1960 Chicago Closed Class
Joel S. Goldsmith
325B – From the Law to Conscious Knowing of Truth, Part 2
Good evening,
As we got into the subject of the correct letter of truth, that which we use to develop spiritual
consciousness, to develop spiritual awareness, we had as our first principle the one of one power.
Now, you must realize, of course, that the teaching of, or the principle of one power is
perhaps the oldest spiritual principle on the face of the earth. It probably is the first one ever
revealed; and the two greatest teachings, original great teachings, or rather the two original, great
original…no, the great teachings in their original form—that’s it, the two great teachings in their
original form—was first of all Gautama the Buddha, for he is the outstanding spiritual seer, sage,
saint who received a revelation—and I don’t mean that he is the first one to receive it, but so far
as our literature is concerned, he is the first one to show forth the teaching of one power; and he
did this through the revelation which was given to him that this world and the powers of this
world—sin, disease, death, poverty—that all of these are maya, or illusion, and that the only
reality is Spirit, the Invisible, and this alone is power and on that basis developed the first of the
great healing movements. And undoubtedly, Buddha’s was the greatest that has ever been on
earth, first of all because it spread throughout all of India and eventually traveled all of Asia and
in its first centuries did marvelous healing works on a broad scale. And the reason was that he
knew you do not fight evil or try to overcome it or get rid of it, because it is maya, or illusion.
Now, the reason that his secret was lost was that his followers, including some of his own
disciples, not having sufficient spiritual vision to understand “one power”, set up maya, which
means illusion, as a separate power, and they tried to have the first great power do something to
the illusion, and of course they failed. And once you set up another power, even for God to do
something to, you have duality, and you no longer have the possibility of spiritual healing.
Now then, Jesus Christ established his healing mission on the same principle; and his was
not as large as Buddha’s, because his encompassed only the few miles that constitute the Holy
Lands of his day. But he did have this principle, because he says to the crippled man, What did
hinder you? Rise, pick up your bed and walk, which certainly is saying there is no power in that
condition; and he says to the blind man, Open your eyes. He doesn’t say a word about any Godpower to do something to it, merely, Open your eyes. And in another case he applied spittle to a
blind man’s eyes and healed them, and surely he wasn’t implying that spittle is the healing
agency for blindness, but rather that spittle, which in and of itself is nothing, even that was
enough to heal blindness. Why? Because blindness has no power to maintain itself or sustain
itself except in the minds of those who are under the influence of two powers.
So it is that even before Lazarus, he said, I do not have to pray; Lazarus, come forth. Why?
Because there is no power in death, and the only power that death has is in the power that we
give it by having a belief in two powers. If we understood life as the only power, the thought of
death would never enter our mind.
Now, the followers of Buddha gradually came to make the mistake of believing that the
maya, or illusion, was “out here”, and so they began to be indifferent to this world because it is
only maya, it is only illusion, and so why bother about it? And so from that day to this, India has
been allowed to rot away only because, “There’s no use. Don’t try to heal my body. It’s only
illusion, and someday we won’t have it. We’ll be rid of the illusion.” And so they allow
themselves…even today the great religionists there do not permit themselves to be healed,
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because, “The body is only illusion, and we’re going to get rid of it someday, so why bother with
it?”
Now, they’re indifferent to money; they’re indifferent to progress. And the reason is that to
them this world is illusion, maya, so why bother about it; why build it up? And of course they’re
all wrong. An illusion cannot be objectified. An illusion is an erroneous mental image in thought,
never outside of thought. Therefore, when you see the illusion on the desert, the mirage, it isn’t
outside. It is in your false perception of what you are seeing. When you see the horizon in the
distance, there is no horizon out there. That is an optical illusion that is within you, and all you
need to prove it is to keep going up and up and up in a plane and watch that horizon recede and
recede and recede, and I’m sure that if you got up far enough, you’d see the entire world,
because there is no such thing as an horizon in externalized form. The horizon is a mental
percept within us.
