to seek an improvement in your human life. It is a perfect
way to turn away from the very thing that God is saying: “Take It. Here is My Kingdom. It is
my good pleasure to give you My Grace.” But the natural man receiveth not, only that
Consciousness which is open to its own Soul.
Today we’re more concerned with the mysticism of this message than the
metaphysical side, and I believe this will be the way we will have to go in order to attain a
Consciousness of Truth, which is not a mental consciousness. As long as you have the
capacity to sit back and think about whether it’s this way or that way, we’re not in Christ; for
in Christ there are no thinking processes.
Now in Christ, there’s no inside and outside; and we’ve reached the part of our
journey where the inside and the outside are one. When you apply this to any of the healings,
you’ll notice quickly that when Jesus looks at a paralytic, he’s not seeing it from where he
stands as the world sees it who reads about it or as any of us would see it if we were looking
at a paralytic ourselves. We see Jesus there, the paralytic here; and they’re both illusion. And
even us seeing the two, we’re illusion too. There was no paralytic outside of Jesus. Infinite
Christ has no outside. There’s no paralytic outside of you. There’s only one outside of your
“person,” but that’s the wrong consciousness. In your true Consciousness, there is no paralytic
outside of your infinite Self; nor is there one inside of your infinite Self because It’s perfect
Spirit.
You can’t find the paralytic outside of infinity or inside of it, and the reason is because
you’re looking at a mental image called a paralytic. And this which is Jesus looking at the
paralytic is a mental image that we entertain too. But Christ isn’t there standing in one form
looking at another form. Christ is I am in the midst of both images. I am the Life, not an
abstraction. I am the real Life of that paralytic, and if I am the Life, there’s no paralytic there.
There’s I am, not reaching the visible sense of human consciousness because there’s no one to
see I am. There’s no Soul Consciousness there to see I am there; and over here, this isn’t Jesus
anymore. This is I am.
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I am where Jesus appears. I am where a paralytic appears, and I am all that is behind
both images. There’s nothing to heal there. There’s just the realization that I am. And
fortunately, this over here called Jesus is the realized I am. And therefore, this over here
which is not the realized I am becomes the realized I am; and the paralysis disappears. Now,
you stand in Jesus’ shoes for a moment and even look at a paralytic outside of your personal
self with Here is Now. Over there now is not a paralytic because there’s no “over there.” That
“over there” is Here to Christ. Therefore, Here Christ––meaning that realization is there––
then the power of Christ automatically is made visible.
Now, think for a moment in silence with me; and let’s see if we can get a noise from
the outside that we could hear. If we hear a noise out there, the minute you hear the noise, let
your mind register “Here I am”; and you’ll begin to get the feeling of the I-ness of you, which
is Here. Usually we get the noises. Now we don’t have one. As I speak to you, this can be the
noise. As I speak to you, let your conscious Awareness be that the I of you is right Here where
this voice is speaking, and that I of you which is Here is the Hereness of your Being.
Whenever you hear a sound anywhere, quickly register “Here I am” in your
Consciousness; and you’ll see how it shows you what some day will be a permanent
automatic thing without you taking thought about it. Wherever a sound occurs, “I am Here”;
and that means the You that is sitting where you seem to be are where that sound is. You are
where that sound is. The Jesus standing there looking at a paralytic is where the paralytic is.
Right where the paralytic is “Here I am.” Do you see how there’s not two separate places?
There’s only one, and it’s all Here. That’s the very same principle on which you have read
about people who in their high states, they’re able to walk out of one body and leave it
somewhere and go somewhere else.
We heard about this minister in earlier centuries who was very adept at living in the
invisible Self, and he was at one sermon, right on the pulpit making a sermon, when he
remembered that he was committed elsewhere to be in the choir right then. And so he said to
his congregation, excuse me, and he just stood there and lowered his head, quiet a few
minutes; and then he resumed. And right at that moment in another church, he was singing in
the choir. This is very incredible to the human mind because it thinks of two places, but you
see, the Truth of you is that You are right now in more than two places; and we want to get to
know that. The bodily you is here, but that’s your mental creation. The Soul Self is
everywhere.
And so the You of you is in many places right now without having to move a muscle,
and you must become conscious that you are in every place because that is infinite
Consciousness. You don’t have to stop the congregation and go Soul traveling somewhere to
be in another place. Because “I am Here,” and “I am Here,” and “I am Here Now.” And how
valuable this will be is quite evident when someone tells you your brother or sister in another
city is sick or something of that nature. “I am Here” will be your instant Consciousness. You
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won’t have to go into a deep meditation. You won’t have to know a lot of Truth and a lot of
memorized formulae. There will be that Consciousness that “I am Here,” which needs take no
thought for your Life, which has no outside, but which is the infinite Hereness. And then you
won’t waste your time trying to do something “out there” when there is no “out there.” There
is only your Self where “out there” seems to be.
Now, we won’t all become mystics overnight, but we do have to rise above this third-
dimensional world of matter and atoms. We do have to prepare the way for the journey into
the higher Self. All healing that is any value is by Grace. The human self does nothing, but the
Soul realization is made manifest as what we call the healing. All supply that is truly supply is
by Grace. All good fortune that is truly good fortune is by Grace. The health, the peace, the
harmony, the prosperity, the cordiality, the graciousness, the wisdom––all that flows out of the
Soul––making Itself manifest in our so-called visible experience, comes by the Grace of a
Consciousness which is always perfect––the infinite Consciousness which manifests Its
perfection on the holy ground where you stand.
Now, there is no place where holy ground is not. There is no such place. Even where
the mortuary appears to be, only the invisible Heaven is. That’s one of the supreme illusions
of this world. The appearance of death and lack and limitation and disease and suffering and
pain is all in the mental universe. Our new horizon takes us into the Soul Universe, and the
mental universe will slowly dissolve. The new law that takes over is the law of Reality.
Now, we have read in this chapter something that we had probably not noticed before;
but it begins to sneak into our consciousness now with greater meaning. And so when you see
this: “I in the midst of you will raise up the temple of your Body.” A whole new Body! That
we had easily passed over so many times. We thought that our old body will be made new,
improved. But no. A whole new Body. Why? Because this isn’t the body we’re going to live
in. The body we’re going to live in is our Body, our spiritual Body; and It is not consumed in
the fire. It is not a paralytic. There’s a wonderful thing you can do in the mind while you’re
waiting to attain more of the Soul realization, and that’s to know that if God didn’t make
something, it isn’t there.
Even if you were a person looking at a paralytic and not in the Soul, you can look at a
paralytic and say, “Did God make it? Did God make a paralytic?” Where is it? It isn’t there?
Did God make poverty? Where is it? Is there another source, another creator, another cause
than God Cause? Where are these things that God didn’t make that we see? And so we have a
simple little way of identifying anything as Reality or unreality: Did God make it? Did God
make poor vision? Did God make bad hearing? Then why do I have bad vision and bad
hearing? Because I live in the mind, and I live in the mind that God did not make because
God didn’t make a human mind.
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The mind which God did not make; how can it have perfect vision? How can it have
anything perfect? It eventually gives up the ghost for that reason. And as long as I live in the
body that God didn’t make, why should the laws of God apply to it? That’s why the brain has
its tumors, and the heart has its attacks because in my mind self, I perpetuate my mental
creation. You know, there’s even a place where just in a second you have this glimpse, and
you can’t hold it; but you realize your whole physical form is nothing but a series of mental
impressions that you have received, conveying to you the form of you. Hundreds and
hundreds of thousands of mental impressions have left you with the impression that you are
there in a form.
But once you peel away each illusion, you’ll find some of it is a visible illusion; some
is a touch illusion. Every sense has been involved in recreating your Christ Self into this
illusion called “the me,” which is the ultimate supreme illusion. There never was “a me.”
There was only I infinite. And when you catch that second in which you know that all I am is
a lot of sense impressions glued together in my mind, you begin to get that vastness of
looking out in a universe which is not obstructed by forms, by matter, by invisible atoms. You
clean out of your mind all belief in anything atomic or visible or tangible or material. You live
in your unobstructed, perfect, infinite, invisible, One Universe.
And now there’s the paralytic. It’s instantaneous: There wasn’t any paralytic to be
there. This cosmic image in time and space, you see it for what it is without taking thought. I
am there Now. The full Godhead is there. I don’t have to think about it. It’s there, and It
knows, and It does, and It maintains, and It supports Itself. It creates and does not permit any
variation from Its perfection. This is your Soul Consciousness. You see the bird, and instantly
something in you says, “This is I invisible.” And all of the space between the bird and your
physical form disappears in your Consciousness because it is all I invisible, and you rest.
You’re not worried about that bird being hurt anymore. The moment you find yourself giving
up fear, concern, doubt, distrust, suspicion, you’ll know you have caught the Soul realm.
And that’s how this whole new Body begins to be part of your Awareness. You’re not
forming It. You’re becoming conscious of It because this Body is bigger than this room. This
Body you become conscious of is the Body that is from here to the bird, and from that bird to
the next bird and throughout the Universe. You become conscious of your infinite Body. Just
think, as you multiply this sense of body into an infinite Body, how that infinite Body is fed
by an infinite Mind and how that all flows to where this visible body seems to be. Do you see
how Grace, then, is only what you yourself cast out upon the waters, coming back? As you
become conscious of your infinite Self, your infinite Self becomes Conscious expressing; and
the Tree of Life puts out Its own fruit that way.
All that you begin to experience is nothing more than your own expanded
Consciousness. And so that’s why when Joel says something here, it begins to have another
meaning for us: “The sun, the moon, and the stars up there in the sky are all under God's
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government.” Ah, now we can see what he was getting at. The government that is there is the
invisible living Spirit that we are seeing as these atomic stars, this atomic moon, this atomic
sun. The invisible government is there as God. What we are seeing is our visible concept of it,
just as we are seeing the visible concept of ourselves. But behind it is I, and I am here. I am
here in the sky. I am here as perfection now Being, perfect, loving, Is-ing. And all of that that
he’s speaking of as the I behind the sky, behind the moon, behind the star––this is the I of
your Being. To be conscious of this I is to bring your Universe into visible harmony. You’re
getting out of finite me.
At the back of the chapter, you have noticed the six, seven chapters he refers to: “New
Horizon,” “God is One,” and so forth in the other books. We won’t do those specifically next
time. We’ll do “Supply and Secrecy,” chapter 11. But you can see what’s happening. We’re
preparing to make the Mystical I our Consciousness. Not a book that Joel wrote, but our
Consciousness as It was his. As It was the Consciousness of Jesus Christ, as It was the
Consciousness of Saint Teresa, as It was the Consciousness of Buddha, as It was the
Consciousness of all those who had discovered the futility of the logic and the reasoning
power of man’s mind as he struggles to improve a world which is based upon the nothingness
of the atom.
And if science did nothing again in its discovery of the atom upon which we have
based our mental universe and our material universe, it has proven the Truth of the statements
of Jesus Christ while it is denying the Truth of them. It’s almost like Pilate, who did us all a
great turn while he was making possible the crucifixion of Jesus, because he was part of the
Divine plan to reveal the nothingness of that crucifixion. There had to be one for us to know
the nothingness of it. Science, which is largely atheistic, is proving the presence of God.
Pilate, who couldn’t care less about Jesus Christ, was proving that the eternal Spirit cannot be
crucified.
And all this is Now. I in the midst of Pilate; I in the midst of Herod; I in the midst of
Caiaphas, the High Priest; I in the midst of the rabble who were spitting; I in the midst of all
those who participated––I am showing you there is no power in form. For in three days that
same form will be there because I in the midst, I am the power Now. And that I is the I of You
Now. Before Abraham was, that I is the I of You Now. That I of You restores the lost years of
the locusts that have eaten the false fruits of a material world. That is the Mystical I. It is the
Self, and it will never be crucified. It will never be in pain. It will never be lacking. It will
never be limited. It is the perfect Self of God, and It is your Self; for we are all that One Self.
When you remove all that appears, there I am. And when you put back all that appears,
I am still there where the visible lie seems to be. When you are that I instead of this me, then
there is no place where You are not; and all of You is infinitely perfect. Now, that’s our Soul
Consciousness. If you have the time and the inclination, pick up your Bible anywhere; and in
the New Testament, you look at any so-called healing. Put yourself in the shoes of the healer
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and stand there in the knowledge that this that I am looking at, this form in this problem over
there, I will face it with Here I am. Now I am. Now I am the Is of God, Being God, perfect.
One infinite I here and none other, and then rest in the Word. Be still and know that this I
which you have declared is God.
Ask yourself then if I, that God, made this condition; and you will be able to say, “
No.” And therefore, shall I improve that condition? If God didn’t make it, shall I improve
what God did not make? If God didn’t make it, can I correct it? If God didn’t make it, is it
there or am I under the atomic illusion? And if it is not there, what is my solution? Be still.
Let the mind which sees it there be still. And then the Soul will tell you this Truth which
makes you free, revealing only I am there, whole, complete, and perfect.
You apply these simple little rules to any of the healings in the Bible, and you will see
that the power of I in you is the healing. When you will stand on those, you will be walking in
the Soul Consciousness; and the Grace that flows will be the sign to tell you you have attained
that Consciousness. It will be quick. It will be sharp. It will be powerful, and it will be
glorious. And It will pave the way for many new mansions of understanding.
Now, “Supply and Secrecy. And we don’t yet know why secrecy is used with supply,
but there must be a reason.
When we meet again, I’d like to know that in your re-identification, you are including
that all time is included within the I-ness of your Being Now; that all space is included within
the Hereness of your Being Now; that all past, present, and future is in the Isness of your
Being Now. That you have taken all that has ever existed and is and ever will be and put it
into a One that is Now Being perfect, and that is You. That is your Self. And if you will even
work with that in a measure, you will see the power of Self-revelation, of Self-expression, of
the Divine Being made manifest as the Word brought into human experience as living Grace.
If any of you care to rework your re-identifications, fine. If any of you wish to put
what you have up here, fine, either way. And then before we get into The Mystical I, we all
want to start with a proper re-identification of Self as living Soul.
Thank you again.
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Class 23
Divine Supply
Herb: We’re in the eleventh chapter of The Contemplative Life, and although the
subject is supply, it would be like discussing one little finger on your hand to leave it at that
level. We have to see the Allness of Being in order to realize the nature of supply, and so we’ll
be reaching out to other elements of this work. Next week we will complete this book, even
though it’s a chapter about Christmas. Christ is next week as well as at the 25th of December,
and so we’ll do that chapter next week. And then on the following Sunday, which I think is
the 27th of June, we will begin The Mystical I, the new book of Joel’s, for at least 12 weeks
into early October probably. And so that’s the continuous program. There’ll be no interruption
for the Fourth of July.
We know that a fish never struggles to swim, nor does a bird struggle to fly. These
come naturally. And we want to learn why the Son of God seems to struggle for supply when
we are told that we are to take no thought for our life, what we shall eat, we shall wear. In
other words, supply is just as natural to the Son of God as swimming is to a fish or flying to a
bird. It’s the very nature of our Being. Perhaps as we look at supply and see that we have a
concept about it, we begin to notice that we have limited supply down to what we believe
finitely. We think supply should be money, dollars, homes, investments, income; but this is
the concept of the earth man.
And although the Father knoweth our needs, and although it is the good pleasure of
the Father to give us the Kingdom, we somehow think that we have to decide in what way the
Kingdom should come to us. And before we know it, we have split away from Truth. We have
entered into concept, into the perception of the senses, into the world illusion. And soon we
say, “My supply has been limited,” and then we face what we consider financial problems.
And so we find that one out of every hundred may be immune to this or maybe one out of a
thousand, but everywhere we go we find financial problems, limitations, and lack even though
the Son of God is unlimited.
When we do mental work to correct this, we go through the illusion that with the
human mind I can permanently improve my condition. And so we take Truth, and we try to
apply Truth. And alas, we discover that you cannot apply Truth. Truth is Truth, and Truth is
Self-fulfilling and Self-acting. The moment you are applying Truth, you haven’t got Truth at
all. And so always we’re stymied about this supply thing until we begin to have confidence in
the Bible. It literally means what it tells us, and it gives us the most unusual way to solve the
supply problem.
It’s so revolutionary that when we look at it, we can’t believe it. It says the way to
solve supply is to take no thought about it. We do not believe that seriously the Spirit could
mean such a thing, and yet it precisely says that and gives us many examples; and the Master
Himself shows us that His own disciples go forth without supply. No purse, no script. But
they’re prepared for the journey with knowledge of Self, knowing that Identity is supply. Now
let’s look closely at the revolutionary teaching about taking no thought for supply in order to
have supply, and perhaps it would be wise to see why, with our application of Truth and our
thought about Truth, we have failed to really nail down the meaning of supply.
You know that the teaching of Jesus starts with God is Spirit. That’s the foundation.
“In the beginning God . . . .” And if you do not start with God, you have no place to start
because God is the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega. “In the beginning
God . . . .” In the beginning Spirit. And you must begin there. God is Spirit, and quickly
follows God is All. Spirit is All. The Allness of Spirit is the fact. And because Spirit can only
beget Itself because like must beget like, Spirit can only beget Spirit and never become
anything else. Spirit remains Spirit. The Allness of Spirit remains the Allness of Spirit, and
there’s nothing but Spirit. And this is the revolutionary teaching, then, of the Bible: God is
Spirit. Spirit is All.
Spirit begets Itself, and there is nothing but Spirit. And you are faced with the fact that
matter is unreal. And so any concept of supply that has to do with matter is an unreal concept.
It is destined to failure. You cannot find material supply. You may call it material supply and
discover to your chagrin that it isn’t. And we find that matter being unreal—because Spirit
can only beget Spirit, and Spirit is All—we have to identify this matter. And we find that the
Bible is telling us that it is a mental concept; that all matter is imagination. And it tells us that
this imagination is cosmic, a universal imagination. And that through our sense perceptions,
we become aware of what is called matter, which is imagination; and therefore, we have
mental matter. All matter, according to the Christ teaching, is made of the human mind.
In other words, you’re seeing nothing except what is in your mind. Nothing is there
outside of your mind. As far as the eye can see you’re looking at your own mind, and you’re
calling it matter, place, person, thing, and condition; but it is your mind. You’re looking at
your thought everywhere, and now your thought says, “I lack. I need. I want. I desire. I must
pay the rent.” But God is All, and God is Spirit. Spirit begets only Spirit. That which is not
Spirit is not there, is not real. What are you lacking? You’re lacking Spirit, but you think
you’re lacking matter. And therefore, you perpetuate the illusion of lack by seeking the matter
that you’re not lacking. You don’t even have it when you have it. You cannot have it or lack it.
It doesn’t exist.
And so a spiritual teaching is about Spirit as All. And finally, we see that the senses
have fooled us into seeking that which has no existence in Reality. We have called it supply,
but we were seeking a material identity, which is mental, which is imagination; and it could
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Class 23 : Divine Supply
never fully satisfy us for that reason even if we secured that which we sought. And finally, it
is all wrapped up with the idea that the material world is cosmic imagination, hypnosis of the
senses, unreal, illusory. And the Master says seek not the things that perish.
Now, once we have established this as fact––once we have confidence in God,

