We are always going to keep our aspiration so high that no matter where we are at this moment, we are not going to be satisfied until we are inside that last chapter of The Infinite Way where we say, "I am home in Thee." We won't say, "I am home in Christian Science or Unity or The Infinite Way" we will say, "I am home in Thee." 
 
Now that's our goal. The goal is achieved through conscious union with God. But before I come to that now, let me tell you. All of these discords that we face – past, present or some of those that are still to come, will have to be dealt with, will have to be met, will have to be overcome. And we don't overcome them through a blind faith by saying "Oh, let God do it." That's been tried by hundreds of millions and hasn't worked.
 
Once in a while there is a person who rises so high in ecstatic faith that they really get outside themselves into God and do witness a miracle. The figures show that out of a hundred thousand people, every hundred thousand people who go to Lourdes, that fifteen have complete and permanent healings. And you can be assured that those fifteen when they go there, go there with such hope, such faith, such ecstasy, such love of God that finally they find themselves outside their own being. And they achieve a measure of God realized. That's a very small proportion and it wouldn't do for us to sit around hoping to be one of the fifteen out of a hundred thousand.
 
Now, these problems that exist in our experience are not actually problems that exist in the world, they exist in our mind. They do not exist outside anywhere. They don't exist in this room. If you search this room from corner to corner, you wouldn't find a problem in this whole room. But if we searched your mind and mine we'd find lots of problems because that's where they thrive, that's where they exist. In your mind and in my mind, in your belief and in my belief, in your wrong concept of the world, in my wrong concept of the world, it's all in the false concept that we entertain of the world.
 
Now, I don't mean that it isn't perfectly real and painful and destructive to you and me, it is; whether it's inside the mind or out. But the fact that it doesn't exist as a reality with a law is what enables us to surmount it, to survive it, to overcome it and to get back into that original pure state of consciousness in which there are no discords.. And it is for this reason that we have a spiritual practice. The human world knows nothing of this, and therefore the human world walks around more or less hopelessly. 
 
That is why in every place where there are radios or televisions - it makes no difference how expensive they are; everybody manages to get a hold of one. They might not be able to get a hold of fifty-seven shillings for a good book but they'll get a hold of fifty pounds for a television set. And why? Because the television set will drown their troubles. It will give them an escape.
There was an article in your paper here this morning about these new drugs being sold over here, which relieve you of your worry. Now they're selling in the United States by the billions. Everybody takes pills every day to stop their worries, and they do stop worrying for a few hours. They do, they're relieved. It doesn't change their problem. Because no, no, no, they have to wake up later and face the problem and get worried again. And then there's a pill tomorrow. (Laughter) And if they just take enough they'll go to sleep forever and they won't have to wake up to their problem. (Laughter) 
 
Or maybe some day they will accept Aldous Huxley's suggestion of having the great multi-billion dollar corporations finance a drug, which will enable each of us to be asleep eight hours a day, in addition to our night's sleep.. So that we'll have eight free hours of worry, eight hours in which we'll be so happy. Of course, when the eight hours are up, like Cinderella you know, we have to go home and lose our glass slipper and go back to rags. But for those eight hours we can be Cinderella.
 
Well, I don't think there's anyone in this room would be satisfied with that. We have gone a step further than wanting an escape. We have gone a step further than wanting just to push the troubles in back of our mind and get rid of them for a few hours. Or even to take a vacation for a couple of weeks and then come back and face them. I think all of us have come to the point where if we have problems we'd rather bring them right out tonight, sit up all night if necessary and face them. And see if we can't meet them and overcome them. All right?
 
Now then, in the practice of The Infinite Way you will find two parts to the teaching. Well, there are two parts, which we call the letter of truth and then the consciousness of truth. But I meant two parts to the letter of truth. And one is the nature of reality, which includes knowing the nature of God and the nature of prayer. And that would be your as, is and am would all come into knowing the nature of God and the nature of prayer, treatment.. 
 
But then we have another part and a part, which is very, very, very unpopular with most of our students for a long, long time. I would say that most of our students for two or three years are always convinced that if they were Joel Goldsmith, they'd know how to improve this teaching and they would leave out this part called the nature of error. Oh, I know most of them would surely improve on it and leave that out because everybody knows that error isn't real. So why do we have to bother with the nature of error?
 
But, but I haven't been able to accept their view on this because of my own twenty-seven years experience. As a matter of fact, one time I was invited to give a class in a Truth Center and the leader said "Now, of course we've heard here how you devote part of the class to the nature of error. And so I'd like to tell you, you won't have to do that here because our students all know about that. They know that error isn't real." 
 
So I said "Why are they students and why are they here? If they've discovered that they have no problems. Now what do they want this for?" 
"Oh no, they all have problems." 
"But you just said that they know the nature of error and its nothing." 
"Yes." 
"Well, if its nothing what are they here for? To get rid of nothing?" 
"No, I'm sure they're here to get rid of something." 
 
And that something is error, in one form or another. And so I have never left out those chapters of the books called "The Nature of Error", nor have I ever neglected it in this work. And this is the reason. Now, mark this well because this is going to be a very, very important point in your life if you catch it. If you don't you're going to have to go through class another time and start all over again.
 