Now…yes, there is a story in India too, a very interesting one, about a man who got in a
rowboat on the river, and when he did it, it was now and here; and he rowed a mile downstream,
and when he got there, the place he left was the past and it was far away, and where he was, was
here and now. And then looking ahead of him was the future, and it was over there. But when he
arrived there, he found it also was here and now. And so it was, that if you went up just a little
bit above the earth you would find that what he called the past, the present and the future were all
the present.
Now, when Christian Science had its beginning, Mrs. Eddy clearly perceived that the
illusion is not “out here”, that it is within one. She clearly perceived that error had no
externalized reality, that it existed only as a belief or dream; and in one of her most famous
statements she said, “Mortality is a myth.”
Now, when she spoke of maya, or illusion, she gave it the term “mortal mind”, but she said
very distinctly, “the term mortal mind is a solecism.” It is a term denoting nothingness; and on
that basis Christian Science, within thirty or forty years, grew to encompass this whole world,
with all of the opposition in the world that there was.
But the same thing happened to her teaching as happened to Buddha’s. Pretty soon mortal
mind got to be something “out here” and somebody “out here” and so then came the idea of
protecting ourselves from mortal mind; and first we did it in the morning, and eventually we got
up at four o’clock in the morning, before mortal mind got up; and some people tried to stay up all
night, so as to beat the old devil, because—and you’ll find this to be pretty prevalent belief
today—mortal mind is something external to you which, if you don’t look out will creep up on
you and do something to you.
But you see, mortal mind is the same as maya. It is our misperception of what we are
beholding, and to recognize that would make us all healers. And not only that, it would save us
from the disastrous effects of the universal belief in two powers, because the moment that we
would take the material and mental powers and embrace them in some such term as illusion or
mortal mind or carnal mind, we could dismiss it, knowing that what we meant by that was
nothingness, the arm of flesh of Hezekiah. They have only the arm of flesh—temporal power,
nothingness. We have the one and only power there is: God All-mighty. And when you have God
All-mighty, there is no other might, and therefore there is no other power and you are free.
And of course, our good friend Paul made the same blunder that the followers of Gautama
did and the same blunder that the followers of Mrs. Eddy did. After learning about the carnal
mind, brother Paul made carnal mind enmity against God, so he had two powers also, and what
did it do to him? Every week he ended up in a prison or beaten with stripes, and eventually he
325B – From the Law to Conscious Knowing of Truth, Part 2
3
died there. Why not? He made a devil for himself and then set out to attack it, and since he
created it and wouldn’t destroy it, he gave it life eternal and gave it more power than he gave
himself.
Now, if you perceive the secret of the teaching of the principle of one power, you will
understand that there is no power external to you, either for good or evil, and you won’t be
looking for good to come to you, even from a God; and certainly you’ll never be expecting or
experiencing any evil from a devil or Satan or mortal mind or carnal mind or maya. Why? The
kingdom of God is within you.
That’s the simple statement of an absolute truth. The kingdom of power is within you, and
since it is only one power, you needn’t even use it. That’s why you hear in all of my classes that
you can use material power and you can use mental power, but no one who has ever lived on the
face of the earth has ever been able to use spiritual power. Why? There’s nothing to use it on.
There’s nothing to use it against. There is no opposite or opposition to God. There are no pairs of
opposites. God is One—one Power, one Life, one Mind, one Soul, one Being, one Body. God is
One; but since God is infinite there is no other than that One, and that One is within you.
Therefore, you need only rest. You need only relax. You need only know this truth: The
kingdom of God is within me; and, Are there any gods beside me? asks Isaiah. I know not any.
Are there any other powers but the power that is within me? I know not any. Are there any other
causes? I know not any. Why? That I in the midst of you will never leave you for forsake you,
and there is where all power is embodied; and as long as you can say the word I you’re all right.
You’ve got infinite God-power and nothing beside; nothing to overcome, nothing to destroy,
nothing to protect yourself from.
And so we come to, I believe, one of the most important parts of our Infinite Way teaching,
and that is to be found in the chapter, “Protective Work”—make a note of it—the chapter
“Protective Work” in Infinite Way Letters, 1955, and also in “Across the Desk” in June 1960,
next month.