knowing what God is talking about through Jesus Christ––we see that we are told that the
world of matter is not Reality. It is not my Father’s Kingdom, and therefore, it is not here. It is
one cosmic appearance in the mind. And matter being unreal, the motion of matter must be
equally unreal. And now we’re coming to the place where we may be ready to know what is
meant by “Son, all that I have is thine.” But we’re not quite ready because the mind is still
under the influence of concept.
Now let’s go way, way back into concept. Let’s just take our little earth––which is our
material concept––and there it goes spinning around the sun. And while it spins, it’s turning
on its axis away from the sun. And now the sun hits the earth, and then behind the earth is the
shadow of the earth. The sun shining on the earth, the earth spinning on its axis, behind the
earth its own shadow shaped in the form of an ice cream cone. The whole width of the earth
casts a conical shadow behind itself.
And you’re somewhere on that earth, and you’re going to pass through that shadow.
You’re going to enter the shadow on one side. You’re going to pass through the complete
shadow of the earth, and then you’re going to pass out of the shadow of the earth on the other
side; and all of that time is going to be called nighttime. And when you come out of the
shadow of the earth, you’re going to say it’s dawn. It’s morning. It’s sunrise. And now you’re
in daytime. And the whole concept of day and night is whether or not you’re in the shadow of
the earth.
But there is no material earth. There is only Spirit. That which isn’t there is casting a
shadow which cannot be there. And the concept of night and day is based upon that which is
not there. From that concept of day and night, we get time. We measure the movement. We
say that time takes 12 hours for the night to come and go, 12 hours for the day. And then in
that time, we measure the movement of objects, which are not there. It takes an hour to run
from here to there, 5 hours from New York to San Francisco.
First we measure night by the passing through the shadow of the earth, and outside of
that shadow there is no night. And in the same manner, outside of our concept of matter there
is no death. And there is no aging process, and there is no time. And our concept of objects
moving in time builds our sense of space because time and space exist only because we fill
them with shadows called objects. Now you sit down and try to figure this all out with your
mind and try to form some kind of intelligent direction to take through it, and you find you
cannot.
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It’s the same way with trying with your mind to figure out what you’re going to do
about supply. The hopelessness of it is that the very earth you stand on is an illusion. You’re
looking at your concept of the spiritual earth, and you’re identifying everything you see with
that which itself has no existence––with material eyes, with material ears, with a material
sense of touch. And Spirit can only beget Spirit, so nonexistence identifies nonexistence.
Supply in the midst of this is very minor. But there is a law. There is a law that
removes from us the necessity for taking thought about supply, or else the Master would not
have revealed that the way out of the dilemma of supply is through taking no thought. The
Law of Transformation when known to your consciousness enables you to confidently relax,
knowing that supply is a natural action of your true Being.
So let’s look at that Law of Transformation. Let’s see that supply is an expression of
your Self and not something you reach out to draw into yourself. Let’s look at the orange tree,
and let’s remember that the orange is not producing more oranges. The orange is the result of
an action in the tree. And as long as you have the orange tree, you’re not too concerned about
the oranges coming out of the tree. You’re not worried about getting oranges. You have the
tree.
And when the tree produces oranges and they fall off, you don’t say, “I have no more
supply.” You say, “I have no more fruit.” But you know the tree will continue to produce new
oranges, and therefore, you identify the tree as your supply; and you identify the oranges as
the fruit of your supply. You know there’s a law of transformation going on. You know the
tree is doing something about minerals, about water, about air, about sunlight, and combining
them, transforming them into sap; and it is pushing forth the fruitage, or the oranges. Even
when the tree is bare, you’re not concerned. Whether you’re awake or asleep, you’re not
concerned. As long as you have the tree, you will have the fruit of the tree. You know the law
of transformation is taking place.
Now, there is such a law in our life. We call it the law of transforming life. We know
that the Substance of our Being is our Supply, just as the tree and its sap is its supply. And we
know that as the Substance of our Being flows as our Consciousness, It forms Itself into those
things which are needed. We learned that from the Master’s teaching. As the sparrow can
forget where it will be fed; as the lily can forget how it will be clothed because from within
itself something is forming, we learn that within the Son of God something is ever-forming,
and “Son . . . all that I have is thine.”
Let the law of transformation continue to flow through you as you, manifesting its
perfection wherever you are. Do not interfere, just as you would not interfere with the activity
of the tree; and watch how the oranges, or the added things, appear as you become conscious
of the law of transformation. Now, we know this law exists; and we have failed to do one
thing. We have placed a barrier between the law and our experience of it, and the barrier is
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unawareness. Your consciousness of the law builds the bridge which permits the law to enter
through and express. When you are not conscious of the law, it could not become an
expression in your life.
Now, let’s say we become conscious of the law of transformation. First, we must be
the Son of God. The law of transformation doesn’t work in a human being. “Son . . . all that I
have is thine.” Not human being, not dust man, not earth man, not man made of atoms. Son,
Divine Son. And we have been stressing Identity now for six weeks in this class. Identity. We
have had re-Identification.
And so, if you are not the child of God––if you are still this physical, mortal being
who cannot be––the law of transformation is not taking place through your mortal selfhood.
Spirit cannot act outside of Spirit. Spirit cannot act in an illusion. If you have not taken the
time and the effort to re-Identify, to accept your Self as Divine Substance, Divine Being,
Divine Self––if you have no confidence whatsoever in the Word of God or Jesus Christ,
which is expressing the Word of God, or in the Bible which is the Word of God and Jesus
Christ––then the law of supply cannot function in your Being. It will not function in the man
of dust.
But as you re-Identify, as you accept that God is My Father—I have no Father on the
earth but God—then you are accepting that I, the Son, and the Father are never separate. I, the
Substance of God, am Spirit, never less than infinite Spirit, never less than true Being, never
apart from Infinity. And now you are realigning yourself. You are fulfilling the first requisite:
correct Identity, Divine Self. You are taking possession.
And now, in this Self, we are in conscious union with God. And the moment you’re in
conscious union with the Spirit of God as your Spirit, you are in touch with every Divine idea.
Nothing is missing in the Spirit of God. Son, every Divine idea is in the Spirit of God, which
is the Life of You. If you have no confidence in the Life of God as your Life, you have
discovered the barrier that you have placed between you and the experience of your natural
supply. It is lying there unexpressed because of lack of recognition.
And now as you think of it, as you know your Self to be Life Divine––not matter but
Life Divine––you are saying to your senses, “I am not fooled by you. I am Spirit. I embody
all that God has. All that the Father has is mine. And I have confidence in the law of Life,
which is that all that the Father hath, which is mine, is expressing Itself now here. And
therefore, that which I have experienced is the lie.” The moment you have the presence of
God where you stand, realized, you have discovered more than the law of supply. You have
discovered the law of eternal Life. The moment you accept the presence of God, every
problem in your life is revealed as a lie.
Now let’s see what you’re lacking in supply right this minute. What are you lacking?
You’re lacking knowledge of God’s presence. That’s all. You can’t be lacking supply. Supply
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is God. Where God is, supply is. That’s the law. In My Presence is fullness of joy. And what
you’re really saying when you say “I lack” is that you lack the knowledge of God’s presence.
“In the beginning God. . . .” You haven’t begun with God. You started with matter, and you try
to work back to God; and you can’t. There’s no way. Matter has no existence. It can’t go back
into Spirit. You must begin with Spirit. To have Spirit, to enjoy Spirit, to live in Spirit and
experience Spirit, you must begin with Spirit.
So in the beginning of your meditation, in the beginning of your contemplation: God,