 
 
In every teaching on the face of the globe there are two powers, excluding of course The Infinite Way. The Infinite Way has one power. In all religions you have a God, a good usually represented by God, and you have evil usually represented by Satan or devil. In philosophy you have a power of Good with a capital G and you have Evil with a capital E. In metaphysics you have the immortal, which is the good and you have the mortal, which is the evil.. And now in all of these the idea is that God is really superior to the evil. The good is superior to the evil, to the error if, if you can find out how to go about it.
 
In other words, it is definitely taught that God is the greater power. But nobody yet has found how to get God to overcome the evil and that's why the evil still exists in the world. But the object of religion is to find a way to reach God so that our evils can be overcome. And that doesn't happen in The Infinite Way. 
 
In the Infinite Way you have one power and that's God. And you never use it and you don't have to use it. There's no need to use it. There's nothing to use it about or over. That which appears to us as evil is recognized as a picture, a suggestion, a hypnotic influence but not a thing or a person. Not a cause. It has no law. It exists as a mental image in your thought. Very much like looking at the car tracks in the distance and seeing them come together and then realizing "Well, we don't have to push them apart because in reality they don't come together, they only appear to." Now that's intelligence overcoming an erroneous appearance. That's knowledge overcoming an erroneous appearance but not separating car tracks, because they weren't together.
 
In the same way, you see a sky sitting on top of a mountain. And you want to go across that mountain but you can't, because how're you going to get across the sky sitting up there? Now, intelligence says to you "Aha, that's an illusion, that's a false picture, that's an appearance but it is not a reality, because the sky is up where the sky belongs and the mountain's where the mountain belong and in spite of all appearances I'm going up over the mountain."
 
Now, there again there is not one power overcoming another. You haven't pushed the sky off the mountain. It wasn't there. It was merely your knowledge, your intelligence telling you the truth. Do you follow that? You didn't do anything to push tracks apart. You didn't do anything to raise the sky off the mountain or the horizon on the water. 
 
Do you remember how many centuries that ships couldn't go further than a few miles from land? Because they couldn't find anybody to push that horizon back. If only they could have found a God who would have shoved that horizon back. But God wouldn't do it for them. Why? There wasn't any horizon there. That was a mental image in thought and it finally took a Christopher Columbus to demonstrate that. Others knew it but they tried to tell it to the church. And that's always a bad business, as they found out. (Laughter)
 
But evidently Christopher Columbus decided that the best way…he believed, I guess, in the Chinese teaching, one picture's better than ten thousand words. "I'll just make one trip across that horizon and that'll end it.." And it did end it for the world, and it ended him. He ended up in prison too for proving it. But the point is this; he did prove that you do not need a power to push the horizon off the ocean. He did prove that; that the horizon isn't there.
 
So it is, if you understand what I am saying to you tonight you will not have to use a God to get rid of your sins or your diseases or your lacks. You will acknowledge the fact that in spite of appearances, there aren't any there. You may know a man who acts like a devil. But it's up to you to realize "I'm being deceived by appearances. God made man in his own image and likeness, and man is pure and upright."
 
You may know somebody who's dying and has every appearance of it but you will have to say, "I don't need a God to heal this person. I know now that this whole thing, this whole appearance is an illusion." And then you'll find what it is that is meant in the New Wisdoms where it says that you are only really and truly showing spirituality when you have no desires, when you have nothing left to pray for.
 
 
 
Now, you wouldn't pray to have those car tracks pushed apart. You wouldn't pray to have the sky removed from the mountain. You won't pray to have the horizon removed. And if you go to your public library tomorrow and check up on how many fish are in the sea and birds in the air, and how many cattle are on a thousand hills, and how many crops are in the ground, you won't pray for supply any more. You'll just know that God is flooding this universe so tremendously with supply that you don't have to pray to God. 
 
You may have to do something else. You may have to find some other way of making your contact with it, but it won't be to pray to God for supply. Because you will know with one visit to your library there's enough supply in this world of everything there is in the world – platinum, gold, uranium, oil. There isn't a thing missing. God didn't overlook a bit.
 
Now, the nature then of error is that you're not dealing with a condition that has to be changed, improved, healed or removed. You are dealing with an appearance that you must see through. Now with your human eyes you can't see through the horizon on the ocean can you? That always stays there as horizon. With your eyes you can't see through the sky sitting on the mountain. That appearance is there. So you have to have a higher intelligence than your eyesight if you are ever to overcome that ignorance. Is that right? And we call that higher power, an intelligence of that which is. All right?
 
There is a faculty which you possess but which you've used very little. It's a spiritual faculty. And with that faculty you can look at any appearance and say "Isn't it wonderful, it isn't true. It hasn't a law, it hasn't a cause; it doesn't come within the realm of God's creating, therefore I need not fear it. And scripture confirms that when it says I shall not fear what mortal man can do to me. It also tells you don't go to the other extreme and put your faith in princes. Keep your faith, not on God as going to do something, but on God as already having established this earth in its spiritual perfection. Do you see that? As, is and am. As, is and am. 
 
 




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