Now, let me tell you why, if this work is understood, most of your other studies become
unnecessary.
Everything that happens to us must happen through our own consciousness. What doesn’t
happen through our own consciousness is never known to us. Therefore, it is up to us to
determine what will happen to us. Now, let us see why that is, because unless you understand the
principle, going through the motions will do you no good.
The mind, our mind, is like an antennae. It picks up everything that is in the air. You
witnessed the proof of that in the first experiments with subliminal perception advertising, when
advertising was placed in the air, but you could neither see it nor hear it, but you obeyed it. From
fifty-seven to seventy-five percent did obey it, so that when it was flashed by Coca Cola, from
fifty-seven to seventy-five (percent) of the people in a theater went downstairs and bought Coca
Cola. They hadn’t before; they didn’t want it particularly; but they did it, and they didn’t even
know that they saw or heard such a suggestion.
Now, later experiments on the television made people get up from their seats and go to the
telephone and then find when they got there they had no one to call and no one had called them,
and they didn’t know why they had gone to the telephone. It was because it was flashed on the
air so that they could neither see it nor hear it, “Go to the telephone,” and up they jumped and
went to the telephone and then wondered why.
Now, so it is that in the morning sometimes, before you’re out of bed and have any chance
to see the newspapers or hear the radio, you find yourself with a cold and you wonder where it
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came from. After awhile you get up and find out that it’s on the radio or on the television or in
the newspapers that the flu epidemic hit today, and you say, “Ah, that’s the reason.” But see, you
knew about it before you heard of it or read of it. In fact, you responded to it and got it.
So it is that we are always obeying impulses from what we call “this world”, the universal
mind, and not knowing why. You probably wake up some morning feeling a terrible sense of
fear, and then when you get up you find out that the big summit didn’t come off, and you wonder
what’s going to happen next. But you knew it before you got out of bed. You already had the
fear. Now you got up and found out why.
In other words, the human mind is forever picking up suggestions and we act on them; and
they are suggestions that affect us physically, mentally, morally, and financially. Now, this need
not be, but it is the history of the human world. It has been said that if a doctor in the other parts
of the world makes a discovery of a new disease today, by tomorrow there will be thousands of
cases of it all over the world, and you wonder how the news travels so fast. It didn’t. It traveled
silently and invisibly and hypnotically. But this need not be, except that it must be in the
experience of those who do not know the truth. Once you have been taught that there is no power
external to you and that the only power within you is the power of God, you, from that moment
on, begin to be free of the world’s hypnotisms, the world’s suggestions, and you can protect
yourself from these.
Now, you don’t protect yourself as Paul did, from the carnal mind that is enmity against
God, but you do protect yourself from the carnal mind which is a belief in two powers. So that
immediately on waking in the morning, your very first thought must be protecting yourself from
the universal belief in two powers. And remember, this belief is within you until you yourself—
only because you have accepted it from the world—until you consciously come out from among
them and be separate. Come out from among those who believe in two powers and make
yourself entirely separate from them through your understanding, first of all, of God as one
power, all-power, the only power, and then that all of this power is within you.
This power of God flows out from you, and it enfolds everyone who comes within reach of
your consciousness. But no power flows to you, no good power and no bad power. All power is
given unto you from God, and it is within you and it flows out from you, but you must “open out
a way for the imprisoned splendour to escape.” You are the one who first must acknowledge, The
kingdom of God is within me, and the kingdom of God is the all-power, the only power, the allmighty power and beside it there are no other powers; no powers of matter, no powers of mind,
no material powers and no mental powers, for the only real power is the power of Spirit, the
power of Soul, the invisible power that is within you and is forever flowing forth from you to
embrace this world.
Now, all of the evil in this world operates as either material powers, mental powers or
persons, and if you will lump them all together as carnal mind or mortal mind or illusion,
hypnotism, and see them as of nonpower with the realization that, “I, myself, embody the only
power there is; all that the Father hath is mine,” then you will find that these suggestions will not
come nigh your household. They will not come nigh your consciousness. Nothing shall enter that
defileth or maketh a lie if you are standing guard with the realization of one power, because all
there is beside that one power is a universal belief in two powers, and you must consciously
reject it.