Spirit. If you want Spirit, you must begin with Spirit. Always, Jesus began with God. He
didn’t work back from matter to God. I and the Father are One. I am the Way. I now in the
midst of you am greater than he that walks the earth. We have lacked confidence in God, in
God’s Word, in our own spiritual Identity as the one Son of God; and so in creeps the belief of
a separation. Now, you could just as well have said you had dizzy spells or stomachaches as
well as saying you lack supply; and you would find the knowledge of God’s Presence is the
answer to all three. The knowledge of God’s Presence is the answer to every problem.
And while we have been trying to memorize page 26 in a book or page 39 in the
Bible––or what did Joel say in 1952 at such and such a lecture?––we have forgotten the basic
principle is where you realize the presence of God, Omniscience does the rest. Omnipotence
does the rest. Omnipresence does the rest. And you may be sure that every important word in
the Bible and in Joel’s writing was put there by the Mind of God, which knows. And so we
begin to let go of this calculating, planning, striving mind. We don’t have to struggle. We
don’t have to use strategy. We don’t have to plan. We have to do precisely what it tells us to
do: take no thought. Why? Because once you have established that God is present here now,
the work is done. There comes a surge of knowledge that God is here, and then every Word in
the Bible rings with a new clarity. It is My pleasure to give you the Kingdom.
Now watch. All of the added things appear. Why? Because the law of transformation is
taking place in your consciousness. Wherever you look, whatever you see, whatever you
experience, it isn’t what you think it is. It’s your consciousness. Your consciousness is made
visible and becomes your experience. Your whole universe is your consciousness. There is no
outside. There is absolutely nothing outside your consciousness. If it is, you’re unconscious of
it. What you are conscious of is your world, and the quality of that consciousness determines
the quality of your world.
Now, when we look at the wheats and the tares, we find something very fascinating.
That parable shows us the difference between our thoughts about supply and the Truth about
supply, our thoughts about health and the Truth about health. Always the wheat stands for
Divine thought, and the tare or the weed stands for human thought or sense perception. And
you have them growing right alongside each other in your consciousness, in your field; and
the sense perception or the tare says, “I lack supply.” But you really don’t. You lack the
awareness of the supply that is there. You’re entertaining a concept, and you are not suffering
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from lack. There is no one in this world suffering from lack. They are suffering from the
acceptance of the illusion that God is not there. Unaware of the presence of God in their
consciousness, their consciousness cannot manifest that quality of God which is called
abundance. But they are not lacking. Their lack is lack of conscious union with the presence
of God, and that manifests as lack.
You can lack health, but you’re lacking conscious union with the presence of God, and
that manifests as health. And so while you are trying and dedicating yourself to what you
think is Truth, the tares creep into your consciousness because you still depend on sense
perception. You still believe that the world around you is out there because your senses say
it’s out there, and it isn’t out there. There is no outside out there. There is nothing external to
you.
The universe that you experience is your consciousness, and you must take possession
of that universe by getting rid of the tares and not going out to just pluck them
indiscriminately and uprooting the wheat at the same time––but daily separating tares from
the wheat––separating sense perception from acceptance of the living presence of God here.
Letting everything come through your conscious awareness of the Presence. And then Divine
thought, the wheat, begins to feed your consciousness; and the tares, the weeds––the human
sense perceptions––begin to dissolve. And your Consciousness being only the wheat, only
Divine thought, externalizes as Divine activity and shows the law of transformation of
consciousness. Divine thought transforms, and the Consciousness outpictures heaven on
earth.
You’re out of the shadow of earth where there is no night, where there is no darkness,
where there is no death, where there is no old age, where there is no condition unlike the
perfection of God’s Presence. Take no thought for your life is, in a sense, a paradox. It’s like
that paradox last week: Be still and know. And we found out that if we are still in the mind,
we will know in the Soul. And here again we are told take no thought. We also know we’re
told to pray without ceasing. How can we pray without ceasing and take no thought at the
same time? We’re also told to acknowledge the Father in all our ways. How can we take no
thought and acknowledge the Father?
And so we put on our high boots, and we have to wade into that one. We have to
separate these thoughts because each of them is important. Each is to open us up. Each must
be faced instead of merely repeated in the mind. We are to know the Truth that sets us free
and yet take no thought.
We are to separate the wheat from the tares and yet take no thought. You see,
everything is forcing you into a sequence in which you begin to accept only Divine thought.
All that is sense perception we begin to weed out of consciousness. We take no human
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thought. No human thought is acceptable. No sense thought is acceptable. No belief in

anything finite is acceptable. No belief in imperfection is acceptable.
Who convinceth me of sin? No sin is acceptable. No unfulfilled need is acceptable.

There cannot be an unfulfilled need. Every limiting thought is released. Every ungodly
thought is released. Every thought of lack and limitation and sin and disease is released, and
then you’re forced to the higher ground. The acceptance that when I cease being man whose
breath is in his nostrils, when I cease being a person, when I cease having friends and
enemies, when I begin to accept the Divinity of my Being, then I can rest in that Divinity
without thought.
Taking no thought is only possible when you have accepted Divine Selfhood because
then the Mind of the Father is your mind. Taking no thought forces you into the acceptance of
immortality now. Ah, but now Joel comes along and tells us so many interesting ways in
which, even when we think we know the Truth about supply, we still have barriers. We have
not known, for example, that supply cannot come to us unless we have sent it forth. And you
say, “How can I send it forth? I don’t know how. I don’t know where to find it.” And yet, it
cannot come to you until you have sent it forth. And then he says you must obey the law of
secrecy, and we never connected that with supply.
Now, there are quite a number of ways in which Joel teaches us to express supply
spiritually. Mind you, you’re standing in the Consciousness of Divine Selfhood knowing that
all that the Father hath is mine. The Tree of Life is ever sending forth its fruit. God being
perfect, the expression of God in me must be perfect; and in that you have confidence, trust.
You rest without question, without seeking or striving or struggling or planning. You’re
accepting. And now, because supply is spiritual, if you’re looking for physical supply, you’re
missing the point. Spiritual supply manifests as invisible spiritual fruitage. That is why you
cannot see Divine supply. That is why you can be fooled by physical supply. Always the
fruitage of supply is as spiritual as the supply itself.
And when you have the knowledge of that spiritual manifestation, then in the visible it
shows forth as your improved concept of dollar, home, financing, food, clothing, shelter.
Always the visible is merely the concept or idea we entertain about the invisible. Between the
supply itself and the visible manifestation, there is an invisible manifestation known only to
the Child of God; and that Consciousness of it transforms into the visible. Now, you are not
conscious spiritually of that manifestation if there are certain things in your outer work that
you’re not doing because these are the signs. If you’re not praying for your enemies, it is
because you’re not conscious of the invisible Circle of Christ.
You may think this has nothing whatsoever to do with supply, but yet that’s the very
core of the chapter. It has everything to do with it. Acknowledge Me in all thy ways. You want
spiritual supply, but you will not acknowledge Spirit as the Allness. And you see, when you’re
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praying for your enemies, that is because you are aware of the spiritual nature of each
individual who appears as an enemy. Forgiveness, to forgive the offender. Why? Because the
Father says, “Forgive seventy times seven,” and you say, “What’s that got to do with supply?”
Well, that’s the point. You can’t deny Spirit over here and expect Spirit on the other side to
shower you with fruit. You must acknowledge Me in all thy ways. If you do this unto the least
of these my brethren, you do it unto Me. In other words, if you don’t have a spiritual
consciousness, how can you have spiritual supply?
A spiritual consciousness is forgiving all offenders, and Joel says it isn’t even enough
to forgive those who in some way are unfriendly to you. No, you must forgive those who
offend your neighbor. You must forgive those who offend your race. You must forgive those
who offend your nation and your religion. And then he says pray for those who despitefully
use you and persecute you, that ye may be the children of God. Oh, we overlooked all that.
We were too busy trying to get supply. Yes, yes, you want spiritual supply. Then acknowledge
Spirit as the Substance of the Universe. Look past the form.
And so he teaches us, both the Master and Joel, to look past the forms of the
offending, persecuting neighbor, country, religion, or whatever it might be that is offending in
some way, and to forgive all on the face of the earth by the recognition of their Divine
Selfhood. And if you haven’t reached the level where this is a normal thing for you, then the
lack of supply will continue to be a burden.
Ah, then he says there are other things too. He says one of the greatest is gratitude, and
that’s where the secrecy comes in. Do not your alms in public. Now that has a special
meaning. In the first place, the giving is not to a person. In the second place, the giving is not
from a person. It is the expression of your spiritual Selfhood, and it is the recognition of
spiritual Selfhood. Always gratitude is the recognition of a spiritual source and a spiritual
recipient, and until you have caught the feeling of expressing, then the spiritual
Consciousness still is not there.
Now, those who give great benevolences are not giving spiritually. The widow’s mite
was more important. It was what her capacity was that counted. She gave all she had. Who
did she give it to? Nobody. She expressed her recognition of Spirit. Joel says this is the most
important barrier to overcome in the understanding of spiritual Selfhood and in the expressing
of spiritual supply. And the one thing he cautions us against is the same thing Jesus cautioned
us against: Whatever your alms are, wherever your charities or benevolences are––how many
orphans you keep, how many sick people you support––this is all within your Self.
It is your recognition of spiritual Selfhood everywhere. Ah, but there’s a secret behind
that too, and the secret is that secrecy is necessary because there’s nobody to tell! The
moment you feel that there’s somebody to tell, you have gone out of the belief in one invisible
Selfhood. You’re coming into multiplicities. You’re coming into personalities, and the giving
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is no longer spiritual recognition. The giving now is for a consideration, for a pride, for a
vanity; and the point of it is gone.
A million dollars given from a human standpoint is not spiritual giving. It is not based
on spiritual recognition. It has nothing to do with spiritual living or spiritual Identity. Service
is a great way of expressing spiritual awareness––but the way you express that service. If you
happen to be in a business which serves the public, you may discover that you have your ups
and downs. But when you understand what you do spiritually and when you are endeavoring
to fulfill a spiritual rather than a human need––when you’re looking through the human need
to the spiritual need behind it–– you will discover a great secret.
Whereas in your physical human way you had been going up and down, up and down,
pleasing some and not pleasing others––the moment you find the spiritual need that you can
fulfill in your work, you’ll find you always hit the target; and the need for you is increased.
Any business that can transform its understanding into fulfilling spiritual needs––in other
words, not the supply of an individual, not the fruitage of an individual but the inner spiritual
Selfhood of the individual––will find that it is always sought after. That’s how an artist or a
composer achieves more lasting distinction. The need that is reached is deeper. It touches
something in the Soul of the individual. That’s what makes Shakespeare an immortal writer.
And when we are doing this with the idea of serving others spiritually from our
own spiritual resources and serving their spiritual needs, we discover that we have an
increased awareness of our own inventive genius. Talents that we had thought were not there
begin to emerge, and talents that we knew were there begin to show a depth we hadn't
suspected. It’s the same as the physical supply. Once you fall into the law of transformation so
that the invisible begins to work through into the visible by your awareness of its presence,
this transformation is not just in supply.
You remember the lame beggar who had asked Peter and John at the gate for money?
Gold and silver have I none. They didn’t give him physical supply, but he leaped jubilantly.
He walked for the first time in his life. They gave him freedom. They gave him his own
Substance, and that was to teach us that when you ask humanly, we know not what to ask for.
He would have been content with a few pieces of silver. Instead, he walked. We would be
content with increased what we call supply. That’s not enough. That’s the human finite mind
saying, “If I have another 30 pieces of silver, everything will be all right.” That’s the deceiver.
That lack of supply is going to plague us until we are lifted up beyond, until we come
to the place where I know my Identity as the very Substance of all supply, and then, instead of
just giving the additional silver will enable me to walk in the Kingdom. It will give me my
freedom. That’s the supply. The real supply is spiritual Consciousness, spiritual righteousness.
To know Spirit aright is Life eternal. Would you trade Life eternal for 30 pieces of silver?
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Every problem, whether it’s supply or health or whatever, is an arrow pointing to higher
Consciousness. It’s saying that when you find Me in you, then your freedom begins.
Now, suppose we look at take no thought to find out if there is something in this very
familiar series of verses that says something new to us. Suppose we read all the invisible ink
and see that there was a revolutionary way of thinking and of living that was being presented.
A way so unique that we today who are still seeking increased supply have clearly overlooked
the Master’s message.
And so he said to his disciples,
“Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall
put on.”
If we are to accept that, then the only way you can is to change the concept of your
life. This life––yes, you’ve got to take thought about it. But take no thought for your Life,
your real Life. And so in the twinkling of an eye, he has revealed that our real Life is so
perfect as our Father that there’s nothing to take thought about. He’s lifting us into the
Consciousness that we are God Life.
Be ye perfect as your Father now. And you will admit that if you knew yourself to be
the perfect God Life now, would you take thought? And so when you’re taking thought, you
are rejecting Identity. You are saying, “I am not God Life. I must take thought about it.”
Reverse that. I don’t have to become God Life. There’s nothing I must do to become the Son
of God. Spirit is all there is. I accept the teaching of Jesus Christ: God is Spirit. God is All. I
am Spirit. My Life is Spirit.
Now it’s just a matter of controlling the sense mind, which wants to take thought as if
I was something other than Spirit Life. You see how clear that is? Take no thought for your
life because your Life is Divine Life now. And every time you take thought for your life, you
are rejecting your own Being. You are stepping right out of Divine Self. Divine Self doesn’t
have to worry about the clothes it wears. Does the Light go down to the city of Paris? Does
the Light go into the shops on Fifth Avenue? You don’t take thought for your clothes because
you are the Light.
And so here’s the message of Identity. And we have been saying, “How foolish. How
can I live without taking thought?” When what we have had to say and what we shall say as
we open our eyes is, “They’re telling me I am Divine Life. I am the Light of the world. I am
perfect now as My Father.” And then I shall reorientate this consciousness to know this. I am.
I am. I am.
And so we dwell for a moment in the I am, Divine Light. And the Light that I am
requires no human food. The Light that I am requires no human clothing, no human supply,
no human companionship. The Light that I am requires no thing, for the Light that I am is
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infinite Light. In the beginning God. And the Light of God was the Life of all men, and this is
My Life now. Do you see, then, that when you begin with Identity, what follows will flow in
the rhythm of Identity? Well, if you start on the lower echelons of a “me” with a clothing and
a food budget, you can’t work back to Identity. So at the moment we’re going to stand in
Identity and let these words reveal to us who we are.
“The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.”
Well, all right. The Life is God, and the Body is God. And it won’t matter how long
you study, how many years. There will come a time when this will be accepted, and then
Truth will activate itself where you are. Let’s accept it for the moment. My Body and My Life
must be of the Substance of God, for there is no other. Now, what do I lack in supply?
Nothing. So I can let that thought go. I can drop it. And if I don’t drop it, I’m not accepting
spiritual Substance, Divine law. You see how you cannot accept and still maintain the belief in
a lack of supply? Which is it, God or mammon? You drop the false concept. I do not lack
supply. The I that I am does not lack supply.
Oh yes, this physical concept called “me” may lack supply; but I’m just learning that
isn’t me at all. Now you’re in Identity, Divine Sonship; and you find that the Father hasn’t
overlooked a thing. The Father is much more practical than you ever were. The Father is so
practical that every need has been provided for. Nothing has been missing or withheld.
“Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor
barn; and God feedeth them: . . . .”
And now we feel kind of silly. I was worried, really, about the food bill, the food
budget. Would we have enough? And here’s God feeding ravens. I just didn’t have confidence
in that. But it means what it said. If God feeds the ravens, what about me? Will I be unfed?
How? By the Law of Transformation in Life Itself. It is automatic. The law of

