Joel S. Goldsmith - Conscious Union with God: Understanding the Truth

by Joel S. Goldsmith

Preaching without practice is one of the deadliest of sins. For example, the scriptural passage, so fundamental to all spiritual teaching, Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it, is a beautiful quotation, but it remains only a preachment until, and unless, it is understood and practiced.

If I were to attempt to teach truth humanly through books, classes, or recorded messages, it would result only in failure. Moreover, if you think that there is some new truth to be learned humanly, you will be disappointed because there is not a single new truth in the entire world. The truth revealed in this book is not my truth or my message, but the word of God which has been imparting itself to universal consciousness throughout all time. That word of God is already embodied in your consciousness, and this truth, which is already your consciousness, is now being unveiled to you within you.

Unless God is my consciousness, there will be no truth expressing itself through, or as, me; and, moreover, unless God is your consciousness, you will not understand the truth that is being presented. But, since God is universal consciousness and since God is my consciousness, truth is expressing itself as this bookGod expressing and revealing Itself.

Furthermore, since God is your consciousness, God will be revealing Itself unto Itself. Consciousness will be expressing Its truth unto Itself. Truth will not pass from me to you, and it will not pass from God to you: The entire activity of truth will take place in the one Consciousness, the consciousness of me which is the consciousness of you.

The purpose of this book is to bring to light the truth of being, but no one can put it into practice for you but you, yourself, and the progress you make will depend upon what you absorb of that which is unfolded and revealed in these pages. Therefore, in some measure, you must begin to use what is given, chapter by chapter, in order to assimilate the more advanced lessons.

This is no different from taking piano lessons or any other kind of lessons. You go to your teacher and take a lesson, but if you do not practice, you will receive no benefit from another lesson the next day. In the same way, your unfoldment, understanding, and progress in truth will be in the degree of your putting each and every one of these lessons into practice.

This message has nothing whatsoever to do with a human person called a teacher, but only with a teaching or revelation. Its main purpose is not the healing of physical bodies, nor is it the adding of ten or a hundred dollars a week to anyones income. The Infinite Way is not primarily concerned with temporal or human improvements: It is concerned with the mission of the Christ, which is to set you free, to set you free spirituallyfree from your belief in bondage to person, place, thing, circumstance, or condition.

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Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.

psalm 127

Illumination dissolves all material ties and binds men together with the golden chains of spiritual understanding; it acknowledges only the leadership of the Christ; it has no ritual or rule but the divine, impersonal universal Love; no other worship than the inner Flame that is ever lit at the shrine of Spirit. This union is the free state of spiritual brotherhood. The only restraint is the discipline of Soul, therefore we know liberty without licence; we are a united universe without physical limits; a divine service to God without ceremony or creed. The illumined walk without fearby Grace.

Even though for many years the metaphysical world has believed that mental and spiritual healing are synonymous, actually they are as far apart as are material and spiritual healing. Mental and material healing are much the same except that they operate on different levels of consciousness. The mental is a little higher and finer than the material, but essentially they are two strata of the same belief.

On the other hand, to use the terms, mentally spiritual or spiritually mental, is exactly the same as saying, a godly devil. The spiritual and the mental are just that far apart, not that one is right and the other is wrong, but they function on such different levels of consciousness that they are as far apart as the poles.

The present day mixture of the spiritual and the mental stems from the beginning of modern mental practice, which originated in the last quarter of the eighteenth century in Germany with Franz Anton Mesmer, a reputable and learned physician, who named his discovery animal magnetism. He it was who discovered that there is a vital fluidinvisible and mentalwhich passes from the practitioner to the patient and which acts hypnotically through suggestion.

One of Mesmers students, the French mesmerist, Charles Poyen, migrated to Portland, Maine, and there found an apt student named Phineas P. Quimby to whom he taught mesmerism, then known as hypnotism, or animal magnetism, and for some time these two engaged in this activity primarily for entertainment purposes.

Mr. Quimby, later known as Dr. Quimby, however, had a young patient, or student, who worked as his assistant and who developed the faculty, under hypnotism, of discerning the mental causes for the physical diseases of people coming to him on the platform. Dr. Quimby, then, by recognizing the non-power of the mental thought, erased the disease. As a result of some remarkable healings which took place, he gave up the entertainment phase of his work and became a very well-known healer. People flocked to him from all over the country, and there are reports of amazing healings.

Dr. Quimby was a very good mana religious man in a church senseand very soon he began to introduce the words God and the Christ into the terminology of his work. Gradually, these religious terms became a part of what was in the beginning a purely mental practice. As a matter of fact, I believe it was Dr. Quimby who first made the distinction between Jesus and the ChristJesus, the man, and Christ, the Spirit that animated him. Up to that time in the theological world, Jesus and the Christ had been thought of as one. In metaphysical language today, however, Jesus is understood to be the man, and the Christ, the power or presence or Spirit of God which animated the man Jesus.

Of all Dr. Quimbys students, the one who became best known was Mary Baker Eddy, who travelled for three years giving lectures for him on the science of Quimbyism, which he later called the Science of Christ, or Christian Science. Because of her religious background, Mrs. Eddy was well-steeped in the Bible and in the religious thought of her day, and she therefore utilized all the religious terms which Dr. Quimby had introduced into his mental practice.

But let us not deceive ourselves: It was a mental practice, so mental that when engaged in the healing work Mrs. Eddy often had to ask Dr. Quimby to help her because she had taken on the disease of the patient she was treating. Early letters which passed between Mrs. Eddy and Dr. Quimby show that the practice in which they were engaged was mental even though they used terms such as the Christ. It was one mind over another mind or mind over matter or one mind understanding that disease is not a power. It was primarily suggestionthe transference of the thoughts of one mind to another.