Therefore, do you not see that until you, first of all, perceive that the only evil there is in the
world is operating as a belief in two powers, functioning as material law or power, or mental law
or power or person, but that all of this really is only a belief in two powers and that this is not
325B – From the Law to Conscious Knowing of Truth, Part 2
5
power, for I in the midst of me is the only power. Then you shut your mind off from being an
antennae.
And so I would like to tell you of this. It is the function of the mind. The mind, your mind,
acts really in two ways. It is, first of all, the substance of your body. Your body is not made up of
matter; your body is made up of mind, which we call matter in its particular form, and therefore
your mind is the essence, the substance of your body. But your mind is an unconditioned mind. It
knows neither good nor evil. It has no qualities whatsoever. It is like God, Spirit. God has no
qualities whatsoever. God is infinite, eternal, immortal Being, but God is neither good nor bad.
God is infinity; God is immortality; God is life. But God is not long life or short life. God is not
healthy life or diseased life. God is just pure life with no qualifications whatsoever, and this is
true of your mind. Your mind is unconditioned, and as the substance of your body, your body is
immortal and eternal. Your body has no qualities of good or of evil; it has no qualities of health
or disease; it has no qualities of strength or weakness. Your body is an unconditioned mind in
formation.
Now, what determines the nature of your life is what you accept in mind, for this becomes
the conditioning that appears as your body, as your business, as your home, as your family; and
your life is then conditioned by what you accept in your mind. So I’m going to start you with the
word I, and I would like you to follow me in this:
I know this truth: that God is “closer to me than breathing and nearer than hands and
feet.” I know this truth: that the kingdom of God is within me. I know this truth: that all
power is within me and that this power is God, and it is not a power over something. It is,
Itself, infinite all-power. I know that my life is the life which is God, the God-life
expressing Itself as my individual life, and therefore I have no short life and no long life.
I have no young life or old life. I have no sick life or well life. I have no moral life or
immoral life. I have only the unconditioned life which is God.
Now, you, of course, in your work will take all of the synonyms you can possibly remember
that will bring to your conscious realization that,
I, in the midst of me, will never leave me nor forsake me; I within me is my bread,
wine and water; therefore I need not look to man whose breath is in his nostrils; I need
not put my faith in princes; I need not look outside of my own being, for I will never
leave me nor forsake me; I will be with me unto the end of the world, and I am my bread;
I embody my meat and wine and water. In fact, I embody the power of resurrection, so
that even the lost years of the locust will be restored unto me.
Now, I am filling my mind with this truth. I am embodying truth in my mind and this
becomes the substance or the conditioning of my life and mind and body and business; and that
is the only conditioning that my mind can have. It gets it from me, the I that I am. I impart unto
my mind truth and thus the mind forms the second function: a reflector. What I fill my mind
with, that it reflects as my body, as my business, as my home, as my family, as my human
relationships. I impart to my mind the truth of being, and it reflects that throughout my being and
body and entire life. But do you notice that in doing this, I have shut myself off from the world’s
suggestions that there are two powers.
Now let us see how this operates, because right now we’re…you see…I’ll interrupt myself
right here. (I’m the only one who can do that.) If all of us, if we were to leave here and found a
wonderful colony, you know, a transcendentalist colony, and all lived together joyously and
happily and peacefully, and walk out on the beautiful countryside or mountainside or seaside and
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say, “Oh, how peaceful and how lovely this is,” we would be liars. We would be deceiving
ourselves. We would just be running away from New York and Chicago and Los Angeles and
San Francisco and its troubles. See that? We would be hiding our heads in the sand and saying,
“How lovely it is; we are all at peace,” as if we really were, while everybody out here was
fighting. Why, it is literally true that if there’s a starving man in the world, I can’t be rich. If
there’s a sick man in the world, I can’t be well. Why? We are all parts of each other.