transformation in your Being feeds Itself. Your Substance is the fullness of everything you
need. Your Substance is Self-contained. In other words, everything is bringing you into who
are you. You see why this couldn’t be accepted? They thought he was teaching them that a
person doesn’t have to worry, that a person is as good as a raven. But he wasn’t. He was
teaching them that they weren’t persons. But even a lowly raven, which is less than a person,
gets fed.
He was teaching them and us that we are living Spirit now, without any needs; for
every need has been fulfilled in our own Being. And the moment we accept the presence of
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God is the Spirit of My Being here and now, you’re in the rhythm of the universe. Then you
can do what the raven does, what the lily does, what the sparrow does. It just knows
everything is taken care of, but you can’t do it as a person.
“How much more are ye better than the fowls? And which of you with taking thought
can add to his stature one cubit?”
And you remember that’s a mistranslation: “Stature” should be length of life. They
took it as length in space, but it should be length in time. Stature is the length of a person in
space, but it really was length of a person in time, the lifespan, meaning: Which of you with
taking thought can add to his lifespan one cubit? And we can’t. And therefore, if you can’t do
the least of this, why try for the most? Always teaching again that the human brain which tries
to think Truth, know Truth, and apply Truth is not the place where the work is done.
And so we come to a principle. A woman said to me last week, “My friend called”––
or some relative––“who was sick, and I wanted to double-check the procedure.” And I didn’t
spend the time to completely explain what should be explained. Now you’re taking thought
about that person’s health because that person said to you, “I’m sick.” And suppose that
person lives a certain distance from you. Suppose, for example, right now one of your close
relatives, one of your children were to call and say, “I’m sick. Will you help me?” You would
always begin your work with the belief that your son, your daughter is there, and you are
here; and that’s because you’re taking thought.
Now here’s a fine point and a very important one. You receive the information where
you are. You received it here, and here is where you must solve it. You cannot solve that
person’s health there, and many of us have tried to do it. We have tried to throw our thought
there. He’s there, and I’ve got to get him well there. Well, you’re not going to get him well
there if you don’t get him well here. It’s here where the work is done, and here means in your
consciousness, right here where you receive the call. And here is where you must solve the
call. Everything is done here in your consciousness, and that’s the secret of
supply.
You want it out there. You want more acreage. You want a nicer home. You want a
nicer car. You want a nicer this. You want a nicer that out there. You can’t get it out there. It
doesn’t belong to you out there. You don’t have spiritual title to it out there. And even when it
appears out there, it still won’t be out there. If it isn’t in your consciousness, the out there will
never manifest for you; and if it does, it won't mean a thing. You don’t get supply out there.
You get it in your consciousness, and then it appears out there. You get it in your
consciousness that the Substance of My Being is God. That’s where supply is. That’s where
your Life is. That’s where your clothing is. That’s where your home is.
Everything out there is in your consciousness that God is the Substance of My Being
here. That’s why supply is such an important subject, because it brings us right smack into the
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Truth of all Being––the hereness of My Substance, the faith in My Substance, the faith in the
law functioning in My Substance. The law of eternal perfection is functioning here.
Now, just to show you why it doesn’t come into your experience unless you know
about it: You may not be conscious of the air around you right now. You may not be conscious
of breathing until it’s mentioned. And then when it’s mentioned, oh yes, you’re conscious of
breathing. But you weren’t conscious of breathing or the air until it was mentioned. Then it
came into your thought. Then it comes into your consciousness. Do you know there was a
period in our lives when we all went through becoming conscious of air, and that’s how
breathing became part of our being? We had to reach the place where we became conscious of
it every moment until it became a natural thing to do, to breathe. We had to learn how. We
don’t remember it now. It happened too far in the dim past of history.
We have to become conscious of the Substance of Life as our own Substance. We have
to think about it, literally take thought about it. And then, you see, your thought you become
conscious of. You can’t be conscious of something unless you first had a thought about it, and
so you become conscious of your thought. Your thought is about the Life of God is your
Substance. And ultimately that thought becomes something you’re conscious of, and when
you’re conscious of it, it manifests in all its glory. Then you’re spiritually conscious. Then
you take no thought because you already have put the seed into Consciousness, and it is your
permanent Consciousness.
Now, actually there’s no person, then, who can suffer from lack of supply. They have
the wrong idea about supply. Supply is the Substance of God, and everyone is the Substance
of God. So you can’t suffer from lack of supply. You are the supply. You can suffer from your
unawareness of it because you haven’t taken thought about it to make it your consciousness. It
isn’t in your consciousness yet, but it will be. And when it becomes consciously yours––that I
am the Substance––then you know that the supply you have been seeking is your Substance. I
am the Substance. I am the supply.
It isn’t outside. I am It, My Substance. Ah, that’s the meaning here then.
“. . . which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit?
If ye then be not able to do that . . . which is least, why take ye thought for the rest?”
All of this thought––the planning, the strategy, the mapping out of program––was your
unawareness that I am the supply now. I am that Tree of Life, and as long as I know it, it will
shower forth the fruitage; and it will be those things that I need. For even the need and the
forms that these needs shall take is taken care of right here in this passage by the Word of
God:
“Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you,
that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
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Why? Because there aren’t any lilies there.
That’s our concept of the perfect Light, the perfect Divine idea. The perfect Light is
far better arrayed than Solomon in all his glory. The perfect Light of your Being is better
arrayed than Solomon in all his glory, and there’s no taking thought about it. It’s the fact. It is
now the perfect Light of God. Now is the fact, and we finally see the Bible has no promises
for us at all. The Bible has never made a promise. Everything here is a statement of fact.
There’s nothing to improve, for you are that Substance now; and only when you’re conscious
of it does the law of transformation manifest as the activity in your consciousness.
Then the same way the invisible sap becomes the appearance of an orange, so does the
invisible Consciousness of you manifest with Divine intelligence as not oranges, but whatever
you need, without taking thought. As you begin to feel this more deeply, you see that the Law
is already established in its fullness from beginning to end. But your enlightened
Consciousness, which is the acceptance of Divinity, manifests Its own omniscience, Its own
omnipotence as every form that you require. But the human self is not—the orange isn’t
deciding how to grow. The human isn’t deciding what it needs. It’s the acceptance of your
own Being as the only Reality.
We all have found that in some way or another, the world we know begins where I am.
I’m it. I look out. I see out there. But when you accept your Self as the Substance, you can't
live that way. You can’t be thinking of everything in this world as beginning right here where
you are. This word “here” stretches out. It covers the universe. You begin to think of yourself
in a different way, as an everywhere Self. You’re not like a tree rooted in the ground, giving
just fruit on this tree. You’re an everywhere Self. The world, which is your Consciousness, is
only going to give fruitage if you are an everywhere world and everywhere spiritual Self.
That’s why you’re praying for your enemies and forgiving those who offend you, and
that’s why you’re showing service to others. That’s why you’re expressing gratitude. You’re
seeing your Self as an infinite Being. You’re not limiting God to a spot. You’re not limiting
Being to a spot. And oh, how many times we completely forget that we’re not just the person
in this form. That isn't us at all. We have to get outside of this person, and that is when you
can forever forget the human sense of supply. Your Universe comes back to the center of Itself
where the form appears to be, and your Universe sustains Itself where you are.
If you had to raise all your own fruit and vegetables in a little patch of land, you’d find
you couldn’t do it. If you have to live a perfect Life as the Father says, you can’t do it in a
little place. You have to be in the Kingdom, in the infinite Kingdom as the infinite Self. And
so catch yourself from time to time if you’re trying to localize your life down to a spot within
a form. It isn’t you. I find just a few minutes devoted to that is a tremendous release, just the
knowledge that I’m not just a point here. That little blob has got to go.
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When I accept Divinity, Divine Selfhood, Christhood, you accept the infinite nature of
your Being; and that’s how you cast out upon the waters that which comes back. That’s what
Joel means when he said you can’t realize supply unless you cast it out on the waters. You
must give it forth for it to come back, and you’re giving forth is the recognition of infinite
Selfhood.
Now, that call from the friend who wanted help––if you had your friend out there and
you here, you had two. There’s only one Christ. How could you have two? You hadn’t
accepted infinite Selfhood. You had a separation between you and your friend. That’s why
they were out there in another city and you were in this city. That isn't true. That’s when you
live in the blob, in the little person; and then everything you do is from the standpoint of a
human being trying to help another one. But it’s not spiritual. It’s not accepting. It’s having no
confidence in God’s Word.
Now I and the Father are one. And what about the one who called you? Isn’t that one
one with the Father? And if you’re both one with the Father, aren’t you one with each other?
Is there a separation between you and your son, between you and your daughter? How can
there be? The separation is in the sense perception which sees a physical world. You and I are
not separated. We never were. We never will be. No one is separated from another, only in our
finite sense perception mind.
You see how all of this is connected to supply? If you have an infinite garden, do you
have more fruitage than if you have a little patch? If you have a spiritual garden, do you not
have Perfection working that garden? Finally, the taking possession is the recognition of the
one infinite Self; and so there’s no outside. There’s no person calling from another city.
There’s only the one Self there and here as one––and rest. The law of transformation will
show forth the fruitage just as if it were oranges on a tree. The law is always working in
Identity as long as you don’t interrupt Identity and make it two, three, and ten.
Ten righteous men save a city by being one, and that one is always a majority with
God. Now you see how all of this comes out of the little revelation that the lilies of the field
are not spinning. Something is happening from the universal, imitating the perfect idea of
God. Always your perfect supply in the outer will be the imitation of the Divine idea. And
when your Consciousness of your spiritual Identity is established, It will then create your
world in its own Divine Image and Likeness as the forms of Divinity. The image and likeness
of your consciousness is the world you are now experiencing.
When that Consciousness is Divine, then you have the Divine Image and Likeness.
When it is human, you have the human image and likeness. When it is wheat and tares, you
have both, a division. Divine thought can never say, “I lack.” Human thought says, “I lack,”
so you weed out that tare. That human thought is a lie: “I lack.” Divine thought says, “I have.
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I am.” And that’s where you rest, accepting the presence of Divinity. That’s having confidence
in the authority, in the Truth, in the words of God.
I think some of you may be wondering if we’re over the hour. We’re using a long tape
today to see if we can do the whole class without an intermission––see if we can not break the
continuity.
Where you are is God. If that is not established, you are going to have a mental
teaching. Where you are is God, and wherever you go is God. At any time of day or night,
awake or asleep, where you are is God. This must be your living Consciousness, and where
God is the law of perfection, the law of God is functioning. When you accept that, you’ll find
every book ever written can add very little to your Consciousness, because that’s the core
from which all things must begin.
Where you are is God. You wake to this. You live with it. You remind yourself of it.
You go to sleep with it, and no matter what report comes to you, where you are is God. And
therefore, any report that is not reporting perfection where you are is a lie because where God
is, perfection is. You are always standing in perfection. It doesn’t matter what shows. That
which shows as imperfection is the lie because where you are is God. That’s your basis of
living in the Kingdom of God.
“If then God so clothe the grass, which is today in the field, and tomorrow is cast into
the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?”
Again, you are the Light. You need not toil or spin or take thought. Always Identity is
being stressed here, until he comes to the greatest revelation, perhaps, in this:
“. . . rather seek ye the Kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
But you are the Kingdom of God. Accept it, and all these things shall be added unto
you.
Now you have a Consciousness that I am the Kingdom of God, and now the world
wants to break that down. The conditions of the world want to tell you, “You are not.” But the
Truth is that you are. The question is: Will you uphold and be faithful to that truth, or will the
world persuade you that you are not the Kingdom of God? That’s the issue, right down to the
nub. And as the Kingdom of God, where do you begin and end? From head to toe? From
elbow to elbow? Here where I am is God. Now, does that limit God to being just where I am?
Here where I am is God, but God is everywhere.
Therefore, the moment you accept that here where I am is God, and God is
everywhere, you accept the words of the Father, “Son, thou art ever with me.” Wherever God
is, I am; and you are laying the Consciousness of Spirit over your universe, and that becomes
the law of your universe. The transforming law of your universe is your acceptance that here
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is God, and God is everywhere. Here is My Being, and My Being is everywhere. You are
laying spiritual awareness over your universe, and there is no other universe. You are bringing
everything in your universe under spiritual law, and that is why the added things will come
up, just as they do in a tree. Your universe is a tree, and throughout your universe the Spirit
will consciously bring Itself into fruition.
And to crown it, to cap it off:
“Fear not, little flock; . . . it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”
You don’t have to do a thing about it. The Spirit gives. The Spirit does. The Spirit
provides. The Spirit comes forth “as.” Your function is to be conscious of your spiritual
infinite Identity as the invisible spiritual Universe. This is only the center of it, you might say.
This center is the awareness center. The whole television set works because you do a little
something on the knobs. The knobs––that’s this form, you might call it. Where you stand is
the knobs. The universe is the television set.
This is the control center. The control center is where you know the Truth, and then
relax. Know the Truth of your infinite Universe and its ever-present perfection. There’s no
lack of supply in It. It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom. Now, in take
no thought––which you find it either in Matthew or Mark or Luke in the Sermon on the
Mount––when you have given it enough consideration and contemplation and understanding
so that you can accept it, then it’s the law unto you; and whoever would deny that law has no
power.
There’s no power outside of the Kingdom of God. And if you are the Kingdom of God
––if you are standing in the knowledge of it––there is no other power. There is no power to
lack. There is no power to die. There is no power to grow old because to know the Kingdom
of God aright is to experience that Life which is the eternal Life. It is an experience, a
knowledge that you are in that eternal Life. And you find you’re not in the life you thought
you were in. You really step over; you step out of the concept. You’re in the eternal Life that
doesn’t know lack. That doesn’t know limitation. That doesn’t know opposing powers. That
doesn’t know sin, disease, limitation. That doesn’t know any form of physical disability.
There is such a Life. It is here. It is now. It is You. This is all about that.
I’m sure that Joel lived the eternal Life while he was among us. I’m sure that Jesus
lived the eternal Life while he was among us. I’m sure that you and I will live the eternal Life
while on this earth knowingly, and show it forth. Because that’s the purpose of the teaching,
that we be perfect. And then we enter into a new circle. Now you’re not just trying to get
supply so that this body can be healthier or live longer. That’s not it at all. You’re not seeking
supply anymore. I am supply. Now you’re feeding the multitude. You’re not looking for
supply. You’re giving supply.
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Jesus wasn’t looking for supply. Joel wasn’t looking for supply. They were giving
supply, expressing Life––Life expressing Itself. To look for supply is the human approach to
life. To give supply is the spiritual way. And so we find that without taking thought or making
effort, there is an overflowing moving through you and out into your Universe; and it appears
out there as someone receiving alms. It appears out there as someone receiving a gift package.
It appears out there as someone else benefiting in some way from what it would appear to be
your benevolence, but it isn’t. It is your spiritual Selfhood manifesting in the visible without
anyone taking thought about it. It is the Infinite living Itself through you.
Now that’s the level we want to live out of because the Circle of Light isn’t
composed of those who are seeking supply. It’s composed of those who are aware of
themselves as the Light, and supply is an automatic Grace, an inner Grace that flows from
their acceptance of Identity. And then we’re not only a Light unto ourselves, but to our
families. A Light to our little groups. A Light to our present society, to our community. A
Light to our nation. And we join the eternal Light, that Circle which stretches throughout our
infinite Being.
We’re making our transition from man of earth to the Light of God. Lifting the
consciousness out of the false beliefs of yesterday. No longer having needs, for we have found
the Kingdom of God in which all things are Self-fulfilling; and It isn’t a place called Heaven
in the sky or in tomorrow. We have found that Heaven is our Substance and our knowledge of
that Substance. We have the knowledge that we are the Substance and the continuing
Consciousness that we are that Substance, and that’s confidence. That’s your prayer without
ceasing. That’s all there is to it. And you’re making a turn. It begins to flow the other way.
You’re not reaching out for it. You’re producing it from within your Self. You’re not thinking
it into existence. God is.
There was a woman on the phone this morning with a stomachache, and she told me
about something Joel said on page 36 of one book and 78 of another book, and she was going
on and on. And every word she said was true, but she still had her stomachache because she
was trying to make the words “do” something, forgetting who she was. Please don’t make
words do something. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and after you have found the
Kingdom of God, which is your Being, your Substance—knowing that, holding that—there
should be an end some day of seeking the Kingdom of God.
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Class 24
Christmas Everyday
Herb: This is the last class of The Contemplative Life. But actually, it’s nothing more
than a continuation into The Mystical I.
Usually we do Christmas at Christmas time, and we mentioned how every day is

Christmas. This time we’re doing June, Christmas in June. And one of the nice things about
Christmas in June is that it reminds us that unless the Christ peace is upon us, the complete
New Testament is of no value to us and has not entered into our consciousness. This should
have been a day in which each of us this morning first established Identity––in which we
invited the Spirit of the Father within us to live Itself without any human intervention––in
which we recognized that which already has overcome the world, Christ within, as My
Identity.
And then your day begins with the acknowledgment that this is a Divine day, a God-
governed day, a day in which all already has been prepared for those who dwell in the Spirit
of the Father. And then as we rest in that understanding, feeling the Presence, knowing Him
aright, we are filled with the power and the wisdom and the glory of the Spirit. And we’re
ready now for a Christ day, which makes it Christmas in June. And because Christ is the
infinite Spirit indwelling every man, every woman, every child, every form, we accept that
Presence everywhere. And as we accept the Presence everywhere, there is a diminishing of
the anxieties, the concerns, the doubtings, the plannings, the hopings, the fearings.
All of the things that might have decoyed us into human thought now become
unnecessary because we have accepted omnipresent Christ, and so we are prepared, for the
Spirit walks before us. Our mind is at ease. We are in that state which has accepted that God is
now everywhere being God. And so should we read the headlines and discover that there’s a
division in the consciousness of man, that there’s corruption in high places, that there is
subterfuge, we recognize as of old that the world consciousness is trying to always reject the
Christ. The Christ of My Being stands here to meet that rejection. But now, being enlightened
to the point of knowing Christ everywhere, you no longer stand in a personal sense of Christ,
denying the world consciousness where you are alone. But rather, you rise to that higher level,
the level that Joel now teaches us was always his constant purpose: to meet world
consciousness everywhere with Christ Consciousness everywhere.
We learn to impersonalize world error. We’re not drawn into these heated arguments.
We’re not startled that anti-Christ shows and wears a disguise––whether it calls itself the
Class 24 : Christmas Everyday
President of the United States, the Congress of the United States, or whether it calls itself a
tyrant in a foreign country. Always, this is recognized as world consciousness, and never do
we personalize the error down to an individual. What’s the difference what title world
consciousness assumes or what form it appears in? It is always the same world consciousness
hitting where the vulnerabilities are greatest.
We even become very grateful for form because without form we would never see
world consciousness externalized into form, and it would be much more difficult to recognize
it. But then it takes a name and a form and a condition, and we can recognize it because it
makes itself known to us. It stands right up and says, “Here I am. I am world consciousness.”
And our function, then, becomes to pray for our enemy, to recognize this world
consciousness. Not to join in the world condemnation of it, but to impersonalize it. To see it,
to know it for what it is; and then within our own Self, quietly, to know this is the anti-Christ.
I won’t give it a name. I won’t give it a human name. I won’t call it a Republican. I
won’t call it a Democrat. It is world consciousness made visible in high places and in low
places, and I recognize not the world consciousness but the Spirit that stands where world
consciousness would try to deceive me. It is denying the All-ness of God, but it is meeting my
Christ Consciousness. And there it is meeting its own Higher Power, and it is dissolved. Your
Consciousness of Christ refuses to acknowledge anything less than the Father even when your
neighbor seems to be one who is inconsiderate of the entire human race.
You are loving your neighbor by recognizing there the invisible Spirit of God, and you
have taken the error out of person; for it never was in person. It was always manifesting as
person, but in Christ Consciousness you do not accept person as Reality. Now while we are
doing this, we ourselves are not rejecting Christ. We are not rejecting the Christhood of any
individual on this earth. We know that God is Conscious, that God is Consciousness, and that
God is Consciousness everywhere. And therefore, has God moved aside for corruption to take
God’s place? Has God moved aside for sickness to take God’s place, for error and problems to
take God’s place, or are we being challenged by the anti-Christ?
Always we find that the only thing we suffer from is the belief that God is
unconscious, that God has moved aside, that God has in some way allowed these things to
happen. And then you discover what you really have done is repeat an age-old error. You, too,
have had no place in your inn for the Christ. Instead, your inn was crowded with fear, with
emotions. With all forms of condemnation, with judgments, and sometimes with possessive
love. We find that when the inn of our own consciousness is overcrowded, we forget to turn to
Christ. And so, unknowingly, we turn away the gentle stranger.
We find ourselves floating with the tide of world thought until suddenly we realize
what we have done. We have failed to recognize the anti-Christ ever-present, ever all
powerful to those who are not dwelling in the secret place. And the moment we find our own
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center instead of rejecting Christ––instead of mentalizing, instead of entering into thought and
defending ourselves with all kinds of affirmations––we do that one thing that overcomes the
world illusion. We accept Christ, I am. We don’t have to reach out. We don’t have to hold up
an argument to anything. We don’t have to reason it through. We don’t have to remember
something. We must be.
Now when you turn to Christ in you, I, Christ, have overcome the world. The
responsibility is not yours. Your function is to accept My Self as your Identity. And once you
accept Christ as your Identity and rest in the Word, then I who have overcome the world, I
show you why you can walk through a wall. I show you why you can be everywhere. I show
you why you are not lacking. I show you why there is no cancer. I show you why every
human problem is nothing but false world belief using you as a channel to externalize itself.
And then I, being your Consciousness realized, reveal My Kingdom, which is the presence of
God on earth as It is in Heaven. And in the revelation of My Kingdom on earth where you
stand, that which we had considered something to fear, something to doubt, something to be
concerned about––whatever its nature––becomes nothing but a shadow to disappear as the
Light of Christ blazes forth in your Consciousness.
Never is the responsibility on you to remove an error. Always Christ reveals the non-
reality of the error. Always the moment the inn of your Consciousness says, “I have Christ
right here. I will turn to Christ.”—not to reason, not to intellect, not to memory, not to mind
power—just the gentle realization that Christ is present; and then whatever the error may be,
whether it’s on the land or in the sea or in the sky, Christ has overcome.
Christ has dominion. And the recognition of Christ in me, Christ in you, Christ in him,
Christ in her; the one invisible Christ in all regardless of the name, regardless of the color,
regardless of the creed, and regardless of the condition of the slavery or bondage to problem,
Christ is the only answer that you will find permanently effective. And the question then is
can you trust the Christ, or in distrust do we unconsciously reject the Christ?
Let’s look at the anatomy of fear. We worry about something, and we say, “This
concerns me gravely and deeply.” And the question is, why are you worried? Always it is
because you do not believe God is present, either here where you have a problem or there
where someone else has a problem. And so, you feel God being absent there or here, you have
to worry. And why do you reject Omnipresence that way? Because there is a condition that
appears to you––and even though you know instinctively and through study that God is there
and God is here––the condition is there. And so you have evidence of the condition but you
have no evidence of God. And so you are willing to accept momentarily that evidence of a
condition, and you give authority to the sense mind, which is reporting the condition. And at
this moment, anti-Christ is uppermost in your consciousness.
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So we have accepted that God is not present because the condition is, and yet we want
God to be present, so we look for signs. We seek signs about the evidence of God while
believing that the very condition itself seems to be evidence that God is not there. So we are
divided. And can we, can we possibly look at these conditions, can we look at the world today
and say God is there? Can we look at Vietnam and say God is there? Can we look at the
tombstones of those killed in action and say God is there? Are we willing to face that we are
not willing to say God is there in our hearts because the sense evidence for us has been too
overwhelming? Now that is rejecting Christ, when you find it impossible to know God is
there.
In spite of all the evidence of war and hate, all the evidence of fear, all the evidence of
destruction, all the evidence of poverty and famine and emotional upsets––when in spite of
these things you can turn around and say, “Even though this is reported to me, it is nothing but
world consciousness made manifest. It has no cause in God. It is world hypnosis, and it is
meeting in me the knowledge that only God is present.”––then you are accepting the Christ
teaching. Then there’s room in your inn. Then you’re not letting the world evidence close up
your hotel and telling the Christ to go peddle Its papers.
That moment, that glimpse that this cannot be because God Is, is the opening of the
stable when Christ steps in. And even though it’s a small beginning, that glimpse is ultimately
going to change the entire world consciousness. It isn’t a question of when. It is already done.
It’s a question of when are you going to catch on to it? I have overcome the world. I’m not
going to do it tomorrow. Before Abraham was, I overcame the world; but you are rejecting
Me. You are not awake to the fact that I am you, and you are walking in the identity of one
who is seeking, wanting, needing but never accepting Identity. And you discover, to your
horror, that you have put identity in form. You have looked at form, and you have given it
identity, when all that is there is the incorporeal Christ.
Every time you label an error and a person with an error, you are putting identity in
form; and there is no identity in form. Identity does not confine Itself to form. Identity is free.
Identity is limitless. Identity is before Abraham. And then you see what you’ve really done is
you have not accepted your Self to be the Christ of God. Are you before Abraham? Have you
consciously realized that you are? Are you earth-bound, space-bound, time-bound, gravity-
bound? Christ isn’t. How can you be the Christ and be bound by space and time and gravity?
How can you be the Christ and lack and be limited? How can you be the Christ and have a
problem?
And so, isn’t the problem, isn’t the being bound by time and space and gravity and
earth rejection of the Christ? Isn’t our breathing as human beings a rejection of the Christ?
And then we find that we have been talking about Christ but not knowing how to live Christ.
We’ve been in the kindergarten stage. We’ve known a good deal about how to meet a
problem. We’ve known a good deal about how to increase our supply. We have found a way
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to make humanhood happier and smoother, and we have said, “That’s living Christ.” Joel calls
that the kindergarten stage, when you find the lamp of Aladdin and you rub it, and the genie
appears and nice things are done; and you’re very proud of yourself. But we’re still accepting
a world. Christ has no world. Christ overcomes the bad and the good of the world.
So it dawns upon us that there are those who will remain in the kindergarten stage.
There are those who will always want to have the good part of humanhood. That may be us.
Then again, we may be among those who are the ransomed of the Lord who are returning,
unwilling to settle for less than the fullness of Christ in every way. Unwilling to accept one
error on the face of the earth as Reality, as power, as existent––because God Is. And then we
will not deny Omnipotence.
What changes Omnipotence? What power pushed God aside and said, “I am going to
do this wicked thing?” No power whatsoever. What power pushed aside God’s creation and
said, “I’m going to make it imperfect?” No power whatsoever. We may be persuaded such a
power has existed, but it never has. The only sickness there is is in the belief of the world
consciousness. The only error there is is in the belief of the world consciousness. But where
Christ is your Consciousness, whatever momentarily appears as error is quickly dissolved by
the Truth that makes you free. And that Truth is your living Christhood meeting all things
before they ever appear.
Now when a problem arises and you reach out for some kind of solution or when you
try to analyze the possibilities, you’re wrong instantly because there’s only one possibility,
God. Every other possibility is anti-Christ or your rejection of Christ. There are no
possibilities. There’s only God. And we come to a revelation that is even greater than the
revelation of I am. As this bursts upon your Consciousness, you realize what is meant by
Jesus taking us from the law to Grace because it was his revelation. I am is not enough,
however beautiful it is. God is the only Being. It doesn’t matter where you’re looking. God is
there and no other. Not only I am, but only God Is. Wherever you look, God Is. There is no
other.
When you take it into consciousness and dwell with it, you find, “Acknowledge me in
all thy ways” is telling you just that. Only God Is. Love your neighbor because only God Is.
Everywhere you turn biblically, you find you’re being told that only God Is. You can’t wake
up in the morning in a world where there’s someone besides God. That’s no alcoholic out
there. That’s God invisible. That’s no arsonist over here. That’s God invisible. And there’s no
corruption. You’re looking at God invisible. Wherever you look, God invisible is, and no
other. And the sense mind will see everything but that. The Christ mind will see only that.
So when you’re seeing something besides God, you’re hypnotized. You have closed up
the inn to the gentle stranger. You have rejected the Christ which says, “I and my Father are
one,” and you have populated the perfect Kingdom of God with all kinds of good and all
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kinds of evil by your acceptance of a world belief. On the other hand, as you rest quietly in
the knowledge that God being All, only God Is, you’ll find some inner strength to look past
all of the evidence of the senses which says, “There is God and this condition, God and this
person, God and this corruption, God and this massacre.” And you will look at everything,
recognizing always the world consciousness which rejects Christ and lives in its own false
belief and presents the shadows of belief as the evils that we call our world.
What do you do about them? I, Christ, have already overcome that world. It has no
existence, and all of the errors in it have no existence. Come unto Me within you––within
your enemy, within all those who suffer from the error––I am, and touch Me; and you touch I
in them. And then rest, and I who have overcome the world will reveal to you the secret of My
Presence and My Power.
When Hawaii was made a state back in the late 1950’s, we probably did one of the
greatest things we could ever do for the other 49 states. We took in a new level of
consciousness––not just a state––a level that’s going to be an important part in overcoming
world consciousness. There was a Minister there, Hawaiian, Chinese-Hawaiian. He was so
elated with the statehood of Hawaii that there was a meeting in one of the old churches there.
Something he wrote and said that day became very popular all over the world, and this little
sheet came into my hands the other day. He explained the meaning of “aloha.” Something was
caught there by this Chinese-Hawaiian minister which the world is going to catch. I’d like you
listen to it. This was from Dr. Abraham Kahikina Akaka in a Thanksgiving service in his
church in Hawaii. He said,
“We do not understand the meaning of aloha until we recognize and realize that its
foundation is in the power of God at work in the world. Since the coming of
missionaries in 1820, the name of God to the Hawaiian people has been Aloha.
And one of the first sentences a child learns from its mother is this from holy
scriptures: Aloha ke Akua. In other words: Aloha is God. Aloha is the power of
God seeking to unite what is separated in the world. The power that unites heart
with heart, Soul with Soul, life with life, culture with culture, race with race,
nation with nation. It is the power that can reunite a man with himself when he
has become separated from the image of God within.”
We don’t hear things like that too often in the church.
“Thus, when a people or person live in the spirit of aloha, they live in the Spirit of
God. And among such a people whose lives so affirm their inner Being, we see
the working of the scripture, that all things work together for good to them who
love God. From the Aloha of God came His Son, that we might have life and that
we might have it more abundantly.”
And then the Minister says,
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“Aloha consists of a new attitude of heart, above negativism, above legalism. It is