We are only fulfilling our function when we stay right out here in the world with our truth
and prove that it is truth and that through this we benefit those who are still in ignorance of it;
and so, don’t think because this news in the paper today sounds bad—and it really isn’t as bad as
it sounds—but don’t believe for a moment that it would be lovely if we could run away to some
transcendentalist colony and not be aware of it, because it wouldn’t be at all. The lovely thing is,
we know this truth, and we can stay here in the midst of it and play a part in overcoming the
world’s appearances.
Now, when I bring to myself, to my mind, the truth of being—as the Master put it, Ye shall
know the truth, and the truth shall make you free—as I know this truth of God, my real being, the
only power, all within me and that all else that exists as an appearance is the carnal mind, the
arm of flesh or of no power, I help to dissolve that picture; first for myself, so that my own life
begins to show forth some measure of the harmonies to which it is entitled; then someone sees it
and wants some of it, and then I give them this truth and I begin to perceive that it operates for
their benefit, and then this circle widens and widens and widens and as we stay in this world and
face the appearances, we help to dissolve them.
And here is the reason: None of these evils are externalized and none of these dangers are
externalized. They exist only as mental images in the mind of man, and only those who know
this truth can help to dissolve them. In other words, if I am a practitioner and an individual or a
thousand bring their problems to me, I, being one with God, one with Truth, am a majority; and
if I know that these claims of human sense are not externalized conditions, they have no
existence in the world, they exist only in the belief of two powers, they exist only as mental
projections in thought but projected out on the screen of life but having no externalized reality or
form or substance or law, you soon find that you have a healing.
Well, when we face the storm at sea as the Master did, with the realization, “There is no
storm at sea; there is no externalized storm. This is a mental image in the universal belief in two
powers,” the bubble bursts and the storm isn’t there. We have witnessed this with destructive
forces of nature and seen them dissolve only through this truth: Evil does not exist as an
externalized condition or person. It exists only as maya, illusion, mortal mind, carnal mind and
hypnotism, appearance, any name you like as long as you understand that it means a mental
image in thought that has no externalized form, has no substance and no law.
Now, the healing of disease isn’t as difficult as it seems. If you, as an individual, can come
to the realization that death itself is not a power, that death itself cannot separate you from God,
which means life; death itself cannot separate you from consciousness; death itself cannot
separate you from the love of God, the life of God, the Soul of God, the consciousness of God,
and therefore, what difference does death make—when you come to that realization, you have
overcome ninety percent of the diseases of this world.
Actually, if you could demonstrate it, you would prove that one hundred percent, because
the only reason for serious illness is the fear of death. Take the fear of death out of disease and
disease would have no sting. It would have no power whatsoever. And you cannot take the fear
out of disease as long as you believe it leads to death and that death is something to be avoided.
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It isn’t to be avoided. Someday it will have to be met, and you might as well meet it now while
you don’t have to meet it in that earthly sense of death, while you can meet it here and now. But
meet it with the realization, “Could it, has it ever separated anyone from the love of God? If so,
what has happened to all the saints and sages and seers and wonderful people of all ages, if death
could destroy them or anyone else?”
No. No, it could not be possible for there to be as much human sacrifice on the face of the
earth, as many men and women who have given themselves and their lives to the world, and then
feel that death all of a sudden cut them off and brought something horrible to them. It didn’t at
all. It was merely another stage in their experience. And when we come to view death in that
manner, we will have destroyed most of our diseases, because our diseases have their basis in
that fear.
That is the only reason, I’m sure, that cancer even to this day is the most difficult claim that
we come up against in this practice; at least I have found it so, and I have found many, many
practitioners who have told me the same thing—that they have more difficulty with cancer than
with any other claim that comes to them. And why? Because that word is so immediately
connected with death. As soon as we hear the word “cancer” it almost seems that we’re hearing
“inevitability”, and that’s what makes it difficult—this fear of death; whereas, to understand that
even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, God will be walking with me in
this I that I am, would make us absolutely indifferent to the experience, and being indifferent to
it would also postpone it, because usually it’s only the things we fear that come upon us.