the unconditional desire to promote the true good of other people in a friendly
spirit out of a sense of kinship. Aloha seeks to do good to a person with no
conditions attached. We do not do good only to those who do good to us. One of
the sweetest things about love and the Aloha of God is that it welcomes the
stranger and seeks his good. A person who has the spirit of Aloha loves even when
the love is not returned. Such is the love of God.”
That’s from our 50th state, where east and west meet.
The interesting thing about this particular sheet of paper that was given to me is that it
came from a family where there was an interfaith marriage, and buffeted between the different
faiths of the parents was the child. And the child went to one faith to satisfy one parent, but
couldn’t quite adjust because of the difference in faiths between the parents. And so both the
parents and the child were in a state of confusion. But Spirit waits for no man. And so in
grade school it became an assignment for the children to study what this Minister had said in
Honolulu. And there, not in the faith of the mother or the faith of the father but in a higher
faith, in the faith of Spirit, the child learned something above what both faiths had been
unable to give her. Not a partisan love for my religion or yours, but the Aloha Spirit. Coming
above the human levels, Spirit taught a child.
We have another interesting situation that developed to show how beautifully Spirit
does things. Within the past three or four weeks, we here together have studied the walking on
the water. How Jesus could be on a mountaintop and they were in the ocean or the lake over
here, and suddenly he was walking on the water while they were in a frantic turmoil trying to
be released from a tempest. And we learned that he wasn’t walking on water. That was the
Spirit of God being manifest to them. That was the Body of the Soul. It took no thought. It
was where it had to be. And while we were doing that in this class, something was happening
somewhere else quite similar as a confirmation, perhaps, of our lesson.
This just came the other day from someone who had written for some help. And oh,
we forgot all about it; never heard about it again. It seemed to be over a month or two ago.
And then the letter started out:
“Just received your letter yesterday.”
It’s from Alaska, by the way.
“The man who was collecting our mail, which was forwarded to us from Nenana,
had to evacuate his house in a hurry when Galena was flooded. He just found his
mail, our mail, and gave it to us on our first trip back down the river.”
This is from a woman who was a cook on a barge along the Yukon. Now watch what
happened. The person asked for personal help. Spirit made the person ask for personal help in
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anticipation of something else, and Spirit appeared there, just like Spirit walking on the water;
and this is what happened.
“We were frozen in Bear Creek, 10 miles below Galena, for almost a month. Most
of the villages along the Yukon were flooded when the ice jams broke, and Galena
is now a disaster. The base there was okay, as it has a dike around it. My sons both
flew out there once a week, so I saw one of them when we stopped on our way up
the river. We were certainly in God’s care while we were at Bear Creek. The ice
and water, when the river flooded, broke all over the cables and pushed us miles
up river; and we had no engine working and were powerless. We finally were
stopped by ice jams ahead at the right stop with trees to tie up to. We were all
ready to abandon ship, but didn’t have to.”
Now you can see the disciples rowing over there and the storm is abetted. And you can
see this barge going through the ice jams and all the concern because help isn’t nearby. But
somebody, a cook on board, had requested help; and the Spirit was there. Nobody went there,
no person. Nobody knew any Truth. Nobody made any affirmations. The Spirit did Its own
work there because there was someone reaching out for the Spirit. And not even knowing
what to ask for because they had no way of knowing what was going to happen. For all I
remember, this might have been about a stomachache.
And so you see, always the answer is Christ recognition; and the power of Christ is so
amazing that we don’t even have to know what the condition is. That answers your question
about treatment, specific treatment. How do you give a specific treatment for something that
hasn’t yet happened? How do you give a specific treatment when there are so many problems
in the world consciousness? Do you sit down and anticipate the things that are going to
happen? Or instead, do you rest and really get down to accepting that Christ is my Being.
Christ is her Being. Where do you go from there? You rest in the Word.
And that’s your faith in Christ is the one Identity. You’ve taken the label off of the
form of a sick person, an ailing person, a suffering person. You’ve re-identified. You’ve
accepted. You’ve stopped rejecting Christ. Your inn has been opened. You have said, “Christ,
come in.” It didn't happen 2,000 years ago and then that was the end of it. It happens every
day. We reject or we accept. Our consciousness is always the inn, and in it is Christ or not.
And if Christ isn’t in our consciousness, we are in the world. And we’re going down the river
in an ice jam, and there won’t be anything to stop us.
What a priceless gift we have been given to know that we can stand in Christ and look
at the insanities of the world declaring God is either absent, unconscious, or indifferent; and
we can know they who reject Christ will not get me to join in that rejection. Joel says that it’s
a sign of progress when we come out of accepting Christ because we’re trying to help me and
mine. But rather, when we have lost all of that personalized sense of helping me and mine and
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can see the broader picture of meeting the world consciousness everywhere––so that you’re
not concerned whether it’s friend or foe––meeting the world consciousness becomes the work
of Christ realized everywhere.
It’s a bigger picture. It’s an unpersonalized picture. And if you find you’re in it, you
can be sure you’re moving in the higher echelons of the Spirit. All personal sense is gone.
You’re seeking nothing, but you are alert––alert to the fact that all around you Christ rejection
is the law of the land. And your ears are pricked up. Every word you hear––it’s the Christ
Consciousness of you. Every opinion, every judgment, every fear, every turbulent heart that
comes to you meets Christ Consciousness. Instant recognition for the ones who are unable to
accept Christ within themselves. You take them over through your silent recognition. You
open the inn of their consciousness without their knowing it, without telling them, without
persuading them or converting them. You recognize Christ in the inn of their consciousness
for them. You are meeting world mesmerism everywhere.
It was the fidelity of Joel to this which has given this world its foundation. It was the
fidelity of those who have known the Word that have lifted us up to the point where we can
know now that the world consciousness is being dismantled. It is falling apart. It is nothing
for you to be inflamed about. It is inevitably falling apart. And as it falls apart, it must
manifest as confusion, as treachery, as subterfuge because anti-Christ is now being made
visible as never before.
Quickly the world consciousness is making visible to us those things which up to this
point the world has not known. Man is coming face to face with his own inabilities as a
human being. We are discovering that there are no human answers. The only answer is Christ.
And though we may seem to be a moment ahead, it wasn’t a moment too soon because you’re
being called upon to stand in the midst of what may appear to the world as a series of
disasters.
They are not disasters. There is no disaster in Christ, and only Christ is. The Truth that
God is the only Being is where you stand in the face of every apparent disaster. There cannot
be God and disaster. The All-ness of God, the fullness of Christ is the basic principle; and it
gets easier and easier to stand there. You simply cannot go anywhere where God is sharing
that place, that time with another.
Now if we have accepted Christ and, therefore, rejected the possibility of anything
unlike Christ, our Christmas becomes more of a daily event. We’re in the position of being
able to open Christ Consciousness in many places because the Light of your own Being
accepting Christ no longer dwells in the world thought of a human mind. Every activity
dwells in its own Source, its Christ Source; and it carries with it an ordination, an
appointment. It’s Self-contained. It’s producing its own perfect Divine effect. And when you
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find yourself living that way––that everything you do is coming from the Source of your own
Christ activity––then Omnipotence needs no sword. It is an automatic act Grace.
Would you make it a point to dwell for a short time this coming week on the fact that
God is the only person you could ever meet that day. And then regardless of what stands
before you in form or what condition, know that the All-ness of God is your Divine guarantee
that no one is there but God. It isn’t your son. It’s the invisible Christ. It isn’t your husband.
It’s the invisible Christ. It isn’t your friend or your enemy. It’s the invisible Christ. And no
matter where you go or who you see, only the invisible Christ is there. You don’t have to
differentiate between the types of conditions or the behavior or the attitude or whether the
person is low-born or high-born, rich or poor; whether the person is an alcoholic or a cripple.
You can look at every country in the world and know there are no Chinese in China.
There are no Russians in Russia. There are no Americans in the United States. There is only
God. God is the only inhabitant of this Universe. And when Spirit within confirms this in your
Consciousness, you’ll find a freedom you’ve never imagined. That’s all there is. And again,
standing beside Jesus looking out, you’ll discover that’s all Jesus could accept. That’s all there
is. Who convinceth me of a condition when God is All? Who convinceth me of hunger when
God is All, of insecurity when God is All, or even of death when God is All?
There’s not a lot of new Truth to learn. There is the actual coming to grips with the fact
that God is All, and letting It teach you how to live with that knowledge so that all fear and
concern departs, so that there’s nothing to seek. Everything that you could seek, Christ
already has; and the seeking denies the Christhood. There’s nothing to improve. Only Christ
is. I found myself, for example, not really believing enough to sit with the Christ long enough
to accept the important ramifications of Christhood. Christ in the 20th century isn’t Christ.
Christ on earth isn’t Christ. Christ in San Francisco or Menlo or Burlingame isn’t Christ.
Before Abraham was is Christ. There’s no time when Christ wasn’t. And therefore, to
be Christ now, you must be that Christ which has existed before time, consciously. You must
be that Christ which will ever exist; that Christ which isn’t waiting for the world to end
because to that Christ that world doesn’t exist. You must be that Christ which isn’t a
reincarnating form in your consciousness. You must be that Christ which can feed 5,000 and
still have 12 baskets full; that Christ which can look at anything and forgive, meaning see
through it. And if we’re not living up to our own Identity, we are rejecting the Christ. And that
is how we lose the meaning of there was no room in the inn. That’s a challenge every minute
of our lives. What minute are we saying there’s no room in the inn?
Now you may find you cannot break the attachment of the senses to things, to person,
to form. But Christ can break that attachment, and so it’s not necessary for you to break it. It’s
necessary for you to accept the inner Christ and then watch Christ break the hypnosis, break
the attachment, break the mesmerism of form. Some of the ways in which Christ breaks the
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attachment in which we pave the way for this Child in the inn to grow in our consciousness,
these are the things we’ll discuss as we take a little rest today. Let’s take a short meditation
and then a five- or ten-minute rest.
Let’s dwell on the All-ness of God. There’s a form to your left, and there’s a form to
your right. When you’re looking past the forms, there’s a form behind you and a form in front
of you; but you’re looking past the forms. You’re bringing everything down to the one Reality
of existence, God. The Spirit of God is All that is ever-present no matter where you go. That
will be the Truth tomorrow and a million tomorrows. And when you accept it in the Now, it
goes before you into every tomorrow. Only God will be here tomorrow. Only God is here
today.
And though the world may tempt me in many ways, especially where I’m the most
vulnerable, I will remain alert to the fact that I will not reject God by accepting another as
being present.
“. . . to thine own self be true.”
To the Divine Self that we are, which is God, be true.
“And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
How can you hurt a person on this earth if you know that invisibly God is in him?
How can you do anything but lift them up? And then the blind shall see, the deaf shall hear,
the cripple shall leap like a hart, for the ransomed of the Lord have returned. In the knowledge
of the All-ness of God, we are truly hid in Christ. The tempter is overcome, for in the
knowledge of God is All, your Soul takes dominion over the human mind. Your spiritual
Consciousness takes dominion over the mental consciousness of the world. You break the
continuity of the universal lie that there is God and someone else.
And so let’s rest a moment now, and I’ll see you in about five minutes.
We find that when Jesus had appeared on the desert to feed the multitude, he was
acclaimed far and wide. But a strange thing happened. The Pharisees came to him, and
looking at the man who had overcome the law of lack, overcome the law of material
insufficiency––the man who had in some way brought abundance out of nothing––instead of
saying to him, “Apparently you have access to some supernatural power which is of value to
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the world”; instead of saying, “We can now abolish poverty and famine”; instead of
welcoming him for the good he could do, even only for the Hebrew nation if that’s where they
wanted to limit it, the Pharisees said to him the very strangest thing you ever heard. It’s
almost incredible.
They had noticed that the 5,000 who ate this hidden manna had not obeyed a very
strict Hebraic law. They hadn’t washed their hands! They had actually broken a law. In a
sense you might say that the world today still works on the small little picayune things,
overlooking the Christ. Here the man feeds a multitude and somebody says, “But they didn’t
wash their hands.” And so they actually had the effrontery now to come up to him and say to
him and accuse him of letting his disciples eat without washing their hands. This rankled
them!
Of course, they were living in a million yesterdays. They were living before Jesus.
They were living in Leviticus, where the ordinance was laid down, in which it said if you
didn’t wash your hands, you deserved every punishment now and forever. And of course, the
washing of the hands was a rite, a ceremonial rite of purification. It had much more to it than
just washing the hands, but the way you went about it was very complicated.
And so in here somewhere in Matthew or in Mark, it says they washed with their fist.
It seems that they had to use the right fist to wash the left hand so they wouldn’t contaminate
the fingers of the right hand, and then the left fist to wash the right hand so that no dirt would
get in between the fingers. And then they had to lift their arms up this way so that the water
would run down from the fist to the elbow instead of the other way. And after a while it
became such a fetish that they had to wash a second time unless they declared that their first
washing was to cover the entire day. And this was called an inventive or an elective, and this
enabled them to get by with only one major washing.
And if you broke the law, woe onto you. So much so that if you didn’t have water
where you were, you had to walk for it; and if it was four miles that’s all right. Now this was
well and good, but they came to the wrong man with their complaint. They came to one who
knew the Hebraic law better than they. Now the world thinks that he was attacking the
Pharisees. He was not. This was meeting the world consciousness right there. Not an
individual Pharisee here and a Pharisee there, but meeting world consciousness which is
concerned with living in the external material formalities. And he called them “hypocrites,”
and he cited how they were being hypocritical in that they had taken the fifth commandment
of Moses: “Honor thy father and thy mother,” and they had altered it to suit their purpose. In
other words, you could alter the law when you wanted to for yourself; and they had altered the
law in a very strange way.
In order to help the Hebrew treasury, they had made a law which made it possible for a
person who, according to Hebraic law, had to support his aged, poor parents even if he had to
443 Return
go out and beg. They had even changed that Talmudic law, and they said now there is a new
law that if you declare that your funds have been already vowed to the temple, then you don’t
have to honor thy father and thy mother with those funds. And so this was their way of
increasing their treasury. They broke the fifth commandment to increase their treasury, so that
a man could now tell his parents, “Oh, I’ve already committed those funds to the temple.”
And if you’ll remember in the Sermon on the Mount: Forswear not. Let all your vows and
oaths speak for God alone. [Matthew 5:33] That was one of the reasons.
And now he called them on it, and he called them hypocrites. They had broken the
fifth commandment, and they were now chastising him because his disciples hadn’t washed
their hands. And what he was really pointing out is that as long as our minds are stayed on
basic rituals, ceremonials, and token observances without the letter, without the Spirit behind
the letter, without the knowledge of the presence of God, we have no religion. There’s no
religion in a form.
The sin of the temple in that day is the same sin of the church in our day. Mortal mind
manifests the same way today. Without the knowledge of the Christ of each individual, it
doesn’t matter what religion we call it. This is what a Pharisee is: one who is concerned about
the material observance of the law. The book says do this, and you must do this. But these are
man-made laws. God didn’t make them. And so when someone is accused of breaking the
law, they’re not breaking God’s law. They’re breaking man-made laws.
And if you don’t go to Mass one day, you’re not breaking God’s law at all. That isn’t
God’s law. That’s a man-made law. And it’s shocking to look into the many laws which we are
told we break, when they’re not made by God. They’re made by man. They’re made by the
Pharisee, the lawmaker who can break his own law when it suits his own pocketbook. And
coming to Jesus with this cry was wasted, because then he taught us a great principle: That
which cometh out of the mouth of man, that’s what he suffers from.
He was telling us that when we are not still, when we are not in the Christ, that which
cometh out of our mouth––that which is the action of our body and our mind––is the world
consciousness that functions through a Pharisee, making him observe only the material letter
of the law and missing the Life of God. You can wash your hands until the skin peels off, but
if you still live in material thought, there is no God experience; and there is no religion.
Now the Pharisees had made themselves the mouthpiece of God, and they were not
authorized. And there are those all over the world today who have made themselves a
mouthpiece of God, and they are not authorized. The only mouthpiece of God is Christ in
you. There will never be another. And when you’re not hearing Christ in you, you’re not
hearing God’s word in you.
Jesus, then, taught us not to wash our hands but to wash our minds, that the purified
thought––that thought which expresses Christ in you, that thought which expresses the Word
444 Return
of God––when that externalizes, then your life outwardly is a perfect expression of Christ
within. That is why it was so necessary to make a point of the washing of the hands and the
rebuke which he gave to them who had come to rebuke him. We spend much time in the
letter, or in the washing of the hands, overlooking the realization of Christ is the perfect
answer to every appearance that faces us.
Now we know that Jesus was able to touch a leper, and the reason he could touch a
leper, whereas no Pharisee would dare, is because they saw contagion there. They had the
thought that contagion was there, but Christ within has no thought of contagion. Christ within
enables you to live in the purity of thought which can touch the contagion because contagion
is only the impure human thought. There is no contagion. Did God create it? Wash your
hands, and you still won’t touch contagion; but wash your mind and you will.
Pilate resorted to that washing of the hands to wash himself clean of something, but he
went mad anyway. In the inner immersion, as we are washed by the Spirit––not by outward
elements––there is a removal of the world consciousness, a removal of material thought. And
those of us who have put this off, have postponed the meeting of material thought with the
Truth of Christ presence, are still not willing to let the Christ into their inn. You in your
material thought are saying to Christ, “Stay out.” This is the major adversary.
We have not overcome the belief in a material world and a material self with material
things, material possessions, material conditions and problems. And as long as we have a
belief in the reality, the existence, the power of matter, we are rejecting Christ. And we’re
2,000 years late in doing it. It isn’t a new idea. It isn’t something you just read in a book
yesterday. It’s something that the human mind keeps postponing. It’s going to get around to it,
you know, but not right away. It still has some good things in the material world that it must
do. And, you know, every time you have good things in the material world that must be done,
you are rejecting Christ just as much as when you are accepting the bad things.
Now those kindergarten days are over for most of us. And as the world around us
becomes more and more of the material consciousness made evident, you will discover how
fortunate you have been to have been led by the Spirit into the way of Christ. Because we
now are on that third level where we are renouncing even the good of this world, for that
which is bad today was the good of yesterday; and that which is bad tomorrow will be the
good of today. That which never was of God can never be accepted in Christ Consciousness.
To walk Here––not in the good of the world, not in the bad of the world––is not possible
while you are living in the human sense of life––in the human mind, in the human form as a
mortal being, a finite being, a person learning about Truth. That person is still rejecting Christ.
Now this beautiful book of Joel’s comes along, The Mystical I, at just the right
moment for you and me to take it and to let it show us how to open the door wide––not just
the stable but the whole house including the penthouse––to Christ, the only inhabitant of our
445 Return
consciousness. One tenant in the temple not made with hands, Christ. So that the entire
house, the entire consciousness, the entire inn becomes Christed. And then we will see how
Christ within us lives not in time but in eternity and now, not in space but in infinity and now.
How Christ in us is never limited and now shows forth all abundance to the very level of
every possible requirement.
Now there is no inn. There is only Christ, the edifice of our very Being. And in Christ
there is nothing outside of you, so you can touch contagion because it isn’t outside. There is
no external condition outside of Christ. Everything is in Christ for Christ is infinite, and
everything in Christ is perfect as my Father, immaculate unto eternity. And your alertness to
Christ as your Selfhood is your alertness to the nonexistence of every problem––the instant
recognition of its nonexistence––because where the problem appears, Christ is. Every floor,
every room, every mansion of your Consciousness is Christ; and you allow nothing to enter or
defile.
You have no external world in Christ, no external condition in Christ, no material