Now, all of this, though, to show you that what you entertain in your mind is what you
experience, and what you entertain in your mind is just the belief in two powers. What form that
takes is different with different individuals. To some it brings poverty, to some it brings sin, to
some it brings alcoholism, to some it brings disease; but regardless of what form, it is still only
the belief in two powers; and if you sufficiently protect yourself in the morning from this belief,
if you sufficiently instruct, if you call it that, the mind in truth, you will find that your mind is not
an antennae; there is no room, for where God, infinite Good is, there can be no room for the
belief in two powers in any form to enter to defile, to make a lie.
So you see that actually, we do choose each day whether we will serve God or mammon.
We choose each day whether we will serve Spirit, the one power, or the belief in two powers,
and it is as simple as that—that we are suffering from nothing more than these hypnotic
suggestions, which we don’t have to see or hear in order to take in. They act upon us
hypnotically; they act upon us like suggestion, only it doesn’t have to be directed at us. We are
picking it up from the atmosphere.
Our work first, then, is to prevent as much evil entering our mind as possible, and that we do
through our conscious rejection of the belief in two powers and our conscious acceptance of the
truth that, “The presence and power of God is within me, ‘closer than breathing, nearer than
hands and feet,’ and Its name is I. I in the midst of me is mighty. I in the midst of me is my bread,
wine and water. I in the midst of me is my resurrection.” And if I have put on the whole armor of
God, which is the realization of God, certainly no world belief can enter to defile or make a lie.
Now, try to see this, then. There are three parts of you. There is you, yourself; that which
you call I, and this is the sum total of your whole being; but it is divided into stages of
awareness. And so we have I, the I that I am, which is my God-being, or Soul, or Spirit, or Son
of God; and there is my mind, and there is my body. And my mind serves to function in two
ways. It serves as my avenue of awareness, and it serves as the substance of my body, the
substance of my business, the substance of my relationships, the substance of everything that
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concerns me. And so it is, then, that I know this truth, and because my mind is imbued with this
truth that I know, mind imbued with truth becomes the substance of form, body, business.
The acceptance into your mind of the universal belief in two powers manifests itself as sin,
disease, death, lack, limitation, all forms of discordant living. Therefore, you see, to be a
follower of the Master, you will be continually coming up against his statement that, The way is
strait and narrow, and few there be that enter, and the only reason is, there are so few who wish
to dedicate themselves to conscious thinking, conscious knowing, conscious studying, conscious
pondering, conscious meditating; and since life is consciousness, those who won’t be actively
conscious all the time are the living dead. They’re walking around in a dream, not aware of
where they’re going or why, or even what’s influencing them to go or come or do or be.
And so it is that part of the tragedy of human living is the amount of time that is spent in
wasted energies. Oh, there’s lots of room and lots of time for legitimate entertainment, lots of
time for pleasant entertainment and vacations and holidays; lots of time for theaters and lots of
time for television. But not to the exclusion of our consciously living, of being a conscious,
living person; not a person who walks around influenced by, but rather being a person who
influences, and influences but not consciously dominating but by consciously being a center of
God-action.
And so it is, the body itself is a very live piece of mechanism, because mind is its substance.
The body itself is something of a joyous nature, a vigorous nature, a vital nature, but not the
body that is allowed to just walk behind us without any conscious direction from us. Our bodies
must be governed by Truth. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free, of all
discords, all inharmonies, all inequalites, because you are setting the law through conscious
realization.
As a matter of fact, you’re going beyond that. You’re letting yourself be governed by Grace.
You’re even denying the power of material and mental laws, so that only God’s grace, centered
in the I that is my true being, my real identity, God’s grace functioning as I, lives my life. And
then there’s no need to take thought, no need to be concerned or anxious, because at the right
moment it is God, or Truth, which thinks, or gives to us the thoughts we think. And God’s
thoughts are not man’s thoughts. Man’s thoughts are not God’s thoughts. And so we become
more and more receptive to the inflow of God’s thoughts. Then we are God-governed.
That is why in our work we devote so much time to that listening ear: Speak, Lord, Thy
servant heareth. In other words, making ourselves receptive, not merely to thoughts which we
already know, but new thoughts. Our slogan should really be that we do not live by yesterday’s
manna. That should be one of the major things…it is one of the major quotations in my entire
life, and it has been always, since I’m in this work, that we do not live on yesterday’s manna, and
we don’t live on yesterday’s truth. We don’t live on yesterday’s treatment.
We don’t live on yesterday’s idea of how to conduct a business. Businesses change
overnight; the nature of them changes overnight; the products change overnight. And I saw in the
paper today, advice to somebody not to buy stocks and put them in the safe and expect to keep
them forever, because companies keep changing and products keep changing, and you’ve got to
be abreast of the time in order to know when to sell your old stocks and to buy some new ones.
In other words, in every phase of life, don’t try to live on yesterday’s manna.
So it is with your truth and your treatments. Don’t learn formulas and repeat them each day,
but act as though you had entrance to the kingdom of God and could go to God any minute, any
second, any hour for fresh illumination, for fresh guidance, for fresh instruction or instruction in
different ways or new ways. Never be satisfied with the truth you know yesterday. Always
325B – From the Law to Conscious Knowing of Truth, Part 2
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seek…well, God is infinite; Truth is infinite; so we have no need of anything that we had
yesterday. Infinity is pouring Itself through today, and let’s get a little bit of today’s and
tomorrow’s and the next day, and we will find then that the study of Truth does not become stale.
It is always appearing in fresh forms.
We don’t have to go over the same lesson day after day. We don’t have to go over the same
books day after day. And as a matter of fact, there’s no loss if we skip some days reading or
hearing Truth, because we’re making room for Truth to reveal Itself to us within ourselves. We
must make periods of time when we don’t live in the books or in the tapes. We must make time
for saying, “God, you spoke to that man, You can speak to me; if You spoke to anyone on earth,
You can speak to me,” for God is no respecter of persons. To God there’s no high or low. To
God there’s no rich or poor. To God there’s no such thing as a religion. God forbid that you ever
believe you’ll find a religion in heaven.
And I like the statement of God’s, too, that the only sin in heaven is stupidity. And it is
stupid to live without conscious thought, without conscious awareness, without living a
conscious life of living. It is stupid to live on yesterday’s manna. It is stupid to live on the beliefs
of the world that have just driven the world into the condition it’s in. There would be no disgrace
on anyone’s part if they threw every teaching out the window and said, “God, I won’t believe
any one of them until it comes direct from You.” And you’d find, too, that there would be no
harm in that and no loss in that, because no teaching on the face of the earth is so important that a
better one can’t come to you if you listen to God. God is infinite and God is no respecter of
persons.
Sometime ago somebody complained to me that learning Truth is too expensive, and I told
him it wasn’t; it didn’t cost a penny if you really want it so. You don’t have to buy books; you
don’t have to go to classes. If you want Truth, go home and stay there and make God talk to you.
Might take awhile; might take a year or two or three, but it’s worth it, and it will be without
price. This is the easier way, but the other is a possible way, because God is no respecter of
persons. And if we insist, if we knock, if we seek the answer will come, but it will come within
us, from an infinite center, an infinite storehouse that is already within us, just waiting for us to
“open out the doors and let that imprisoned splendour escape.”
Now, believe this: The harmony of your life is locked up within you. Your health and your
supply and your companionship and your home—these are all locked up within you, and the
moment you realize that the I of your being embodies these and that It flows out into expression,
it will be that way unto you instead of having it come from some outside source, or man whose
breath is in his nostril or princes or favoritism or any other external way.
Now, do you see this? There is the I that I am, and the truth that I know is what I’m
conditioning my mind with, and that conditioning appears as the harmony of my entire existence.
And if I do not know the truth consciously, believe it or not, the world is pouring its beliefs into
my mind subliminally as well as through the press and the radio and the television, and this
manifests itself then as the conditioning of my mind and the appearance of my body.