universe in Christ. You are looking behind the atom, above the atom, below the atom, and
right where the atom is supposed to be. And you are walking consciously in the perfect
Kingdom not seen with a human mind, but discerned by the activity of your Soul which is
now your inn. It has been Christed, opened to Christ, receiving the infinite flow of Divinity
always, without fear, without concern, without seeking. And the mystical I is your
consciousness of that Christ where you are, where the corrupt official seems to be, where the
alcoholic stumbles, where the arsonist lights his fires, where the revolutionary throws his
bombs.
You can look at every stuffed shirt in the world and say, “There stands the invisible
Christ.” You can look at everyone in pain, every addict, everyone in every hospital, everyone
in every mental or physical or financial condition and say, “These things do not move me.
God is being God right there now.” You must! Or your inn is closed to Christ. We go back to
Pharisee days, talking about Christ with our mouths and bleating about not washing the hands
before we do a miracle to feed the multitudes.
Now, I know The Mystical I is going to be a great experience. It isn’t metaphysics

anymore. It’s Self living Self, being pure Being. And on the little sheet which announces it, I
have asked each of you who come to class to consider going into the Silence at home before
you even start out to get the feel of who you are, to bring It with you, so that we can all share
the one Christ Consciousness. We’re counting on this particular series, you see, to lift us into
that Consciousness which can look at the world and dissolve world consciousness. To
continue the great work of those before us who have, through their integrity, not faced
individuals, not faced one condition or another but have faced the invisible world
consciousness.
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And we’re beginning to change our way so we face it. This one here with this problem,
we’re not facing that one’s problem. We’re facing the world consciousness which is
manifesting as that one. And as you do this, you’re reversing that little termite which is
nibbling at us all; and you, instead, are nibbling at the world consciousness, at the very
foundation of the lie. Each of us, then, becomes an invisible messenger; and we welcome the
opportunity to meet the world problem. To stand before it, and to let it hit Christ in me.
We welcome every opportunity to do that joyously because we become aware of our

great mission to meet that world consciousness and let the I of My Being, which was before
Abraham, which has overcome the world, stand there unmoved—and then reveal right where
world consciousness was projecting pain and sorrow, lack and limitation, the very opposite—
the perfection of God Itself—by your fidelity to Christ everywhere.
Now that’s what Mystical I was put on this earth to do, and it will attain its purpose in
us. If you haven’t picked up your little announcement, do so please. They’re on the little desk
in the lobby. And then when you come to this Mystical I class, let your Presence in the class
be a result of your living Silence before coming to class. You will benefit thereby.
The resurrection of Christ Consciousness in each of us is what the world calls the end
of the world. But it isn’t. It’s the resurrection of Christ in us made manifest as the end of the
world. It is taking place, and even those who we call our enemies become channels for Truth
when you hold them in their Christhood in spite of what they manifest to your face. They
literally are prohibited from projecting world consciousness when you know the Truth of their
Being, and they become a channel which, instead, pours forth even love where only hate had
been known before.
And no matter who you take into your consciousness, be sure that if you see them as a
person, you’re missing it. But if you see them as world consciousness made manifest and
meet it on that level just by recognizing it, you will release in them the birth of a Child in the
inn of their consciousness. And you can do no one a greater favor on this whole earth than
opening them to Christ by your silent awareness, meeting world consciousness invisibly.
So we have Christmas in June, Christmas tomorrow, Christmas every day in the

enlightened Consciousness. If you’ll join with me in a Silence, this will be our preparation for
The Mystical I. We withdraw from humanhood, and leave Him on the field whose right it is to
sit upon the Throne. A passage comes to mind in Isaiah:
“And the work of righteousness shall be peace;
and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance forever.
And my people shall dwell in a peaceable habitation,
and in sure dwellings, and in quiet resting places; . . .”
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He who understood the Christ assures us that in our peace, in our quietness, we are
leavening the consciousness of the world. Not just of ourselves, but of the one Self. And this
is a great privilege and responsibility that we carry with us whenever we face an individual or
a group or any activity in the world. We address it silently with peace, with knowledge, with
Christ vision, for only God is there.
[Silence]
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The End

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What is the 4th Dimension according to the foreword?

What is the 4th Dimension according to the foreword?

What are some characteristics of living in the 4th Dimension mentioned in the foreword?

What are some characteristics of living in the 4th Dimension mentioned in the foreword?

READ ME FIRST!

How to Use this Electronic Book:

1. Click on the chapter numbers in the “Table Of Contents” to go to that

This book remains the property of

Unauthorized publishing of any of the

Foreword Bill Skiles 7

Class 1 There Is No Place Where God Is Not 9

Class 3 Impersonalizing Four Ways 43

Class 4 Immaculate Self Conception 63

Class 5 Secret Of The Resurrection 79

Class 6 Invisible Resurrection Of Your Real Body 98

Class 7 Freeways Of The Soul 118

Class 8 Remnants Of The Seventh World 136

Class 9 Your Healing Consciousness 154

Class 10 Miracle Of The Holy Ghost 173

Class 11 Enoch 192

Class 12 Erasing Concepts 211

Class 13 Living Outside Your Body 228

Class 14 A Real And Permanent Body 246

Class 15 I Am Not A Prodigal 264

Class 16 Oil From Your Soul Center 283

Class 17 Has Goliath Fooled You 300

Class 18A Three Measures Of Leaven 323

Class 18B Cosmic Television 333

Class 19 You Are Divine Life Now 340

Class 20 Your Identity Already Walks On Water 358

Class 21 A Total Re-identification 377

Class 22 Here Is Now 396

Class 23 Divine Supply 413

Class 24 Christmas Everyday 432

What is this 4th Dimension? Is there such a place? Is it a plane of existence?

Now, if your consciousness is not aware of the presence of Spirit, it is disconnected;

∞∞∞∞∞ END OF SIDE ONE ∞∞∞∞∞

So you have two experiments to try with yourself:

for he did say, "And greater things shall ye do."

goes through by denying spiritual Self at every moment.

But I, Spirit, am the resurrection. In the realization of Spirit as identity, we are

∞∞∞∞∞ END OF SIDE ONE ∞∞∞∞∞

We may bring the illusion of a third dimension of consciousness. We may bring a

When you were taught to impersonalize, up to this moment our impersonalization’s

∞∞∞∞∞ END OF SIDE ONE ∞∞∞∞∞

the Spirit of God that is you.

“I have made him for my glory.”

Thank you very much.

∞∞∞∞∞ END OF SIDE ONE ∞∞∞∞∞

We impersonalize place, space. We impersonalize that which is finite, a place which

This is our way. It isn't a way of fancy words or of sentimentalism or of holy

A very Merry Christmas to everyone.

welcomed back by the Master.

It is recorded elsewhere that before he reappeared to the apostles, he first reappeared

selfhood. I am your eternal Self. You know I have no physical form.”

He hadn’t been resurrected. Their consciousness had dropped that degree of

∞∞∞∞∞ END OF SIDE ONE ∞∞∞∞∞

It is an all-embracing revelation of the illusion of the material experience. But if we

Thanks very much, and I hope to see you next year.